Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

Good luck with that, considering the appeals court saying that house subpoenas are not enforceable.

Trump can use Executive Time to block it, yes. Which means, just before the election, he'd had to admit the changes were run past him and he approves.

[DingDongKing]

I'd consider a lack of weighing in a tacit approval, personally.

I absofuckinglutely hate Kayleigh McEnany. She makes Kellyanne Conway look the harmless drunk aunt at a party. She’s pure evil and appeals perfectly to the MAGA crowd with her blonde hair/blue eyed evangelical schtick.

[solinari6]

Trump can use Executive Time to block it, yes. Which means, just before the election, he'd had to admit the changes were run past him and he approves.

No, I was referring to this: A federal appeals court gutted Congress' subpoena power in a massive ruling in Don McGahn's case

[Edge-]

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/51...-of-falwell-jr

Liberty University is contracting with an outside firm to investigate Falwell Jr's tenure as president of the school. Apparently they're investigating everything since he took that position and want to learn, and yes this is a quite - “the consequences that have flowed from a lack of spiritual stewardship.”

[Fugus]

They don't have a choice. They are defending a lying loser. And it is no longer possible to be a Trump supporter without being a hypocrite -- if you had tried to defend Obama with "both sides do it" in 2016, Trump supporters would not accept that.

The funny part is pointing out when they bring up something relatively minor in Biden to deflect from Trump doing exactly the same thing, except on a much larger scale. 33 years ago, Biden lied about how well he did in law school, which was 23 years before even that. That was stupid. Trump lies about everything all the time, founded a fraudulent university, and Wharton is embarrassed of Trump.

So funny on the timing, I have a friend I was talking to on facebook and said he wouldn't vote for Biden because he was a perv and I mentioned all the stuff Trump has with his allegations of sexual assault long with his relation to Epstein and him wishing Ghislaine Maxwell good luck in her trials and all that. He asked for proof because he knew about Biden's one person but not about Trumps, give him a link to 25 of them. His response, "Well their both pervs" and when I pointed out how he was much worse. He basically dropped it.

Also told him I could prove mathematically that Trump is worthless and that he has damaged us as a nation and voting for him would be selling out his kids. His response was "You can make the numbers say whatever you want them to" and I told him that you can't draw the conclusion that Trump helped without ignoring the numbers and trends before he took office and given what we have now, I can actually prove it with verifiable information. Again nothing.

When it comes to Trump, they have no facts to go on, it is all feelings and are willing to whore out their own children's futures just so they can ignore reality to protect their feelings and their ego.

[DingDongKing]

So funny on the timing, I have a friend I was talking to on facebook and said he wouldn't vote for Biden because he was a perv and I mentioned all the stuff Trump has with his allegations of sexual assault long with his relation to Epstein and him wishing Ghislaine Maxwell good luck in her trials and all that. He asked for proof because he knew about Biden's one person but not about Trumps, give him a link to 25 of them. His response, "Well their both pervs" and when I pointed out how he was much worse. He basically dropped it.

Also told him I could prove mathematically that Trump is worthless and that he has damaged us as a nation and voting for him would be selling out his kids. His response was "You can make the numbers say whatever you want them to" and I told him that you can't draw the conclusion that Trump helped without ignoring the numbers and trends before he took office and given what we have now, I can actually prove it with verifiable information. Again nothing.

When it comes to Trump, they have no facts to go on, it is all feelings and are willing to whore out their own children's futures just so they can ignore reality to protect their feelings and their ego.

It's the same over here in the UK. To the Tory Party's more rabid base, Boris Johnson can basically do no wrong.

We're just lucky that there still a reasonably okay level of British decorum and decency that prevents the cabinet from going full tilt far right.

[Thepersona]

Time for another press briefing full of bullshit.


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This bullshit Trump is spewing is amazing.... He sounds super low energy, too.

Where are the trebuchets, then?

[Benggaul]

When it comes to Trump, they have no facts to go on, it is all feelings and are willing to whore out their own children's futures just so they can ignore reality to protect their feelings and their ego.

It's not even usually THEIR feelings. It's just stuff from FOX "News" or OANN or random Twitter posts that they can't be bothered to research for themselves so they take on the feelings of whomever presented the information.

[Gorsameth]

No, I was referring to this: A federal appeals court gutted Congress' subpoena power in a massive ruling in Don McGahn's case

Yeah no.

That is not undermining subpoena power, that is Congress trying to get the courts to do their dirty work. Its not the job of the courts to make people testify before Congress.

If Congress wants to force someone to testify they can hold them in Contempt of Congress and order their imprisonment via the Attorney for the District of Colombia in the same way that a Judge can have you imprisoned for Contempt of Court.

[Masark]

This is some Monty Python level parody

No, it isn't. They admit that they couldn't complete with this.

[D Luniz]

I'd consider a lack of weighing in a tacit approval, personally.

rather sure he "weighed in" when he retweeted support for him

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https://thehill.com/homenews/news/51...-of-falwell-jr

Liberty University is contracting with an outside firm to investigate Falwell Jr's tenure as president of the school. Apparently they're investigating everything since he took that position and want to learn, and yes this is a quite - “the consequences that have flowed from a lack of spiritual stewardship.”

wait, think they will actually try to sue him for not being pious enough?
At least this timeline has its moments of comedy.

[omerome]

The dumbest motherfucker alive....

Reporters really need to keep asking him questions with a high school vocabulary just to watch him constantly fail to answer them - simply because he doesn't know what those words mean.

[Benggaul]

I believe he has already retweeted over the weekend a post portraying Rittenhouse as a hero. I don't think any of us should be surprised if he pardons him, the right wing is holding up this psycho as a hero.

I mean, it's not really in doubt anymore:

Trump defends Kenosha suspect as acting in self-defense

[Breccia]

"You can make the numbers say whatever you want them to"

This is a common belief amongst people who have no fucking clue what they're talking about. It's also a stupid fucking thing to say, when Trump makes promises based on a bunch of numbers -- jobs, GDP growth, health care -- and then delivers none of that. If numbers mean nothing, why believe promises with numbers? And if the promises meant something, the failure to fulfill the promises also means something.

Be sure to tell your friend "Sorry, I don't make the rules". I've gotten a lot of mileage out of shoving that down hypocrites throats until they choke on their own words.

[Draco-Onis]

This is a common belief amongst people who have no fucking clue what they're talking about. It's also a stupid fucking thing to say, when Trump makes promises based on a bunch of numbers -- jobs, GDP growth, health care -- and then delivers none of that. If numbers mean nothing, why believe promises with numbers? And if the promises meant something, the failure to fulfill the promises also means something.

Be sure to tell your friend "Sorry, I don't make the rules". I've gotten a lot of mileage out of shoving that down hypocrites throats until they choke on their own words.

I think Banon has more than proven how dumb and blind this cult is. They gave them millions to build a wall Trump promised Mexico would pay for.

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The dumbest motherfucker alive....

Trump wants blood on the streets he wants to scare white people into voting for him but it's insane since he is in charge now.

[Benggaul]

38,560 new cases, about 3k fewer than last week. No telling how impacted testing in the south was due to Laura, though, so this might be misleading.

California: 6,485 new cases; 82 deaths
Texas: 3,774 new cases; 53 deaths
Missouri: 2,233 new cases (new record); 15 deaths
Fuck Florida.
Tennessee: 1,818 new cases; 7 deaths
Illinois: 1,668 new cases; 7 deaths
Georgia: 1,498 new cases; 28 deaths
North Carolina: 1,407 new cases; 18 deaths
Kansas: 1,268 new cases; 1 death

Still an underreport day so there's not much to go off of, but the new record from Missouri indicates that my presumptions about that region from last week might not be far off. We'll have to wait until the next few days to get more clarity on it.

512 deaths, nearly exactly the same as last Monday. As August ends the national total stands at 187,736.

Got some shitty news regarding my leg today that pretty much means I'm going to be doing these daily reports for at least another 6 weeks--unless I get thrown out for calling someone a joke again--so I'm going to conserve my energy for now and go play some games to take my mind off things.

Stay safe, folks.

[Nellise]

but the new record from Missouri indicates that my presumptions about that region from last week might not be far off.

This is something I've mentioned earlier, the counties that are near St. Louis have been one of the areas doing poorly in Illinois. A lot of people were crossing the border to Missouri and bringing it back. Illinois does about 5x as many tests daily as Missouri and I think it was seeing this outbreak earlier by catching a lot of asymptomatic cases. Missouri is probably only testing people with likely symptoms so is only picking them up now. This is also happening near the Iowa border where it seems like Illinois was picking up the cases before Iowa noticed them as Iowa does about 1/10 the amount of tests that Illinois does. One a somewhat positive note, this is the first week since early June Illinois is down a decent amount from the week before, about 5% (I count from Tuesday to Tuesday because that's when the Illinois numbers essentially reset: cases and tests reported on Tuesday are almost always the lowest of the week).

This shows how increased testing can predict where outbreaks might happen. Illinois was seeing these outbreaks in Missouri and Iowa way before they did by doing much more extensive testing. (These aren't outbreaks caused by people from Chicago, St. Louis is over 5 hours away, and the Iowa border is about 3 hours away).

[Omega10]

38,560 new cases, about 3k fewer than last week. No telling how impacted testing in the south was due to Laura, though, so this might be misleading.

California: 6,485 new cases; 82 deaths
Texas: 3,774 new cases; 53 deaths
Missouri: 2,233 new cases (new record); 15 deaths
Fuck Florida.
Tennessee: 1,818 new cases; 7 deaths
Illinois: 1,668 new cases; 7 deaths
Georgia: 1,498 new cases; 28 deaths
North Carolina: 1,407 new cases; 18 deaths
Kansas: 1,268 new cases; 1 death

Still an underreport day so there's not much to go off of, but the new record from Missouri indicates that my presumptions about that region from last week might not be far off. We'll have to wait until the next few days to get more clarity on it.

512 deaths, nearly exactly the same as last Monday. As August ends the national total stands at 187,736.

Got some shitty news regarding my leg today that pretty much means I'm going to be doing these daily reports for at least another 6 weeks--unless I get thrown out for calling someone a joke again--so I'm going to conserve my energy for now and go play some games to take my mind off things.

Stay safe, folks.

There is a good chance that Georgia is under reported due to the fact that Trump supporters are intentionally not getting tested to avoid being counted as a virus case. They want to keep schools open, and their strategy is to avoid being counted as someone with the virus.

They ARE willing to spread the virus around, though.

[Benggaul]

This shows how increased testing can predict where outbreaks might happen. Illinois was seeing these outbreaks in Missouri and Iowa way before they did by doing much more extensive testing. (These aren't outbreaks caused by people from Chicago, St. Louis is over 5 hours away, and the Iowa border is about 3 hours away).

Yeah, I definitely feel Misery and Iowa are at the center of it all given the rates of increase of the surrounding states. I haven't really looked at North/South Dakota/Nebraska et al today both because of my poor mood and because it's a low-report day, but I wouldn't be surprised if they saw increases over the previous Monday. I confess I haven't been keeping up with testing in most states because I already have enough on my plate, but fortunately Johns Hopkins has a handy utility here that's mostly up to date for tracking it:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states

As you've said, Illinois has been doing pretty great with testing and showing nearly continuous increased testing as time goes on. I don't have it in me to break down testing quantity versus population right now but comparing Illinois to what Iowa and Missouri are doing shows a pretty stark difference (and a glance at the positivity rate also shows where those problem areas are).

Don't even bother looking at Florida's. Fuck Florida.

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There is a good chance that Georgia is under reported due to the fact that Trump supporters are intentionally not getting tested to avoid being counted as a virus case. They want to keep schools open, and their strategy is to avoid being counted as someone with the virus.

They ARE willing to spread the virus around, though.

I'm sure it'll be a comfort to them on their death beds that they were able to keep the conspiracy theory going.

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Trump's...equating shooting an unarmed black man in the back 7 times to missing a three-foot putt.
I can't even anymore.

[s_bushido]

I mean, it's not really in doubt anymore:

Trump defends Kenosha suspect as acting in self-defense

The entirety of the rhetoric coming from his side of the aisle would have painted him into this corner, even if he wasn't a reprehensible sack of shit in his own right. You can't spend months demonizing protesters as some sort of existential threat to the country and then take their side when a proud patriot takes a stand and puts some of them down...