Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

First off, we do see Republicans like Graham pushing back against this.

But wait! There's more where that came from!

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a member of House leadership who is weighing a Senate bid, called Trump's decision a "catastrophic mistake that puts our gains against ISIS at risk and threatens US security."

"This decision ignores lesson of 9/11. Terrorists thousands of miles away can and will use their safe-havens to launch attacks against America," she added in a tweet.

Rep. Adam Kizinger (R-Ill.) said withdrawing U.S. troops from the area would "abandon our friends and give Russia & Iran exactly what they want. This is wrong."

And Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.), who sits on both the Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees, also voiced his disapproval. "Strongly disagree with @POTUS Trump decision to allow Erdogan to invade Syria. Betrays Kurds, strengthens ISIS and endangers American homeland," King tweeted.

Meanwhile, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called the Kurds "instrumental" against ISIS and said "leaving them to die is a big mistake."

That's two more GOP lawmakers and one more Trump hire.

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But wait! There's more!

The President’s decision to abandon our Kurd allies in the face of an assault by Turkey is a betrayal. It says that America is an unreliable ally; it facilitates ISIS resurgence; and it presages another humanitarian disaster

Romney!

I want to make sure we keep our word for those who fight with us and help us. If you make a commitment and somebody is fighting with you. America should keep their word.

House Minority Leader!

I generally support POTUS on foreign policy & don't want our troops fighting other nations' wars, but a HUGE mistake to abandon Kurds. They've never asked us to do THEIR fighting-just give them tools to defend themselves. They have been faithful allies. We CANNOT abandon them

Huckabee! No not her, him.

What are you, stupid? This is a stupid fucking idea!

Bolton! (ahem) The essence of the message, parody, I was only joking, etc etc.

[Sorshen]

Once again, Trump fucks allies in favor of dictators. What a swell guy.

[Breccia]

Trump decision to pull back US troops in Syria recalls past conflicts with Bolton, Mattis

Trump’s foreign policy decision on Syria, which he had promised back on the campaign trail in 2016, was reportedly the final straw for Mattis. His decision to resign was based on principle, sources told Fox News at the time.

"Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position," Mattis wrote at the time.

Meanwhile, Bolton was left to try to smooth over backlash in Washington and abroad over Trump’s policy decision on Syria.

Bolton and other officials in the White House worked “behind the scenes” to slow the president’s order to pull all 2,000 troops from Syria, with Bolton pushing for the U.S. departure from Syria to include the condition that Turkey guaranteed it would not target Kurdish fighters.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Bolton of making a “serious mistake” in complicating Trump’s Syria withdrawal — and Bolton would ultimately also exit his post after being fired by Trump in September.

In announcing Bolton’s termination, Trump said he “disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions.”

Wow, that is a lot of FOX News quoting today. That includes Graham and the House Minority Leader, both of whom apparently called FOX and Friends.

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Breaking news, the lawsuit Trump has filed to keep his NYState taxes from the hands of NYState prosecutors has just been dismissed.

"Emergency appeal" temporarily suspends the handover.

Just a reminder:

A New York federal judge ruled earlier in the day that Manhattan's district attorney could subpoena 8 years of the president's personal and corporate tax returns from his longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA. The Second Circuit's stay means that those documents will not have to be immediately handed over.

The case involves an untested legal argument from Trump's lawyers, which posited that the Constitution protects presidents from criminal investigations while in office.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance's office subpoenaed Trump's tax returns last month as part of its investigation into hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.

Trump is using "you can't prosecute me because I'm President" for a crime he committed before becoming President. Also note: Trump is not using "I am not guilty". He is using "I am withholding evidence that would immediately say if I was guilty or not".

As noted above, Trump isn't even the one served. They're not really the ones contesting it, either, they just don't want to be the accounting firm who releases information without a pressing reason. I kind of feel sorry for them. Odds are, while they probably knew Trump was doing some questionable stuff, they probably didn't see this particular result landing in their lap.

[Paranoid Android]

But wait! There's more where that came from!



That's two more GOP lawmakers and one more Trump hire.

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But wait! There's more!



Romney!



House Minority Leader!



Huckabee! No not her, him.

What are you, stupid? This is a stupid fucking idea!

Bolton! (ahem) The essence of the message, parody, I was only joking, etc etc.

Umm yeah. Cheney the chicken..err War Hawk like her daddy.

I will admit I'm on the more non-interventionist side almost like Trump (yuck!). But of course his view is totally uniformed, so I can't say I'm with Trump. This of course being the biggest example of maybe so far.

I'll admit probably the toughest part of Foreign Policy is predicting how it will affect the future. So to be consistent with my view, we don't know how this will go, but it all shows that Turkey will invade the Kurds. As stated possibly ethnic genocide and maybe resurgence (even more) of ISIS.

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Trump is using "you can't prosecute me because I'm President" for a crime he committed before becoming President. Also note: Trump is not using "I am not guilty". He is using "I am withholding evidence that would immediately say if I was guilty or not".

As noted above, Trump isn't even the one served. They're not really the ones contesting it, either, they just don't want to be the accounting firm who releases information without a pressing reason. I kind of feel sorry for them. Odds are, while they probably knew Trump was doing some questionable stuff, they probably didn't see this particular result landing in their lap.

Alright slightly edited this one Breccia .


So the defense is always that this will bring frivolous lawsuits inquiries against any sitting President and thus wasting time.

You know how you avoid this? By stop being an effin criminal

Let's say the next President keeps getting sued by Jacob Wohl for his stupid shit. Well, I would take it that most judges are going to have to capacity to see bullshit from a mile away.

Yes, of course the argument "I'm above the law" is a great argument. We all know the hypocritical SMALL government Republicans who used to bitch about executive overreach and how I guess now its "the President can do whatever he wants".

[Breccia]

I will admit I'm on the more non-interventionist side almost like Trump

The question isn't the "what" but the "how". I'd like peace in the Middle East, because I'd like peace everywhere, but I definitely don't have the experience or skills to make it happen. But I would try diplomacy. This isn't that. This is "screw you guys, I'm going home" from the Oval Office. A parallel would be "I don't want police officers to get shot, so, I'll keep all police officers in their stations all day doing only paperwork". It solves the problem in a poorly thought-out way.

Incidentally, adding to the list of Trump diplomatic failures of "why would any foreign leader trust Trump to keep privacy during a phone call" (if Trump hadn't committed a crime on a phone call, this wouldn't be a problem) we now have "why would any foreign leader trust Trump to have their back in a conflict" when he literally sold out the Kurds. I'm not even talking Trump Tower Turkey, I mean he literally said we should save the money equal to one-fifteenth of the Wall's down payment.

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So the defense is always that this will bring frivolous lawsuits inquiries against any sitting President and thus wasting time.

You know how you avoid this? By stop being an effin criminal.

I'll ask @cubby to get in on this, but, I'm of the opinion from experience that subpoenas are handed out by judges when the prosecutors demonstrate merit. Merit along the lines of "Trump's personal lawyer said the evidence was in the tax returns". They're not handed out by whim because someone saw a FOX News report and ordered a hostile foreign power to investigate CrowdStrike. No probable cause, no subpoena.

[szechuan]

Cult Leader Trump's recent hits lmao.

"in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits" - Donald Trump

[Thelxi]

There will be blood on Trump's hands soon enough. Erdogan is divisive like Trump, and he and his side of the population think of the Kurds as less than human. Caravans and snakepits are one thing, but this is serious stuff with serious international consequences.

[Breccia]

Cult Leader Trump's recent hits lmao.

He's talking about a Trump Tweet from five minutes ago.

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families. The U.S. has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory. THE USA IS GREAT!

Well, let's count 'em down.

1) When did he say so before? The policy was announce late last night.

2) When did he destroy the economy of Turkey before?

3) If I were handing off a military endeavor to a country, I would not say "you better get this right, or I WILL DESTROY YOU!"

4) Destroyed 100% of ISIS in the region? That's what literally nobody else has said.

5) And, yes, the wisdom thing.

[Benggaul]

He's talking about a Trump Tweet from five minutes ago.



Well, let's count 'em down.

1) When did he say so before? The policy was announce late last night.

2) When did he destroy the economy of Turkey before?

3) If I were handing off a military endeavor to a country, I would not say "you better get this right, or I WILL DESTROY YOU!"

4) Destroyed 100% of ISIS in the region? That's what literally nobody else has said.

5) And, yes, the wisdom thing.

I was about to post this, because good grief, who uses that "great and unmatched wisdom" thing unironically besides dictators and wannabees?

[Belize]

I was about to post this, because good grief, who uses that "great and unmatched wisdom" thing unironically besides dictators and wannabees?

Wannabe dictators?

[Benggaul]

Wannabe dictators?

That was the point, yes.

[Breccia]

Gm lays off workers due to the strike.

"You already posted that."

They did it again. As posted before, the talks are just not going well, and the reason is, well, Trump. Simply put, UAW is looking at the past "GM got a big tax cut" and GM is looking at the future "we won't be able to sell the cars". The steel tariffs and the upcoming economic downturn, maybe recession, will make the cars far more proportionately expensive. Giving their workers a big salary hike is a long-term loss. The fact that they got a one-shot burst of cash doesn't change that.

[Kontinuum]

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families. The U.S. has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory. THE USA IS GREAT!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...32249821388801

[beanman12345]

I'm getting deja vu didn't he try to do this a year or so ago?

[ringpriest]

Cult Leader Trump's recent hits lmao.

"in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits" - Donald Trump

He means 'Trump Tower Istanbul' and 'evidence my administration was involved in Khashoggi's murder', btw - everything else is pretty clearly fair game; I wonder if he (or his muppeteers in DC) have considered that using atomic demolition charges on the US relationship with the Kurds just as Iraq is going up in flames is a bad idea? (Or does that not matter, because his handlers in the Kremlin have taken it into account and think that now is the perfect moment?)

America's crazy dictator problem is getting worse by the day, the people who live there might want to start doing something about that post-haste; just a thought.

(And now I am going to bed - hopefully WW Trump won't have started before I get 6 hours of sleep. )

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Now its supposedly Rick Perry's fault that Trump called Ukraine (ignoring no one forced what he choose to say during that call)

https://www.axios.com/trump-blamed-r...54b0565d4.html

So, Rick Perry is to blame for the "beautiful, perfect call"?

[Edge-]

So, we abandoned another group of local allies in the Middle East, WHICH HAS SURELY NEVER GONE POORLY FOR US BEFORE, and we yet again took military action (withdrawal is still an action) without giving our allies a heads up?

This is all normal. This is fine. This is putting our allies soldiers at risk or priming another group to have a long-standing grudge against the US in the region. Nope.

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So, Rick Perry is to blame for the "beautiful, perfect call"?

Technically, it looks that way. Though thankfully for Perry, he's too stupid to be involved in this kind of corruption and seems to have largely just been an unwitting dupe doing his job (probably the only one in the Trump administration) while everyone around him was engaged in corruption.

[Leobald]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...32249821388801

I really, 100% was sure that this cannot have been an original text. Even after so much time I could not have imagined Trump would write something like “in my great and unmatched wisdom”. I honestly thought it was a parody account or something that went to far.

This tweet alone should be proof that he is losing his last grasp on reality.

[Edge-]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...32249821388801

They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families.

These are very mixed messages...I thought he wanted to kill their families.

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Even after so much time I could not have imagined Trump would write something like “in my great and unmatched wisdom”. I honestly thought it was a parody account or something that went to far.

Is this really that out of sync with the rest of his masturbatory hyperbole? I mean, I give him credit for using "unmatched" because that seems above his usual level of English, but this seems pretty routine for Trump when talking about his "greatness".

[Paranoid Android]

Minneapolis police union releases "Cops for Trump" t-shirts ahead of president's visit https://t.co/Ax6sqN9Grh https://t.co/0RoFhuRLBH

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1...381846529?s=19

This was news in my local paper, but now has become national news.

So the story goes that a new policy from police chief that off-duty cops could no longer wear police uniforms while working political events.

This change did happen on the eve of a Trump rally in Minneapolis. The MPD have stated this policy has been in the pipeline for a while. Take it for what it's worth.

Well now the police union had of course decided to print pro Trump shirts.

I'm not shocked really that some, not all of the police are in support. Not surprised for the fact since the makeup of the MPD and the I guess police loving an authoratarian figure.

Now by the union being mad at what they claim is a political motivation by thus making their own political motivation should have wondering. Add to the fact Trump has trashed so many law enforcement agencies.

Edit: To clear my story up the Trump shirts are being sold to the public, not worn by the police.