Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[CastletonSnob]

Trump was a joke.

When BORIS JOHNSON laughs at you, it's time to rethink your life.

[Doctor Amadeus]

As much as I hate Trump with ever fiber of my being, lessons I think his existence and Presidency proved is that Stupidity and popular opinion can override any institution or law on paper. Not only him but most of his administration.

Rules, Laws and Systems of control like Justice are only ever as good as the quality of those who serve. Stupidity, and tolerance for everything leads us here.


I am satisfied with Biden as doing what I knew he would do, and that is right the ship, the problem is soo much damage has been done and soo too few willing to step up qualified to help repair it and work. Means we are still vulnerable and damage is still being done from the effects of Trump.

I really do hope that someone Anti Trump in everyway runs against him in 2028 and wins. Right now I think the focus should be on the Senate, and stacking the courts.

[Paranoid Android]

Trump's inner circle is secretly making plans to fire thousands government employees if he wins in 2024, report says

So yeah I will link a more full article and Jonathan Swan is pretty reliable yet this story reads as he is just throwing every worst case thing that can happen. If half true its scary.

A radical plan for Trump’s second term

They intend to stack thousands of mid-level staff jobs. Well-funded groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system — in line with Trump’s long-running obsession with draining “the swamp.” This includes building extensive databases of people vetted as being committed to Trump and his agenda.

The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition.

So as I stated these jobs will be filled. This time he is going for literally Third Reich loyalty. A blood oath. Almost all the people will have no qualification but loyalty to Trump. Oh they will be fascist. Well, I mean this move is pure fascism.

Trump signed an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It received wide media coverage for a short period, then was largely forgotten in the mayhem and aftermath of Jan. 6 — and quickly was rescinded by President Biden.

Sources close to Trump say that if he were elected to a second term, he would immediately reimpose it.

Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as “Schedule F” employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections.

New presidents typically get to replace more than 4,000 so-called “political” appointees to oversee the running of their administrations. But below this rotating layer of political appointees sits a mass of government workers who enjoy strong employment protections — and typically continue their service from one administration to the next, regardless of the president’s party affiliation.

An initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers — a fraction of a workforce of more than 2 million, but a segment with a profound role in shaping American life.

Again seem like some scary fiction stuff on along Order 66 but I have no doubt this will happen. Trump will weaken every government agency within so nobody can oppose him.

MY Goodness People, this is FASCISM!

Read the article. It sounds unthinkable, but do we doubt any of this?

[Kaleredar]

So yeah I will link a more full article and Jonathan Swan is pretty reliable yet this story reads as he is just throwing every worst case thing that can happen. If half true its scary.

A radical plan for Trump’s second term



So as I stated these jobs will be filled. This time he is going for literally Third Reich loyalty. A blood oath. Almost all the people will have no qualification but loyalty to Trump. Oh they will be fascist. Well, I mean this move is pure fascism.



Again seem like some scary fiction stuff on along Order 66 but I have no doubt this will happen. Trump will weaken every government agency within so nobody can oppose him.

MY Goodness People, this is FASCISM!

Read the article. It sounds unthinkable, but do we doubt any of this?

I don't doubt it.

I can only hope that the fucker loses for a second time.

[Breccia]

I can only hope that the fucker loses for a second time.

At least for now, that seems realistic. The GOP is backing away slowly as the Jan 6th panel sharpens its knives. It might be enough to scare him out of running, considering his ego won't let him run if he might lose.

[Edge-]

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/22/ted...s-kiss-my-ass/

During a speech given at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, which kicked off on Friday night in Tampa, Florida, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told attendees that his pronoun is "kiss my ass."

Now this is, again, a conservative being hilarious but not for the reason he intended. I assume the audience laughed at that knee-slapper of a joke that's never been told once in the history of the world, but because they thought that the straightforward point of "hur dur pronouns are dumb" is just the bees knees.

It's actually hilarious because Republicans are basically bragging that they legitimately have no idea what a pronoun is and don't understand some of the very basics of the English language.

And they want to make it the national fuckin language, lol.

[Kaleredar]

At least for now, that seems realistic. The GOP is backing away slowly as the Jan 6th panel sharpens its knives. It might be enough to scare him out of running, considering his ego won't let him run if he might lose.

I highly doubt Trump has an accurate appraisal of the current situation. I'm almost entirely certain he believes the lies he's spun about himself right now. He lives in a world where he's the most successful, most interesting, most beloved man in the world, who beat all the odds in 2016, thinks he won in 2020, and wholeheartedly believes that he could win again in 2024.

Of course they say the con man is never in more danger than when he begins to believe his own con, but I don't discount this moron's ability to win again in 2024. I think it's a colossal uphill battle, but just like in 2016, and in 2020, there was still that chance. Luckily it didn't work out for him the second time around. I pray mostly that there is no third time, either because the rat bastard has either been dropped by the GOP, a quasi-miracle occurs that claps him in irons or otherwise disables him from running, or his fat orange heart gives out on him. I would be highly, highly surprised if Trump, in any way, shape, or form, chose not to run in 2024.

The latter two the GOP want. They can't do the first to him without risking the alienation of his base, and even if only 10% of the GOP's base are "I'll only vote for Trump" voters in any given area, the GOP is sunk. Even moreso if they drop Trump and he begins to verbally rebel against the GOP nominee or he encourages his fanbase to write him in as a candidate. If he's disbanded from running, the GOP can just throw up their shoulders and complain about the kangaroo courts railroading poor innocent Trumpy, and then wipe the sweat off their brow as they get to run a far more controllable candidate. The third option is probably the best for the GOP, as it removes the "toxic wild card" that is Trump from the equation permanently, and they're able to dress him up like some patron saint of the GOP cause to charm his fans and then sweep him under the rug as they go back to their tried and true narrative of fearmongering and pocket-lining.

[Ripster42]

Since Trump is claiming he has already decided, and also claiming that if he runs he'll win...why hasn't he announced yet? By his logic, he'd win.

Or, he knows he'll lose if he runs.

Or, he's lying.

I think we've talked about this before, but if not: there's either no limits on 'campaign donations' or there's limited reporting requirements before you formally declare a candidacy. I can't remember which one, but this has, unfortunately, become a rather common tactic to get around one or the other regulations around campaign financing.

[Poopymonster]

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/22/ted...s-kiss-my-ass/



Now this is, again, a conservative being hilarious but not for the reason he intended. I assume the audience laughed at that knee-slapper of a joke that's never been told once in the history of the world, but because they thought that the straightforward point of "hur dur pronouns are dumb" is just the bees knees.

It's actually hilarious because Republicans are basically bragging that they legitimately have no idea what a pronoun is and don't understand some of the very basics of the English language.

And they want to make it the national fuckin language, lol.

>.>
<.<

Time to dig out my trolling twitter account and ask him if ass if ass is ok with being referred to as assselves.

[Breccia]

I highly doubt Trump has an accurate appraisal of the current situation

His remaining allies do, though. So does the remnants of the Enclave classic Republican Party. If the current trend continues and Trump's chances at anything other than a prison sentence drop, they'll either convince him to be a figurehead, or if he's that insane he runs anyhow and splits the party, they try no to be the reason they lose.

I think we've talked about this before

We have, it remains both true and important, and plays into the "Trump knows he's going to lose" story as well as anything else. People don't donate to a lost cause.

[Paranoid Android]

I don't doubt it.

I can only hope that the fucker loses for a second time.

Err some say that DeSantis will follow the same plan. I think DeSantis did this on some scale in Florida.

Again Fascism is a feature, not a bug in the Republican Party.

[gondrin]

Err some say that DeSantis will follow the same plan. I think DeSantis did this on some scale in Florida.

Again Fascism is a feature, not a bug in the Republican Party.

I would say it is a feature of the America in general, and this is coming from an American. Up until roughly the 1970s(could be a few years earlier), unless you were a white, protestant Christian(who also was rich), you literally were discriminated against and regardless of the laws, people looked the other way and didn't care. If you lived in the south, Minorities didn't have the same rights until the 1980s(even if there were laws on the books). Gays didn't have the same rights(even if there were laws on the books) were up to almost 2000. Trans people were just a few years ago. America, in one form or another, has been a fascist country pretending it is the land of the free.

Think of this, in some parts of America, if you are an atheist or an agnostic, you are targeted for harassment and could possibly be killed because of how bad religious extremists can be.

[Adam Jensen]

Trump's inner circle is secretly making plans to fire thousands government employees if he wins in 2024, report says

It's the night of the long knives but without the actual murder.

[Breccia]

Err some say that DeSantis will follow the same plan.

This might be the rose-colored glasses talking, but the hope is DeSantis is competent enough to know you don't fire half your staff the first day of the job, unless your goal is to do nothing successfully.

I could easily be giving him too much credit.

[Xyonai]

This might be the rose-colored glasses talking, but the hope is DeSantis is competent enough to know you don't fire half your staff the first day of the job, unless your goal is to do nothing successfully.

I could easily be giving him too much credit.

They could make a show of 'purging liberals' and actually just not do anything. Trump's tenure taught us that a lot of the Republican voting base cares way more about words than things actually happening (Or, rather, they prefer what they -feel- is being done over what's actually gotten done). So they could make some token firings of high profile folks, replace them with stooges, and keep the lower and middle levels untouched so shit still works.

Now can they do such a thing without worrying about rebellion in federal agencies (like what we saw with the Trump Admin)? Probably not.

[Paranoid Android]

This might be the rose-colored glasses talking, but the hope is DeSantis is competent enough to know you don't fire half your staff the first day of the job, unless your goal is to do nothing successfully.

I could easily be giving him too much credit.

No the plan is to put in sycophants. They don't have to be qualified. This Trump plan is placing people who have loyalty. This is why I linked the article and I'm yelling "Fire!". They would prefer loyal Fascists over qualified civil servants.

Remember the Republicans think the gubbbbernment is badddd! They believe in non functioning government. You think they care if the EPA or HUD don't function cause people left?

[Ripster42]

You think they care if the EPA or HUD don't function cause people left?

We already have evidence they don't give a shit: Pruitt, carson, and devos, for EPA/HUD/Dept of Education.

[Breccia]

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post both had their editorial boards come down on Trump, hard, within a few hours.

Why?

Well, because we've seen proof Trump did nothing while the mob he inspired tried to break into the Capitol and murder Republicans.

Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as Commander in Chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name.

He refused. He didn’t call the military to send help. He didn’t call Mr. Pence to check on the safety of his loyal VP. Instead he fed the mob’s anger and let the riot play out.

-- one

His only focus was to find any means — damn the consequences — to block the peaceful transfer of power. There is no other explanation, just as there is no defense, for his refusal to stop the violence.

-- the other

But are there other reasons they should have added?

1) Trump used the exact quote "Americans kneel to God and no one else", which is cool, I mean, there's a subset of Americans who do that five times a day. I didn't know he was that open-minded.

2) Trump promised Lou Dobbs a Cabinet post.

According to the sources, one name Trump has kicked around in private conversations at least a few times since leaving office is none other than Lou Dobbs, the one-time Fox Business star who has informally advised Trump for years. The former president loves Dobbs so much that he’d even put him on speakerphone in the Oval Office while members of his senior staff and Cabinet were convened there to have sensitive discussions on policy and messaging. Sometimes, he’d cut off senior government personnel mid-sentence so that he could tell “Lou” to interject.

3) There's the fake signature issue. No, dammit @Edge- not [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/us/politics/suzanne-morphew-ballot-trump.html]the story of Barry Morphew, yet another Trump cultist who committed election fraud.

The husband of a Colorado woman who has been missing for more than two years pleaded guilty on Thursday to casting her mail-in ballot for Donald J. Trump during the 2020 election, telling F.B.I. agents, “I figured all these other guys are cheating.”

The man, Barry Morphew, 54, was given a sentence of one year of supervised probation but avoided jail time after pleading guilty to one count of forgery, a felony, in district court in Chaffee County, according to court records.

Yeah...he was wrong. He broke the law, on purpose, because of a lie spread by Trump.

But I'm talking about the growing reports that, when Melania said she saw nothing wrong in a published statement, her signature was forged.



4) The Washington Examiner, of all places, shows a video of a Trump crowd booing Trump's endorsed candidate and Trump looking shocked.

"A highly respected man just endorsed by me today. Future congressman for the 2nd District, Eli Crane," Trump said.

A thunderous chorus of boos swept the crowd in response. Taken aback and seemingly bewildered, Trump paused and then asked, "But you like me?"

Aww, Daddy never loved you.

Yeah this is the Trump vs. Pence Arizona proxy duel here. And Pence is winning.

5) All his friends are being mocked or worse.

-- Kid Rock walked off his own concert and cancelled the show, and the audience trashed the stadium.

-- Bannon drank his own Kool-Aid and now he's choking on it.

-- Hannity decried the "sham" Jan 6th committe for investigating Trump's known 187 minutes of silence, but whoops forgot he texted Trump in that time and Trump never responded.

-- known murderous insurrectionist Matthew Bledsoe was found guilty.

-- convicted murderous insurrectionist Mark Aungst fucking killed himself while waiting to be taken to prison.

-- Hawley said he won't run from Democrats, which makes sense, because he's too busy running from his own voters. Like, literally running, in terror. The Kansas City Star, and everyone else, mocked hometown "hero" Hawley, the guy who helped instigate the mob then fled before it killed him.

A signature Hawley issue is masculinity — as in, how little of it American men seem to have these days. It’s a frequent topic in his speeches and on his podcast, where ‘the left-wing attack on manhood’ is a dire threat to our society. Regnery Publishing is set to release his book “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs” next year. Twitter didn’t see much bravado as he ran from the mob on Luria’s video.

6) And of course, most injurious to Trump, Trump's numbers are dropping. Anyone left that calls themselves independant is fleeing Trump, according to a new poll. And while Trump struggles to fill seats in a rally, the prime time Jan 6th hearings detailing his literal treason got 17.7 million views. That's no Super Bowl, but it's roughly double the Olympics.

Trump is going to have increasing issues going further as yet more of his friends disown him, go to jail, or just fucking die. There's probably more, but they're finally boarding my late-ass flight, and I have some tiny packages of peanuts to struggle to open.

...what? They don't do that anymore? Well, shit!

[Edge-]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/madiso...touch?ref=wrap

More on, "Why are liars and grifters and thieves so often Republicans?", we welcome back our friend and one-term member of the House Madison Cawthorn.

With two weeks to go until a primary election he was fated to lose, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) was already underwater. His campaign held more than twice as much debt as it had cash on hand, the donor well was dry, and he and his staff were months into a madcap spending streak that one campaign source called “baffling.”

And now, after indeed losing that primary, there’s no money to pay the piper.

Specifically, there’s no money to repay the supporters who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance to Cawthorn’s election efforts beyond the primary—to the general election he now won’t be competing in.

Cawthorn is required by law to refund those donations. Instead, according to a campaign source, the campaign already spent the money.

The public doesn’t know any of this yet, however, because the Cawthorn campaign is now a week late in submitting the quarterly Federal Election Commission report that would disclose the collapse. That delay will already trigger an automatic fine.

The breach of fiduciary obligations follows a string of personal and professional embarrassments that hounded the one-term congressman across the weeks and months leading up to his primary defeat—accusations of insider trading, multiple alleged ethics violations, unforced public gaffes, and photo and video leaks designed to humiliate him.

But the campaign’s financial washout is more than another embarrassment; it’s against the law.

“Nobody ever did the math, which baffled me because the spending was so outrageous,” the campaign source told The Daily Beast.

This person pointed to a spree of frivolous charges over the last year that all accelerated into 2022, such as $1,500 in “egregiously” frequent trips to Chick-Fil-A, almost $3,000 at a place called Papa’s Beer, three separate charges at a high-end cigar shop, $21,000 for lodging in Florida and—the biggest drain—hundreds of thousands of dollars in sky-high consulting and fundraising fees, including for Cawthorn’s friend and campaign manager, Blake Harp, who was drawing a salary beyond federal limits.

Cawthorn couldn’t raise money to offset this burn rate, which was so high that, by May 5, the campaign had just 2 percent of the $3.7 million it had raised since January 2021. In truth, the source said, the campaign had been forced to tap its general election account months ago.

Federal election laws allow candidates to raise money for the primary and the general election at the same time. But candidates can’t spend the general election funds unless they win the primary, first. If you don’t win, you have to repay those donors.

More in the link. But I can't say anyone is likely surprised. This is the guy elected to the Legislature, who didn't have a legislative director because he had no interest in legislating...you know, his job.

But hey, if he wants to burn more Republican donors and make them distrust the kind of people running for office in the party, go for it. If someone was dumb enough to donate to his campaign to begin with, they deserved to lose that money no matter what.

[Breccia]

I can't say anyone is likely surprised.

I don't know the law of it, but I'm going to guess the GOP will bail this guy out, if they can. They don't want the public image of the Party That's Always In Debt.