Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Thekri]

The House and Senate are coming back to town. What does the GOP want to do? Hurricane aid, farm aid, something about Afghanistan or China perhaps?

Nope. They want to talk about Comey.



Wait, you know what? Fuck that story. The report that was just released once again said Trump's own DoJ didn't prosecute because it wasn't warranted. And Comey didn't cost a thing, Mueller was appointed because Trump fired Comey, and Mueller made money. That entire narrative is bullshit and I'm changing topics.

Outrage is the GOPs only real policy position, so no surprise to anyone who has had their eyes open for any significant part of the last decade.

Trump has done so much for coal that Democratic Senator Manchin now beats coal exec incumbent Gov. Justice by 10 points in a recent local poll.



Looks like someone's getting a new Overseer.

To be fair, this is because it is Joe Manchin, not necessarily a reflection on anyone else. He is one of those Senators that is untouchable in his own state no matter what letter he puts after his name, because everyone there knows him and everyone trusts him. If Manchin ran for Governor then the Democrats would almost certainly be down a Senate seat, and that isn't worth it to get the governor of West Virginia.

[D Luniz]

I don't know why anyone believed him.

It was a beautiful lie, one that people wanted to believe, told from a position that runs on trust.

[Canpinter]

Just a reminder all the Republican rage at comey can be summed up as "he took notes and told the public stuff that happened" aka informing the public is bad.

[Endus]

Just a reminder all the Republican rage at comey can be summed up as "he took notes and told the public stuff that happened" aka informing the public is bad.

I mean, he probably shouldn't have done it, in terms of professional ethics. There should have been official channels he could have gone through. But that's grounds for firing him from his position, maybe. So feel free to fire Comey from his position as head of the FBI over this.

Oh, wait.

Also, the "probably shouldn't have done it" can be qualified by factoring in the public interest. If the public interest is violated in not coming forward, and the government is working against the public's interest, then Comey would have been ethically obligated to come forward with this stuff, policies be damned. I'm not sure that case is strong enough to fly, if he were fired for this and tried to argue the dismissal was unlawful, but it could certainly be made. But regardless, the ethical duties and responsibilities of a member of the FBI only apply if he's still part of the organization, and he's not.

[Breccia]

So feel free to fire Comey from his position as head of the FBI over this.

I am waiting for Trump to tweet that this was, in fact, the reason he fired Comey.

- - - Updated - - -

Well FOX News' top headline was finally the hurricane. Let's see what preparedness tips, science, and project well fuck it's a bunch of politicians tweeting.

Well...time for Guess the Speaker Storm!

Our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico and Florida are bracing for a hurricane.
@realDonaldTrump, stop raiding disaster funds and work to ensure FEMA is ready to help these Americans.

Another hurricane is bearing down on Puerto Rico and Trump is siphoning money away from FEMA to fund his hateful wall. Puerto Rico deserves better

By diverting millions from FEMA during peak hurricane season, @realDonaldTrump shows he cares more about being cruel to migrants/jailing them indefinitely than protecting Americans from natural disasters.

As Dorian hits Puerto Rico, the Trump Admin seems to have learned nothing from its shameful failure in Hurricane Maria,

.@realDonaldTrump’s brazen theft of disaster relief funding to pay for an inhumane family incarceration plan is cruel — and doing so on the eve of hurricane season is stunningly reckless.

Hurricane Dorian looks like it will be hitting Florida late Sunday night. Be prepared and please follow State and Federal instructions, it will be a very big Hurricane, perhaps one of the biggest!

"Well the last one is clearly Trump, apparently bragging about the size of the Hurricane."

Correct.

"The other five...of course they're all Democrats, and this is FOX, so, one's Schumer and one's Pelosi."

First and last of that batch, yes. The others are Democratic Senators Murphy, Hirino, and Blumenthal.

It should be noted that, of the six, only Schumer linked a news article about the goddam hurricane. Murphy and Hirino linked the NPR story about taking FEMA money, Pelosi linked her own statement, and I'm genuinely convinced Trump doesn't know how to attach a website other than FOX News, because he hasn't for weeks. He did post himself in a video 20 hours ago which...look, I said I wouldn't link Trump tweets, but seriously, this one EDIT found YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvJo8W-ipHg, please turn captions on.

"Do you have a transcript or -- "

Look, it starts with "Hello, this is President Trump, and I'm standing in the Rose Garden of the White House." Which anyone over the age of six would know by looking at the man in the center of the frame, the white house-shaped object behind him, and the rose-shaped red flowers out of focus in the background. Yes, I'm sure they're out of focus on purpose. Watch the rest for yourself, including listening to the tone of his speech, watching his eyes, and spoiler alert, "That's not good" at the dead center of the clip in reference to Dorian, while "That was not good" refers to Hurricane Andrew.

[Levelfive]

Just a reminder all the Republican rage at comey can be summed up as "he took notes and told the public stuff that happened" aka informing the public is bad.

Yep, that's where we are now: Of Course Comey Was Right to Share the Memos

"Today we know that the subsequent special counsel’s office investigation, triggered in large part by Comey’s firing, failed to find sufficient evidence to bring charges of a criminal conspiracy between people in the Trump campaign and Russia. This is far from an exoneration, to put it mildly. But even this was not known at the time. The unstated premise of Horowitz’s report is that Comey should have handed his information over to Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, the two men who had just assisted Trump in what was certainly a substantive corrupt, if procedurally licit, termination, and simply done nothing to alert the country to what had happened.

This is frankly absurd.

Comey can take care of himself. The report confirms the legally significant point: he broke no laws. But of course Comey was not simply within his rights but had an affirmative obligation to bring this information to light. Critically, he had no reason to believe that the others in the existing chain of command weren’t compromised by Trump’s corruption and efforts to end the investigation. Indeed, what we have subsequently learned gives every reason to believe they were compromised. The only reason this isn’t obvious is that we’ve had Trump’s denials, lying and gaslighting in our collective heads for the last two plus years.

Of course Comey had to bring this critical information to light. In every substantive sense, he was acting as a whistleblower in what amounted to a national emergency. Only collective amnesia and denial can suggest otherwise."

[Paranoid Android]

NEW: President Trump has tweeted an image that experts say was likely taken by a classified satellite or drone, showing the aftermath of an accident at an Iranian space facility.
https://t.co/GfVjWdXeva

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1167535525026287617?s=19

We have an idiot in the White House who thinks it's funny releasing classified photos.

[Shadowferal]

Now Iran knows...and from the angle where...

[Breccia]

We have an idiot in the White House who thinks it's funny releasing classified photos.

Not linking the tweet, but, Trump said the US had nothing to do with it. Which is interesting, because Iran isn't blaming us.

- - - Updated - - -

Once again, it's time for Guess the Speaker!

A win for farmers would be to get the markets back but listen, and I'll tell you, I don't think we get China back. I think China is a lost market for agriculture and there's just too much damage done there

It's the head of the National Farmer's Union, again, in this interview. In terms of soybeans, I don't know what I could say to contradict him. Ending the trade war won't drop US soybean prices to compete with South America.

EDIT: Johnson also said Trump "offended the leaders of pretty much every ally we have on Earth" and...well, again, hard to disagree. Even Russia and Israel are having second thoughts.

[cubby]

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1167535525026287617?s=19

We have an idiot in the White House who thinks it's funny releasing classified photos.

We really gave the keys to the kingdom to a complete and total fucking retard. Trumsters - grats. You're making our country weaker one tweet at a time!

Morons
Are
Governing
America

[Zan15]

So a little off topic but is anyone else hoping the hurricane his Mar largo and then we get to say "it was the wrath of god because of all your lies"

CAuse you know the evangelicals in the repub party won't dare say this about anyone but gay people

[Zaydin]

So a little off topic but is anyone else hoping the hurricane his Mar largo and then we get to say "it was the wrath of god because of all your lies"

CAuse you know the evangelicals in the repub party won't dare say this about anyone but gay people

I would love to see it get leveled by Dorian and Democrats bar efforts by Trump to try and use taxpayer funds to rebuild it.

The only downside is that I live in Florida and worrying about the damn storm has been giving me anxiety attacks the last few days.

[Twdft]

We have an idiot in the White House who thinks it's funny releasing classified photos.

I guess this also proves there are no aliens in Area 52, he would have tweeted about them by now.

[Wyrt]

I would love to see it get leveled by Dorian and Democrats bar efforts by Trump to try and use taxpayer funds to rebuild it.

The only downside is that I live in Florida and worrying about the damn storm has been giving me anxiety attacks the last few days.

If Dorian could just annihilate Trump's business and then touch nothing else in the state that'd be great.

But I think we all know if Dorian even so much as touches Mar-a-Lago that Trump will be trying to claim FEMA money.

[Breccia]

Bla bla bla Republican bla bla bla retiring bla bla bla spend time with his family bla bla bla Shimkus (R-IL).

[Shadowferal]

Another Republican running away.

[DarkTZeratul]

If Dorian could just annihilate Trump's business and then touch nothing else in the state that'd be great.

But I think we all know if Dorian even so much as touches Mar-a-Lago that Trump will be trying to claim FEMA money.

And it wouldn't even be the first time.

[Breccia]

And it wouldn't even be the first time.

You're talking about the 9/11 money he got because his building qualified by location, but wasn't actually damaged?

[minteK917]

Well at least if Mar a lago is destroyed, the G20 wont be there.

[Thekri]

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1167535525026287617?s=19

We have an idiot in the White House who thinks it's funny releasing classified photos.

Ok, lets break down the levels of stupid and criminal in this one tweet. I am quite familiar with intelligence briefings, and this is a shot of one of the briefing documents.

First, lets start with the photo itself. It is a very high resolution high altitude image capture. It was likely not a satellite, it was some sort of high altitude asset (Probably a drone). You know, the sort of thing we aren't supposed to be flying over Iran. At least we can still pretend it is a satellite, even if nobody will believe us.

Next, lets look at how it got on an unsecured and internet capable phone. Normally this would be a big deal to work out, but in this case the moron showed us exactly how. It is a picture taken with a smartphone of the briefing board. Not only is that the camera flash in the center, that is the clear shadow of the person taking the picture over it. Now smart phones are not allowed near classified briefing material, probably because some idiot might snap a picture and tweet classified information to the entire world. Now who took this picture? Well it is tempting to say Trump, but I am almost certain it wasn't. For one thing that would mean he actually paid attention during a briefing, which seems unlikely. More importantly though, somebody removed the classification tag. They didn't declassify it, they just blacked out the tag. This is criminal, and I doubt it would even occur to Trump (Nor does he have the technical skills to do so). Most likely some staffer snapped the photo and sent it to Trump.

Next lets look at the message going with it. What kind of idiot yells "It wasn't me" when a space exploration accident occurs? Nobody accused us of that, he is just stirring up shit by creating the impression that we did actually do it. Which would make his base happy and piss off the Iranians. Again, it is all spelled correctly, so this is certainly a tweet sent by someone other then Trump. No way in hell he got all those words right.

Finally, we finally get to see an example of the idiot-proofing that presidential briefings actually are. We heard about this a long time ago, that Trump needs big pictures and few words. Amusingly it even has a map to show him where Iran is. Anyone that has ever dealt with normal briefings knows they are usually incredible dense documents full of hundreds of details, especially ones for people like the president. The idea is to have access to any information the president may need to make an informed decision. This is just labeling things that went boom. There is no detail at all here.