POLITICON: Why Trump is winning, astold by Sarah Palin
Published: June 26, 2016 Updated: 7:32 p.m.
Sarah Palin used her extensive stage time at Politicon on Sunday to stump for Donald Trump, blast the Republican establishment, and promote gun rights in her blunt, riffing style that her fans love and her critics love to mock.
The former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee was an early supporter of the real estate mogul and used her first speech of the day to lay out the reasons why he is the GOP’s presumptive nominee after besting a broad field that included big names such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
“So, why is Trump winning?” Palin asked. “Why do we see these floating heads still not grasping this movement? It’s so obvious. Voters are really sick and tired of betrayal.”
The betrayal, she said, hinged on the “audacity of duplicity” by corporations “that bankroll campaigns with such disloyalty to the American worker.”
Her early speech before about 500 in Pasadena was met with some applause, some dead moments of silence, some groans and some laughs.
She acknowledged that in blue California, and at an event that drew partisans from both sides of the aisle, there is “a diverse mix of opinion” at Politicon.
When she took the stage again with Democratic strategist and pundit James Carville for a conversation, the crowd – this time about 1,000 – was again mixed in its reactions.
She argued with Carville over gun rights and, when he asked why the Second Amendment should afford him the right to have a high-capacity automatic weapon, she countered by saying laws don’t keep those kinds of weapons out of the hands of criminals.
Palin has been a polarizing figure since she burst on the scene as Sen. John McCain’s running mate and, over the past eight years, steadily moved with the Tea Party faction of the GOP.
She has fervent supporters, has had best-selling books and retains a vast following of 1.26 million on Twitter and 4.6 million likes on Facebook.
“She hit it out of the park today,” said Julian Raven, who drove from New York to Pasadena to see her at the first speech. “She was very funny, forceful and respectful. The best speech I’ve seen her give.”
During that early speech, she took on the anti-Trump movement within the GOP ranks with acerbic fervor and described them with an acronym: Republicans Against Trump.
“Or RAT for short,” Palin said.
More than half of the crowd applauded. When the applause stopped, she continued.
“They’re not all bloodsuckers,” she said. “They’re not all bad.”
https://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin/videos/10154316449588588/ Video at LINK
Stopped by cousin's house yesterday on the way to Anchorage airport for trip to POLITICON convention in California. Here's Trig's sweet send-off!
Perhaps he's sensing I may be in the lion's den today delivering a speech the not-so-conservative convention has titled: "Why Your Average Everyday Garden-Variety American is (Ticked) Off and Trump is Winning", so he put extra effort in his cheering.
I love a challenge, so armed and loaded for bear after my son's great cheer, I'm headed in to the event to share some reality on behalf of Americans with righteous indignation.
https://www.periscope.tv/a35mmlife/1MnGnzabQnYGO
FROM 'TRUTHDIG'
Politicon 2016: Sarah Palin Hails the Rise of ‘Golden Wrecking Ball’ Donald Trump (Video)
Posted on Jun 26, 2016
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Kasia Anderson
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Sarah Palin knows the publicity game, and she knows how to work the spotlight to her political advantage. For this and many other reasons, it’s only logical that she would be the person to explain Donald Trump’s spectacular rise, fueled by just the same brand of media-based power she’s leveraged to her considerable advantage for more than a decade.
As it happened, Palin did just that on Sunday at the Politicon 2016 conference in Pasadena, Calif. In case there was any question about where she was heading as she made her entrance at the pop-culture-meets-politics summit, the title of her speech, “Your Garden Variety Everyday Pissed Off American,” spelled it out.
After sharing an onstage embrace wth her “friend,” CNN commentator Sally Kuhn and repeating her invite for Kuhn to “come slay some salmon in Alaska,” Palin came right out with the multi-billion-dollar-question of the 2016 election season: “So why is Trump winning?”
Current polls aside, Palin of course was ready with some answers. After setting the scene with an I-told-you-so critique of the Obama presidency, Palin said, “We knew the only counter to this was a revolution. But who would be the revolutionary? Instead of letting the media vet candidates for us, we asked who is not part of the problem?”
Enter Trump, said Palin, with his “earned income that is due respect,” and “who has has nothing to lose but knows that our very sovereignty is to gain,” and, most fancifully, who is “not palling around with crony capitalists, in bed with special interests ... screwing the American worker.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with capitalism. The former Alaska governor was quick to cast Trump in the unlikely position of the “outsider” billionaire, who has amassed great wealth but remains close to the earth.
“Trump is a builder—he looks up and he builds big!” Palin said, echoing a familiar right-wing refrain about job creation and self-propelled, meritocratic success. “He knows that men in denim built this country,” she added, “but D.C. suits—and pantsuits—destroy it.”
Enter Hillary Clinton, she of the pantsuits. Somewhat surprisingly, Palin devoted relatively little airtime to Trump’s potential Democratic challenger to the White House, except for a requisite Benghazi dig involving a shadowy figure sending emails from deep within “some dude’s bathroom” in D.C. Instead, she preferred to focus on Trump, the “golden wrecking ball” who had “knocked the crap out of” establishment politicians from both sides of the aisle, as well as another treasured target of the right, the “hypocritical PC police.” Palin also predictably stumped for America’s armed forces and gun rights, staying on-message with the pro-Second Amendment portion of her program while hitting out against “the Obamacare lie” in a single gymnastic move: “You like your doc? You can keep your doc! ... It’s gonna become, ‘you like your Glock? You can keep your Glock!’”
She took aim at America’s “Swiss-cheese borders,” railed against “silly protesters at the Trump rallies” (a riff which drew the loudest boos from the mostly subdued crowd) as well as “Repubilcans against Trump—or ‘RAT,’ for short.” In her biggest stretch yet, she took issue with “that ugly, ugly charge of racism” that Trump’s critics have pinned on him. “He’s got so many friends of every race, color and creed ... persuasions—black friends, colleagues—all great relationships!” Palin said, as though reading directly from Trump’s Twitter feed. “And doggone it the press knows this; Trump was never called a racist until he decided to run against the Democrats, and this is the way this dirty business works, folks.”
Rounding out her array of policy points, Palin invoked the specter of Islamic State, which she conflated with Islam itself. “The biggest, most sinister threat? The Islamic ideology constituting ISIS,” she said. “Islam put the ‘I’ in ISIS,” she added, again encountering no push-back from the audience. Pointing fingers at “current leaders” for failing to share this view, she said, “They’re wrapping our children in a suicide vest.”
In closing, she played on the Trumpian theme of winning, claiming that after eight years under Obama’s leadership, America’s “enemies laugh at us ... allies don’t trust us. USA—just settle for that participation ribbon,” she said, before praising the GOP candidate’s movement that in her estimation became a revolution and whose supporters watched him “rip the veil off a rigged system” and steal the GOP from under party leaders’ noses.
Overall, Palin’s speech was an unsurprising pastiche patched together from her trove of greatest-hits causes, catchphrases and all the zingers fit to print on her teleprompter. Trump couldn’t ask for a better spokesperson, and from reading Palin’s clear signals since the launch of his campaign, she could well be eyeing the White House herself—this time as a member of the Trump administration.
For now, though, at least a dozen polling percentage points and four other presidential candidates, including one in a pantsuit, still stand in her way.
Video footage (via YouTube)
As it happened, Palin did just that on Sunday at the Politicon 2016 conference in Pasadena, Calif. In case there was any question about where she was heading as she made her entrance at the pop-culture-meets-politics summit, the title of her speech, “Your Garden Variety Everyday Pissed Off American,” spelled it out.
After sharing an onstage embrace wth her “friend,” CNN commentator Sally Kuhn and repeating her invite for Kuhn to “come slay some salmon in Alaska,” Palin came right out with the multi-billion-dollar-question of the 2016 election season: “So why is Trump winning?”
Current polls aside, Palin of course was ready with some answers. After setting the scene with an I-told-you-so critique of the Obama presidency, Palin said, “We knew the only counter to this was a revolution. But who would be the revolutionary? Instead of letting the media vet candidates for us, we asked who is not part of the problem?”
Enter Trump, said Palin, with his “earned income that is due respect,” and “who has has nothing to lose but knows that our very sovereignty is to gain,” and, most fancifully, who is “not palling around with crony capitalists, in bed with special interests ... screwing the American worker.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with capitalism. The former Alaska governor was quick to cast Trump in the unlikely position of the “outsider” billionaire, who has amassed great wealth but remains close to the earth.
“Trump is a builder—he looks up and he builds big!” Palin said, echoing a familiar right-wing refrain about job creation and self-propelled, meritocratic success. “He knows that men in denim built this country,” she added, “but D.C. suits—and pantsuits—destroy it.”
Enter Hillary Clinton, she of the pantsuits. Somewhat surprisingly, Palin devoted relatively little airtime to Trump’s potential Democratic challenger to the White House, except for a requisite Benghazi dig involving a shadowy figure sending emails from deep within “some dude’s bathroom” in D.C. Instead, she preferred to focus on Trump, the “golden wrecking ball” who had “knocked the crap out of” establishment politicians from both sides of the aisle, as well as another treasured target of the right, the “hypocritical PC police.” Palin also predictably stumped for America’s armed forces and gun rights, staying on-message with the pro-Second Amendment portion of her program while hitting out against “the Obamacare lie” in a single gymnastic move: “You like your doc? You can keep your doc! ... It’s gonna become, ‘you like your Glock? You can keep your Glock!’”
She took aim at America’s “Swiss-cheese borders,” railed against “silly protesters at the Trump rallies” (a riff which drew the loudest boos from the mostly subdued crowd) as well as “Repubilcans against Trump—or ‘RAT,’ for short.” In her biggest stretch yet, she took issue with “that ugly, ugly charge of racism” that Trump’s critics have pinned on him. “He’s got so many friends of every race, color and creed ... persuasions—black friends, colleagues—all great relationships!” Palin said, as though reading directly from Trump’s Twitter feed. “And doggone it the press knows this; Trump was never called a racist until he decided to run against the Democrats, and this is the way this dirty business works, folks.”
Rounding out her array of policy points, Palin invoked the specter of Islamic State, which she conflated with Islam itself. “The biggest, most sinister threat? The Islamic ideology constituting ISIS,” she said. “Islam put the ‘I’ in ISIS,” she added, again encountering no push-back from the audience. Pointing fingers at “current leaders” for failing to share this view, she said, “They’re wrapping our children in a suicide vest.”
In closing, she played on the Trumpian theme of winning, claiming that after eight years under Obama’s leadership, America’s “enemies laugh at us ... allies don’t trust us. USA—just settle for that participation ribbon,” she said, before praising the GOP candidate’s movement that in her estimation became a revolution and whose supporters watched him “rip the veil off a rigged system” and steal the GOP from under party leaders’ noses.
Overall, Palin’s speech was an unsurprising pastiche patched together from her trove of greatest-hits causes, catchphrases and all the zingers fit to print on her teleprompter. Trump couldn’t ask for a better spokesperson, and from reading Palin’s clear signals since the launch of his campaign, she could well be eyeing the White House herself—this time as a member of the Trump administration.
For now, though, at least a dozen polling percentage points and four other presidential candidates, including one in a pantsuit, still stand in her way.
Video footage (via YouTube)
VARIETY
Politicon: Sarah Palin, James Carville Engage in a Debate About Guns
ROB LATOUR/VARIETY/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
When James Carville sat with Sarah Palin for a Politicon conversation on Sunday, he was polite. He praised her 2008 Republican National Convention speech. He even seemed to sympathize with her for being scapegoated in John McCain’s presidential campaign.
But then he challenged her on wanting to “take back the country,” a common Tea Party phrase that has morphed into Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” and their conversation quickly turned into a debate over gun control.
Carville, the Democratic strategist, said to the former vice presidential nominee: “When you say you want to take back the country, what is it you want to take back?”
“I want to take back the interpretation of our constitution that is being wrongly interpreted today,” Palin said.
“Where are we going haywire on the Constitution?” he asked.
Palin’s response: the Second Amendment.
“It is black and white, and we have a right, of course, to bear arms,” she said. “People who can interpret that to, ‘Oh that means not everybody has that right.’ Or to take certain things like ammo, ‘Well that doesn’t apply.’ Or we can get rid of AR-15s because AR-15s weren’t invented for hunting. I say, ‘Yeah, the Second Amendment wasn’t written in the case the moose turn on us.’ Of course it wasn’t mean for hunting.”
Carville, though, pressed her further.
“Do I have a right to possess a bazooka? Do I have the right to have a surface to air missile and live close to the Los Angeles Airport?”
“Well, that is such a stupid question,” Palin responded.
The Palin-Carville conversation was among a number of marquee events at Politicon, a gathering of political junkies with panels, standup comedy, film screenings and art displays at the Pasadena Convention Center.
Carville went on. “I was in the Marine Corps. I have guns. I grew up rural. Why do I need a 40-clip magazine?”
“Well, I hear what you are saying is there are some firearms that you think should be outlaws assuming, and it is a wrong assumption, that the bad guys are going to follow any law and not have that firearm,” Palin said.
Palin had a number of supporters in the audience, which was standing room only at a meeting room at the convention center. But there were also many cheers as Carville tried to make his point.
“I was just asking the question, why do I need a 40-clip magazine rapid fire rifle?” Carville continued.
“You probably don’t in your area of New Orleans,” Palin responded.
“Where would I live and need one? I am not doing gotcha. Actually real hunters, they don’t even hunt deers anymore with repeating rifles,” Carville said.
Palin answered. “It has nothing to do with hunting. It has to do with the constitutional right to protect yourself.”
She added that there “is an assumption that more laws on the books are going to wake up and convert a criminal, a bad guy to all of the sudden wake up say, ‘I can’t do that, I am not going to do that anymore.'”
But Carville wasn’t finished. “People are going to get drunk and drive, but we have drunk driving laws.”
“This is one of those issues that you are not going to change my mind,” Palin said, as Carville switched topics. “I am not going to change your mind. Because if the Second Amendment goes, that right goes and every right goes.”
Carville also pressed Palin if she had any examples when she referred to the news business as the “lame stream media” — a frequent phrase she uses in speeches and on social media.
She named Katie Couric, who interviewed her in a notorious series of pieces for CBS News in 2008. Palin cited Couric’s recent apology over edits made to a recent documentary, “Under the Gun.”
But later, in a Q&A with the audience, she also agreed that some reporters at Fox News have a bias. “I believe that Fox News has a conservative bent,” she said, adding, “You know what? Thank God for that.”
The first question from the audience came from a ten-year-old boy who also said he was a reporter. Carville asked him to come up on stage, and the boy noted that Palin had said that she “hated” countries that didn’t treat women right and didn’t want them to be part of the United Nations.
Palin tried to interrupt, but the boy asked her to “please” let him finish.
Given her comments about those countries, the boy said, “How come you are endorsing Donald Trump after he said, Megyn Kelly ‘has got blood coming out of her wherever.'”
There were cheers and some laughs from the crowd.
Palin answered, “Donald Trump isn’t sexist. If he were, I wouldn’t be endorsing hi
