Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

What a bunch of dummies.

To be fair, yes. They should have known he was a failure long before this.

[Edge-]

One, ah ah ah.

Two, ah ah ah,

Three! Ah Ah Ah!

An exasperated Judge Juan Merchan, in a scathing order released Wednesday morning, denied former President Donald Trump's third attempt to kick the judge off his New York criminal hush money case based on an alleged conflict of interest.

"Stated plainly, Defendant's arguments are nothing more than a repetition of stale and unsubstantiated claims," Merchan wrote in the three-page order.

Surprisingly, repeating yourself doesn't make your arguments any more persuasive.

[Flarelaine]

One, ah ah ah.

Two, ah ah ah,

Three! Ah Ah Ah!

Surprisingly, repeating yourself doesn't make your arguments any more persuasive.

So, if a daughter's activism creates a conflict of interest for a judge, how about a spouse?

[Breccia]

"Stated plainly, Defendant's arguments are nothing more than a repetition of stale and unsubstantiated claims,"

Then sanction them already. Jeez.

- - - Updated - - -

Stephanie Grisham, a person Trump hired on purpose, tells CNN that Trump won't be happy acting like an adult.

“Maybe for a week he’ll, you know, attempt to stay on message,” Grisham said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett. “It depends on how tough his staff is being with him. But he will get bored. He doesn’t like those small [events]. He never has, and he will be demanding to do a large rally sooner rather than later.”

“It’s funny, because everything I’ve been hearing is, you know, all these people are saying to do the best version of himself. They want him to be a fake version of himself,” she continued.

Just throwing it out there: if the best version of yourself is a fake version of yourself...I mean, that's bad enough on the dating scene.

Also, this is a senile and possibly retarded man who already killed a million Americans and broke every promise he made. We know the real version of himself by now.

"Donald Trump is a bombastic narcissist, and he loves attention, and he is not going to be happy being quiet or being on message.”

The former White House press secretary has turned into a vocal critic of her former boss. She said that, during the 2016 campaign, staffers similarly struggled to keep Trump on message.

“It’s not who he is. And so, they all know that. Look, we did this a million times. We did it in 2016. We did it throughout our time in the White House,” Grisham said. “We were all trying to keep them on message. Everybody was frustrated, all the time. We went through tons and tons of staff. You all know that. And this is just, you know, version 27 now.”

It continues to be the case that Trump's harshest critics are the ones that worked with him, and know who he is from direct personal experience.

- - - Updated - - -

This is a WSJ OP ED. Like many OP EDs, it is an opinion that is based on actual evidence.

Have Trump’s Rallies Become a Political Loser?

So far this year, Donald Trump has appeared in 37 political rallies, according to the Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard’s Ash Center. His record rally total in one year was 83 in 2020, a presidential election year when Mr. Trump came up short.

In his recent hourlong press conference, Mr. Trump said he would spare reporters “a whole course on economics,” but here is an economic principle he no doubt understands: the point of diminishing returns. The Trump rallies are there. They no longer produce significant additional votes for Mr. Trump. Something more is needed.

It’s no overstatement to say the Trump rallies are his reason for being. They provide repeated personal and political validation. But the Trump rallies have become like Grateful Dead concerts, with many of the same Deadheads, now Trumpians, showing up (apologies to former Deadheads). I saw a fellow recently who said he’d been to more than 70 Trump rallies.

This isn’t to say the Trump rallies are a waste of time. They hold the base, without which the Trump phenomenon evaporates. The problem is the rallies produce no net gain. In fact, the rallies may now run the risk of losing votes, given the opportunity for Mr. Trump to make damaging impromptu remarks, which have become more frequent.

Apart from hosting rallies and having a conversation with Elon Musk on X to mobilize first-time or low-interest voters, Mr. Trump’s biggest voter outreach venue looks as if it will be his one or more debates with Ms. Harris. But the debates, however important, are dangerous because they elevate familiar problems. Antagonizing Mr. Trump produces such predictable outbursts of exaggeration that neither Ms. Harris nor the moderators will be able to resist poking the bear. The net gains from debates among gettable voters for Mr. Trump are likely small.

He submitted to a press conference last week and plans to do another this Thursday in New Jersey. This is intended to draw a contrast between Mr. Trump and the Harris avoidance strategy, and it does. But press conferences also reveal a recurring Trump malady: He gets too hot in these settings, too tense. He becomes combative because he likes being combative, and, yes, it can be grimly entertaining. But his out-of-left-field riffs, such as comparing the size of his Jan. 6 Washington Mall crowd to that of Martin Luther King Jr., can’t possibly have reassured uncommitted voters. Another net loss.

Now the OP ED goes on from there to give advice to Trump. I have no desire to post it, but it wouldn't matter. Y'all could probably guess. This is not a Trump-friendly piece, this is an analysis of Trump's biggest problem.

And that's why I posted it. The WSJ, or at least this author, is clearly pro-Trump still and wants him to win, but is publicly admitting that Trump is costing himself his own re-election chances by being Trump. We're past the "people are whispering behind his back" stage, and are now in "people are saying it publicly".

[Edge-]

https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/judg...-toward-trial/

Remember the group of Donald's cultists that tried to drive the Biden-Harris bus off the road in Texas in 2020?

A federal judge has now unsealed a lengthy opinion explaining why “Trump Train” participants are heading towards trial in a Ku Klux Klan Act lawsuit filed over the October 2020 surrounding of a Biden-Harris bus on I-35 in Texas, writing that a “reasonable jury” could find “force, intimidation, or threat[s]” were used to “interfere with Plaintiffs’ rights to support or advocate for their candidates for President and Vice President” and that the claim can survive without a “showing of racial or class-based animus.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman last week denied summary judgment motions that were filed by defendants Eliazar Cisneros, Joeylynn Mesaros, Robert Mesaros, and Dolores Park, siding with KKK Act, civil conspiracy, and civil assault plaintiffs Wendy Davis — a Democratic former member of the Texas Senate — former Biden-Harris campaign staffer David Gins, and bus driver Tim Holloway, and setting the stage for a September trial, nearly four years after the incident that gave rise to the case.

Pitman, a Barack Obama appointee, initially issued the ruling under seal, but the public filing now shows his view is that the KKK Act of 1871 “establishes an independent substantive right to engage in support or advocacy in federal elections that extends beyond the act of voting” itself.

“Although the methods of political intimidation may change over time and require adapting the Klan Act to new contexts, the conduct alleged here requires no such adaption; the Defendants’ alleged conduct is similar to a type of political violence that the Klan engaged in at the time of the Act’s enactment,” Pitman wrote in one part of the ruling, providing an example from 1868 of where a wagon full of 36 Republican “young ladies” on the way to a political rally crashed due to an act of “Ku-Klux treachery”:

[T]he Reconstruction era Congress was greatly concerned about the political violence being enacted by the Klan. One such type of political violence was physical intimidation of persons traveling for political rallies. Such conduct was not foreign to the public in 1871. For example, an article published in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel in 1868 decried the “Ku-Klux treachery” of a “dastardly attempt to murder . . . thirty-six young ladies who represented the states at the Republican rally at Bonaparte [Iowa]” by causing the “large wagon in which they were” to crash. A Democratic Attempt to Kill Thirty-Six Republican Girls, Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, Oct. 22, 1868, at 2; see also (Ex. 1, Dkt. 386). Courts at the time recognized that political intimidation occurring on public roads fell under the breadth of the Support or Advocacy Clause. See United States v. Butler, 25 F. Cas. 213, 220 (C.C.D.S.C. 1877) (No. 14,700) (describing testimony, noting that conspirators forced men traveling on the road to “to get down on their knees, and made to swear that they would vote the Democratic ticket”).

While the Biden-Harris bus did not crash, plaintiffs alleged that they feared that was a possibility — and video from that day showed that there was a collision between a car directly behind the bus driven by a Biden-Harris staffer and the truck driven by Cisneros.

The judge wrote that Cisneros “later described” that collision as “‘me slamming that f****r’ and ‘welcom[ing] him properly to Texas.'”

While Cisneros argued that what the Biden-Harris associated plaintiffs called an “ambush” and “assault,” among “other choice words,” was actually a “Trump Train” exercise of First Amendment rights “in a demonstration of support for their favorite candidate for President of the United States,” Donald Trump, the judge wrote that the First Amendment is not a shield for “allegedly threatening Plaintiffs with reckless driving” just like the First Amendment “does not protect a driver waving a political flag from running a red light” or somehow transform that violation into “expressive conduct.”

“A jury could reasonably find that Defendants unlawfully conspired and drove in a dangerous manner such that they threatened or assaulted Plaintiffs,” Pitman wrote. “If a jury accepts these allegations, Defendants’ First Amendment defense must fail because assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression. And to the extent that Defendants’ conduct contained any pure speech, such speech would also be excluded from First Amendment protection because it was incidental to tortious behavior or constituted a true threat.”

The judge also said Cisneros allegedly boasted that he was “[s]mart enough to get the entire Biden-Harris campaign cancelled in Texas,” called the driver of the staffer vehicle “Antifa, I’m more than sure,” that he testified at a deposition he “‘pushed [the staffer] back’ and agreed that he ‘hit him,'” and that there was evidence he once texted co-defendant Joeylynn Mesaros asking for a custom-made “don’t make me Rittenhouse your a–” T-shirt, evidently referring to Kyle Rittenhouse.

Honestly what the fuck is wrong with these fucking people? Like, seriously, what the fuck? People like this continue to make me almost want to advocate for poll-testing to return.

They're clearly guilty, the evidence is all on video (and in depositions), and I hope they're convicted and the judge throws the book at them. Enough with Donald's violent, weird-ass idiot cultists thinking they can get away with dangerous bullying.

[PhaelixWW]

https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/judg...-toward-trial/

Remember the group of Donald's cultists that tried to drive the Biden-Harris bus off the road in Texas in 2020?

What's the over/under on the percentage of defendants who will view being charged under the KKK Act as a badge of honor?

[Gorsameth]

What's the over/under on the percentage of defendants who will view being charged under the KKK Act as a badge of honor?

95%? Right up to the point where they go to prison.

[PhaelixWW]

95%? Right up to the point where they go to prison.

Why stop then? I hear there's a "brotherhood" in prisons that might consider that a badge of honor, too.

[Gorsameth]

Why stop then? I hear there's a "brotherhood" in prisons that might consider that a badge of honor, too.

I imagine the snowflakes pretending to be tough will find that the actual KKK in prison is a little to demanding for them, and gl with the rest of the population if they find out your associated with said 'brotherhood'.

[Poopymonster]

I imagine the snowflakes pretending to be tough will find that the actual KKK in prison is a little to demanding for them, and gl with the rest of the population if they find out your associated with said 'brotherhood'.

OOoo! An awesome scene from an awesome series! HBO's "Oz"!
Who gets to lick the spoon?

[Gorsameth]

OOoo! An awesome scene from an awesome series! HBO's "Oz"!
Who gets to lick the spoon?

... I did not know that series existed, and having googled it I am not exactly sure I wanted to know lol.

[Poopymonster]

... I did not know that series existed, and having googled it I am not exactly sure I wanted to know lol.

Jokes aside, it's really well done for it's time. Tackles topics that were taboo back then (and some still are today). And when Tobias got really buff, damn, he looked good.

[Breccia]

Mark Meadows asks judge to move his Arizona voter suppression charges to federal court, on the grounds of "I wasn't in Arizona, I was coordinating the crime from the WH".

Obviously that's not an exact quote, but it's close enough.

The Maricopa County indictment squarely relates to Mr. Meadow's conduct as Chief of Staff to the President. Nothing Mr. Meadows is alleged in the indictment to have done is criminal per se.

Grand jury said otherwise, dude.

Rather, it consists of allegations that he received (and occasionally responded to) messages from people who were trying to get ideas in front of President Trump or seeking to inform Mr. Meadows about the strategy and status of various legal efforts by the President's campaign. Serving as the filter

Yes, he's still using that.

for the President's time and attention is well within the Chief of Staff's role. Indeed, it would be unusual if people did not reach out to the Chief of Staff on these matters or that a Chief of Staff would not be aware of these significant matters demanding the attention of the President.

This reeks of desperation. I'm sure lots of people call lots of government officials all the time. It stops being "of course I get calls" and starts being "I admit I coordinated the crime" when you discuss what laws to break and how.

I don't believe this attempt will succeed. The fact that he's trying is admission he has no case on the merits, and is frantically scrambling for a pardon.

And it's not just him, of course. Trump begged the court to put off his sentencing until the election, so he could pardon himself.

setting aside naked election-interference objectives, there is no valid countervailing reason for the Court to keep the current sentencing date on the calendar. There is no basis for continuing to rush

"I know I was found guilty, but I really need there to be no consequences!"

For the record, yes there is a reason to rush. Trump's immunity plea will fail, because paying a whore is not part of the WH's core Constitutional duties. Trump will immediately appeal.

[SoulForge]

Trump just can't help insulting Veterans can he?

The former president, speaking at his golf club in Bedminster New Jersey as part of an event called "Fighting Antisemitism," said Medal of Honor recipients were soldiers "either in very bad shape because they've been hit so many times by bullets or they're dead."

The Republican presidential nominee made the comments in an attempt to praise guest Miriam Adelson, to whom he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018. Adelson, the widow of one of the GOP's former largest donors, Sheldon Adelson, continues to make substantial donations to Trump's campaigns.

"It's actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're soldiers," Trump told supporters. "They're either in very bad shape because they've been hit so many times by bullets or they're dead. She gets it, and she's a healthy, beautiful woman, and they're rated equal."

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-offen...-facts-1940470

[Breccia]

So Trump was forced to reveal his fiscal disclosure forms.

"Best businessman ever" Trump had 100 companies that made $201 or less in 2023.

"Well, two hundred million is a lot of money."

I didn't say million.

"Thousand, then."

Two hundred dollars. As in, you could get it from an ATM in one try.

"...you're lying."

I actually am, it's two hundred of his companies. Almost half.

Under the section titled "Filer's Employment Assets & Income and Retirement Accounts," there are 452 listings, with income types including rent, royalties, interest, sales proceeds, management fees, license fees, business income and more. Of these listings, 205 returned no income or less than $201.

Inactive assets accounted for 67 of Trump's listings that returned no income or less than $201. Thirty-three of the listings returning no income were dissolved in 2023.

Trump does have businesses that are above water, true. But he did also have to list $150 million in lost lawsuits to the woman he sexually assaulted and the state government he defrauded.

And I'm pretty sure Melania made more money than Truth Social. Hell, I made more money than Truth Social that time I found a $5 in the laundry.

To be "fair" I'm convinced he has dummy or empty corporations for loopholes, LLC dodging, that sort of thing. But he was required, by law, to admit a large portion of his businesses can't even tread water.

[Edge-]

To be "fair" I'm convinced he has dummy or empty corporations for loopholes, LLC dodging, that sort of thing. But he was required, by law, to admit a large portion of his businesses can't even tread water.

Very much seems like this is the cause. Still though, that's a lot of liability dodging for someone who wants to be "leader of the free world"...again.

[Breccia]

Virtually 100% of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants. You know that? Most of the job creation has gone to migrants. In fact, I’ve heard that substantially more than — beyond, actually beyond that number 100%. It’s a much higher number than that, but the government has not caught up with that yet.

Yep, that's Donald Trump in his "press conference" claiming that migrants have taken every job created last year, then stolen a few others.

Now, Trump could have said "foreign-born workers" which includes American residents. That would have helped, as foreign-born worker employment did go up (during an increase in legal immigration) while American-born employment did go down.

Because retirements are up. More Americans felt ready to retire.

Thanks, Biden.

[Edge-]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/19/trum...-earnings.html

Shares of former President Donald Trump’s social media company on Monday touched their lowest price since they began public trading on the Nasdaq nearly five months ago after a merger.

Trump Media, the company that owns the Republican presidential nominee’s preferred social messaging platform Truth Social, was below $22.40 per share, a more than 3% decline on the day, in the final hour of trading.

The previous low point for the stock, which trades under the DJT ticker, was in mid-April when the price plummeted to $22.55 following the company’s slingshot rise in its frenzied public trading debut.

Donald's bullshit stock keeps losing value. It's rapidly approaching the pre-merger price at this rate.

[Poopymonster]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/19/trum...-earnings.html



Donald's bullshit stock keeps losing value. It's rapidly approaching the pre-merger price at this rate.

How long until he can abort it?
I mean, how long until he can sell this company that he is forced to keep stock in until it comes to term?

[Gorsameth]

How long until he can abort it?
I mean, how long until he can sell this company that he is forced to keep stock in until it comes to term?

I think it was 6 months? So we are getting close.
For a company losing like 20x more money then it is making it still somehow has a stock value...