Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, goDel said:

His 2016 campaign was the same. Hillary was supposed to win. Trump was only in it for the money. Like a giant commercial for his business. It was a succesful grifter party, if you will.

true. Carville makes it sound like this time around trump isn't in on the grift though. but we'll see.. i mean... maybe trump is just counting the days to get out of office but i really doubt it. he's an arrogant sociopath and wants to have "big numbers" etc and win for its own sake. 

[Brisbot]

1 minute ago, ignatius said:

His 2016 campaign was the same. Hillary was supposed to win. Trump was only in it for the money.

That's Bernie Bro level of conspiracy

[ignatius]

@Brisbot your quote attribution is skeewompus. aka you mixed up me and goDel

but i agree w/him. i don't think trump really wanted to win. i think he was just upping his profile. i recall he had plans for a far right tv network "trump tv" or some shit and that hit the skidz when he became president elect. 

Edited May 8, 2020 by ignatius

[Rubin Farr]

 

[chenGOD]

20 hours ago, Nebraska said:

trump's campaign manager announces death star is close to being fired

 

The replies in that thread are golden.

[Nebraska]

 

[zero]

14 hours ago, ignatius said:

but i agree w/him. i don't think trump really wanted to win. i think he was just upping his profile. 

it was all a publicity stunt that went wrong, and now here we are.

howard stern gave a good interview last year where he mentioned this:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/09/magazine/howard-stern-change.html

Quote

It’s more that I’m wondering — and maybe this sounds corny — if you think he’s actually capable of a certain level of soulful introspection. No, I don’t. Donald is a well-guarded personality. I think he’s actually so emotional that somewhere along the line he had to close it off. That’s a valuable technique for people who have been traumatized. Donald has been traumatized, make no mistake. I believe his father was a very difficult guy. My theory about Donald, having spent some time with him — don’t forget Donald was at my wedding, and I was at one of his — is that deep down he did not want to be President. It was a publicity stunt. These are my beliefs based on facts that I know.

Facts like what? I know people who orchestrated some of these things. I was at Mar-a-Lago around when it was announced that Donald was going to run for president, and like everyone else, I thought, Ha-ha-ha. So, knowing Donald, I can tell you with some assurance that I don’t believe that he thought anyone would buy in. Lo and behold, people did. But I’m pretty sure that there was no intention of actually being president. Now as far as your question about a truly introspective Donald, I don’t think anyone could get that out of him. I believe that traumatized people, and I include myself —

 

[Nebraska]

meidas touch going for the jugular

 

[goDel]

He read that snake story? O wow. Please don't tell me he implied talking about himself being the snake. He must've talked about Obama. Or the establishment. Or illegal immigrants. 

He's the king of snakes though ;D

Here's some secret footage from Trumps grifter party shortly after winning his presidency 

 

[auxien]

 

[may be rude]

 

A whistleblower paints a shocking picture of the White House bungling the covid-19 response

Quote

THE UNITED STATES pumped some $50 billion into the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, founded in the aftermath of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, to prepare for and stockpile medical countermeasures to a biological emergency, natural or man-made. When the emergency came, however, the Trump administration foundered.

The former director of BARDA, Rick Bright, has made public a whistleblower complaint that depicts confusion and ineptitude at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees BARDA. He says senior officials repeatedly failed to anticipate the supply-chain problems that would engulf the United States while at the same time pressing for mass distribution of drugs lacking scientific evidence. Mr. Bright charges that he was wrongly forced out and wants to be reinstated. The federal Office of Special Counsel has found “reasonable grounds to believe” the administration was retaliating against him and recommended he be reinstated while it investigates.

Mr. Bright, a PhD in immunology and virology, became BARDA director in 2016. He describes frequent tension with his bosses over what he perceived as conflicts of interest and political pressures in negotiations to purchase vaccines, drugs and other therapies from private companies.

When reports of a novel coronavirus emerged from China in January, Mr. Bright says he urged superiors “to move quickly, hire more personnel, secure funding and obtain viruses to get started on medical countermeasures.” He pushed to convene the department’s high-level “Disaster Leadership Group.” But one superior wrote back questioning “if that is a time sensitive urgency.” Mr. Bright says he repeatedly warned of a shortage of N95 respirators to protect health-care workers, but his alarms were brushed off. In February, Mr. Bright took his concerns to President Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, who was sympathetic. When Mr. Navarro requested more information from HHS, he got a slide deck that, according to Mr. Bright, declared, “There are no known immediate problems with supply chains.” Mr. Bright also raised alarms about a potentially crippling shortage of syringes and needles for a vaccine, and shortages of diagnostic test kits and swabs.

Mr. Bright says high-level government officials pressed him to stockpile and distribute the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which Mr. Trump had touted as a “game changer” against the virus, but which Mr. Bright believed lacked scientific merit. The administration took a donation of 3 million pills from Bayer to the national stockpile. Mr. Bright says he resisted a designation that would allow the pills, from factories in India and Pakistan unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration, to be distributed “without close physician supervision.” When the FDA granted emergency use, it restricted the drug to close physician supervision and hospitalized patients. But then, Mr. Bright says, he was ordered to make it more widely available “in blatant violation” of the FDA decison, “regardless of the risk to the American public.”

Mr. Bright’s complaint deserves a thorough investigation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-fumbled-while-the-virus-spread/2020/05/08/d4bf8686-9078-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html

Edited May 10, 2020 by very honest

[ignatius]

total lack of surprise. 

[Nebraska]

trumps needs to start throwing poop at these fake news journalists for asking him question

[ignatius]

12 minutes ago, Nebraska said:

trumps needs to start throwing poop at these fake news journalists for asking him question

he's such snowflake. just takes his ball and goes home. waaaaa! rage quit. reeeee. 

[zero]

1 hour ago, Nebraska said:

trumps needs to start throwing poop at these fake news journalists for asking him question

rather, fake news journalists need to start throwing shoes at him.

poop vs. shoes. oil vs. water. we could do this for millennia...

[ignatius]

[Nebraska]

rather, fake news journalists need to start throwing shoes at him.
poop vs. shoes. oil vs. water. we could do this for millennia...

well, tomorrow SCOTUS will have three hearings for his tax returns so if he chucked some poop on the journalists, they might be too distracted to cover it.

rage tweeting has been working, but now Twitter is also implementing new alerts for disinformation.

big T is under attack bigly

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[may be rude]

a week after the administration claims victory over the pandemic, they start wearing masks because trump is freaked out about numerous cases in the white house. only a thousand deaths today. that seems to be going down, for now, at least.

the supreme court thing tomorrow is being broadcasted. the trump lawyers are set up to fail but who knows. the banks and the firm holding the records indicated they would hand them over. if that happens, i will be interested to see if deutsche bank loans were guaranteed by russian state bank VTB, as reported. 

also tomorrow, senate committee hearing with fauci, redfield, and others on the covid response. should be some good stuff there.

also, barr dropping the flynn case earned him significant blowback, despite his PR interview saying history is written by the winners. 2,000 former federal officials, so far, signed another letter saying he's attacking the rule of law, and that he should resign, and that Congress should do something.

also, one of the people barr quoted in the DOJ filing about dropping the Flynn case put out an article saying he distorted her words.

Quote

At the direction of Attorney General Bill Barr, the Justice Department last week moved to dismiss a false-statements charge against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser. The reason stated was that the continued prosecution “would not serve the interests of justice.”

The motion was signed by Timothy Shea, a longtime trusted adviser of Mr. Barr and, since January, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington. In attempting to support its argument, the motion cites more than 25 times the F.B.I.’s report of an interview with me in July 2017, two months after I left a decades-long career at the department (under administrations of both parties) that culminated in my role as the acting assistant attorney general for national security.

That report, commonly referred to as a “302,” is an interesting read. It vividly describes disagreements between leadership of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. about how to handle the information we had learned about Mr. Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, more specifically, Mr. Flynn’s apparent lies about those calls to incoming Vice President Mike Pence.

But the report of my interview is no support for Mr. Barr’s dismissal of the Flynn case. It does not suggest that the F.B.I. had no counterintelligence reason for investigating Mr. Flynn. It does not suggest that the F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn — which led to the false-statements charge — was unlawful or unjustified. It does not support that Mr. Flynn’s false statements were not material. And it does not support the Justice Department’s assertion that the continued prosecution of the case against Mr. Flynn, who pleaded guilty to knowingly making material false statements to the FBI, “would not serve the interests of justice.”

I can explain why, relying entirely on documents the government has filed in court or released publicly.

Notably, Mr. Barr’s motion to dismiss does not argue that the F.B.I. violated the Constitution or statutory law when agents interviewed Mr. Flynn about his calls with Mr. Kislyak. It doesn’t claim that they violated his Fifth Amendment rights by coercively questioning him when he wasn’t free to leave. Nor does the motion claim that the interview was the fruit of a search or seizure that violated the Fourth Amendment. Any of these might have justified moving to dismiss the case. But by the government’s own account, the interview with Mr. Flynn was voluntary, arranged in advance and took place in Mr. Flynn’s own office.

Without constitutional or statutory violations grounding its motion, the Barr-Shea motion makes a contorted argument that Mr. Flynn’s false statements and omissions to the F.B.I. were not “material” to any matter under investigation. Materiality is an essential element that the government must establish to prove a false-statements offense. If the falsehoods aren’t material, there’s no crime.

The department concocts its materiality theory by arguing that the F.B.I. should not have been investigating Mr. Flynn at the time they interviewed him. The Justice Department notes that the F.B.I. had opened a counterintelligence investigation of Mr. Flynn in 2016 as part of a larger investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to interfere with the presidential election. And the department notes that the F.B.I. had intended to close the investigation of Mr. Flynn in early January 2017 until it learned of the conversations between Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kislyak around the same time.

Discounting the broader investigation and the possibility of Russian direction or control over Mr. Flynn, the department’s motion myopically homes in on the calls alone, and because it views those calls as “entirely appropriate,” it concludes the investigation should not have been extended and the interview should not have taken place.

The account of my interview in 2017 doesn’t help the department support this conclusion, and it is disingenuous for the department to twist my words to suggest that it does. What the account of my interview describes is a difference of opinion about what to do with the information that Mr. Flynn apparently had lied to the incoming vice president, Mr. Pence, and others in the incoming administration about whether he had discussed the Obama administration’s sanctions against Russia in his calls with Mr. Kislyak. Those apparent lies prompted Mr. Pence and others to convey inaccurate statements about the nature of the conversations in public news conferences and interviews.

 

Edited May 12, 2020 by very honest

[ignatius]

regarding Flynn.. wtf.. he lied to the FBI and he lied to the vice president and Pence has already implied he'd welcome him back into the administration. 

the old school 'traditional' republicans hate trump as much as anyone. 

https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/-if-obama-was-potus-this-would-not-have-happened-gop-veteran-unloads-on-trump-virus-response-83307589861

Newly leaked audio from a call obtained by Yahoo News, President Obama says Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been ‘an absolute chaotic disaster.’ In an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Republican Political Strategist Steve Schmidt argues America under Obama’s presidency would have “competent, professional people” in charge of the response, critiquing Trump for his “ineptitude and incompetence.”
 

[may be rude]

11 hours ago, ignatius said:

regarding Flynn.. wtf.. he lied to the FBI and he lied to the vice president and Pence has already implied he'd welcome him back into the administration. 

the old school 'traditional' republicans hate trump as much as anyone. 

https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/-if-obama-was-potus-this-would-not-have-happened-gop-veteran-unloads-on-trump-virus-response-83307589861

Newly leaked audio from a call obtained by Yahoo News, President Obama says Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been ‘an absolute chaotic disaster.’ In an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Republican Political Strategist Steve Schmidt argues America under Obama’s presidency would have “competent, professional people” in charge of the response, critiquing Trump for his “ineptitude and incompetence.”
 

he also admitted to violating the logan act (negotiation by unauthorized American citizens with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States), for his calls with kislyak that he lied about, and the Foreign Agent Registration Act, for his crazy scheme to kidnap a turkish cleric in pennsylvannia and render him to turkey for money. he made those admissions in his statement of offense. as part of the deal, they only pressed charges for lying to the FBI, which is the kind of charge that is almost never dropped.

Edited May 12, 2020 by very honest

[zero]

donnie was this close to quoting donnie darko's "go back to china, bitch" line yesterday. if you watch the clip, you know that's exactly what he was thinking.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52627604/trump-spars-with-asian-american-reporter-over-nasty-question

Quote

CBS News journalist Weijia Jiang asked Mr Trump why testing is a global competition to him. The president answered by saying that's a question she should ask China. After calling on another reporter, Ms Jiang followed up by asking the president why that response was specifically for her.

President Trump has previously made comments regarding Ms Jiang's Asian American background.

 

[Candiru]

15 minutes ago, zero said:

donnie was this close to quoting donnie darko's "go back to china, bitch" line yesterday. if you watch the clip, you know that's exactly what he was thinking.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52627604/trump-spars-with-asian-american-reporter-over-nasty-question

 

Forreal. I think the constantly accusing people of racism strategy is a bit tired at times and unhelpful, but when I watched the footage of this happening it was just so crass, and I like how the reporters handled it and showed how lame he is, yet again. 

[ignatius]

 

[prdctvsm]

[dcom]

Quote

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read (journal of a grumpy old man)