HUNTINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA
The only thing that Donald Trump is even vaguely good at (other than making billions from unneeded casinos, resorts, and golf courses) is holding campaign rallies. There, his totally misguided audiences volubly applaud his xenophobic, often casually racist rants, and they leave the rallies feeling better about themselves. One of his chief sycophants, Kellyanne Conway, masterminded the last stages of his highly unorthodox presidential campaign, and she did a great job for the presumptuous leader of the GOP — a party which is already walking away from him since he’s the leader of the Trumpite movement (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/04/senate-struggles-to-rein-trump-241302).
Yesterday, West Virginia’s governor, Jim Justice, at a bigly Trump campaign rally here, with an ecstatic Trump at his side, proudly but extremely wrongly announced that he has changed his party affiliation from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.
Justice has a lot in common with Trump: both are billionaires, both are overweight, both are loudmouths, and both are really good at pandering to their political bases.
Justice is an American coal mining and agriculture businessman who owns over 50 companies, including The Greenbrier, a luxury resort near White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. He had been a Republican, then became a Democrat, got himself elected governor, and then flipped once again to the GOP, at yesterday's campaign rally here, where Trump said that Hillary Clinton is the one who should be investigated by the Department of Justice, whereupon the adoring crowd broke out with “Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!".
Back in Washington, Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota), the third ranking Senate Republican, appears in today’s Politico in an article written by Elana Schor and Seung Min Kim. Their article details how Senate Republicans are defying their guy in the White House.
Associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith called Sen. Thune, Schor, and Kim to thank them for their service.