Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Tech614]

They're old enough to know how to make an appointment. This was a photo op, and they got the photo op. Mission accomplished.

You're old enough to have learned how to not talk out of your ass and how did that turn out?

[tehdang]

Mayors dont need an appointment to observe lol

The federal government cannot block access to local authorities. Its literally trampling over state rights (and city rights!!!)

Republicans cant stop being hypocrites again and again

I thought he was there to protest?

Let me put it to you this way: Can a mayor demand entry to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility, simply for being mayor of the town? How about a military base? If the answer to either in your opinion is, "No," then what special rule applies to the Department of Homeland Security? We can get down to the heart of the issue quite fast if you want.

I don't think the law allows certain classes of elected government officials (well, state and local officials) to drop by when they feel like it, and enjoy immunity from trespass laws.

(All the usual caveats on a developing story apply. I read that he claimed on a news program that he was leaving and obeying a command to leave when he was arrested. On the flip side if he was asked nicely to leave, and then arrested when he did not, that's simple trespass and lawful. The arrest is kind of the point if this is a photo op and political stunt.)

[NED funded]

I thought he was there to protest?

Let me put it to you this way: Can a mayor demand entry to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility, simply for being mayor of the town? How about a military base? If the answer to either in your opinion is, "No," then what special rule applies to the Department of Homeland Security? We can get down to the heart of the issue quite fast if you want.

I don't think the law allows certain classes of elected government officials (well, state and local officials) to drop by when they feel like it, and enjoy immunity from trespass laws.

(All the usual caveats on a developing story apply. I read that he claimed on a news program that he was leaving and obeying a command to leave when he was arrested. On the flip side if he was asked nicely to leave, and then arrested when he did not, that's simple trespass and lawful. The arrest is kind of the point if this is a photo op and political stunt.)

Mayors can demand entry to a federal prison. That building is under their jurisdiction and needs the resources of the city. Dunno about military bases I think thats diff

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With congressmen its even worse. Cuz they have actual oversight authority and dont even need to ask lol

[Dontrike]

I thought he was there to protest?

You didn't think and you know it.

[tehdang]

Mayors can demand entry to a federal prison. That building is under their jurisdiction and needs the resources of the city. Dunno about military bases I think thats diff but thats cuz of national security stuff

What jurisdiction do you think city mayors exercise over federal property? I’m not talking about the bureau of land management renting a floor at the main st office building.

With congressmen its even worse. Cuz they have actual oversight authority and dont even need to ask lol

Thats federal and oversight, so restrictions are of a different class.

[NED funded]

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/09/mea...c-rfk-vaccines

1000 cases of measles. Maga continues to deliver on their antivax promise

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I like to catch up on news watching Fox News cuz its always fun seeing how they spin this. But they dont even bother focus on the mayor and are saying that congressmen dont have the authority? Thats just wrong. Congressmen dont need an appointment and can just enter if they feel like it to do their oversight duties.

[gondrin]

What jurisdiction do you think city mayors exercise over federal property? I’m not talking about the bureau of land management renting a floor at the main st office building.

Thats federal and oversight, so restrictions are of a different class.

The prison isn't federal property. It is a private prison that is contracted out to the Federal Government as it is owned and operated by the GEO Group. It is similar to Boeing or any other business that is contracted to do business with the Federal Government. So no, the local municipality does have a right to inspect any business that does any form of commerce, whatever that commerce is from retail to detention centers, with minimal or no restrictions that is within their jurisdiction.

[Dontrike]

So what is some of the most nard gargling that Trump's ball fondlers are doing right now?

Well Nazi Barbie pushed the idea that Trump actually cares and he's losing money right now for being the president.

“I think it’s frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,” Leavitt said. “He left a life of luxury and a life of running a very successful real estate empire for public service, not just once but twice.”

“The American public reelected him back to this White House because they trust he acts in the best interests of this country and putting the American public first,” Leavitt continued. “This is a president who has actually lost money for being president.”

When questioned about Trump's obvious mental decline Trump's communication director communicated that Trump "aced" his tests. Hint: You don't "ace" a dementia test.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell had called Trump’s cognitive functions into question, speculating that his recent remarks —in which he said he doesn’t know whether it’s his job to uphold the Constitution—“could be a sign of mental illness, or it could be a sign of early-stage dementia in a 78-year-old man.”

“In Donald Trump’s case, stupidity is the most innocent explanation for his ‘I don’t know,’” O’Donnell said on The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell. “But during mental health month, we have a right to consider other possibilities.”

“Every high school student in America is supposed to know the answer to that question, which is one word: ‘Yes,’” O’Donnell added. “But Donald Trump’s answer was ‘I don’t know’—which could be a sign of mental illness or could be a sign of early-stage dementia."

But White House Communications Director Steven Cheung shot back at the veteran news anchor in a statement to the Daily Beast, accusing O’Donnell of “clearly suffering from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his brain.”

“President Trump aced his cognitive test, meanwhile Joe Biden’s handlers refused to allow him to take one out of fear of what was apparent to the entire world—his mind was severely in decline and lacked the intelligence to lead the country,” Cheung said. “People like Lawrence are complicit in the coverup to hide Biden’s condition, and he knows he’ll have to live the rest of his life reconciling the fact he helped deceive the American people.”

O’Donnell further highlighted Trump’s growing habit of responding “I don’t know” to questions he finds uncomfortable on Wednesday’s edition of The Last Word.

Then of course Trump definitely proved him wrong. He's all there. He needs water wings to drink soup.

Amid reports he asked congressional leaders to include a tax increase for the richest Americans in the budget, President Donald Trump on Friday reflected on the downside of such a proposal unpopular with Republicans.

“The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, “Read my lips,” the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election," Trump posted to his Truth Social media platform on Friday.

[Breccia]

They're old enough to know how to make an appointment. This was a photo op, and they got the photo op. Mission accomplished.

To paraphrase @gondrin and cite the AP

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the lawmakers had not asked for a tour of Delaney Hall, which the agency said it would have facilitated. The department said that as a bus carrying detainees was entering in the afternoon “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”

Watson Coleman spokesperson Ned Cooper said the three lawmakers went there unannounced because they planned to inspect it, not take a scheduled tour.

“They arrived, explained to the guards and the officials at the facility that they were there to exercise their oversight authority,” he said, adding that they were allowed to enter and inspect the center sometime between 3 and 4 p.m.

Watson Coleman later said the DHS statement inaccurately characterized the visit.

“Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not ‘storm’ the detention center,” she wrote. “The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident.”

In video of the altercation shared with The Associated Press, a federal official in a jacket with the logo of the Homeland Security Investigations can be heard telling Baraka he could not enter the facility because “you are not a congress member.”

Baraka then left the secure area, rejoining protesters on the public side of the gate. Video showed him speaking through the gate to a man in a suit, who said: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.”

“I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” Baraka replied.

Minutes later several ICE agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded him and others on the public side. As protesters cried out, “Shame,” Baraka was dragged back through the gate in handcuffs.

So, yes they had the right to be there, yes they had the right to show up and exercise lawful oversight authority, and yes they were old enough to know that. You either chose not to look into that, or did and ignored it, and you're okl enough to know neither is a redeeming trait.

And, just to make this absolutely clear, even if he did, in fact, storm a federal facility and break in through guarded gates...Trump pardons people who do that. That means you still don't think it's a crime. Either way, you lose.

Oh, and speaking of those Trump pardons, Trump is also old enough to know which number is larger than which number. To this day, years later, he refuses to agree with it.

Everything about your attempt to defend this is either willfully ignorant or an intentional lie, and "old enough to know" applies to Trump hundreds of times over and you've never used it once, meaning that's hundreds of cases of hypocrisy when you tried it. You support a dictatorship, a terrorist, and a god, and this post just demonstrates how badly you know you're wrong but choose to support him anyway.

[Belize]

I thought

Oh piss off, you're just regurgitating whatever the right wing rags feed you.

You've never had an original thought in your life.

[tehdang]

The prison isn't federal property. It is a private prison that is contracted out to the Federal Government as it is owned and operated by the GEO Group.

See:

Let me put it to you this way: Can a mayor demand entry to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility, simply for being mayor of the town? How about a military base? If the answer to either in your opinion is, "No," then what special rule applies to the Department of Homeland Security? We can get down to the heart of the issue quite fast if you want.

the local municipality does have a right to inspect any business that does any form of commerce, whatever that commerce is from retail to detention centers

Are you really going with the line that a detention center is commerce? That's your legal authority?

[Endus]

See:

Are you really going with the line that a detention center is commerce? That's your legal authority?

For-profit private prisons are "commerce" in the same exact way that self-storage facilities are.

The Federal Reserve choosing to keep currency in a locker there doesn't change that.

[Xath]

See:





Are you really going with the line that a detention center is commerce? That's your legal authority?

A for profit prison is absolutely Commerce lol?

[gondrin]

See:





Are you really going with the line that a detention center is commerce? That's your legal authority?

Yes, it is a form of commerce. Because a transaction has taken place(GEO Group received funds in exchange for holding detainees), that is the definition of commerce. Commerce isn't just buying and selling goods, it is also to provide a service in exchange for something of value.

And yes, the GEO Group runs a for-profit system of detention centers. If it were an actual state run detention center, no, it wouldn't be a form of commerce.

[Breccia]

Are you really going with the line that a detention center is commerce?

You have been shown multiple articles that say that it is a privately owned center, that contracts with the federal government for money. It is just as much commercial property as Mar-a-Lago, which is not owned by the government either, that's why Trump charges for the Secret Service to stay there.

And you are old enough to know that.

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Trump redirects dot-gov website to fan fiction.

So WaPo found that Trump had put “LAB LEAK: THE TRUE ORIGINS OF Covid-19" on an official federal site. Questionable enough on its own, as all the results are questionable. But it only starts there, and gets worse.

Please note, first, that “Covid-19” is written in the cursive of a wedding invitation while the rest of the words are written in the block type of a JAMES PATTERSON NOVEL. The font fades toward the bottom of each word, in a way you are most accustomed to seeing not on government websites, where the goal is legibility, but rather on airport fiction, where the goal is conveying that the identical twin is a serial killer.

Yes, the WaPo journalist wrote all that out. But here's the picture:



"Did Trump actually write any of this?"

Very likely no.

"Did Trump personally engage in any of the research this dot-gov site claims is true?"

Very likely no.

"Trump looks a lot younger and healthier than I remember him."

The picture is edited.

Now visitors to covid.gov are properly oriented. We all understand that we have been hoodwinked by a massive government conspiracy, and only the 47th president — who had nothing to do with anything covid-related — can save us.

Scroll to: a Google Earth map of Wuhan, China, which has been doctored to have some kind of shaky, smoky effect, showing visitors that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is just 7.5 miles from the Huanan Seafood Market.

Has that sunk in yet? If so, get ready to have your mind further blown. The National Institutes of Health is about 7.5 miles from the Smithsonian National Zoo. My neighborhood is about 7.5 miles from the White House. The Trump National Golf Club at Bedminster, New Jersey, is about 7.5 miles from the Wendy’s in Branchburg, New Jersey. Do you see what we’re talking about here? (If you do, could you explain it to me?)

Scroll to: a portrait of a beleaguered Anthony S. Fauci pressing his hand to his forehead, next to a pdf of the preemptive pardon President Joe Biden granted Fauci before he left office. Now we are really getting to the bottom of this, because before I opened “LAB LEAK: THE TRUE ORIGINS OF Covid-19,” I would have told you the reason Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci was not because of wrongdoing but because Biden feared that the famously vengeful Trump would seek to punish Fauci. And I would have noted that Trump turning on Fauci was one of the more bewildering things to happen in 2020. Fauci wasn’t a Biden guy. He was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during Trump’s first term. Trump invited Fauci to brief America on the coronavirus crisis many times, putting him forth as a trustworthy expert.

Scroll to: shady-looking images of former New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo. Scroll to: “There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19.” The aesthetics of all of this can best be described as “The Apprentice” meets “To Catch a Predator,” as if at any scroll, Chris Hansen is going to pop out from behind a sofa and accuse Fauci of sexting underage covid vials.

By now we might all know that coherent aesthetics are not necessarily a priority for this administration. The homepage for the U.S. DOGE Service looks like a GeoCities project circa 1997. MelaniaTrump.com sells an absolutely wild hodgepodge of Christmas ornaments, NFTs and jewelry. Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt at the Republican National Convention. Trump likes what he likes, and calling someone else tacky almost always makes the critic look snobby.

So I almost left all of this alone. Except, after visiting “LAB LEAK: THE TRUE ORIGINS OF Covid-19” — after sending it to a couple of people and having a good chuckle — I learned that covid.gov was not a Trump original, like DOGE.gov or MelaniaTrump.com. Rather, it was a complete overhaul of a previous government website, which was originally created to provide resources and information — how to get a free coronavirus test; what warning signs to look for regarding long covid — for a terrified public. As recently as April 1, the homepage contained guidance about which populations would most benefit from a vaccine booster.

The Library of Congress has archived versions of covid.gov only going back as far as 2022, two years into the pandemic. But you know what archived site is available going back to March 2020? The White House’s page touting its coronavirus response. And you know what you find when you look at that site? You find reminders that Trump didn’t inherit this pandemic from the Biden administration; Trump was president for the entire first nine months of the pandemic. The White House was bragging that it distributed 125 million face masks to school districts — the masks that “LAB LEAK” now decries as ineffective. That they launched Operation Warp Speed to develop the very vaccines that many of Trump’s followers now believe either don’t work, will make you infertile, or contain nanobots.

This is what is killing me about “LAB LEAK: THE TRUE ORIGINS OF Covid-19.” Not that it’s weird, ugly or lame. But that this was a normal government website until just a few days ago, and now, boom, everything that was once carefully vetted and fact-checked is gone. It’s a full-scale rewriting of history, using official government channels.

This is what you get when you willingly vote for a failed entertainer trying to become a dictator, @tehdang you get blatant government propaganda and gaslighting.

And just so we're clear, if you Google "do masks help with COVID?" the very first link is the Mayo Clinic who also references the CDC, as recently as 2023. Even the current NIH take on the topic, the second hit on the list, written to side with Trump's agenda, and which I will now quote for posterity, agree.

A meta‐analysis of randomised controlled trials of pre‐COVID‐19 showed that surgical masks or N95 respirators reduced clinical respiratory illness in health‐care workers by 41% and influenza‐like illness by 66%: they work but are far from perfect. N95 masks were not statistically better than surgical masks in preventing proven influenza, nor in preventing COVID‐19, although the latter is based on weak data. N95 masks are more efficient filters of small particles, but these findings suggest it is reasonable to recommend that health‐care workers use surgical masks when there is risk of droplet spread and reserve precious N95 masks for health‐care workers performing aerosol‐generating procedures.

And NIH cited multiple studies. They do even try to say "well it didn't work in 2009, therefore we have no proof" and quote one study with four people. Simply put, the studies they cite to disprove the effectiveness of masks don't hold up against the Mayo Clinic, especially when one's a study of SARS with four people, no really, Trump tried to use a medical study with four people despite having tens of millions of people he infected in the USA.

Trump was in charge when he invited COVID into the country, botched the response, and blamed the only person on his staff trying to fight it. Now he's trying to rewrite history to blame Obama for Katrina. And the people who willingly voted for this are complicit and will be quoted as such.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Are you really going with the line that a detention center is commerce? That's your legal authority?

I would like to see you define an exchange of money for services as anything other than commerce.

[tehdang]

A for profit prison is absolutely Commerce lol?

They're selling services to the federal government. To the city they're in, this is a detention facility that serves as a residence for the detained, and not selling goods and services to the public.

Yes, it is a form of commerce. Because a transaction has taken place(GEO Group received funds in exchange for holding detainees), that is the definition of commerce. Commerce isn't just buying and selling goods, it is also to provide a service in exchange for something of value.

And yes, the GEO Group runs a for-profit system of detention centers. If it were an actual state run detention center, no, it wouldn't be a form of commerce.

Selling a detention service to the government. Not selling the city goods and services. To the mayor, this is for detained persons of the United States government. Not your Walmart.

That matters if you're a mayor. It won't matter if he's tagging along with a city inspector, like fire and health inspectors.

I would like to see you define an exchange of money for services as anything other than commerce.

What kind of goods and services is this facility selling to the public? It's a federal government contractor.

Which is to say that throwing a big protest and trying to push past ICE/DHS agents is breaking the law.

And, like I said earlier, constitutes a publicity stunt for the mayor and state representative, since the whole goal is to create an incident and get anti-government people to learn their names and cheer them on. Pretty easy case. I'm just a little surprised people thought mayors had lawful authority to demand entry. I think you, and they, would have a different opinion if a right-wing city official busted into a Biden or Obama center and yelled at federal employees.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

TWhat kind of goods and services is this facility selling to the public?

The government is literally the public.

[gondrin]

They're selling services to the federal government. To the city they're in, this is a detention facility that serves as a residence for the detained, and not selling goods and services to the public.

So, are they selling a service(therefore commerce) or not selling a service?

Because it doesn't matter who the 2 parties are that are involved in the transaction, it is still one party(GEO Group) selling a service some entity. This entity being the government(the public).

The only time it isn't a form of commerce is if it were a full on government run facility that was owned by the government that provides it to the general public at no cost. This is why Congress isn't doing any form of commerce even though they are providing a service. They aren't selling it to anyone. This is why your local police or fire department isn't doing any form of commerce even though they are providing a service. They aren't selling it to anyone.

This is also why Soup Kitchens and other forms of food assistance that is given away aren't a form of commerce. Because nothing is being sold.

What kind of goods and services is this facility selling to the public? It's a federal government contractor.

They are selling their usage of their facility to ICE for detention services. As Endus said, it is no different than renting out a storage facility to store stuff. Because that is what ICE is doing, literally storing their detainees there for the time being until they are either deported or released.

[Endus]

They're selling services to the federal government. To the city they're in, this is a detention facility that serves as a residence for the detained, and not selling goods and services to the public.

I've literally worked for the DOD in a civilian capacity where part of my job was keeping the office supplied with sundries. So I had catalogues for several retail locations and would order stuff in as needed.

Did that mean Staples wasn't engaged in commerce, because their commerce was with a Federal office? Or do you just not have any clue what you're talking about?