By golly, Trump is negging us!


The slimy orange turd is actually going to be speaking in Minnesota on 19 August — he must be really confident if he’s bothering to campaign in a state that’s practically guaranteed to vote for anybody but Trump — and he’s warming us up with trash talk.

So the Washington Times reported, of a Somali refugee program in Minnesota, that, “the effort to resettle large groups of Somali refugees, is having the unintended consequence of creating an enclave of immigrants with high unemployment, that is both stressing the state’s” — I mean, the state is having tremendous problems, its safety net — “and creating a rich pool of recruiting targets for Islamist terror groups.”

It’s hapenning. It’s happening. You see it, and you read about it. You see it. And you can be smart, and you can be cunning, and tough, or you can be very, very dumb, and not want to see what’s going on, folks.”

I don’t think he knows us at all well, which is another reason he’s going to lose here. The City Pages dismantles his claim that we have tremendous problems.

Here, Trump is referring to the terrible scourge of unemployment in the Twin Cities, where, as of June, the unemployment rate was all of 3.7 percent, second lowest among American metropolitan areas. Statewide, the jobless rate is 3.8 percent, tied for the eighth-best in the country.

As for the “tremendous problems” for our safety net, let’s compare Minnesota to Maine, where Trump was speaking. Maine, with 1.3 million people, has about one-fourth of Minnesota’s population (roughly 5.4 million, give-or-take a few hundred people in town claiming to be relatives of Prince.) Maine finished its budget year with a $93 million surplus. Minnesota entered the 2016 legislative session with a $900 million surplus. Four times the population, ten times the leftover money. A tremendous problem.

That same Washington Times story Trump cited faults Minnesota for spending more than all but one other state (Alaska) on social welfare, according to the local conservative think thank, the Center for the American Experiment. That study found Minnesota spent $4,000 more per-low income person than the average American state.

Leave it to conservatives to believe that spending more on the poor is a black mark against the state, or to assume that Somali is synonymous with terrorist.

I’d love to attend for the frisson of horror, but unfortunately, Trump is charging $1000 a person just to attend, and is looking for $100,000 donations from couples. Somehow, I don’t think attendance will reflect the political preferences of the state at all.


In other important Trump news, it is now an established scientific fact that he has tiny little hands.

Comments

  1. kiptw says

    With that steep a buy-in, though, he can be sure he’ll have an audience who believes that they are politically and economically depressed (all those heartrending yard signs outside the mansions), and overrun with immigrants (far more than suits their needs) which only Trump can hit. With words!

  2. says

    The Khan family was right to say that Donald Trump repeatedly smears Muslims. He smears all non-white people. Trump claimed that Khizr Khan was telling lies about him, but Trump continues to back up everything Khan said.

  3. says

    I suppose Trump will ban all journalists from the City Pages. He banned journalists from the Washington Post after they wrote true, unflattering things about him.

    Kudos to the City Pages for presenting facts.

  4. says

    I mean, the state is having tremendous problems, its safety net…

    I’d like to take the opportunity to point that this is the real reason that most conservatives are against the social safety net. They are secretly afraid that some of their money might go to help POC and they just can’t stand that.

  5. The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge says

    He’s planning a campaign swing through Washington, Oregon, and California, too. Good luck with that. Snerk.

  6. Tethys says

    Having read the press release for the fund raiser I am wondering who these prominent local Republicans might be? Both our Senators are Dems and have already endorsed Hillary, not to mention that Minneapolis even elected one of those Muslim people to congress. Keith Ellison

    I hope he holds it in downtown Minneapolis or near the airport. A great many Somalians and other POC and immigrants work in service staff positions in the local hotels. I checked google for any details as to location, and was pleased to see that multiple protests being organized was the top local search result.

  7. antigone10 says

    Maybe he means our Representatives, not Senators? In pure numbers, there are way more Democrats than there are Republicans in Minnesota. But they are all pretty much concentrated in Minneapolis/ St. Paul, Rochester, and Duluth and to a lesser extent, Moorhead*. All of the suburbs and rural areas vote Republican**. So Eric Paulsen and few others are still hanging around.

    *Our regions could be an object lesson in gerrymandering. Check out the districts around Minneapolis/ St. Paul to see how bloody shameless it is.

    **Although, I have noticed that for the most part our Republicans aren’t THAT Republican. Trump came in third in the Republican primary, and they still end up voting for Democrats in ares that tend to be Republican from time to time.

  8. mareap says

    Winona county is solidly blue whereas Rochester is pretty damn Republican. Don’t assume out state Minnesota is solidly red, it’s not.

  9. Tethys says

    A whopping 80% of MN republicans have already rejected him. The only prominent R named is Stanley Hubbard, but I wonder if Mr. Hubbard is aware of it? I can only hope that our local billionaire media mogul becomes the target of protests too if he now endorses out of party unity. At one time he donated to a superPAC devoted to stopping the orange troll from becoming the nominee, so his waffling now could have some serious consequences in the court of public opinion.

  10. Tethys says

    As to the outstate vs metro vs suburbs. The republican areas of the state are the exurbs. Solidly white, generally on the higher end of the socioeconomic scale, hotbed of racism and gerrymandering. The rural portions and the core cities and suburbs are and have always been Democratic Farm Labor and our Republicans generally still value social democracy as a basic tenet of civilized society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota%27s_congressional_districts

  11. cartomancer says

    But is the publicity capital from campaigning in Minnesota actually aimed at convincing the people in Minnesota?

    Is it not more likely that the Trump entourage has selected Minnesota because they can use the presence of its ethnic Somali community to spin the kind of racist rhetoric that goes down well in the places they are likely to garner support? Somalia is a majority Muslim country after all, so we can probably guess how that’s going to go.

    I doubt many people who are susceptible to the Trump brand will know much about the Minnesotan Somalis and how problematic they aren’t, so they can say whatever they please. And those who do know the realities of the situation won’t be voting for him anyway, whatever he says, so the damage is absorbed.

  12. AMM says

    He’s quoting the Washington Times? Isn’t that a Moonie newspaper? At any rate, I don’t recall that it’s particularly reputable or unbiased — every time I hear about it, it’s because it’s come out with some bit of ultra right-wing spin. It doesn’t surprise me that this story contains a made-up controversy. Or that Trump uses them as a source rather than some more honest media outlet.

  13. Chris Capoccia says

    “everything is horrible” and obama ruins everything is the same drumbeat as the national republican-oriented press. with headlines like “Why the Jobs Report Could Tip the U.S. Towards a Recession” or “Friday’s jobs report looks like good news but it’s really bad news” (real headlines)

  14. blf says

    He’s quoting the Washington Times? Isn’t that a Moonie newspaper?

    Yes, the Washington Times is the fruitcake cult’s paper. As far as I know, they are about as reliable as the WND. Whether or not teh trum-prat’s claims are based on something they printed, I do not know (but note the City Pages apparently looked into what was in the WT). This is teh trum-prat, and he has an established and continuing history of inventing, misinterpreting, and cherry-picking, even from “friendly” “sources”: He lies.

  15. birgerjohansson says

    “he has an established and continuing history of inventing, misinterpreting, and cherry-picking, even from “friendly” “sources”: He lies.”

    You know, the CRISPR/Cas9 gene scissors were discovered in my home town…..
    (channeling Trump) …and it is a little-known fact thai I advised Emmanuelle Charpentier about where to look for the molecular machine bacteria use to defend themselves from virus.
    Also, I am the one who suggested Cleveland for the Republican meeting and who told Bill Gates he should try a career in computer programming.

  16. drken says

    @AMM #13:

    Giving Republicans somewhere to quote when they lie is the primary business philosophy of The Washington Times.

  17. ledasmom says

    Where in Minnesota? I thought it was safe to leave Massachusetts. Surely, I thought, I could visit family in Minnesota without risk of Trump encounters. But noooooooooo.

  18. moarscienceplz says

    re: Trump’s tiny hands
    It is often said that a person’s heart is about the size of a fist, so does this prove that Drumph is lacking in heart?