POTUS Donald Trump

[TheLeviathan]

 

I am going to go out on a limb and say Bolton replacing McMaster is not a good thing...

 

I've only seen him as a guest on Fox and he always struck me as being about as bright on issues as that semi-racist uncle you see once a year and try to avoid talking with.

 

He'll fit in well!

[gunnarthor]

So I guess Stormy spanked the President in that interview.  Lordy, I hope she has pictures.

[Squirrel]

I find it EXTREMELY disturbing, that at the most intimate moments, he comments how she reminds him of Ivanka. What. The. ****. That is seriously disturbing. Whether he actually molested his daughter at one time, or fantasizes about her in that way ... majorly disgusting. Worse than disgusting. Just ... UGH!

[TheLeviathan]

I'm not sure any of this matters.  Evangelicals will stand by him if he shoots someone in broad daylight.

 

There is no ground to be gained with all of this.  

[gunnarthor]

 

I find it EXTREMELY disturbing, that at the most intimate moments, he comments how she reminds him of Ivanka. What. The. ****. That is seriously disturbing. Whether he actually molested his daughter at one time, or fantasizes about her in that way ... majorly disgusting. Worse than disgusting. Just ... UGH!

Yeah, that's come out in a few things now. Must have been a hell of a child hood for her.

[gunnarthor]

 

I'm not sure any of this matters.  Evangelicals will stand by him if he shoots someone in broad daylight.

 

There is no ground to be gained with all of this.  

We don't need the evangelicals. We just need high turnout on our end, low turnout on their end, and increased votes from women. This helps all three things. I'm getting optimistic about a huge blue wave.

[Squirrel]

 

I'm not sure any of this matters.  Evangelicals will stand by him if he shoots someone in broad daylight.

 

There is no ground to be gained with all of this.  

Yeah. Already I read comments where people think it's made up, that it's a campaign to smear him. Ugh. If they believe in God and the afterlife, I hope Judgement finds them.

[Squirrel]

 

We don't need the evangelicals. We just need high turnout on our end, low turnout on their end, and increased votes from women. This helps all three things. I'm getting optimistic about a huge blue wave.

I want to believe ... I'm just ... way too cynical about it all at this point.

[TheLeviathan]

 

We don't need the evangelicals. We just need high turnout on our end, low turnout on their end, and increased votes from women. This helps all three things. I'm getting optimistic about a huge blue wave.

 

I'm just not sure these stories do anything for that.  I wasn't suggesting Dems need Evangelicals, I was suggesting that the purpose of this seems to be to weaken his support among the conservative christian types and I just don't see that happening.

 

The hypocrisy is thick, but I don't think it moves any needles.

[gunnarthor]

 

I'm just not sure these stories do anything for that.  I wasn't suggesting Dems need Evangelicals, I was suggesting that the purpose of this seems to be to weaken his support among the conservative christian types and I just don't see that happening.

 

The hypocrisy is thick, but I don't think it moves any needles.

Nah, I few of them have moved on. I know some Evangelicals who will never vote for him now. They'll probably still support GOP candidates that aren't him but I also don't think they are all that energized about voting at all. Blue wave, dude!

[Badsmerf]

To me, this isn't z an us vs them discussion. There are plenty of sane republicans. The party is being led by hypocrites and liars right now. I do believe it is a subset of conservatives as a whole.

 

The Republican enthusiasm is certainly falling. They are even losing ground on the gun control discussion. The democrats could dramatically change the political tide inn the next few years. They'll need to get to work to undo the damage being done right now by the zealots Trump appointed.

[TheLeviathan]

 

Nah, I few of them have moved on. I know some Evangelicals who will never vote for him now. They'll probably still support GOP candidates that aren't him but I also don't think they are all that energized about voting at all. Blue wave, dude!

 

I guess I just don't see many Republicans left that fit in that camp.  If that principle mattered to them, most of them got off the bus figuratively when Donald was getting off it literally.

 

I think most of the reason this story is being pushed is to try to damage Trump from people who don't like him.  But a) I don't think it does damage his support and I think many of his supporters love the "womanizer" image.

 

Unless something ends up with him testifying in court (like the defamation suit), I think this is largely a waste of time.  (And that is a uniquely Trump thing.  For most politicians this would matter a lot)

[ashbury]

Trump now wants us out of Syria. Russia has always wanted us out of Syria. Perhaps it's correct to get out, and it represents Obama's likely worst foreign policy stain, but I would prefer that judgement be made by any conceivable other person than the one we have right now.

 

I've long believed that to understand GOP governance, on any particular issue, just ask what rich people want. Not every move the Republicans make favors the rich; but just about never do they make a move that downright harms those interests, and an occasional big move comes along that is constructed to make life easier for the already-well off.

 

A similar formulation seems clearly to apply regarding Trump and Russia. Not every move by Trump is with Russia in mind, but their interests do not seem opposed at any turn, and every once in a while a big strategic move on our part coincides with Russian preference. And it's not just Syria - Turkey moving in any slight way out of NATO's sphere of influence is congruent with another of their goals.

 

We're going to look back in a few years and marvel at how quickly several decades of containment could unravel.

[Badsmerf]

Obama was damned if he did and damned if he didn't with Syria. His strategy was a failure, perhaps in part because of the half-in stance he took. Russia was always much more invested. Had Obama took a bigger stance he risked an unpopular war/waste of money/foreign policy. If he hadn't gotten involved people would complain he let Syrians die. There was really no winning. Russia played that conflict well. They now have what they want (i'm not really sure why they care so much), with little international resistance. Putin has dramatically changed the world these last 5 years. It is sickening to me republicans are going along with Trump on these blatantly pro Russian (Putin) policy issues. It's a shame Russians have to live under a leader like him.

[ThejacKmp]

 

I've long believed that to understand GOP governance, on any particular issue, just ask what rich people want. Not every move the Republicans make favors the rich; but just about never do they make a move that downright harms those interests, and an occasional big move comes along that is constructed to make life easier for the already-well off.

 

 

Part of the issue is that everyone in white America thinks that they too might someday be rich. We don't make rational decisions ("I'm likely to remain lower to middle class so I should support positions that help people like me") because we think "Maybe I'll be rich and then I won't want to pay tons of taxes". Democrats often have trouble connecting with people because it's an outwardly focused worldview - "We should help others who are less fortunate" not "we should help ourselves because we are less fortunate than we could or should be".

 

That American Dream is a double edged sword.

[ThejacKmp]

 

It's a shame Russians have to live under a leader like him.

 

To be fair, he's not even close to the worst leader the Russians have had to live under. In fact, he might be up close to the top. The Tsars were a-holes; Lenin only killed hundreds of thousands, not millions and that Stalin guy gave Uncle Adolph a run for his money. You can make an argument for Yeltsin and co. over Putin but even that was just a blatant money grab. The worst Presidents in American history would be Founding Fathers in Russia. The illegal machinations of Nixon, LBJ and JFK would be considered charmingly childish by Russian politicians.

 

I teach Russian History to 9th graders. One of my kids came in and said, "When does Russian History get happy?" I laughed and said never.

[Craig Arko]

 

Part of the issue is that everyone in white America thinks that they too might someday be rich. We don't make rational decisions ("I'm likely to remain lower to middle class so I should support positions that help people like me") because we think "Maybe I'll be rich and then I won't want to pay tons of taxes". Democrats often have trouble connecting with people because it's an outwardly focused worldview - "We should help others who are less fortunate" not "we should help ourselves because we are less fortunate than we could or should be".

 

That American Dream is a double edged sword.

That thought has never occurred to me. Having said that, by most of the world's population standards, I (we) are pretty wealthy. I think both utilitarian and virtue ethics can be applied here.

[ashbury]

I teach Russian History to 9th graders. One of my kids came in and said, "When does Russian History get happy?" I laughed and said never.

All happy nations are alike; each unhappy nation is unhappy in its own way.

[ThejacKmp]

 

All happy nations are alike; each unhappy nation is unhappy in its own way.

 

Hard to find a country that has had more consistent unhappiness than Russia. Maybe it's the tundra?

[Badsmerf]

That doesn't make living with Putin great, just less bad than it has been in the past. These men that grab power in Russia do so because their system is absolutely corrupt. There is nothing fair or democratic. I'm not sure when things will improve, but out certainly won't while Putin is in power.

 

Before Putin, Russia seemed to be turning the corner. With the explosion of social media during his tenure, I wonder how tumultuous things are over there. I have a friend that visits often, and it seems pretty normal from pictures lol.

[gunnarthor]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-raid-on-michael-cohen-is-the-most-dangerous-day-of-donald-trumps-life?source=twitter&via=desktop

 

And this article was written by a republican!

[Squirrel]

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-raid-on-michael-cohen-is-the-most-dangerous-day-of-donald-trumps-life?source=twitter&via=desktop

 

And this article was written by a republican!

Wow ... masterful usage of metaphors.

 

I hope they find what they need to bury him, but ... I still see nothing happening, and his core constituency disbelieving of all of this in staunch support of him to the end and beyond ... whenever that is. After all, if it's not in line with their thinking, it's fake.

[ashbury]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-raid-on-michael-cohen-is-the-most-dangerous-day-of-donald-trumps-life?source=twitter&via=desktop

 

And this article was written by a republican!

Rick WIlson's on MSNBC all the time. There are plenty of Republicans who opposed Trump in 2015/6 and downright can't stand him, and it's no news if some of them continue to hurl invective at him.

 

It'll be when the Chris Christies of the world start to turn on Trump that I'll believe the end is really near. I don't expect true partisans like Jeff Sessions or Rudy Giuliani will ever lead the way, though they may make a cameo appearance at the finish line and try to assert they were out front, but someone like Christie is a pragmatist at heart and may at some point calculate that it's to his advantage to visibly bail out. That'll be meaningful. Indeed I just checked Christie's recent quotes and he's publicly advising Trump not to fire Mueller; he's setting himself up for what he needs to say next, when the time eventually comes.

 

Not that this Cohen thing isn't big. He's been on my radar, like for many people, ever since "Says Who" was briefly but hilariously a meme almost two years ago:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAdGYYsG7yc

 

After 25 seconds of stonewalling, not conceding the most elementary of common knowledge, this brilliant legal mind concludes with, "okay".

[TheLeviathan]

I think it says a lot about what evidence is out there at Mueller's disposal that they got a judge to agree that Cohen and Trump are so unlikely to cooperate that search warrants are required.  

 

I've long believed we're more likely to vote him out after one term than we ever are to impeach him.  I hold more hope that these investigations put him in jail later and humiliate him.  

[jimmer]

What's hilarious is that Trump insists he never had the affair, never authorized the payoff/settlement, never knew about the payoff/settlement (which is hilarious, because Cohen paid her for something). 

 

ANYWAY, IF he never had the affair, didn't know about the payoff/settlement, didn't authorize it or give the money to Cohen to make the payment, how can he scream that lawyer-client privilege is breached? 

 

 

 

 

[TheLeviathan]

 

What's hilarious is that Trump insists he never had the affair, never authorized the payoff/settlement, never knew about the payoff/settlement (which is hilarious, because Cohen paid her for something). 

 

ANYWAY, IF he never had the affair, didn't know about the payoff/settlement, didn't authorize it or give the money to Cohen to make the payment, how can he scream that lawyer-client privilege is breached? 

 

It seems to me that the man never met a lie he didn't mind telling.

[D. Hocking]

Nothing like pardoning someone who was convicted to lying to the FBI to send a message to potential witnesses not to worry about lying in their testimony...

 

JUST IN: Pres. Trump poised to pardon Scooter J. Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, sources tell @ABC. https://abcn.ws/2IPMolJ

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Nothing like pardoning someone who was convicted to lying to the FBI to send a message to potential witnesses not to worry about lying in their testimony...

 

JUST IN: Pres. Trump poised to pardon Scooter J. Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, sources tell @ABC. https://abcn.ws/2IPMolJ

I find it all pretty funny at this point.

 

I don't see any way this doesn't end in disaster for Trump unless everything Mueller is doing turns out to be a nothingburger in regards to him (which looks increasingly unlikely).

 

Republicans are going to continue to peel off from this mess because loads of them weren't on board with his message in the first place, they just fell in line to appease the party and expand their base. After this election, I don't think it's going to take many more to peel off until we're in really treacherous territory for Trump and his presidency.

[gunnarthor]

Yeah, this midterm election is going to be huge but I really think we'll see a blue wave unless the Dems somehow manage to **** it up. (That's not an impossibility but so far they seem to be set well).

 

I really do think that the investigations are going to find something in those finances. I don't give a lot of weight to Wolff's book but the comments by Bannon about Kushner ring pretty true. There's probably something there.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

Trump bombs Damascus

 

 

Not sure how or where to focus my rage. Suggestions welcome.