You Can’t Accept Part Of Trumpism Without Endorsing The Entirety Of Trumpism
Donald Trump is a complete package, you can't support part of it without at least implicitly endorsing all of it.
Later today, Stephen Ross, the billionaire owner of the Miami Dolphins who also owns the company that runs Soulcycle and the fitness club chain Equinox, will host a high-dollar fundraiser for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and the Republican National Committee, and that isn’t sitting well with potential and actual customers:
WATER MILL, N.Y. — Dressed in workout clothes, Lulu Hall hovered by the front door of the SoulCycle studio while fighting back tears.
She had already signed up for Thursday’s 10 a.m. indoor-cycling fitness class when she learned that Stephen Ross, the chairman of the Related Companies, whose principals own majority stakes in SoulCycle and the fitness club chain Equinox, was planning to host a fund-raiser at his Hamptons home for President Trump on Friday. Different levels of access will be offered to donors, including a photo with the president for $100,000.
Ms. Hall, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Brooklyn and nearby Sag Harbor, N.Y., is a regular SoulCycle customer who has found inspiration in the brand’s message of sweaty spirituality and community. But she is not a supporter of Mr. Trump’s, and was alarmed to realize the money she spends at SoulCycle, where 45-minute classes held in the Hamptons cost $42, was profiting a Trump booster who would be hosting the president at his home on Friday, just a few miles from her morning ride.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said as class was about to begin. “Part of me feels like a hypocrite for going.”
Briggs Coleman, who lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., and spends summers in the Hamptons, had no such concerns. “I don’t want to hear about politics while I’m working out,” she said. “There is a lack of respect. People should just respect the president,” she said, adding an expletive.
Amid a summer of division and dissent over treatment of migrants, political rhetoric and gun safety, the anger that has roiled 2020 campaign events and social media feeds has landed with a barbell’s thud on the fitness studios, where the well heeled pay for expensive club memberships and boutique classes to release tension and burn fat.
The controversy may seem trivial in the scope of things, especially to people directly affected by the news of the past week: mass shootings, large-scale arrests of immigrant workers. But many bystanders, engaged or enraged by those events, were troubled by the financial connection to SoulCycle and Equinox and a president whose policies they do not support.
Political fund-raisers hosted in the Hamptons by wealthy New Yorkers are an annual August rite. Yet news that Mr. Ross is supporting Mr. Trump’s re-election efforts was met with a swift outcry on social media, with indoor cyclers and club members vowing to boycott. Both companies have significant customer bases in liberal cities and promote themselves as safe havens for the L.G.B.T. community and stalwarts against bigotry.
Equinox, a fitness club with 100 locations in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and SoulCycle, which has 94 studio locations, released statements distancing themselves from Mr. Ross. “SoulCycle in no way endorses the political fund-raising event being held later this week,” the company said. “Mr. Ross is a passive investor and is not involved in the management of SoulCycle.” Equinox’s statement also referred to Mr. Ross as “a passive investor.” It added, “We want to let you to know that Equinox and SoulCycle have nothing to do with the event and do not support it.”
Management is struggling to control the damage. On Wednesday, SoulCycle’s chief talent officer sent an email to instructors providing “talking points” to share with customers. They included, “At SoulCycle, we believe in diversity, inclusion, and equality. All souls are welcome” and “None of the money you spend at SoulCycle will go to this event.”
Meanwhile, people who work for the fitness company are organizing to register their anger. On Thursday, emails from an anonymous Gmail account went out to some Equinox employees calling for a strike. “If we do not show up to work, the clubs can not function,” the email read. “We are the cleaners, the managers, the trainers, the group fitness instructors, the sales reps, the shop salespeople, the spa professions and the gatekeepers. Our collective efforts will have results.”Inside the 10 a.m. class at the Water Mill studio on Thursday, it was entirely perspiration and no politics. All but a handful of the nearly 70 bikes were occupied by ponytail-wagging, sports bra-wearing riders who had shown up for a workout led by Mireya D’Angelo, one of the company’s most popular instructors. As “Havana” by Camila Cabello and Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady” blasted in the dark room, the mostly female cyclers swayed and bopped like dancers at a club exclusively for stationary bikers.
Toward the end of the class, the staffers who had been working at the check-in desk skipped in and sashayed across the studio, wielding flashlights and positive attitudes. Many bikers swung hand towels above their heads.
In the parking lot after class, the feel-good endorphins turned to agitated adrenaline as some riders realized a reporter was present. “Are you here to ruin people’s day?” shouted one woman wearing a baseball cap with the word “LOVE” written in rainbow letters. Her friend called out, “I love you, SoulCycle!”
Jared Epstein, who lives in New York City and Water Mill, was circumspect. “All Americans are entitled to their own opinions and their own political views,” he said, calling Mr. Ross “a great human being.
(…)
Mr. Ross, the man whose political fund-raising is at the center of this tempest, is a billionaire who owns the Miami Dolphins and has a wide range of business interests anchored by the Related Companies, one of the most powerful real-estate interests in New York. (Related Companies retains a majority stake in Equinox, of which SoulCycle is a subsidiary — the holding is divided among the firm’s partners, of which Mr. Ross is only one, making him a minority investor.)
Mr. Ross issued a statement on Wednesday noting that he had known President Trump for 40 years. He said he agreed with him on some issues, but “strongly disagreed” on others. He also said he has always “been an active participant in the democratic process.”
Mr. Ross has primarily been a donor to Republicans, though he has given to Democrats as well over the years, including Senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Mark Warner of Virginia, as well as Representative Lois Frankel of Florida.
So far in 2019, Mr. Ross has contributed $150,000, topped by $50,000 to the Republican National Committee and $33,600 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In the 2018 midterms, Mr. Ross’s largest contributions were $155,000 to the political committees of then-Speaker Paul Ryan and $150,000 to the R.N.C.
We’ve seen this kind of thing before, of course. Several years ago now, Brendan Eich was forced to step aside as Chief Executive Officer at Mozilla when it was revealed that he had donated to the effort to pass Proposition 8 in California, the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage after the state’s Supreme Court had ruled otherwise. In this case, though, Ross is saying that he does not support the President’s racially tinged rhetoric but he is supportive of generally conservative causes such as tax reform and other issues and that it is because of this that he’s hosting the fundraiser tonight.
The question that this raises, of course, is whether it’s really possible for someone to back part of Trump’s agenda without at least implicitly endorsing the rest of the package that comes with it, including the xenophobia, the racism, the vile personal attacks and everything else. People in Ross’s position would say that you can, but that position would be far more credible if he and people like him were willing to stand up and criticize the President when he steps over the line or when, as he often does, he fans the flames of racial or ethnic discord. If they did this, then it would be a lot easier to accept the argument that Ross and others like him make.
The problem is that this isn’t happening. With very few exceptions, the people who back Trump are silent even when he says something utterly outrageous, something that has been a part of his personality going back more than forty years. It’s not as if these people can plead ignorance, all they needed to do was look to the President’s rhetoric and actions to see what kind of man he really is.
After all, this is the same man who started out his campaign by attacking Mexicans, Muslims, disabled people, a Federal District Court Judge who happened to be Mexican-American and a Gold Star Family who happened to be Muslim. In response to N.F.L. players who were peacefully kneeling to protest racially biased police violence, he responded by calling the largely African-American players “sons of bitches.” He responded to the racist rally that resulted in a murder in Charlottesville by essentially excusing the rhetoric of the white supremacists who organized the rally. And, of course, most recently he has spent the last three weeks engaged in racist attacks on four minority Congresswomen and on House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings. This week, that target list expanded to include CNN anchor Don Lemon, who is African-American and who Trump once again described as “one of the dumbest men on television,” something he has said about the CNN host in the past.
It was also apparent long before he became a candidate for President, Trump engaged in housing discrimination in the 1970s. In the 1990s, he took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the death penalty for the so-called Central Park Five, a group of five African-American teens who were falsely convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park. Even to this day, Trump refuses to apologize for that position and refuses to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence of their innocence. Finally, and perhaps most infamously, he first dipped his toes in 21st Century national politics by embracing the racist birther conspiracy.
To say that they didn’t know what they were buying into is quite simply a lie. You can’t treat Trumpism as a cafeteria where you select some of Trump’s ideas without being responsible for the others. You can’t just support him for the tax cuts, or the judges, or the deregulation and say you don’t support his racism. It’s all part of the same package. If you don’t like that, then maybe you need to reconsider your support for Trump to begin with.
Absolutely correct. It’s the old, “Well, Mussolini mad the trains run on time, and I’m a train voter!”
Note: Check your headline.
Don’t you want a negative in your title–that you can’t accept some Trumpism without accepting all of it?
(Wish me luck, guys–am boning up on the Japanese. The French exam went, well, I haven’t the foggiest idea. I hate exams where it’s obvious that the answers are loosey-goosey and don’t have anything to do with something you can in fact study but will depend on what the grader “feels” is right. Dammit, if I can read Michel de Montaigne’s essays in the original archaic French there’s no way you can say I don’t “understand” French!)
@michael reynolds:
Which also happens to be a myth.
Don Lemon is one of the dumbest people on TV.
@95 South:
And Trump is a very stable genius, right?
@Kylopod:
Hey, at least we know who the racist apologist in the comment thread is.
Of course, with single sentence random “pwn the libs” comments like those, he/she isn’t even brave enough to stand up for a position.
We are at a point where you are either for a good and moral America…or you are for Trump. There is no in-between. If you are willing to have kids ripped from their parents arms and put in cages so that you can have a tax-cut…you are immoral. Period.
You headline should read “can’t”, I believe.
@95 South:
I think that red hat may be a little too tight, and is cutting off the blood to what passes for your brain.
She seems nice.
@mattbernius: What racism?
“Chris Cuomo, he’s sitting there like a chained lunatic”
“CNN should be ashamed of itself having you [Jim Acosta] working for them”
I had to change the title of the post since it conflicted with the conclusion.
Sorry about that
@95 South:
Are you seriously trying to convince anyone that Donald Trump is not a racist?
That you are not a racist?
Good luck with that.
“…People should just respect the president,”…
Every time he grabs them by the pussy.
@95 South:
You’re totally right, I wrote that wrong and I apologize. I have no idea of you’re a racist or not.
I meant to say that your someone who apparently supports and normalizes the behavior of someone who takes a lot of racist actions.
Unless of course you want to make it clear and say that you don’t support the way the president has used racial charged language to activate his base…
I mean, sure, most of the President’s base don’t think he is a racist. And of course they don’t support racism. That said, they really hate the idea of American becoming a majority non-white nation.
But that isn’t about racism, you know. They just think that the current American culture is white… I mean right.
It’s not so much that they accept trump, but that they prop him up and enable him. Big donors and fundraisers are in the best position to influence his behavior. All politicians need money. Donors are not dependent on the party’s base, either, nor do they run for office.
So, fine, they got their undeserved tax cuts, now rein the beast in. If they don’t, it’s obvious they are for him.
BTW, the Dolphins plain suck. they’ve amounted to exactly nothing since first Don Shula and then Dan marino left, and that was thirty years ago. they really should look in next year’s draft for business schools grads for a new owner, and the Cowboys should as well.
I’m not sure I agree. Like Homer said: Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand. The white nationalists are getting what they want, and have agreed not to look too closely at tax cuts. And the rich are getting their money, so all the rest is maybe a bit good, maybe a bit bad, but nothing to dwell upon. How guilty do you feel when you are too lazy to recycle that plastic bottle? Yeah, that’s not right, but whatever. People are being served up their red meat of choice, so they adore the chef. No biggie if some of the side dishes aren’t for them.
@Kylopod: I’ve made fun of Don Lemon for saying goofy things in the past, but he’s got a good 30 IQ points on the Fox and Friends crew. 🙂
If he wants to say he doesn’t approve of some of the things Trump does, he can do that. He can go on Twitter, or hold press conferences, or cut back his giving. I would welcome that. Where was he after “sons of bitches”? Where was he after “good people on both sides”? Where was he after “send them home”?
A guy like that, there are hundreds of options for things you could do to show your displeasure. Things other than selling photos with Trump for $100,000 (that’s so gross I can’t even).
Robert Mercer got booted from Renaissance after Trump was elected for similar reasons. The news story I read said his association with Trump was making it difficult to recruit new talent to the hedge fund.
@Kathy:
Ah, fuq…now you’ve got me going…Dan Marino was the biggest waste…he never won anything…not at the HS level, the college level or in the pro’s. He had one thing…an arm. That’s it. He never figured out the game. Couldn’t lead. Just pathetic. And the franchise has never recovered.
BTW…Nick Buoniconti died last week…a great man…may he RIP.
@Kathy:
Don Shula, on the other hand, once intimidated me so badly I almost pissed my pants. He was a great coach that just got suckered by Marino’s arm.
One day, Dennison stumbles upon an old lamp containing a genie. In gratitude for being freed, well, you know about the three wishes, right?
Dennison says “I want to be one billion times richer than I am now!”
“Done,” says the genie. “You are now a billionaire for real.”
Next Dennison says, “I want to live forever!”
“Done,” says the genie. “You are now immortal.”
“And I want to be ten times as smart as I am!”
“Done,” says the genie. “You are now a Democrat.”
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
A good QB, or worse a superstar QB, is often a waste. The coaches seem to think a great quarterback equals a winning record and Super Bowl rings. It might, but not without a great team to go along.
Marino had a good receiver corps, but lacked a ground game, and the team lacked a good defense. Think about it, Miami’s best years, including the undefeated season, were those of the No Name Defense.
BTW, the one and only Football game I’ve seen at a stadium was Miami vs Seattle in the playoffs. How long ago? It was at the Orange Bowl.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: If you are willing to have kids ripped from their parents arms and put in cages so that you can have a tax-cut…you are immoral.
I remember reading somewhere that a society can be judged by how they treat the most vulnerable. If that is the standard, under Trump we fail as a society.
@Teve:
Average IQ points for the Fox and Friends crew, or total among all of them? Beating the average by 30 is not much of an achievement.
“In Germany they had a word to describe people who joined the Nazi party not out of bigotry or ideology but just to have a better chance for a promotion, or a government contract, or a nicer apartment. They called them Nazis.”
@Kathy:
He lacked a ground game because he would never stick with it long enough to let it develop.
I saw a lot of Dolphins games at the Orange Bowl when I worked in TV in S. Florida. Hurricanes games too. Jim Kelly and Bernie Kosar.
I was lucky enough to see the San Diego/Miami playoff game, in 1982, when Kellen Winslow played like a man possessed. One of the greatest games in NFL history. Unforgettable.
What of the NY Times that profited from Trump’s ad? But then Trump didn’t call for the death penalty for the Central Park 5, he called for the death penalty for those muggers and murders operating in “roving bands” as the NY Times loved to write who killed their victims should get the death penalty. Later when asked specifically about the Central Park 5, Trump said the woman didn’t die, so no death penalty, even though at the time the whole nation was on notice via the NY Times that the Central Park 5 had confessed in a case overseen by Democrat Robert Morgenthau, New York County District Attorney (1975-2009). And if you are old enough, the crime in NY City was the spawn of the very lucrative ‘Law and Order’ police dramas. The first few seasons are a trip back to a grittier, garbage-infested (rats as well) New York City filled with heinous crimes “ripped from the headlines”.
The point is, when you refuse to examine the reality of the situation, your accusations against Trump lose a lot of their force.
And to save the asking. To get the good we’ve had in the economy and the realignment of sclerotic trade arrangements and foreign policy delusions of DC, I live with Trump’s rough edges. Democrats have accused Bush, McCain, Romney, etc. all of racism, so it’s not like things would be different is Trump was more circumspect in his slams of those who try to slam him.
@Kylopod:
It’s one of the persistent myths that fascists are competent. They aren’t. The Nazis still have that reputation and it’s baloney. Who was really efficient in WW2? We were. Also the Brits. The Axis made 670k tanks. All by themselves the Brits built more (and better) planes than Germany, despite the German head start.
You could say Stalin was effective, but we managed to be effective without murdering millions of our own people. Have to kind of think in terms of efficiency, gulags full of your own people isn’t quite what most people have in mind.
You can tell this was Trump’s theory. I’ll just get in there and start barking out orders and stuff will happen. Like the wall. The infrastructure plan. The replacement for Obamacare. The peace deal in the middle east. The waaaay better NAFTA. The revival of manufacturing. Trade war(s).
Turns out things are hard to do.
@JKB:
Another proud “I support a person who harnesses racism because of my economic anxiety.”
I agree that in many cases attacks on previous candidates have been hyperbolic. However, if you don’t see fundamental differences in actions between those people and Trump, then that says far more about your threshold for excusing explict racist behavior than anything else.
Points for being honest about your proud and unabashed support and excusing of racism. That’s better than a lot of our other posters.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl:
The only thing better, in Football, that that playoff game, is the NFL Films highlights of that game as narrated by John Facenda.
This is the trash that JKB is trying to prop up…there’s nothing that says a president cares like having a thumbs-up photo op with a baby orphaned because of a mass shooter who used the same talking points as that president…
@JKB:
Please name me a single major Democratic candidate for president who ever called Bush, McCain or Romney a racist.
@michael reynolds:
That’s not remotely possible.
@michael reynolds: There was an interesting article in Newsweek earlier this year (actually an excerpt from a book) arguing that, contrary to the received wisdom, Hitler really was an incompetent buffoon.
https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-incompetent-lazy-nazi-government-clown-show-opinion-1408136
@Kylopod:
Oh shit.
@Teve: This sounds…very, very familiar.
@Kylopod: Hitler really was an incompetent buffoon.
I guess Trump really does have something in common with Hitler, if you’ll pardon my Godwin.
@CSK: keep reading Kylopod’s link, it gets even more familiar. 🙁
Hitler was a narcissist who laid in bed until 11, huh? That’s…great.
It’s long past time for Operation Valkyrie…
@michael reynolds: The German Army was very good. They’d have been better without the Nazi government.
Recently read a review of a book about the American and British programs at the end of the war to find and exploit German technology. Apparently the programs were disappointing. For the most part they found out our stuff was better.
Once you’re past the V1 (which was actually pretty crude) and Von Braun and the V2, our airplanes and engines and aviation fuel were better (they got jets operational a bit earlier, but they had a service life of like a dozen or two hours), our radar was better, our artillery was better, our codes and code breaking were better. They did have bigger tanks. (There was a line something like it took four or five Shermans to take on a Tiger, fortunately we brought twelve. And they weren’t reliable, he best way to disable a Tiger tank was to get them to move it.)
@Teve:
Have I not explained that I am not to be trusted with numbers?
@Teve: Yes. It does.
@mattbernius: I don’t support the way the president has used racial charged language to activate his base.
@michael reynolds: we all make typos. 😀
@SenyorDave:
Don’t worry, Mike Godwin is with you.
@JKB: “To get the good we’ve had in the economy and the realignment of sclerotic trade arrangements and foreign policy delusions of DC, I live with Trump’s rough edges.”
‘To get the f-ed up parts, I’ll live with the evil part’
@95 South: Kudos to you for recognizing that. It’s really all he’s got, if you look into the details at all. Racial dog-whistles, “Only the Best People”, “Build the Wall”, “Trade wars are good and easy to win”, “I’ll replace Obamacare on Day One”, “Who knew healthcare was so hard” and whatnot. It’s all on viddddeoooo should you choose to look into it further.
@michael reynolds: “Have I not explained that I am not to be trusted with numbers?”
You were merely confusing what they produced with what they told Hitler that they had produced.
@Teve: A.J.P. Taylor’s analysis of Hitler (which got him a lot of brickbats in England, since the authorities didn’t want to believe it) was that Hitler never did have any grand strategic plan on how to take over Europe–he just looked at what was going on and pushed where he saw a weakness.
I still think that Trump is even more chaotic and disruptive than lil’ Adolf, because he can’t keep competent people around, due to his constantly getting rid of them. Plus he’s manipulatable as hell and is at the mercy of the last thing Hannity has said. Hitler at least knew where he wanted to go and had people with Prussian efficiency habits around him.
You gotta be shixt’n us.
Let’s take some presidents during my lifetime. Vote for Kennedy? You support a high volume, revolving door aldulterer. Paragons of virtue and decorum, Race Blind (snicker) LBJ and Dick Nixon? Heh. Well.
Voted for Clinton; you support pedophilia and workplace sexual harrassment. Not woke, that Billy Boy. Know what I mean? You liked Obama? You mean, Barack “Drone the Civilians” Obama. Civilians? Eff’m, right? Gotta crack a few eggs………. Or was it Barack “My Buddy Reverend Wright” Obama. As they say, you are the company you keep. And we were close to Hillary “Bleach Bit My Computer – Please” Clinton.
Yeah. As we all now know, you take the bad with the good. I heard it on the internet. Looks like we need some new candidates. I’m not sure Kamala “Sure I’ll Sleep with You for Personal Gain (isn’t there another word for that?)” Harris, Joe “Let Me Touch You Sweetie” Biden or Lizzy “I’m Not Really Indian, but it Sure Helps the Career” Warren are the answer………
The flaws of previous presidents as well as those of current presidential candidates mean next to nothing when compared to the flaws of the trash that currently sits in the White House…and no amount of spinning from fluffers like the obsequious toady above can change that…
@An Interested Party: Trump is scum, but George W. Bush’s body count is several hundred thousand innocent lives higher than Trump’s.
@Teve: True, but you notice how Bush wasn’t even mentioned in the above screed? And I don’t doubt that Trump would have a body count to rival Bush’s if he was actually competent at anything other than getting himself to be the center of attention…
@mattbernius:
I get what you are trying to do, but (slaps you in the face) WAKE THE F UP! Do you honestly think a Trumper is going to understand your sarcasm?
@Guarneri:
Every accusation from the right ends up being a confession.
@95 South: Just saw this, way late and probably repeating what somebody else has already said but feel the need to anyway:
95 South is one of the most moronic people on the internet.
@95 South: But you support trump anyway. And you think he can tell the difference? Do you also think he cares?
In for a penny, in for a pound.
@JKB:
You men the economy that is producing fewer jobs in trump’s first 29 months than it did under Obama’s last 29 months? You mean the endless trade wars that do nothing but suck money out of your, mine, and our pockets? You mean the “beautiful letters” trump gets from Kim while missile tests continue or the invitation for Russia to interfere in our elections again?
Once again we find the only thing worse than a racist piece of shit in the Oval Office is calling the people who support him racist.
@95 South:
Thanks for the clarification. I hope that translates to I would never vote for the person who uses that type of racism as a political tool.
@Teve:
“Hold my Diet Coke.” — Trump
“Trump’s racism is fine with me because it doesn’t affect me personally and the economy is so great” doesn’t make any fucking sense because the economy is no better than under Obama, by most measures it is slightly worse, and if you think it is you’re numerically incompetent. All you’re telling people is you don’t really mind his racism.
In related news:
After 400 years white supremacy doesn’t go down without a long protracted fight and Trump is just the latest skirmish in that fight.
@Kylopod: Hitler won a lot of credit (mostly undeserved) for a few moments of intuitive insight (i.e., the British and French unwillingness to protect Czechoslovakia, the “Case Yellow” plan for the attack in the West), but he was intoxicated by his will and success. He failed to push development of jet aircraft and insisted on adding much excess weight to both the Tiger and Panther, leading to frequent breakdowns. Does any of this sound familiar?
@mattbernius:
Three times in a row. How about you?
@SC_Birdflyte:
Hitler lost the war in 1933. That’s when Einstein picked up and moved modern physics to the US.
All those Jewish and anti-fascist scientists at Los Alamos weren’t building the bomb for use on Japan.
@95 South:
umm… ok??? honestly not sure what that means.
Not voting for people who use racist tactics?
Yeah, I fell good owning all my votes.
@SC_Birdflyte:
Hitler got a lot of approval from non-Jewish Germans because the economy was great, as far as they were concerned. This was funded largely by assets stolen from Jews and ‘enemies of the state’ and given to ‘aryans.’ They were the only ones who counted, and he rewarded them well.
@mattbernius: Obama used racism as a political tool. Did you vote for Obama?
Oh? How did he do that…
@95 South:
Dude, you’re gonna have to give examples. Like verified text or video.
You need to show how and when Obama used racism as a political tool.
There’s a long list of big mistakes by hitler and his trusted advisers. A sampling:
Delaying the invasion of the USSR to bail out Mussolini in Greece.
Sending the army to the USSR without winter gear.
Not allowing army units to break out of Stalingrad.
Focusing on bombing British cities during the Battle of Britain.
Declaring war on the US.
Insisting on jet bombers.
Favoring the highly inaccurate V1 and V2 missiles.
Not favoring atomic research enough (but see Michael Reynolds point above).
Diverting resources and personnel to concentration and extermination camps.
The early gains the nazis made in Europe were due entirely to their fighting under-armed and unprepared enemies.