Today in Trump

[Spicoli]

Sometimes I really wonder is people still defending the walking grifter gravy stain are brilliant trolls or highly intoxicated. Know what else authoritarians do, they relentlessly shout about all elections being rigged. Literally on a daily basis. And they don't stop there, they just call the entire democratic free voting process corrupt rigged and failed. Throw in threats to deploy the US military to multiple States to put down protests, deploying federal aircraft to monitor and federal officers to violently disperse protests and voices of dissent as they hide behind religious text they proceed to hold upside down and have never even opened. They continually interfere in State run local and national elections and literally call the free press an enemy of the people and a threat to the country. They subvert established branches of government to cut financial arms deals with foreign powers. They stand on the White House lawn asking China to investigate their opponent. And they go years on end using their highest office and every single public taxpayer funded campaign event as a stage to call for the arrest and prosecution of political opponents, former cabinet officials, their family members, their dog and the housekeeper for good measure. Oh and they boast about love letters, defend the actions, praise the efforts and policies of and admire likeminded dictators fawning like a love struck pre teen whose balls have yet to drop. Trump is not and does not need to be a Hitler at all, he's bad enough all by himself.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Sometimes I really wonder is people still defending the walking grifter gravy stain are brilliant trolls or highly intoxicated. Know what else authoritarians do, they relentlessly shout about all elections being rigged. Literally on a daily basis. And they don't stop there, they just call the entire democratic free voting process corrupt rigged and failed. Throw in threats to deploy the US military to multiple States to put down protests, deploying federal aircraft to monitor and federal officers to violently disperse protests and voices of dissent as they hide behind religious text they proceed to hold upside down and have never even opened. They continually interfere in State run local and national elections and literally call the free press an enemy of the people and a threat to the country. They subvert established branches of government to cut financial arms deals with foreign powers. They stand on the White House lawn asking China to investigate their opponent. And they go years on end using their highest office and every single public taxpayer funded campaign event as a stage to call for the arrest and prosecution of political opponents, former cabinet officials, their family members, their dog and the housekeeper for good measure. Oh and they boast about love letters, defend the actions, praise the efforts and policies of and admire likeminded dictators fawning like a love struck pre teen whose balls have yet to drop. Trump is not and does not need to be a Hitler at all, he's bad enough all by himself.

A succinct, sincere, well-written post employing striking and poignant expression and sincerity at an advanced syntactic and lexographical level. 👍

[TitoFan]

Sometimes I really wonder is people still defending the walking grifter gravy stain are brilliant trolls or highly intoxicated. Know what else authoritarians do, they relentlessly shout about all elections being rigged. Literally on a daily basis. And they don't stop there, they just call the entire democratic free voting process corrupt rigged and failed. Throw in threats to deploy the US military to multiple States to put down protests, deploying federal aircraft to monitor and federal officers to violently disperse protests and voices of dissent as they hide behind religious text they proceed to hold upside down and have never even opened. They continually interfere in State run local and national elections and literally call the free press an enemy of the people and a threat to the country. They subvert established branches of government to cut financial arms deals with foreign powers. They stand on the White House lawn asking China to investigate their opponent. And they go years on end using their highest office and every single public taxpayer funded campaign event as a stage to call for the arrest and prosecution of political opponents, former cabinet officials, their family members, their dog and the housekeeper for good measure. Oh and they boast about love letters, defend the actions, praise the efforts and policies of and admire likeminded dictators fawning like a love struck pre teen whose balls have yet to drop. Trump is not and does not need to be a Hitler at all, he's bad enough all by himself.

A succinct, sincere, well-written post employing striking and poignant expression and sincerity at an advanced syntactic and lexographical level. 👍

You forgot "accurate." Can't leave the word "accurate" off of your poetic description. Although "on point" would be a suitable substitute.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Well,well,well, whadda we have here? Who coulda seen it coming really

Screenshot_20230917-131214~3.jpg

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Unless the kangaroo courts get a "felony conviction" on Donald of course.....

https://youtu.be/tqqiChPtGx0?si=zRdts7iVU8yfHLXZ

[Kirkland Laing]

Sometimes I really wonder is people still defending the walking grifter gravy stain are brilliant trolls or highly intoxicated. Know what else authoritarians do, they relentlessly shout about all elections being rigged. Literally on a daily basis. And they don't stop there, they just call the entire democratic free voting process corrupt rigged and failed. Throw in threats to deploy the US military to multiple States to put down protests, deploying federal aircraft to monitor and federal officers to violently disperse protests and voices of dissent as they hide behind religious text they proceed to hold upside down and have never even opened. They continually interfere in State run local and national elections and literally call the free press an enemy of the people and a threat to the country. They subvert established branches of government to cut financial arms deals with foreign powers. They stand on the White House lawn asking China to investigate their opponent. And they go years on end using their highest office and every single public taxpayer funded campaign event as a stage to call for the arrest and prosecution of political opponents, former cabinet officials, their family members, their dog and the housekeeper for good measure. Oh and they boast about love letters, defend the actions, praise the efforts and policies of and admire likeminded dictators fawning like a love struck pre teen whose balls have yet to drop. Trump is not and does not need to be a Hitler at all, he's bad enough all by himself.

If you're an American president and you act/try to act in authoritarian ways and you pal around with authoritarians people are going to compare that president to authoritarians. You don't have to be as bad as Hitler or Stalin for you to be seen as having had something of a negative effect on your country, you can be a second tier dictator like Franco and still cause tremendous damage. They're still finding mass graves in Spain.

The unnerving thing about Trump or some future GOP cult leader is the seemingly unlimited potential for carnage. There are millions of Americans walking around every day who believe that they're god's chosen people, that they're under attack from an elite who hate America and want to destroy it in various ways and that the entire apparatus of the state is controlled by these people in order to bring about all the terrible things the elite want to see happen. These people are avid consumers of the world's most sophisticated propaganda, stuff so good Goebbels and the Department of Agitation and Propaganda could only dream about producing, and they're fed a daily dose of hate and poison designed to keep them permanently enraged so they come back for another dose the next day. The propaganda production is now so sophisticated that whatever bubbles up from the fever swamps of facebook and the lower levels of the propaganda media structure, whatever is really working to drive clicks and engagement gets stovepiped right up to the top of the structure and is on Fox News and the top conservative media outlets within hours. What kind of mental state are these millions of people currently in? Let's look at one example:

https://twitter.com/realJonRiley/sta...56945942769723


Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

Whoops there's another 1930s Germany authoritarian comparison. It seems to be easy to make these comparisons though eh.


And these millions of permanently enraged completely deluded people are by and large heavily armed. This is not normal. This is a situation unique to America. Lots of potential for things to go badly wrong.

In a situation like this, where it looks like circumstances are going to conspire to put their leader back in the White House again* you're going to need the institutions of democracy to hold firm. And just look at that Romney article. Lots of senators would have voted to impeach Trump after January 6th but were too scared to do it:

One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him—why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome? Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.
As dismayed as Romney was by this line of thinking, he understood it. Most members of Congress don’t have security details. Their addresses are publicly available online. Romney himself had been shelling out $5,000 a day since the riot to cover private security for his family—an expense he knew most of his colleagues couldn’t afford.
By the time Democrats proposed a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6, the GOP’s 180 was complete. Virtually every Republican in Congress came out in full-throated opposition to the idea. Romney, who’d been consulting with historians about how best to preserve the memory of the insurrection—he’d proposed leaving some of the damage to the Capitol unrepaired—was disappointed by his party’s posture, but he was no longer surprised. He had taken to quoting a favorite scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when he talked about his party’s whitewashing of the insurrection—twisting his face into an exaggerated expression before declaring, “Morons. I’ve got morons on my team!” To Romney, the revisionism of January 6 was almost worse than the attack itself.


Only a few of these people would be able to spend five thousand dollars a day on an ongoing basis to protect their families from their party's own voters so congress is basically going to be a rubber stamp for whatever Trump wants. When he took office the first time basically everybody he appointed to top jobs later after they'd left office said he'd proposed doing a bunch of crazy/criminal things and they'd stopped him. Trump eventually worked his way down from conventional cabinet members to tenth rate criminal garbage, lawyers who told him what he wanted to hear and so on. The guy who was director of national intelligence, probably the second most powerful job in the country, had zero intelligence background but had defended Trump on Fox News against charges that he was criminally interfering with the intelligence agencies. He has a list of people now who will do whatever crazy/criminal shit he wants to do second time around. Not only will they do it but they'll be egging him on to do it. They'll all have overtly broken laws within five minutes of taking office to the extent that they'll be locked up if anything resembling a rule of law government ever takes office again. So do you think they're going to allow that to happen? Once they step over that line and commit themselves that's it, there's no way back for them. This bit about once they go over the line these regimes are then committed to staying there and then do worse and worse things to stay in power, there are lots of examples of this. From history.



*Will come back to this tomorrow.

[Kirkland Laing]

Talking about Trump and lists:

One of former President Donald Trump's long-time assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with her statements.
As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that -- more than once -- she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials -- with visible classification markings -- used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.
The notecards with classification markings were at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate when FBI agents searched the property on Aug. 8, 2022 -- but the materials were not taken by the FBI, according to sources familiar with what Michael told investigators.

MORE: Top Trump campaign aide identified as key individual in classified docs indictment: Sources








When Michael, who was not present for the search, returned to Mar-a-Lago the next day to clean up her office space, she found the documents underneath a drawer organizer and helped transfer them to the FBI that same day, sources told ABC News.
The sources said Michael also told federal investigators that last year she grew increasingly concerned with how Trump handled recurring requests from the National Archives for the return of all government documents being kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago -- and she felt that Trump's claims about it at the time would be easy to disprove, according to the sources.

Sources said that after Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael last year, Trump allegedly told her, "You don't know anything about the boxes."
It's unclear exactly what he meant by that.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-wrot...y?id=103226113



It's unclear what he meant by that.





Let's see what former prosecutors think about the clearness:



https://www.mediaite.com/crime/cnn-l...on-of-justice/

[TitoFan]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...&ei=14#image=1

"Make no mistake, it's absolutely possible Trump wins the 2024 election"


Let me be clear. One thing is hoping Trump never holds political office again... and another is knowing that it's quite possible the American public votes this bozo into the Presidency in 2024.

I've always been clear that the American public can never be overestimated... and are fully capable of putting a known criminal in office again.

This doesn't change my long-held views on Trump.

Let me see how clear I can express this…

I don’t care that Biden is too old to be President. I don’t care how many gaffes and stumbles he’s filmed doing. I don’t care how many mistakes he makes when he speaks. No… he’s not the greatest President ever. No… he wouldn’t be my first choice for President in 2024. No… I don’t ignore or gloss over his mistakes and faults.

But…

I have higher standards than to accept a President who…

1. Got his rocks off by saying “You’re fired!” on a reality TV show.
2. Speaks so disrespectfully of women in general.
3. Swore to “drain the swamp”, then proceeded to surround himself with “yes-men” who are the “world’s greatest” when they parrot his views… and the “world’s scum” when they dare contradict him, or have individual thought.
4. Claims to know more about EVERYTHING than ANYONE… no matter what the topic.
5. Has an ego the size of Mt. Everest, and gets in petty fights with singers and actors.
6. Mocked a disabled person, then denied it. (As did his legions of blind followers).
7. Creates and rejoices in the deepest of divisions and hatred between groups of people.
8. Created fear and hatred against immigrants coming across the Mexico border.
9. Tear-gassed protesters so he could pose in front of a church while holding a Bible (upside down).
10. Calls countries “shithole countries.”
11. Lobbed rolls of paper towels at a crowd of Hurricane Maria victims in Puerto Rico.
12. Lost 2020 election, then proceeded to:

a. Claim the election was stolen.
b. Coerce election officials to “find more votes.”
c. Refused to go through transition process with Biden.
d. Incited the mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol.

Yes… I have higher standards than that.
It's really too bad that many people don't.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Donald Trump is so far ahead in the polls of every Republican and so far ahead in the polls of Joe Biden, with the latest which came out yesterday from ABC News showing Donald Trump 14 points ahead of Joe Biden.

According to the ABC poll, Donald Trump is at 56% and Joe Biden is at 42%. And among independent voters Donald Trump is at 51%, and Joe Biden is at 37%.

I'm still waiting for anybody out there to tell me who is going to even come close to Donald Trump.

[TitoFan]

If this is the case, the U.S. is going to DESERVE what it gets.

~ "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..."

[NoSavingByTheBell]

If this is the case, the U.S. is going to DESERVE what it gets.

~ "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..."

America can't get any worse than what it got since Joe Biden took office.

And I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me who is going to come anywhere NEAR Donald Trump in the polls.

Edit: the following photo in the next post gives you all the choices pretty much.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Hmmm...I don't see Kamala there.Screenshot_20230925-231928.jpg

[NoSavingByTheBell]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Screenshot_20230925-235846.jpg

[TitoFan]

If this is the case, the U.S. is going to DESERVE what it gets.

~ "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..."

America can't get any worse than what it got since Joe Biden took office.

And I'm still waiting for somebody to tell me who is going to come anywhere NEAR Donald Trump in the polls.

Edit: the following photo in the next post gives you all the choices pretty much.

You think poll results make Trump a good candidate?

All it tells me is that people have lost the plot in general.

I'll stick by my previous post. The U.S. is going to get what it deserves.

Like I also said... none of Biden's shortcomings make Trump a good candidate.

IMHO, a 2nd Trump presidency will sink the U.S. to levels people haven't even imagined yet.

I predict full rioting in the streets, and something pretty close to anarchy.

In response, Trump will rig all future elections to where only HE can be elected, if elections are held at all.

The only thing that will save the nation is Trump getting too old and having to step aside.

But the damage has already been done. All future GOP candidates are going to be Trump clones, because spineless politicians know that's what this clueless generation of voters wants.

Sad.

[Kirkland Laing]

[QUOTE=TitoFan;1643655][QUOTE=NoSavingByTheBell;1643642][QUOTE=TitoFan;1643606]
You get outlier polls and this is one of them. But in just about every poll Trump and Biden are dead level which is bad enough. Decades of bullshit propaganda from talk radio then Fox then the internet have radicalised half the country to the point that they can believe that the FBI, the DOJ and the entire system of government are crooked and an obvious crook is going to save them from the system.

I like the post apart from the bit about Trump getting old and stepping aside and that will save America. Once a president and his appointees step outside the rule of law, and it'll take them about five minutes to do it if he gets reelected, there's no way back. America does not get saved. The people in power can't ever step aside or risk losing an election because they'd end up in prison so they keep on getting more repressive and tyrannical to remain in power. That's how it happens in every single autocratic regime in history. America is not going to be any different. There's no other way it can play out.


Some stuff that stood out for me recently:

Imagine, just imagine, if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris said even 1% of this about Fox ‘News’. Imagine the coverage not just from Fox and the right but from our ‘liberal’ mainstream media, too.

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/stat...23435384988046



This is the GOP now. You've got to be on board with all the crazy shit if you want to be elected:

https://twitter.com/ResoluteSquare/s...59556579287550


Remarkable quote :

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/sta...02311329944043

Once again, Republicans aren’t serious about border security


This is a couple of days old, but it's still worth a brief mention. When the House Freedom Caucus put out its demands for a budget bill, one of them was passage of border legislation:

The stopgap bill includes a House-passed border security proposal that orders construction of the border wall to resume, boosts the ranks of Border Patrol agents and tightens asylum rules. The plan included in the continuing resolution, though, leaves out a provision of the immigration bill related to E-Verify, which allows employers to confirm the eligibility of employees to work in the U.S.

Of course it does. Republican border plans routinely include lots of crowd-pleasing provisions that have little prospect of working (walls, more agents, etc.) while leaving out the one thing that probably would: E-Verify. Granted, E-Verify isn't the answer to our newfangled problem of asylum seekers, but it's sure the answer to our old-fashioned problem of illegal immigrants: if you can't prove you're legally allowed to work, you can't get hired. If you get hired anyway, the company that did it is liable to big fines. That would work.
And that's precisely the problem. The money wing of the party, which tolerates social conservatives only as long as they don't interfere with business, opposes any border proposal that requires action on their part and might actually be effective. They want to be left alone to hire all the cheap immigrant labor they want.
Business Republicans know that walls are just hot air, so they don't object to Donald Trump and his acolytes using them to feed the base some red meat. But E-Verify? That would actually constrain their ability to hire undocumented workers—and that's why Republicans generally stay quiet about it.

https://jabberwocking.com/once-again...rder-security/





Both sides:

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/sta...60394917810609