At the greatest college in the world, Professor Timothy Burke explains why Donald Trump gets support even though he is a mediocre player at a fixed game who doesn’t bother to remember which lies he’s told, running an operation so inept that it allowed his wife to stand up before a national audience and deliver a speech that was transparently plagiarized from the one given by Michele Obama four years ago.

A current theory states that Donald Trump doesn’t really want to be president (if nominated will not seriously run, if elected will punk out earlier than Sarah Palin) but is merely in it to line his pockets and promote his brand. If the Republicans are victimized by this scam, I will have less sympathy for them than for the guy who suddenly discovers that the friendly stranger offering to cut him in in a charming scheme to defraud the Nigerians was actually aiming at him because they’ve been promoting the hatreds that Trump exploits and the distrust of regulation that all scammers love.

But here’s another twist. Remember that Trump is not a rich, successful businessman; he plays one on television. Many of the Republicans and their supporters are what he pretends to be. (I suspect that Willard Romney could buy Trump and not have to sell him.) If he is trying to run a bust-out on the Republicans, he may find out what happens when you annoy the people with real power.

Man who’s running for president because he played a successful businessman on television claims that former senator and cabinet member never did anything but be a woman. The Rude Pundit discusses. (Uses language.)

The Rude Pundit on Donald Trump’s political success.

With his plan to ban Muslims, tRump has achieved something many considered impossible: He is worse than Dick Cheney.

ETA: A comparable victory in the race to the bottom: J.K. Rowling has announced that tRump is worse than Lord Voldemort.

Thanx to File 770

"Trump is so thin-skinned that, if he swallowed a flashlight, he'd glow like a Japanese lantern." Use that.

Thanx to Charles P. Pierce.

I have long suspected that Donald tRump is the product of a Communist conspiracy to show that capitalism will allow a sufficiently rich person to prosper even if he has no intelligence or human understanding. (If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?) He probably has found his ideal apotheosis as a butt plug. His public comments usually range from merely stupid (a snowstorm disproves global warming) to stupid and vicious (his hate rants about Mexicans). However, I will not join in the general derision over his reasonable statement that he has noticed that his daughter is sexually attractive but will of course do nothing about it.

Donald Trump refuses to release birth certificate. In a related story, his hair announced, "It started as a wart on my ass."