2016 August 6^th

Donald Trump, speaking in Wisconsin last night, endorsed Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Arizona Senator John McCain and New Hampshire Senator Kelli Ayotte, all for the coming elections. Trump spoke while reading directly from a script just like his handlers wanted him to do. There was all the enthusiasm of a hostage reading a ransom note dictated by his captors and, indeed, that is what this endorsement amounted to. Trump reading from a script  does not have the appeal of Trump’s unrehearsed unpredictability.

Congressman Ryan’s primary opponent, Paul Nehlen, has already received the nod from Trump who thanked him “for his kind words,” so this now makes Trump’s “endorsement” of Ryan largely moot. It was anyway because Ryan is very popular in his district and is a shoe in to return to Congress and to his speakership. Trump’s endorsement of Ryan helped Trump in Wisconsin far more than it helped Ryan…and Trump needs all the help in Wisconsin he can get.

Given the Latino population in Arizona Senator McCain might well prefer not to have Trump’s endorsement; it will not help him with a large and growing segment of the Arizona population.

Senator Ayotte is already ten points behind her popular opponent, the Democratic Governor, Maggie Hassan. Trump is behind Clinton in New Hampshire by 15 points; some help his endorsement of anyone will be in that state.

Even if Trump veers off track by not attacking Clinton, Fox and Friends with Tucker Carlson and two other non-entities (One of those a short-skirted blonde woman selected for her reporting skills of course.) were busy today attacking Hillary Clinton on her emails. A search of three thousand emails revealed that three had been marked somewhere in the document with a “C” for confidential and Clinton didn’t treat those emails with appropriate care. Comey, the FBI chief, admitted that Clinton might not have even seen that “C.” No matter, the folks at Fox have very little to hang their criticisms on, so they’ll hang on for dear life to what little they have.

The Benghazi killings continue to provide right wing ammunition. Never mind that Clinton was quizzed for eleven hours by a Congressional tribunal again and they found no smoking gun. Their waste of government money on this witch hunt has now become embarrassing. It’s interesting that the Republican house can find money to continue the investigation of Hillary Clinton but they can’t find money to fight the mosquito borne Zica virus. Is it any wonder Congress’ approval rating is about 13 percent?