Trump Threatens to Skip Remaining Debates If Hillary Is There

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (The Borowitz Report)—Plunging the future of the 2016 Presidential debates into doubt, Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday morning that he would not participate in the remaining two debates if Hillary Clinton is there.

Trump blasted the format of Monday night’s debate by claiming that the presence of Clinton was “specifically designed” to distract him from delivering his message to the American people.

“Every time I said something, she would say something back,” he said. “It was rigged.”

He also lambasted the “underhanded tactics” his opponent used during the debate. “She kept on bringing up things I said or did,” he added. “She is a very nasty person.”

Turning to CNN, Trump criticized the network’s use of a split screen showing both him and Clinton throughout the telecast. “It should have been just me,” he said. “That way people could have seen how really good my temperament is.”

The billionaire said that debate organizers had not yet responded to his ultimatum, but he warned that if he does not get assurances in writing that future debates will be “un-rigged, Hillary-wise,” he will not participate.

“I have said time and time again that I would only do these debates if I am treated fairly,” he added. “The only way I can be guaranteed of being treated fairly is if Hillary Clinton is not there.”

The first debate featured an unprepared man repeatedly shouting over a highly prepared woman

The first presidential debate featured a man who didn’t know what he was talking about repeatedly shouting over a woman who was extraordinarily prepared.

The debate was a collision between Donald Trump’s politics of dominance and Hillary Clinton’s politics of preparation.

Clinton’s politics of preparation won.

Trump did his best to be fair. He interrupted Clinton 25 times in the debate’s first 26 minutes. He talked over both her and moderator Lester Holt with ease. But the show of dominance quickly ran into a problem: Trump would shout over his interlocutors only to prove he had nothing to say.

Trump’s riffs were dotted by baldfaced lies of the kind the press will easily check, but, more consequentially, he spoke in a barely coherent stream of consciousness. Consider his answer when Holt asked him to defend his proposal to cut taxes on the rich. It’s worth quoting in full:

They are going to expand their companies and do a tremendous job. I'm getting rid of the great thing for the wealthy, it's a great thing for the middle class and for companies to expand and when these people are going to put billions and billions of dollars into companies and when they are going to bring $2.5 trillion back from overseas where they can't bring the money back because politicians like Secretary Clinton won't allow them to bring the money back because the taxes are so onerous and the bureaucratic red tape, it's so bad.

So what they are doing is leaving our country and, believe it or not, they are leaving because taxes are too high and because some of them have lots of money outside of our country and instead of bringing it back and putting the money to work because they can't work out a deal and everybody agrees it should be brought back, instead of that, they are leaving our country to get their money because they can't bring their money back into our country because of bureaucratic red tape, because they can't get together. Because we have a president that can't sit them around a table and get them to approve something, and here's the thing, Republicans and Democrats agree that this should be done. $2.5 trillion.

I happen to think it's double that. It's probably $5 trillion that we can't bring into our country, Lester, and with a little leadership, you'd get it in here very quickly and it could be put to use on the inner cities and lots of other things, and it would be beautiful. But we have no leadership. And honestly, that starts with Secretary Clinton.

There is virtually nothing in this answer that makes any sense.

First, it doesn’t address the original question. Trump has proposed a massive cut in income taxes for the richest Americans. His answer, as best I can parse it, is related to overseas corporate earnings. He seems to be blaming Hillary Clinton for tax rates on overseas corporate income, which is ... a strange thing to blame Clinton for.

But it’s hard to assess what he’s saying, exactly, because his answer is a half-informed ramble from someone who apparently didn’t listen to the original question.

And this just kept happening. Take Trump’s answer on cybersecurity:

As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said, we should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not. I don't know if we know it was Russia who broke into the DNC.
She's saying Russia, Russia, Russia. Maybe it was. It could also be China, it could be someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds. You don't know who broke into DNC, but what did we learn? We learn that Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of by your people. By Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Look what happened to her. But Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of. Now, whether that was Russia, whether that was China, whether it was another country, we don't know, because the truth is, under President Obama we've lost control of things that we used to have control over. We came in with an internet, we came up with the internet.

And I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the internet, they're beating us at our own game. ISIS. So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is a, it is a huge problem.

I have a son. He's 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it's unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing, but that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them.

Compare that with what Clinton said on the same subject:

I think cybersecurity, cyber warfare will be one of the greatest challenges facing the next president, because clearly we're facing, at this point, two different kinds adversaries. There are the independent hacking groups that do it mostly for commercial reasons to try to steal information that they then can use to make money. But increasingly, we are seeing cyberattacks coming from states.

The most recent and troubling of these has been Russia. There's no doubt now that Russia has used cyberattacks against all kinds of organizations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this. I know Donald been very praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin.

But Putin is playing a very tough, long game here. And one of the things he's done is to let loose cyberattackers to hack into government files, to personal files, the Democratic National Committee. And we recently learned that this is one of their preferred methods of trying to wreak havoc and collect information. We need to make it very clear, whether it's Russia, China, Iran, or anybody else, the United States has much greater capacitty 

And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private sector information or our public sector information, and we're going to have to make it clear that we don't want to use the kinds of tools that we have. We don't want to engage in a different kind of warfare. But we will defend the citizens of this country, and the Russians need to understand that.

There’s just an astonishing gap in the coherence of these two answers. Neither, in my view, stands as a particularly great answer in the history of presidential debates. But Clinton’s is a basically logical, informed response to an obvious question; Trump’s answer is simply word salad.

Trump’s worst moment on the night came after Holt asked about Trump’s propagation of the conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya. As you read Trump’s answer, note that he says, in his answer, that he expected this question. This is what you get when Trump prepares.

HOLT: Just want to get the answer here. The birth certificate was produced in 2011. You've continued to tell the story and question the president's legitimacy in 2012, '13, '14, '15 as recently as January. So the question is, what changed your mind?

TRUMP: Well, nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it. I figured you'd ask the question tonight, of course. But nobody was caring much about it. But I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate. And I think I did a good job.

Secretary Clinton also fought it. I mean, you know — now, everybody in mainstream is going to say, oh, that's not true. Look, it's true. Sidney Blumenthal sent a reporter — you just have to take a look at CNN, the last week, the interview with your former campaign manager. And she was involved. But just like she can't bring back jobs, she can't produce.

HOLT: I'm sorry. I'm just going to follow up — and I will let you respond to that, because there's a lot there. But we're talking about racial healing in this segment. What do you say to Americans, people of color who...
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Well, it was very — I say nothing. I say nothing, because I was able to get him to produce it. He should have produced it a long time before. I say nothing.

But let me just tell you. When you talk about healing, I think that I've developed very, very good relationships over the last little while with the African-American community. I think you can see that.
And I feel that they really wanted me to come to that conclusion. And I think I did a great job and a great service not only for the country but even for the president, in getting him to produce his birth certificate.

Cut back to Clinton:

HOLT: Secretary Clinton?
CLINTON: Well, just listen to what you heard. And clearly, as Donald just admitted, he knew he was going to stand on this debate stage and Lester Holt was going to be asking us questions, so he tried to put the whole racist birther lie to bed.

But it can't be dismissed that easily. He has really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted, he persisted year after year, because some of his supporters, people that he was trying to bring into his fold, apparently believed it or wanted to believe it.
But, remember, Donald started his career back in 1973 being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African Americans, and he made sure that the people who worked for him understood that was the policy. He actually was sued twice by the Justice Department.
So he has a long record of engaging in racist behavior.

Here’s the thing about the coherence gap: It matters, because it speaks to a deeper difference between Trump and Clinton. My colleague Matt Yglesias wrote a piece on the difference between Trump and Clinton’s debate preparations (she was preparing, he wasn’t) that reads as nearly prophetic now:

Trump’s aides are probably underplaying his level of preparation to lower expectations, but on some level we all know in our hearts that it’s true — Trump is not sitting around studying briefing books and making sure he has accurate and detailed answers on everything that might conceivably come up. We’ve seen him in debates and high-stakes interviews before, and he almost certainly is going to more or less wing it and figure that it doesn’t really matter if that means he says things that are false or offensive.

Clinton is the one doing prep work. She’s prepping because the debate is important, and preparing for important moments is what sensible people do. And something that’s tended to get lost amid the frog memes and whatnot of 2016 is that working with a competent team to read briefing books and release white papers is a crucially important part of being president.
It’s a big, difficult job in which mistakes can have catastrophic consequences for the lives of millions of people, and where you don’t get to declare bankruptcy and start over again if you mess up. You don’t have to walk into the Oval Office knowledgeable about every issue under the sun on day one to be successful — nobody’s ever met that standard, and nobody ever will — but you do need a credible team, and you need to be able to get up to speed.

This difference will show up at the debate, allowing Clinton to give factually defensible and politically tenable answers to a range of questions on weighty matters. That’s hard to do, and Trump won’t be able to pull it off on the fly, which is why he has recently been working the refs to explain that debate moderators should let him get away with lying.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Toward the end of the debate, Trump questioned Clinton’s stamina. "I don't believe she does have the stamina," he said. "To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina."

But the irony was it was Clinton’s stamina that won this debate, and behind that stamina was her preparation. Trump grew less and less coherent as the night wore on, and his early spree of interruptions flagged as he was quickly forced onto topics where he hadn’t done the work to feel comfortable. Clinton, by contrast, grew stronger as the debate wore on, because she had prepared for everything the moderators threw at her.

There were many differences between the candidates on display in this contest, but the most consequential one was that Clinton displayed the basic personal qualities necessary to be president. Trump didn’t. She had done the work to know what she was talking about and to survive a high-stakes encounter with an unpredictable opponent. He hadn’t done the work, and it showed.

Ginebra survives Alaska to book semis ticket vs SMB

Barangay Ginebra is back in the PBA Final Four for the first time in three years.

With huge games from LA Tenorio and Justin Brownlee, Ginebra overcame Alaska Milk, 109-104, in an emotional, rollercoaster game to advance to the PBA Governors Cup semifinals at the Smart Araneta Coliseum Friday night.

Tenorio poured in a personal three-year high of 32 points while Brownlee came through with 28 including a huge three-pointer at the finish as the Gin Kings got past the Aces to arrange a best-of-five semis showdown with the San Miguel Beermen.

Sol Mercado and Japeth Aguilar had their own moments in the early goings of the game, helping the Kings nail a first semis appearance in eight conferences.

The Kings had never been into the semis since finishing third in the 2013-14 Philippine Cup.

“The guys had never got past the quarters in a long while. It’s a first big step for them,” said Ginebra coach Tim Cone.

“It’s great to be in the semis. It’s nice to be back. Our reward is we’ve got to play San Miguel Beer. We’re gonna enjoy tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll refocus and have to be ready,” Cone also said.

“With all due respect to TNT, I think SMB is still the team to beat in the semis. With June Mar (Fajardo) and all the weapons around him, it’s not a stretch to say they’re really tough. Fajardo is tough to handle especially without Greg (Slaughter),” Cone added.

Tenorio sizzled all night, leading decisive runs in the second and third periods and also having a hand as they fended off Alaska’s fourth-quarter chase.

The Ginebra playmaker was amazing but so were the Aces in their mighty fightback from 48-74 down to threaten at 104-105 with still 31 seconds to go.

Brownlee provided the Kings a huge relief in knocking in a trey off LaDontae Henton making it 108-104 with time down to 9.6 seconds.

Hastening Alaska’s downfall and exit in the season were three flubbed charities by Calvin Abueva with 8.3 seconds left.

Tenorio proved too hot to handle for Jvee Casio and RJ Jazul in the first three quarters, firing away 30 as the Gin Kings sat on a 53-41 cushion at the half then broke away with their 26-point bulge.

The Ginebra chief point guard went 4-of-4 from the field and added a charity to lead their 30-18 pounding of the Aces in the second quarter.

The scores:

 
GINEBRA 109 – Tenorio 32, Brownlee 29, Mercado 14, Aguilar 12, Marcelo 7, Devance 6, Caguioa 4, Thompson 3, Cruz 2, Mariano 0, Helterbrand 0.

ALASKA 104 – Henton 27, Abueva 17, Jazul 13, Hontiveros 12, Manuel 10, Casio 9, Thoss 9, Banchero 5, Racal 2, Baclao 0, Dela Rosa 0, Exciminiano 0.

Quarterscores: 23-23, 53-41, 86-66, 109-104

LA Times endorses Clinton, bashes Trump

The reliably liberal editorial board of the Los Angeles Times has endorsed Hillary Clinton, calling her "an experienced, thoughtful and deeply knowledgeable public servant" in a lengthy editorial.

The paper lambasted Donald Trump, by contrast, as a "thin-skinned demagogue who is unqualified and unsuited to be president."

Echoing criticisms leveled by Clinton and her allies, the editorial attacks the billionaire businessman as someone who "has never held elected office and has shown himself temperamentally unfit to do so. 

"He has run a divisive, belligerent, dishonest campaign, repeatedly aligning himself with racists, strongmen and thugs while maligning or dismissing large segments of the American public. Electing Trump could be catastrophic for the nation," the board writes.

The editorial then goes on detail Clinton's perceived strengths and attack Trump's record at length.

But it also wrestles with the former secretary of state's perceived shortcomings, noting her "penchant for secrecy" and dinging her "for adjusting her positions to match popular opinion and for being a little too comfortable with the use of military force."

Ultimately, the board concludes: "To be a great president, she will have to struggle to overcome her own weaknesses. But compared with Trump’s infirmities as a candidate, her failings are insignificant. It’s absurd — and perilous — to portray this election, as so many are doing, as a choice of the 'lesser of two evils' or to suggest that her flaws are in any way on a level with his."

The LA Times also endorsed Clinton ahead of the California Democratic primary. It also endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 "without hesitation," and again in 2012, hailing his "steady leadership."

5 Tips from Trump's fallen rivals on how to debate him

Take it from those who took on Donald Trump in the primary debates — it’s not easy to debate him. 

The political neophyte turned GOP presidential nominee vanquished 16 Republican rivals by exceeding expectations on the debate stage, where he offered an unpredictable mix of personal attacks and controversial claims. 

Trump is a relatively inexperienced debater compared to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but he can't be underestimated.

Here's what a handful of top aides to Trump’s primary rivals say they learned from debating — and losing — to The Donald.

1 - Be authentic, not overly scripted 

Carly Fiorina was the only woman who ran against Trump in the Republican primaries.

She and Trump feuded bitterly, with Trump jabbing during an interview with “Rolling Stone” that the onetime Hewlett-Packard CEO didn’t have the “face of our next president.”

“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?” Trump told the magazine while watching Fiorina on the news.

“She’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta [sic] to say bad things, but really, folks, come on, are we serious?” Rolling Stone quoted Trump as saying.

Trump’s comments were widely viewed as a sexist attack on Fiorina’s looks, and her campaign knew it would come up during the debates.

Fiorina’s team didn’t plan a scripted response, said campaign manager Frank Sadler, and instead trusted Fiorina to land a blow from the heart.

She didn’t disappoint when CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked about Trump’s Rolling Stone comments.

“I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,” Fiorina shot back, as CNN showed a side-by-side of a calm Fiorina with a fidgeting Trump. 

Fiorina got great reviews for the performance and short-lived bump in polls, which showed the importance of at least looking authentic and tough against Trump.

“We believed our most effective way to attack that would be to let Carly be Carly in the moment. If we had scripted it, it probably would have gone poorly,” Sadler said. 

In Clinton’s case, he said, “She’s got to be herself in those moments. ... If that comes across scripted with Trump, that’s where you get into real trouble.” 

That may not be easy for Clinton, who admits to being less comfortable with the “public” part of public service. 

At the same time, she’s shown herself to be a good debater, and she kept her cool and stayed on message during her inaugural Senate campaign when Republican Rick Lazio memorably got into her personal space.

2 - Push back, but don’t get down into mud 

The primary debates proved Trump is not afraid to get down and dirty. 

His insults left many of his rivals looking bad and struggling for a comeback. 

Mike DuHaime, a longtime aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, specifically noted Trump’s famous jabs about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s “low energy,” from which Bush struggled to rebound.

“You have to be very direct about confronting” those types of attacks, DuHaime said.

In Clinton’s case, attacks related to her husband's marital infidelities, her health or decades-old controversies could come up. Or there could be another surprise.

“He may say something to her face that no one else has ever said to her face,” DuHaime said. “People may have said it behind her back, but he may say it to her face in front of tens of millions of people.”

Sadler said Clinton will have to show an ability to push back.

“The ability to counterpunch is a very useful tactic against Donald Trump, and it’s helpful if the comments he’s made are like what he said about Carly: things that don’t ring well with the American people,” Sadler said. 

Alice Stewart, who advised Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) White House bid after working with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's, said the best way to handle Trump is to not resort to insults. The Republican nominee is likely to win such a battle. 

“Don’t go out there and criticize him. Show the contrast on the issues and don’t make it about personal insults. I think that served Ted very well,” she said.  

She believes Cruz hurt Trump by turning a question about whether he could match Trump’s tough talk on immigration into sharp criticism of Trump’s past donations to Clinton and other Democrats during an early March debate right before the Wisconsin primary.

“He was very familiar with Trump’s record, and when he had the opportunity, he called him out as someone without a conservative record,” she said.  

Cruz ended up crushing Trump in the Wisconsin primary.

3 - Lean on your policy strength 

Few know more about public policy than Clinton, an advantage she holds over Trump that gives her an edge in the debate.

The one-on-one atmosphere only strengthens that advantage, Stewart said, as Clinton is “able to elaborate and flesh out policies in a more comprehensive way than Trump.” 

DuHaime said that considering her low favorability rating, many people who support Clinton don’t have the sunniest view of her or her candidacy. But they may think she’s much more prepared than Trump to be president, and the debate is a moment for her to underline that argument.

“If people are voting for her and they don’t like her, they are voting for her because they have comfort on the substance,” he said.  “Being the more substantive candidate could reassure those people who are uncomfortable with her personality.” 

4 - At the same time, don’t be overly wonky 

Al Gore could out-wonk George Bush.

But the 2000 Republican nominee got the better of the vice president in that year’s first debate nonetheless when Gore’s audible sighs turned viewers off.

Against Trump, there’s a risk in Clinton looking too much like a college professor — or the candidate you’d less like to hang out with.

“She will look more obtuse if she tries to talk too much to the audience. We should remember who the average voter is. The average voter isn’t someone who has a breadth of knowledge on these issues,” said Vincent Harris, a former aide to Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) who briefly did private digital work for Trump’s campaign. 

“If Secretary Clinton tries to take the ‘I’m so wonky and I have such an inside-baseball knowledge’ route, she’s going to be hurting herself in playing to what Mr. Trump says that she is: a creature of the system.” 

5 - Don’t prepare for a weak opponent 

Monday night will present Trump’s highest-stakes debate and his first one-on-one political event. But after his performance in the GOP primary debates, aides caution underestimating the lifelong showman. 

Many of his primary election rivals expected Trump to bungle his chances in the debates, overwhelmed by his more seasoned rivals. But instead, he continued to build momentum even when the post-debate punditry questioned his methods. 

“We talked to other staffers, other candidates would chat backstage, and they all thought Donald Trump did poorly, but voters overwhelmingly thought he won,” said J. Hogan Gidley, a former Huckabee aide that now works on a pro-Trump super PAC. 

Much of that comes from his comfort on television. 

“He is a charismatic guy, likes the attention, and will certainly not be intimidated by the bright lights and lots of people watching, he’ll probably thrive on it,” DuHaime, the Christie aide, said.  

Trump’s unpredictability will complicate Clinton’s planning; one Clinton ally told The Hill that she’s preparing for his “multiple personalities.”

DuHaime said that wild card could be “unsettling” for Clinton.  

“He can be very aggressive, but in other debates, he was smartly very reserved,” he said. 

“You can war-game it a little, but at the end of the day, it’s up to the candidate."

The Alt-Right Movement Gains Momentum Alongside The Trump Train

What is the alt-right?

The alt-right is setting itself apart from mainstream conservatism in the United States.
This group of real conservatives have been defined as the movement assisting Donald Trump to the top of the Republican presidential ticket. The alt-right has no official ideology, though is loosely joined together by the belief that America should be the first and foremost priority for our politicians and immigration should be curtailed.

It has been described as an "amorphous conservative movement" by Mic, and as "loosely assembled" by The New Yorker. Various sources have described the alt-right as composed of elements of white nationalism, white supremacism, and even anti-semitism.

Jeet Heer of The New Republic viewed the alt-right as a group held together by a collection of far-right wing beliefs, in particular, restricting immigration and supporting a more nationalist foreign policy. This loose collection of mostly conservatives make up much of the strong support for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

While some conservatives have accepted the alt-right, many others on the Left and Right continue to dismiss the movement as racist, hateful, and bigoted.

David French, writing for National Review, called the alt-right "wanna-be fascists.”

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, writing in The New Yorker, described them as a "loosely assembled far-right movement," saying its differences from the conventional right-wing in American politics are more a matter of style than substance.

Professor George Hawley of the University of Alabama went so far as to suggest that the alt-right may pose a greater threat to progressivism than mainstream conservatism, something barely represented in the current U.S. political system.

Samuel Jared Taylor is an American nationalist who is the the founding editor of American Renaissance, a publication sometimes described as white supremacist. He has been mentioned as an intellectual representative of the alt-right. Taylor would contend that his views on nationality and race are simply “moderate, commonsensical, and fully consistent with the views of most of the great statesmen and presidents of America’s past.” White people have their own racial interests, Taylor believes, and for this reason, they must protect these interests from those who would threaten them (i.e. illegal Mexican workers stealing jobs).

Paul Joseph Watson, longtime reporter at Alex Jones’ controversial site, InfoWars, is another voice for the alt-right. “Culture, controversy, contrarianism” are the words describing Watson’s insightful YouTube channel. His plain talk and dispensing of political correctness is a much more eloquent version of Trump’s lambasting ramblings. He is confrontational in his dialogue and writing, setting a high bar for new age conservative thought in the West.

 

The alt-right and Breitbart News

In National Review, Ian Tuttle wrote that the alt-right “has evangelized over the last several months primarily via a racist and antisemitic online presence.” But not everyone on the Right shares those sentiments. Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart paint the alt-right as a bunch of “fun-loving provocateurs, valiant defenders of Western civilization, daring intellectuals—and a handful of neo-Nazis keen on a Final Solution 2.0, but there are only a few of them, and nobody likes them anyways." Bokhari and Yiannopoulos think the alt-right should be heard while others dismiss them outright without fully knowing what they’re all about.

Cathy Young, writing in Newsday, called the alt-right “a nest of anti-Semitism” inhabited by "white supremacists" who regularly use “repulsive bigotry.” Chris Hayes on All In with Chris Hayes described alt-right as a euphemistic term for "essentially modern-day white supremacy." These mainstream media critics pick out a small minority of the alt-right in order to depict the group as a set that should not be taken seriously.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Breitbart News has become a popular outlet for alt-right views. This has been borne out over the last few years.
Speaking of Breitbart, the “alternative right” was described in a recent profile piece by the recently mentioned Bokhari and Yiannopoulos. “Young, creative and eager to commit secular heresies, they have become public enemy number one to beltway conservatives — more hated, even, than Democrats or loopy progressives.” The alt-right is a collection of Americans eager to upend the status quo, fed up with the entrenched Republican versus Democrat dichotomy without a difference. Their pointed arguments have garnered criticism from all political stripes which goes to show they are hitting a nerve.

Critics are wrong to insist that only the very worst of our society subscribe to the alt-right’s tenets. There are certain undesirable people under this rickety umbrella, but they are nowhere near representative of the group’s overall goals. They hold loosely united beliefs, but this strand of modern day conservative outreach is nevertheless taking a firm hold.

There are many kinds of conservatives and libertarians drawn to this new movement on the American Right. Bokhari and Yiannopoulos detailed the dizzying demographics of this growing lot. There are the clear headed intellectuals, natural conservatives, unaffiliated tech-savvy Millennials, and racist skinheads that no one wants around.

The alt-right separates itself from these skinheads because they are by and large a very intellectual group. This is likely why much of the Left and the Right hate them so much. Their ideas make so much sense. Almost too much sense. The mainstream media therefore moves to silence them.

But is it racist? 

The origins of the alternative right range from H.L. Mencken to Oswald Spengler and Pat Buchanan. The media empire of the modern-day alt-right initially coalesced around Richard Spencer during his editorship of Taki’s Magazine. Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com in 2010, a center of alt-right thought.

Intellectuals such as “isolationists, pro-Russians and ex-Ron Paul supporters frustrated with continued neoconservative domination of the Republican party” were also drawn to the alt-right. This peaceful strand of libertarian-leaning conservatism is growing in the Republican Party, as seen by the alt-right “who are almost as likely as the anti-war left to object to overseas entanglements.”

Natural conservatives take governance and politics very seriously. The conservative instinct, as described by sociologist Jonathan Haidt, includes “a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism.” This kind of non-inclusive approach is what the media uses to paint all Republicans as racists and hatemongers. But this doesn’t come from out of thin air and is not at its base, “racist.”
Conservatives have an instinct to be wary of the foreign and the unfamiliar. This is a feeling we all share, deep down, but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They prefer familiar societies, norms, and institutions.

Natural conservatives of the alt-right are for maintaining an American identity and not allowing open borders as Obama has been working to install via unilateral executive action. “By the numbers, cheap foreign workers on H1B visas make perfect economic sense. But natural conservatives have other concerns: chiefly, the preservation of their own tribe and its culture.” The U.S. government cannot allow immigration to continue on its current path. Sure, we need some cheap labor now and then, but we do not need to be importing an entire brown underclass while almost 100 million Americans are able to work but not looking at all.

For natural conservatives and many on the alt-right, culture is everything. While economics are important, they are not the be-all-end-all. “The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheoses of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting.” Alt-righters declare Establishment Republicans as overly-obsessed with the free market, forgetting about the importance of preserving culture amidst growing chaos abroad.

Natural conservatives, unfortunately, have been abandoned by the Republican Party. Having lost faith in their former representatives, they now turn to something different.
Enter Donald J. Trump and the alternative right.

 
The free market or culture or both? 

Since the 1980s, the Republicans have been obsessed over unabashed free market economics and an interventionist foreign policy. In matters of culture and morality, the Left is in charge. Trump’s supporters reflect a dissatisfaction of the last few decades of American governance. The natural conservatives lament the rise of the obsessively politically correct culture alongside a broken immigration system.

“For decades, the concerns of those who cherish western culture have been openly ridiculed and dismissed as racist. The alt-right is the inevitable result. No matter how silly, irrational, tribal or even hateful the Establishment may think the alt-right’s concerns are, they can’t be ignored, because they aren’t going anywhere.” The Left cannot get rid of this group of insightful conservatives. The Right cannot dissociate themselves from them as they will need their support come November. 

The young rebels of the alt-right are a subset of Millennials. These people are not drawn to it because of their extremely conservative beliefs. They are actually drawn to it in the same way some of their mothers and fathers were attracted to the New Left in the 1960s. It promises fun, transgression, and an upending of social norms that the rest of the country doesn’t understand.
These young folks have used a barrage of memes and other pop culture references to push the limits on our increasingly liberal and softheaded society. Mass trolling and other online acts are taken to ensure that these young renegades wreak havoc on their fragile opponents on the Left. These Millennials “aren’t necessarily instinctive conservatives. Indeed, their irreverence, lack of respect of social norms, and willingness to stomp on other people’s feelings suggest they may actually be instinctive libertarians.” Young people are drawn to the alt-right because it is something new and fresh. Republicans and Democrats can pound sand.

Unfortunately, the alt-right also draws in some racist and disgusting members. KKK groups and neo-Nazis call themselves followers of the alt-right. Every ideology has followers its leaders wish it didn’t have. This group of people is used to give all of the alt-right a bad name.
Many in the Millennial generation are becoming politically disengaged over today’s toxic political environment. Still, others are standing up to the increasingly undemocratic Left. Liberals claim to stand up for equality and racial justice “while praising acts of racial violence and forcing white people to sit at the back of the bus (or, more accurately, the back of the campus — or in another campus altogether).” This is an uphill battle against political correctness because most of the media and educational system is on the other side. 

The radicals of the alt-right want to push their solution to segment populations off by race and culture. These essentially racist individuals want their own communities, populated by their own people, and governed by their own values. But this is not America.

The right choice for America

Sure, we have the right to self governance, but we must be realistic. The Establishment is in charge for now, but with the rise of Donald Trump, the elites are slowly losing their grip on power. The alt-right’s sometimes controversial ideas should be considered, yet the media and the Left continue to discount this movement as a rabble of racists who simply want no more immigration.

The alt-right philosophy, like Donald Trump, is not going away. At least not yet. Trump’s policies have been influenced by bomb-chucking Breitbart’s Steve Bannon. This has forced Hillary Clinton to directly address Trump and “the disturbing ‘alt-right’ political philosophy” later in Nevada today, according to an aide. This same aide also said that the alt-right is “embracing extremism and presenting a divisive and dystopian view of America which should concern all Americans, regardless of party.” Clinton will no doubt present her image for the country. One that includes all Americans, no matter their desire to be free or live in America. Liberals pursue diversity for its own sake, refusing to confront the reality that a clashing of cultures can be controversial and even detrimental for a society.

Germany, France, and Great Britain are dealing with this deadly reality right now in the midst of the Syrian refugee crisis spilling into Europe.

Bannon, of Breitbart fame, has become Chief Executive Officer of the Trump team. His running of the conservative news site distinguished himself from the rest of conservative media in the same way the alt-right does with mainstream conservatism. Bannon’s Breitbart has become a mouthpiece for Trump over the past year-plus. Critics call it a periodical for older white males. Bannon embraces the alt-right movement which has greatly helped his brand catapult to prominence.

With the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 as a result of Bush’s big government conservatism and Obama’s irreverent liberalism, activist conservative sites thrived. Breitbart would become the Tea Party’s #1 cheerleader, promoting beliefs in a more marketable way to the indifferent Millennial generation.
After the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, Bannon would take Breitbart News to the top. It would become “not only the most-read conservative web outlet but also the most incendiary one,” wrote Will Rahn in a CBS News primer on the alt-right. It would set aside all appearance of objectivity, instead trumpeting conservative narratives through heroically portrayed characters. Always pitting itself against an insurmountable political/media machine, Breitbart would take alt-right conservatism to an almost ridiculous level.

Donald Trump embraced this form of in-your-face conservatism. His candidacy was not taken seriously by most mainstream news sources, yet here we are, facing essentially a 50-50 chance of a Trump presidency. But Bannon’s Breitbart would realize that “Trump-style white identity politics wasn’t a passing fad,” Rahn noted. Trump and his campaign tapped into this online community of mostly white Americans. He has called this the “silent majority,” a possibly sizable chunk of the public out there that has been so put off by the political system that they have not participated in decades. Trump could bring these folks out and into the experiment that is our system of republican government.

The Donald’s decision to bring on Bannon and new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in recent days signals his strategy of doubling down on his derisive style that got him to this point. Many think that will simply not translate to the general election, as revealed by recent polling showing Mrs. Clinton with a sizable lead nationwide. Still, polls are already popping up showing the race tightening after the chaotic period of time following each party’s convention.

Bannon’s appointment to the Trump train was heralded as a bold move by alt-right members. Breitbart has been bringing alt-right ideas into the mainstream in similar ways that National Review did for full-fledged conservatism in the days leading up to the Reagan presidency.

Now we will see if Breitbart and alt-right conservative thought have the same impact for ushering in a Trump administration.