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Donald Trump Presidency discussion thread III

Quin_Dub

This thread is for the continuing discussion of Donald Trumps's presidency in the US and any related matters.

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Mr.Micro

Nody wrote: »

But what will be interesting to see is what Christopher Wray does; he's Trump appointed and threatened to resign if the memo was released. Now if a Trump FBI director resigns over it that is not exactly going to reflect well on Trump and his claims of bias but I'm sure Trump will ridicule him like he done to all his other who left.

No doubt he would. It's working for Trump. No matter what, he wins in the end. It's a ridiculous situation that he controls any investigation and can undermine such. To my mind, maybe the FBI and others should call it a day and let it go. Trump is going to come out on top no matter what. It's the good guys who will continue to lose their careers and loss of reputation at the hands of Trump et al.

Water John

There are no indications that the GOP will do anyway well in the mid term elections. That may be what will sober them. And people saying Hilary was as bad as Donald are incorrect. It simply wasn't true. Just crap fired constantly so some would stick. By now she yesterdays news and Dems need to look anew.

Manic Moran

They do have a fair chance of losing the house, but they may gain in the senate. There are some 26 D senators up for election, only 8 R, and far more D than R are considered vulnerable, including some in States Trump has double-digit victories.

Overheal

If the midterms were tomorrow they would be fine. But they have to do something about the debt ceiling in the intervening time and there are so many other ways it can go wrong for them. Workers are still riding the “omg my employer gave me my three pieces of silver MAGA!”

spacecoyote

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/03/republican-voters-turn-against-fbi-according-new-poll/

Looks like the plan is working with the base for Trump. All of the bluster is turning republican voters against the FBI according to a new poll

Overheal

In case you wanted to know where the national dialog was at around immigration: Trump supporter questions whether a Navajo congressmen was in the United States legally. Yep. I'm done.

https://www.snopes.com/trump-supporters-navajo-legislator-legal/

Nody

Overheal wrote: »

In case you wanted to know where the national dialog was at around immigration: Trump supporter questions whether a Navajo congressmen was in the United States legally. Yep. I'm done.

https://www.snopes.com/trump-supporters-navajo-legislator-legal/

I can actually beat that one; Trump thinks the released memo proves he's innocent and that the congress agrees with it. There are delusions and then there's Trump's delusions...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/959798743842349056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fus-politics%2Ftrump-russia-nunes-memo-latest-witch-hunt-poll-numbers-twitter-tweet-a8192786.html

Professor Moriarty

Nody wrote: »

I can actually beat that one; Trump thinks the released memo proves he's innocent and that the congress agrees with it. There are delusions and then there's Trump's delusions...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/959798743842349056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fus-politics%2Ftrump-russia-nunes-memo-latest-witch-hunt-poll-numbers-twitter-tweet-a8192786.html

All of this is designed to ensure that The Donald can refuse to be interviewed by such a discredited organisation and investigation.

spacecoyote

Why does he refer to himself as "Trump" in inverted commas?

Nody

spacecoyote wrote: »

Why does he refer to himself as "Trump" in inverted commas?

I think he talks of the larger Trump in this case being family and business interest; since his son clearly had nothing to do with Russia as the memo proves...

Water John

I presume it's to sneakily embrace all the family, within his assumed immunity.

[Deleted User]

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

All of this is designed to ensure that The Donald can refuse to be interviewed by such a discredited organisation and investigation.

Pretty sure that leads to a subpoena, which in turn I believe he doesn't have to be granted legal consul to be present.

This would be an interesting outcome.

Nody

On a separate note today marks Trump's 95th day playing golf since he became president 379 days ago. As a comparison Obama spent a total of 306 days over 8 years golfing; Trump at current trajectory will achieve 350 days golfing after 4 years. Of course Trump had a bit to say about that; of course he never realized he'd make his own projections true...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/370028393255149568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbnation.com%2Fgolf%2F2017%2F3%2F27%2F15073086%2Fdonald-trump-tweets-barack-obama-golf

StringerBell

The memo release smacks of desperation. That gives me a bit of enjoyment at least, we appear to be entering the edges of the endgame of all of this is now imho. I am not saying it is going to come in the next couple of weeks or anything but I have gotten a bit more convinced there will not be a President Trump in the WH come early 2019.

Course, after that election it would be foolish to write The Donald off completely. He may pull something out of the bag yet, my money is on no though.

Overheal

If you would like a hint about how out of touch Paul Ryan is, he shared a story of a school secretary from Lancaster PA who told him she was surprised to see that she will get $1.50 raise due to the new tax plan, emohasizing that would probably be enough to cover her Costco membership. Yes. $1.50 a week. $78/yr bump. And he touted it basically as #Winning #MAGA

He deleted that tweet but not before the internet excoriated him. Entry level Costco membership is $60/yr by the way. So she will even be able to buy a box of K-cups

https://www.snopes.com/2018/02/03/ryan-tax-cut-tweet/

Wanderer78

Overheal wrote:

If you would like a hint about how out of touch Paul Ryan is, he shared a story of a school secretary from Lancaster PA who told him she was surprised to see that she will get $1.50 raise due to the new tax plan, emohasizing that would probably be enough to cover her Costco membership. Yes. $1.50 a week. $78/yr bump. And he touted it basically as #Winning #MAGA

People such as Paul Ryan don't care about normal working folk, he isn't there to represent them anyway, unfortunately many Americans seem to think he is though.

Leroy42

StringerBell wrote: »

The memo release smacks of desperation. That gives me a bit of enjoyment at least, we appear to be entering the edges of the endgame of all of this is now imho. I am not saying it is going to come in the next couple of weeks or anything but I have gotten a bit more convinced there will not be a President Trump in the WH come early 2019.

Course, after that election it would be foolish to write The Donald off completely. He may pull something out of the bag yet, my money is on no though.

I don't think it is desperation at all, more that it is a next step on a clear policy to discredit the FBI and CIA. Trump has been disparaging the state of the US since before the election "Drain the Swamp" and GOP have spent years making the claim that the state has colluded in protecting the Clintons.

So faced with the state looking to hold him to account the best way is to paint the state as some sort of corrupt collective, out to get him, and by extension, the people. Somehow, the GOP and Trump,have managed to get the people to believe they they are somehow different from the state and that they are the only ones to save the people from it.

Comey was a lackey of the Clintons for not charging HC during the campaign, then a hero for finally doing the right thing just before the election, and then a corrupt deep state actor out to defy the will of the people for not siding with Trump.

The GOP have nailed their colours very clearly to the ship of Trump, and there is no way they are going to impeach him. The fact that they haven't come out as a party to state that Mueller is untouchable tells you how they are positioning themselves (remember they nearly all welcomed Muellers appointment at the start as they saw him as a Rupublican!)

There is no way that they will impeach their own POTUS, not unless the polls clearly show that people have turned against Trump. There is no indication that that will happen, regardless as what comes out.

So unless the DEMS can with enough seats (which whilst they could get a majority I think they need 60+ for impeachment) then Trump has shown that unlike other politicians he was brazen it out. He seems not to care out right or wrong and deems the fact that he is POTUS as a backing for anything he thinks. He is POTUS, therefore it is what the people want, therefore he is merely doing the will of the people.

So I hold out very little confidence that it will not last the 4 years, and every possibility that he will win another term.

rossie1977

Interesting article on huffpost last week which really highlights how many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Incredible that nearly half the population couldn't afford unexpected $400 debt without borrowing.

Of those surveyed, just 39 percent of respondents said they’d be able to cover an unexpected $1,000 bill with funds from their savings . Most of the other respondents said they would have no choice but to accrue debt ― by paying with a credit card, borrowing from family and friends, or getting a loan.

Struggling Americans may actually be able to afford far less than the Bankrate report suggests. According to a Federal Reserve report released last year, 44 percent of adults wouldn’t be able to afford an unexpected $400 emergency expense. They’d either borrow the money or sell something to cover the bill. That figure is on the decline, though. It’s dropped from 50 percent since 2013.

aloyisious

I saw this story about a Trump nominee's name being withdrawn by the White House in the New York Times, so I double-checked it as the NYT asks for subscriptions and I don't want to infringe copyright [too much] in the interest of news. It seem's her [first] nomination for the post was sent back to the White House by the Dems in a deal with the Republicans to close the last legislative session in Dec but Don Trump re-submitted her nomination for the post early Jan.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kathleen-hartnett-white-withdrawal_us_5a766477e4b01ce33eb35a72

aloyisious

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/business/wells-fargo-fed-board-directors-penalties.html

Now this is something with bite that'll upset bank boards up and down the U.S. and probably cause calls to be made to the W/House and Capitol Hill, DC. WHAT, we will be held responsible for our failures! And it's apparently the last act by Janet Yellen before she leaves the Fed Chair.

demfad

Nody wrote: »

I can actually beat that one; Trump thinks the released memo proves he's innocent and that the congress agrees with it. There are delusions and then there's Trump's delusions...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/959798743842349056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fus-politics%2Ftrump-russia-nunes-memo-latest-witch-hunt-poll-numbers-twitter-tweet-a8192786.html

The Memo has no substance. But that was never the point. It doesn't need to.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/04/trump-twitter-russians-release-the-memo-216935

It was an 11-day dis-information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers. It succeeded to an 'astonishing' degree.
Why has the world seemingly turned upside down? Because the world is not what it seems: the big stories are not really the big stories. Or rather: the stories that would normally organically grow are being blown away by the stories that are artificially amplified by computational propaganda-digital growth hormone if you like.
Conservatives now trust the FBI less, and now believe the investigation into Trump is just another partisan row.
And Nunes has 4-5 more of these 'Memos' apparently. Do you think Nunes would embarrass himself by producing this dishonest nonsense if he didn't understand that his nothingburger memo would be amplified out of all proportion to make it's release almost a forgone conclusion?
This is a scary time in US and world history.

On Tuesday morning—the day after the House Intelligence Committee voted along partisan lines to send Rep. Devin Nunes’ memo, alleging abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to President Donald Trump for declassification—presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway was confronted with the idea that Russian trolls were promoting the #releasethememo hashtag online. She was offended. Russian trolls, she told a television interviewer, “have nothing to do with releasing the memo—that was a vote of the intelligence committee.” But her assertion is incorrect. The vote marked the culmination of a targeted, 11-day information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers.

And it worked. By the time the memo got to the president, its release was a forgone conclusion—even before he had read it.

This bears repeating: Computational propaganda—defined as “the use of information and communication technologies to manipulate perceptions, affect cognition, and influence behavior”—has been used, successfully, to manipulate the perceptions of the American public and the actions of elected officials.

The analysis below, conducted by our team from the social media intelligence group New Media Frontier, shows that the #releasethememo campaign was fueled by, and likely originated from, computational propaganda. It is critical that we understand how this was done and what it means for the future of American democracy.

demfad

On cue here is memo #2's propaganda buildup

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/02/sara-carter-deep-state-terrified-second-anti-trump-dossier-thats-coming-video/

Note* Gateway pundit is owned by Robert Mercer. Also owns Cambridge Analytica, Breitbart, Government Accountability Institute (produced Clinton Cash) and controls a network of up to 10,000 webpages to amplify Internet content and game social media algorithms. CA heavily involved in Trump and Brexit election victories with Mercer as Trump's main backer.

He and is daughter Rebakah have been heavily involved in elections including France, Germany and Netherlands. The Gatewaypundit has Dutch and German translations. Articles from it were used in both elections and amplified by Russian bots.

This is just to give you the idea that there is something bigger going on than Trump's election: that it is part of a wider coordinated pattern of election interference involving far right actors and Russia.
It's important to understand because Ireland is likely next unfortunately.

aloyisious

demfad wrote: »

On cue here is memo #2's propaganda buildup

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/02/sara-carter-deep-state-terrified-second-anti-trump-dossier-thats-coming-video/

Note* Gateway pundit is owned by Robert Mercer. Also owns Cambridge Analytica, Breitbart, Government Accountability Institute (produced Clinton Cash) and controls a network of up to 10,000 webpages to amplify Internet content and game social media algorithms. CA heavily involved in Trump and Brexit election victories with Mercer as Trump's main backer.

He and is daughter Rebakah have been heavily involved in elections including France, Germany and Netherlands. The Gatewaypundit has Dutch and German translations. Articles from it were used in both elections and amplified by Russian bots.

This is just to give you the idea that there is something bigger going on than Trump's election: that it is part of a wider coordinated pattern of election interference involving far right actors and Russia.
It's important to understand because Ireland is likely next unfortunately.

Was Nigel's Irexit visit over the weekend the herald of things to come, seeing as he was an "advisor" to Don?

Gbear

demfad wrote: »

This is just to give you the idea that there is something bigger going on than Trump's election: that it is part of a wider coordinated pattern of election interference involving far right actors and Russia.
It's important to understand because Ireland is likely next unfortunately.

I definitely think we're better placed than most to resist this nonsense.
There's some populist things we fall for hook line and sinker, but we're a long way from from the UK or the US and it would be far more difficult for pseudo-fascists to push our whole political discourse to the right as they have in other countries.

We're too mild-mannered, boring and centrist, and our democratic system has thus far been resistant to extremism, with even relatively mild far-left parties incapable of getting much support and there being nothing significant to the right of Fine Gael.

We also don't have anywhere near as contentious an immigration issue.

I'd say not having a colonial past (or rather being on the wrong end of one) gives us a better culture to deal with it as well. You can't, I think, have a history of emigration as we have and show the same sort of aloofness, myopia and isolationist view of the world as the UK or the US. Being small and weak probably contributes to that as well.

That doesn't mean we're immune to it and in the general thrust, we're probably not much, if at all, less xenophobic or easy to manipulate, than people from the US or the UK, but the truth is that most people in those countries don't support the likes of Trump, nor do they support the far right, or even the Tories.

In Ireland it's just harder for them to get into power.
They're going to be trying to make hay in the abortion referendum - it's the exact kind of issue they would use to infiltrate the political system, but they're much further behind in terms of having a political platform like the now oligarchal Republican party or even the proven fertile soil for the far right in the UK.

aloyisious

CNN coverig Don in Cincinatti... Don giving a speech to the faithful about his 1st state of the nation address: 50 per cent in the house were silent, 59 percent were cheering. The vibes from the quiet, bad feeling. Then he comes out and say's "treasonous and unamerican" in a direct reference to the Dems because they didn't cheer at his state of the nation speech. This US President is deliberately stirring the hatred pot against a large group of his own nations citizens.

Professor Moriarty

The Dow Jones is down by 5.8%, the biggest one day drop since 2008. Looking forward to The Donald's tweet claiming responsibility.

Really Interested

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

The Dow Jones is down by 5.8%, the biggest one day drop since 2008. Looking forward to The Donald's tweet claiming responsibility.

From Jan 20th 2017 to Jan 26th 2018 the Dow rose about 6,800 points in the last 2 days of trading it has lost about 1/3 of that gain the next few days are going to be interestiing.

BTW today is the biggest drop since 2008!

Itssoeasy

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

The Dow Jones is down by 5.8%, the biggest one day drop since 2008. Looking forward to The Donald's tweet claiming responsibility.

About two hopes bob hope and no hope I'd say prof. And bob hope is died with years.

Professor Moriarty

Itssoeasy wrote: »

About two hopes bob hope and no hope I'd say prof. And bob hope is died with years.

And Slim left town recently.

eire4

Wanderer78 wrote: »

People such as Paul Ryan don't care about normal working folk, he isn't there to represent them anyway, unfortunately many Americans seem to think he is though.

No question Paul Ryan does not give a seconds thought to the normal working person unless it is to think how he can manipulate him or her. The modern Republican party represents and works for the top 1% end of story IMHO economically. I think that much of their social agenda of hate is how they get many working people to vote against their own best economic interests because they find various social groups to spew hate about and blame for various woes and this keeps people voting against their own best economic interests.
To be fair though I would disagree with your last line though. I do not think all that many Americans actually agree with him at least enough to motivate them to vote as roughly half of Americans consistently do not vote at all so really only about a quarter or so of Americans are actually motivated enough to actually vote for the Republicans.