Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[btlcryct]

Waking up and seeing that the stock market has gone back to plummeting, I assume Somewhatconcerned is "going ghost" for the foreseeable future again.

Somewhatconcerned is the opposite of this Einstein story:

https://www.restorationadvisers.com/blog/einsteinlesson

He'll come sing the praises for the one thing out of ten Trump may get right, while ignoring the nine he got wrong. Yes, I used may because broken clock and all.

[Rasulis]

Waking up and seeing that the stock market has gone back to plummeting, I assume Somewhatconcerned is "going ghost" for the foreseeable future again.

It is a sea of red. Although Intel is up 16%. I guess people like their new CEO?

Dollar Tree and Dollar General up 6.19% and 4.92%. Never a good sign of the economy when those two stocks go up.

[Xyonai]

Somewhatconcerned is the opposite of this Einstein story:

https://www.restorationadvisers.com/blog/einsteinlesson

He'll come sing the praises for the one thing out of ten Trump may get right, while ignoring the nine he got wrong. Yes, I used may because broken clock and all.

And even then, the success story almost immediately gets backtracked by something Trump says/does. Time is a flat circle, it's the exact same shit we had to deal with during Trump's first term.

[En Sabah Nur]

Waking up and seeing that the stock market has gone back to plummeting, I assume Somewhatconcerned is "going ghost" for the foreseeable future again.

Only until he can find a link that'll spin things for him that he can post and then run away from.

[Breccia]

The algorithm was apparently reading over my shoulder again.

ICE Isn’t Delivering the Mass Deportation Trump Wants

Sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, real and imagined, are everywhere on social media. Teachers say students are panicked that ICE will take their parents while they’re in class. One Maryland doctor who treats patients with cancer and chronic pain from worksite injuries told me that many are skipping appointments. “They’re terrified,” he said.

That much, according to Trump officials, is going to plan, backed by a $200 million messaging campaign called “Stay Out and Leave Now.”

The results of the actual deportation push appear to be more modest, though not for lack of effort. ICE officers, some working six or seven days a week, made about 18,000 arrests last month, according to internal data I obtained. By comparison, the agency tallied roughly 10,000 arrests in February 2024. The latest government data show that deportations were actually higher toward the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, when ICE was removing a larger number of migrants picked up along the Mexico-U.S. border..

At its current pace, ICE is nowhere near delivering what Trump promised.

Oh, look. Another intentional Trump message that turns out to be exaggerated or flat-out false.

Also, just to be clear:

ICE stopped publishing daily-arrest totals in early February as its numbers sagged

Yep. Remember what I said earlier today about "no further questions"? The lack of published numbers will now be taken as an admission the numbers are not what they said they would be. Until those numbers are back doored by a trustworthy source, or just published again, I believe it is reasonable to say "Biden was doing better than Trump", which is backed by both published numbers and a trustworthy source, to be true indefinitely.

"But surely what Trump promised is still possible, maybe even reasonable!"

Again, he's hiding the numbers, so even he knows it's not. Also:

ICE has never deported 1 million people in a year, let alone half that many.

And

Trump made mass deportations a centerpiece of his campaign and said during his inauguration speech that ICE would deport “millions and millions of criminal aliens.” Vice President J. D. Vance said that the administration would “start with 1 million.” But ICE doesn’t have the resources or staffing to do what Trump wants. The agency has fewer than 6,000 enforcement officers nationwide. Much of their work is essentially immigration case management—ensuring compliance with court appointments and monitoring requirements—not kicking down doors in tactical gear or staging mass roundups in the streets.

Trump does not have the manpower, nor does he have the money to fix that, nor does he have the permission to misuse money Congress has put to other goals. And he knows that.

Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” who has been working out of an office at ICE headquarters in Washington, told me on Friday that the mass-deportation campaign remains on track and just needs Congress to cough up the money to allow it to kick into a higher gear.

Trump is happy with the results so far, Homan insisted. “The president has never told me he’s not happy,” Homan said. “I’m not happy.”

By the way, Homan is lying. Not only am I convinced Trump screamed at him when the numbers weren't high enough, as we've seen he's doing with other people he hired on purpose, but Team Trump lies all the time about everything. The only way Trump would actually be happy, was if he never intended to get those high numbers in the first place, and that means he lied about everything. There is no reasonable way what Homan said can both be correct and also align with Trump's publicly promised goals.

The courts are already stopping him from just doing whatever he wants. He'll either have to choke up court proceedings by arming receptionists and sending them door to door, or, he won't get the numbers he claimed he would for a few days then went golfing instead.

Of course, it's not like Trump has to personally direct ICE. You hire people who do that for you. Who did-

Noem blamed internal leaks and “crooked deep state agents” at the FBI for the relatively modest figures. It was a baffling claim. She and Homan had been conducting ICE raids on live television, even bringing along Dr. Phil to publicize the effort. Everyone knew they were coming.

On February 11, Noem ousted Vitello’s key deputies at ICE. Ten days later, she tried to demote Vitello. Noem wanted to bring in a trusted former aide and GOP political operative, Madison Sheahan, the head of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, who’d gotten that job in 2023 at age 26.

Noem wasn’t aware that ICE leadership roles typically require years of law enforcement or litigation experience, according to one senior DHS official who spoke with me on condition of anonymity. Although Sheahan had restored black-bear hunting to Louisiana and scored federal dollars for oyster farms, she wasn’t a lawyer or a cop. Vitello remained in the acting-director role, leaving ICE staff puzzled about who was in charge. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Ohhhhhh...yeah maybe Trump could have picked someone competent. Like Hegseth, or Dr. Ben "pyramids are grain silos" Carson.

On Sunday, two weeks after Vitello’s demotion was announced, ICE named a new acting director, Todd Lyons, a veteran official Noem had promoted less than a month earlier to oversee enforcement operations. Sheahan was named to the deputy-director role. Noem called the pair “work horses” who would deliver “results” and “achieve the American people’s mandate.”

The leadership stumbles point to the core problem with Trump’s grandiose deportation plan, which has the potential to become the “Build the Wall!” equivalent of his second term. Trump wants ICE to erase the immigration wave of the past decade and spearhead a MAGA social and cultural transformation. He has ordered federal law-enforcement agencies from across the government—the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals, even the FBI—to drop what they’re doing and help ICE catch more immigrants.

Yep, taking the FBI off their task and re-assigning them to ICE sounds like a great way to get the FBI disgruntled and quitting. The DEA, at least, I can see following along due to Trump yelling "Fentanyl!" at every passing camera.

Now that was published March 11th. As we've seen, the results since then are...negative. Like, actually going backwards. The only thing being delivered are worse results and lies. Trump will not get the results he said he would, it's effectively impossible. The only question is if he knew that and lied, or didn't and is incompetent. There is no redeeming choice.

[postman1782]

Gas prices dropping. Egg prices stabilizing and should continue to drop as bird flu is winding down. Border secure. Tariffs resulting in concessions.

Uh oh, the talking points are disappearing fast.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybo...tainty-swirls/

- - - Updated - - -



He still remains more popular than Democrats.

And remember that every single poll that ever existed has underestimated his support.

AGAIN, LITERALLY NONE OF THIS IS TRUE. Stop fucking lying.

[Bwgmon]

Only until he can find a link that'll spin things for him that he can post and then run away from.

And it'll no doubt be another case of "the headline sort of supports the spin, the text in the article explicitly does not," seems to be all the rage with their sort.

ICE Isn’t Delivering the Mass Deportation Trump Wants

And to think that's with them vastly overstepping their bounds and arresting tourists and such. Sad!

[Breccia]

Waking up and seeing that the stock market has gone back to plummeting

I stopped looking, how bad is...oh...DOWn nearly 500 points.

Gold futures were up 1.4% at $2,990 an ounce, approaching a record high

That's not typically a good sign.

Understanding the Dynamics Behind Gold Prices

Key Takeaways

• Gold's price is influenced by central bank reserves and their purchasing trends.
• Economic and political instability increase demand for gold as a safe haven.
• Global gold production and mining challenges affect gold's supply and price.
• Demand for gold in jewelry and technology sectors also impacts its price.

[Xyonai]

Gas prices dropping. Egg prices stabilizing and should continue to drop as bird flu is winding down. Border secure. Tariffs resulting in concessions.

Uh oh, the talking points are disappearing fast.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybo...tainty-swirls/

- - - Updated - - -



He still remains more popular than Democrats.

And remember that every single poll that ever existed has underestimated his support.

"Polls show Democrats have miserable support!"

"Also polls are unreliable and cannot be trusted!"

That aside, pointing to Dem's failures right now in support of Trump's own gross failures is fairly boneheaded when you compare why each party is currently not popular right now. Or it's an admission that the entire system is broken and needs to be fixed if none of our leaders are doing well? In which case welcome to the resistance Comrade.

[Belize]

American Idiot!

20 years later that song reminds as depressingly relevant as it was during the Bush era

[Edge-]

20 years later that song reminds as depressingly relevant as it was during the Bush era

They're still updating the lyrics in shows to dunk on Donald and MAGA folks.

[Rasulis]

Since GOP reps are treating their constituents like highly contagious disease, Democrats are holding town hall meetings in GOP districts.

Democrats are heading to GOP districts for town halls: ‘We’re filling a void’

Not a single one of CA GOP reps have made time to meet face to face with their constituents since they were elected. In fact, all previously scheduled meetings have been canceled for the foreseeable future.

[Milchshake]

This morning, i surveyed several major news front pages and amongst them, only MSNBC and reuters even mentioned the Department of Education has been nuked. Then it wasn’t even a top headline for either.


The media gave more front page coverage to the idea Tim Walz retiring from the National Guard after 20 years was scandalous than to Trump's promise to destroy the Department of Education.

[Rasulis]

This morning, i surveyed several major news front pages and amongst them, only MSNBC and reuters even mentioned the Department of Education has been nuked. Then it wasn’t even a top headline for either.


The media gave more front page coverage to the idea Tim Walz retiring from the National Guard after 20 years was scandalous than to Trump's promise to destroy the Department of Education.

Has it been nuked? That would require an act of congress. They have reduced the work force by 50%. Which is pretty bad by itself.

[Edge-]

Since GOP reps are treating their constituents like highly contagious disease, Democrats are holding town hall meetings in GOP districts.

Democrats are heading to GOP districts for town halls: ‘We’re filling a void’

Not a single one of CA GOP reps have made time to meet face to face with their constituents since they were elected. In fact, all previously scheduled meetings have been canceled for the foreseeable future.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/14/polit...lls/index.html

Nevada Sen. Dean Heller is set to attend a town hall Monday in Reno – but he’s not thrilled about it.

“It’s gonna be a long day, to say the least,” Heller – perhaps the Senate’s most endangered Republican in the 2018 midterms – said at a fundraising lunch Wednesday. Audio and video recordings of his comments are being circulated by Democrats.

“Two hours of town hall meeting – two hours of people yelling at you – it’s going to be quite the experience,” Heller said. “But it’s one of those boxes you gotta check.”

Many other Republicans in competitive seats, though, aren’t checking that box.

With members of Congress at home for a two-week spring break, many Republicans – especially those in competitive states and districts – are once again encountering backlash over President Donald Trump and House leadership’s push to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Two top Democratic targets in the 2018 midterms – Reps. Leonard Lance of New Jersey and Mike Coffman of Colorado – faced rowdy crowds Wednesday night. Lance was loudly booed for suggesting that Planned Parenthood divide itself into separate organizations – one that performs abortions and one that offers other health services.

Some lawmakers, though, are opting not to hold town halls at all.

Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock skipped two “mobile office hours” sessions she had scheduled in late January, as backlash against Trump and the GOP effort to repeal Obamacare began to build.

Hundreds showed up at a February “empty chair” town hall – one organized by constituents to which the lawmaker was invited, but not confirmed to attend – for Rep. Erik Paulsen of Minnesota, whose district Hillary Clinton won by nearly 10 points in the fall.

Aides for Comstock and Paulsen didn’t respond to CNN’s questions about why they haven’t held town halls. But other GOP lawmakers have been blunt in arguing that the events attended by hundreds of constituents hold little value.

Rep. Mimi Walters of California – whose Orange County district is similar to many Democrats hope will become hyper-competitive in 2018 – said she sees town halls as political ambushes.

RELATED: Here are the town halls scheduled for Thursday

“The whole goal is to try to get as much press as they can, and then try to get me to say something that they could use against me in the campaign,” Walters said in a recent interview on AM 870’s “The Answer.”

Some Republicans who aren’t hosting town hall meetings say they prefer alternatives like “telephone town halls” where constituents call in, or in-person one-on-one or small-group meetings scheduled with constituents in their district offices.

Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, whose district Clinton carried by seven points, has opted for telephone town halls, small district offices and stops at local businesses and schools.

His spokesman, David Pasch, explained Roskam’s reluctance to hold town halls in an email, saying that “large, unstructured events tend to devolve into shouting matches. Both sides compete with each over who can scream the loudest, while the people who are interested in an actual, productive dialogue are denied the opportunity to hear and be heard.”

Rep. David Valadao of California, whose district Clinton carried by 15 points, is also opting for smaller-group events. “By utilizing a variety of methods such as community coffees, workshops, and telephone town halls, I am able to communicate with my constituents in ways that work for them,” he said in a statement.

Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Washington, prefers one-on-one and small-group meetings, and has scheduled nearly 50 with more than 200 constituents, his spokeswoman Breanna Deutsch said. She said Reichert “believes this is the best way to maintain open communication with his constituents and have productive conversations.”

RELATED: GOP lawmakers brace for new round of town hall backlash

But progressive groups argue lawmakers like Roskam, Valadao and Reichert are ducking accountability.

Indivisible, the group with more than 6,000 affiliates nationwide, recently published a new guide to “sham town halls.”

“Telephone town halls are very controlled in that questions are screened, people are very easily cut off from asking any follow-up questions and it really gives the member of Congress too much control over the situation,” said Sarah Dohl, Indivisible’s chief communications officer.

Other forms of “sham town halls,” she said, include events with narrow focuses – such as “veterans’ town halls” – that are designed to discourage non-veterans from attending, and events where questions are sought in writing and then sorted and chosen by lawmakers’ staffers.

Participants should keep their questions vague when speaking to a screener on telephone town halls, she said.

And in-person, Dohl said, “we’re telling people that if they’re in a situation where a member of Congress is reading questions from cards, they should feel empowered to stand up in the crowd and say, ‘that one was mine’ – to say it out loud, to ask follow-up questions, and if the member of Congress is going on and on, to demand a yes or no.”

To be sure, some Republicans in competitive seats are holding town halls. In addition to the Coffman and Lance events Wednesday night, Rep. Jeff Denham of California has one scheduled for Monday. Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania held one Saturday. Rep. David Young of Iowa has scheduled several across his district south of Des Moines.

Another Republican senator facing a potentially tough re-election contest, Arizona’s Jeff Flake, is set to hold a town hall Thursday night.

On Monday, Heller, at least, will have backup: His town hall is a joint event with Republican Rep. Mark Amodei. Heller said at the Wednesday lunch that “I chose to do it with Amodei ‘cause he’ll do all the talking.”

Other Republicans are ducking the topic of town halls altogether.

Aides for several GOP lawmakers in districts Clinton won in 2016 – including Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Ed Royce and Dana Rohrabacher of California and Kevin Yoder of Kansas – did not return CNN’s requests for comment on whether they intend to hold town halls.

An aide to Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-North Carolina, took a more confrontational approach.

Asked whether he plans to do so, Pittenger’s communications director Jamie Bowers wouldn’t answer. Since CNN hasn’t covered Pittenger’s town halls in previous years, he said, “why should we be interested in this question?”

Funny how time is a circle.

Here's a 2017 article about Republicans cancelling/skipping town halls because Donald and his policies were also deeply unpopular in his first 6 months in office, too.

Wild how nothing seems to have changed.

[Breccia]

So I believe it's been brought up before, but here's an NBC News article about Trump advertising Tesla in his official role at the WH.

Trump turned the South Lawn of the White House into a temporary Tesla showroom Tuesday in a conspicuous favor to his adviser Elon Musk, the car company’s billionaire CEO.

Tesla delivered five of its vehicles to the White House and parked them on a driveway for Trump to personally inspect, hours after he said on Truth Social that he planned to buy a Tesla to demonstrate his support for Musk and for the slumping company.


"It's red, that means it goes faster!"

With Musk beside him, Trump declared the vehicles “beautiful” and in particular praised the company’s unusually designed Cybertruck.

“As soon as I saw it, I said, ‘That is the coolest design,’” Trump said.

“The one I like is that one, and I want the same color,” he said, pointing to a red Model S. The vehicle is listed on the Tesla website for $73,490, or $88,490 for the all-wheel-drive Model S Plaid.

He did not take a test drive but said he might “another time.”

The event drew some criticism, most notably from Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

“Just because the corruption plays out in public doesn’t mean it’s not corruption,” Murphy said on X, alongside a video of Trump getting into a Tesla.

I mean, leave to someone named Murphy to try to save Detroit.

Old news at this point, but you know what else is old news? The many negative things Trump has said about not just EVs, but the federal government pushing EVs. Take a look through the years of statements Trump said in public on purpose. Which one's your favorite? This one's mine:

Trump, a Republican, also posted on his social media site that then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, sold autoworkers “down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax.” He suggested that promoting electric vehicles “was the idea of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, & Communists” and that “Within 3 years, all of these cars will be made in China.”

Incidentally I think I posted this earlier:

Tesla opens $200m battery factory in China despite trade war tensions

The time between the two was almost exactly 18 months.

[Edge-]

Wait, does Donald have a drivers license? Can he even lawfully operate a vehicle from behind the wheel? I don't think we've ever seen him operate a motor vehicle, not like Joe and his Corvette Stingray.

[PACOX]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/...ted-rcna196049

The cruelty has no bounds.

[Edge-]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/...ted-rcna196049

The cruelty has no bounds.

no wonder elon is crying about the dangers of empathy

because to be empathetic would prevent something like this from happening

[PACOX]

Wait, does Donald have a drivers license? Can he even lawfully operate a vehicle from behind the wheel? I don't think we've ever seen him operate a motor vehicle, not like Joe and his Corvette Stingray.

Presidents, even exes" aren't allowed to drive on the road for security reasons.