Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Endus]

SPEAKING OF WHICH.

From the fine folks that revealed Madison Cawthorn having cocaine fueled crossdressing parties, we now have Boebert serving as an escort, ALLEGEDLY during which she would have ALLEGEDLY met Ted Cruz followed by him financing her election campaign. Allegedly.

And to be clear; the issue is not that she might once have been a sex worker, or that she might have gotten abortions.

It's that she's so rabidly against such things now. This revelation isn't about attacking her past character, it's about demonstrating how little she believes any of the shit she's saying.

[Belize]

And to be clear; the issue is not that she might once have been a sex worker, or that she might have gotten abortions.

It's that she's so rabidly against such things now. This revelation isn't about attacking her past character, it's about demonstrating how little she believes any of the shit she's saying.

If she served as Ted Cruz's escort in Aspen, Colorado in 2019, then I am 1000% attacking her past choices. Escorts should have standards.

[Endus]

If she served as Ted Cruz's escort in Aspen, Colorado in 2019, then I am 1000% attacking her past choices. Escorts should have standards.

I think what Muckrakers pulled out is just that she met him at Aspen, while working for some other client, introduced at a party or something.

[Edge-]

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...-after-report/

The Walker campaign has acknowledged his child he had out of wedlock and is a deadbeat dad to, claiming that he's proud of his child and has supported him.

Which ignores the earlier reports that the mother had to take him to court to prove paternity to get said child support.

And also doesn't address how his comments about deadbeat dads square up with him being a deadbeat dad who needed to be taken to court to provide financial support for his child.

The Walker campaign blames his opponent, Raphael Warnock, who has literally nothing to do with this reporting.

[Darththeo]

While this philosophical discussion could go in all kinds of interesting ways, there's none flattering to Boebert. Even if I were to grace her with the maximum credit she does not deserve, that means she's parrotting things that are false and has no idea they're false, because she believed people who told her easily-disproven lies and chose to accept them at face value. Someone that intentionally ill-informed and gullible shouldn't be a politician.

I don't believe that's the case. I think she's lying on purpose because it gets votes.

Yes. The best option is just sheer ignorance.
Everything else is worse going from willful ignorance to actual malice.

[Breccia]

Remember years ago when Trump was described as being "impervious to intelligence"? Good times...good times...

If Trump Wasn’t Lying, That’s Worse

This OP ED lays out the case, based on Jan 6th testimony and other objective facts, that Trump might not have been lying so much as, well, delusional.

Monday, the House January 6th Committee presented evidence that Donald Trump, after losing the 2020 election, promoted allegations of voter fraud that his own advisers had told him were false. According to the committee, this evidence proves he was lying.

But the evidence actually points to a different conclusion: Trump wasn’t lying in the way that other presidents have done. He was simply impervious. He refused to accept unwelcome facts. And that degree of imperviousness, in a president, is much more dangerous than dishonesty.

Hence the above throwback.

The author goes into an extensive list of, again, objective facts about Trump's behavior, including testimony about what he did behind closed doors as well as what he did in public. I will quote just one of them:

Donoghue, who served as acting deputy attorney general during the post-election crisis, testified on video about a conversation in which he had guided Trump through the bogus allegations the then-president was promoting. This conversation provides the strongest evidence that Trump knew he was spreading lies. But it also shows how easily and rapidly he shifted his mental defenses to maintain the myth of massive fraud.

In the conversation, which took place some time after the election (the date wasn’t specified), Donoghue refuted Trump’s claim of a high error rate in mechanical counting of ballots in Michigan. According to Donoghue’s testimony, “The President accepted that. He said, ‘OK, fine. But what about the others?’”

So Donoghue proceeded to the next allegation: that a truck driver had transported rigged ballots from New York to Pennsylvania. Donoghue told Trump that federal investigators had looked into the truck’s loading and unloading and that their findings didn’t support the allegation. Donoghue says Trump didn’t press him on this point: “Again, he said, ‘OK. . . . What about the others?’”

Next, Donoghue proceeded to allegations about a ballot-stuffed suitcase and multiple scanning of ballots in Georgia. He explained to Trump that video evidence contradicted the allegations. Again, Trump responded by moving on: “Then he went off on double voting . . . He said, ‘Dead people are voting. Indians are getting paid to vote.’”

In the face of Donoghue’s refutations, Trump kept retreating: OK, fine. But the retreats were just tactical. Trump was committed to his belief in massive fraud, and he was determined to find a story—the trucker, the suitcase, whatever—to justify that belief. As Donoghue explained to the committee: “There were so many of these allegations that when you gave him a very direct answer on one of them, he wouldn’t fight us on it, but he would move to another allegation.”

Notice the key word "tactical". Trump was committed to believing that fraud was the only way he'd lose. We've seen such confirmation-biased cherry-picking on these very forums, haven't we?

The danger with someone so committed to being right, despite every single scrap of evidence to the contrary, is that people kept feeding him conspiracy theories and complete objective falsehoods -- which formed a dangerous codependency, like an epoxy holding American policy to fan fiction.

Remember Jeffery Clark? I won't blame you if you don't, Trump went through a lot of people as he fired the competent ones and replaced them with crazies. But you should. Clark was in Trump's DoJ, nothing special about that, it's a big department. However, after the election, as we've seen, Trump demanded Barr find proof of election fraud. Barr, acting highly out of character, refused, and Trump fired him for that. Barr needed to be replaced, Clark wanted the job and Trump almost gave it to him.

As we've recently seen in the Jan 6th findings, a lot of this happened on Jan 3, but Clark had been trying for weeks. During this time, not only did he push the higher-ups in the DoJ to "convince" Georgia to throw out perfectly good election results and replace them with "TRUMP ONE" in Sharpee, he also claimed that China changed votes with thermostats.

No, really. You can read more about that here.

Looking back on this now-public evidence, it's a miracle this didn't work. Not the thermostats, that's fucking insanity on a kaiser roll. Clark was hand-feeding Trump exactly what Trump wanted to hear and act upon. It might only have been the optics that stopped him, and again, I'm surprised even that did it.

But we heard from a lot of witnesses. It's time to play Guess the Speaker! Fuck, I haven't used that in ages.

I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was saying

You might be reading that and saying to yourself "Wow, someone who doesn't want to say the election was fair but doesn't want to say it was rigged on the stand. Who would still be in such a bind?"

The answer...is Ivanka Trump. Yeah, makes sense, doesn't it?

Anyhow, we've seen Trump basically lost it when that was aired. Mary Trump has more.

Mary Trump told MSNBC she regarded the former president’s comment as “accusing” his daughter of “perjury.” She referred specifically to Trump saying his daughter had “checked out.” But the former president also suggested Ivanka said what she did only out of “respect for Barr,” indicating she did not necessarily believe him.

Otherwise, the father-and-daughter behavior was “exactly what I expected from both of them,” said Mary Trump.

“I think Ivanka walked a very fine line,” she explained. “She did not say anything necessarily incendiary but, as we thought would happen, she decided she needed to come down on the side of what the facts support.”

As for Donald Trump, he “didn’t entirely throw her under the bus,” his niece said.

Mary Trump predicted that their future connection will depend on if they can still benefit from one another.

Their relationship, “whether they seem close or not, is entirely transactional,” she explained. “Once one or both of them come to the conclusion that there’s nothing in it for them, then they will move on.”

"Oh, please, what could she possibly know? She's a family member, after all. It's not like she's a psychologist."

mary Trump, who’s a psychologist

"Fuck."

believes her uncle both “understands” that he lost the 2020 presidential election yet absolutely cannot face being a “loser.”

He “cannot go there,” she said. “Being a loser is just utterly unacceptable” for him.

“At this late date, one of the reasons people find the ’big lie’ so convincing ... is because Donald has come to believe it to a degree that makes the lie sound authentic,” Trump explained.

Aaaaaaaaaand re-read the above. Fits perfectly together, doesn't it?

This is not the first time Mary Trump has commented on the issue, either. As she said Jan 22, the second Ivanka says "What Donald Trump did was _________" (insert pretty much any negative descriptor here, such as "illegal" or "false") Trump will disown her and throw her out on the street.

Simply put, with the evidence that exists in the public eye, it is harder and harder to believe Trump was acting like someone who was both open to information, and willing to do the right thing. He either knew the election was fair and tried to throw a coup anyhow, or he was shown proof over and over it was fair and refused to believe it. I can't think of a third option, and even if I could, I don't think there's evidence of it. Every single person Trump hired that told him "the election was fair" was ignored and/or fired.

[Poopymonster]

If she served as Ted Cruz's escort in Aspen, Colorado in 2019, then I am 1000% attacking her past choices. Escorts should have standards.

Makes me think of the joke Jim Cornette told.
Guy walks up to a woman in a bar, "Would you blow me for a hundred thousand dollars?"
Woman "yes."
Guy "Would you blow me for a dollar?"
Woman "No, what do you think I am?"
Guy "We've established what you are, we're just negotiating a price now."

[Edge-]

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/15/abs...r-cries-fraud/

Republican primary losers are still crying fowl and claiming "election fraud" for their hilarious defeats. Let them.

[YUPPIE]

When ("if" to not sound biased) Trump wins the next elections, does that mean he is going to have full effective authority again? Some of the fears people have are his ability to revoke all support for Ukraine. Can he do that in office?

[draynay]

When ("if" to not sound biased) Trump wins the next elections

Good job, totally unbiased.

[Shadowferal]

When ("if" to not sound biased) Trump wins the next elections, does that mean he is going to have full effective authority again? Some of the fears people have are his ability to revoke all support for Ukraine. Can he do that in office?

No one will want to work for this rotten shit of a human being.

[Breccia]

No one will want to work for this rotten shit of a human being.

This is an excellent point, and I'm sure it'll come up again.

Trump was able to take the nomination in 2016 on the requirement he take Pence with him. Trump has now cut off all the remaining Republicans from the Party of Trump. While that proportion is small, bear in mind, barely won 2016 due to a sliver in a few states, and lost 2020 handily. Then started a murderous insurrection. Even a 10% or 5% loss means we see President Harris and VP Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Trump didn't just burn bridges, he burned them publicly and bragged about it. Mattis? McMaster? Even Barr is running at this point. Oh, and of course, some Trump purists (the ones that snort the Cheeto dust uncut) were found to be foreign agents. Can't use them again.

Can Trump find enough remaining people looking for the spotlight and willing to suck the limp orange dick to get it? Of course. But at some point, independants and the classic non-insane conservatives will notice that Trump is running with a plane full of Boeberts.

And there's a zero percent chance Team Trump doesn't know this. Trump is already sulking about his completely legit loss, or possibly he's too insane as I recently posted. A failed run in 2024 could literally kill him. I think he's taken his beating and he's going to try his hand at kingmaker, despite that he's quite secondary in the current primaries. Math jokes.

Also, I find it funny that someone is talking about 2024 when he spent the last 100 posts claiming we'd all be nuked by Putin by now.

[postman1782]

I think what Muckrakers pulled out is just that she met him at Aspen, while working for some other client, introduced at a party or something.

She was with a Koch family member, who introduced her to Cruz, who gave her somewhere in the tune of $126k in donations, somehow that hasn't violated campaign finance laws. And the Muckrakers have the paper trail for the money, and the escort service, including pictures and her profile on the website.

- - - Updated - - -

When ("if" to not sound biased) Trump wins the next elections, does that mean he is going to have full effective authority again? Some of the fears people have are his ability to revoke all support for Ukraine. Can he do that in office?

I can guarantee that Trump will never win the next election. He has a higher chance of going to prison before he ever sees the Whitehouse again.

[Kaleredar]

This is an excellent point, and I'm sure it'll come up again.

Trump was able to take the nomination in 2016 on the requirement he take Pence with him. Trump has now cut off all the remaining Republicans from the Party of Trump. While that proportion is small, bear in mind, barely won 2016 due to a sliver in a few states, and lost 2020 handily. Then started a murderous insurrection. Even a 10% or 5% loss means we see President Harris and VP Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Trump didn't just burn bridges, he burned them publicly and bragged about it. Mattis? McMaster? Even Barr is running at this point. Oh, and of course, some Trump purists (the ones that snort the Cheeto dust uncut) were found to be foreign agents. Can't use them again.

Can Trump find enough remaining people looking for the spotlight and willing to suck the limp orange dick to get it? Of course. But at some point, independants and the classic non-insane conservatives will notice that Trump is running with a plane full of Boeberts.

And there's a zero percent chance Team Trump doesn't know this. Trump is already sulking about his completely legit loss, or possibly he's too insane as I recently posted. A failed run in 2024 could literally kill him. I think he's taken his beating and he's going to try his hand at kingmaker, despite that he's quite secondary in the current primaries. Math jokes.

Also, I find it funny that someone is talking about 2024 when he spent the last 100 posts claiming we'd all be nuked by Putin by now.

God forbid we have to suffer any more of Trump, I don't actually doubt that he'll be able to gird himself. Never underestimate the ability for slime to congeal.


Now, keep in mind these people won't be... well, competent or interested in things like leadership or governance. They'll be like most of Trump's hangers-on near the end, or like those that cling to him still... in it for themselves, looking to profit in money or fame off of Trump's insane followers who believe he's a messiah who can do no wrong. Trump short-shrifting people and burning bridges might be known to... well, anyone paying attention, but Trump's followers were never the kind to pay attention, now were they?

And much like his politically prominent followers, Trump was never in it to govern or lead or anything like that. I think people have this errant notion that Trump had some sort of dogmatic worldview to push, or moral crusade he was working towards... that's giving him too much credit. He was only ever in it for the personal profit... everything he said and did was to rile up his base and placate his benefactors, and he doesn't need competent people or people with political connections for any of that. The money will flow from his followers into his pockets, and if the country dissolves around him... why should he care? He didn't care from 2016-2020, and neither did his followers. The GOP might resent Trump's presence but they're too spineless to actually do anything about him or speak out against him directly, politically. Their party is in such poor sorts on a national scale that they need his rabid sycophants to vote for them, or else their hope of holding the presidency evaporates, so they can't risk alienating them. And so long as Trump can run, he isn't going to be passing that torch off to another candidate.

That all being said I don't actually think Trump's chances in 2024 are all that good were he to run again. People know now, more or less, what the issues are and where things stand, and I really doubt Trump is going to start impressing with grandiose articulated speeches about how he'll solve things like inflation or oil prices or whatever (assuming those things are still an issue in two years.) Biden isn't one to let any rampant Trump lying go unanswered about how things were supposedly "better under Trump;" he certainly wasn't that way in 2020.

[YUPPIE]

if people at large were so assured, the fear of Trump being re-elected wouldn't be there. He's definitely not going to prison, ever, that is for certain. But he *can* run again, and given the state of America, his underworld connections, and Biden's abysmal approval ratings, I wouldn't be so certain he's just marching toward defeat.

[postman1782]

if people at large were so assured, the fear of Trump being re-elected wouldn't be there. He's definitely not going to prison, ever, that is for certain. But he *can* run again, and given the state of America, his underworld connections, and Biden's abysmal approval ratings, I wouldn't be so certain he's just marching toward defeat.

Even with Biden's abysmal approval ratings, they are still higher than Trump's.

[YUPPIE]

Even with Biden's abysmal approval ratings, they are still higher than Trump's.

I always saw the fact that Biden has abysmal approval ratings as a sign of how much power Trump and his followers still have since there's no one else on mass that could logically hate Joe Biden to that degree. Also a sign the right has taken over American politics.

[postman1782]

I always saw the fact that Biden has abysmal approval ratings as a sign of how much power Trump and his followers still have since there's no one else on mass that could logically hate Joe Biden to that degree. Also a sign the right has taken over American politics.

Put the crack pipe down.

[YUPPIE]

Put the crack pipe down.

you just have to explain why Biden has bad approval ratings, if it's not Trump supporters. He's been doing more than enough of a good job as the left is concerned.

[postman1782]

you just have to explain why Biden has bad approval ratings, if it's not Trump supporters. He's been doing more than enough of a good job as the left is concerned.

Because people are fucking ignorant, blaming gas, taxes, and inflation on Biden for no fucking reason.