Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

(deep breath)
(long, exasperated sigh)

McCarthy calls for investigation into NSA spying on Carlson.

No, really.

There is a public report that NSA read the emails of Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Although NSA publicly denied targeting Carlson, I have serious questions regarding this matter that must be answered

"What about the public report that Trump worked with Russia?"

Nothing.

"Does McCarthy believe this?"

Of course not. He, like others in the Party of Trump, know that anyone who is not Trump, is not Trump. He must curry favor in order to stay alive in the party he gave to Trump. McCarthy is lying.

[beanman12345]

I'm hoping these tax charges are just the tip of the iceberg. With the CFO not flipping yet, he's also facing charges. I don't know the specific laws of NY or Manhattan, but I think that the officers of a corporation are criminally responsible for the actions of the corporation, and that would include Trump and some of his family. I've got a work deadline or I would throw some research time into it.

It most certainly is. They got the grand jury meeting for 5 more months. This is step 1.

- - - Updated - - -

(deep breath)
(long, exasperated sigh)

McCarthy calls for investigation into NSA spying on Carlson.

No, really.



"What about the public report that Trump worked with Russia?"

Nothing.

"Does McCarthy believe this?"

Of course not. He, like others in the Party of Trump, know that anyone who is not Trump, is not Trump. He must curry favor in order to stay alive in the party he gave to Trump. McCarthy is lying.

He's worried about NSA spying on Cucker(which didn't happen,) but not worried about the upcoming criminal charges on Gaetz(which seems certainly will happen,) sounds about right.

[D Luniz]

Well the KKK was already taken...

so was Council of Conservative Citizens

[Bakis]

How fucking far down the drain does the US has to go before its okey to acknowledge that having a two party system of which one is dedicated to North Korean cult mentaltity is nuts. Where is the old reasonable (in perspective) GOP?
Jeeses christ get a fucking grip already. What the hell is wrong with your country.

[Breccia]

DeSantis finally got around to signing that Bill that would prevent Social Media platforms from enforcing their rules

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand

Nothing. The Florida law is likely unenforceable.

Turns out everyone was right. Not just me. Everyone called this.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Florida law that would have forced social media companies to carry speech even if it violated their rules.

The law, which experts expected to be declared unconstitutional, was set to go into effect Thursday.

CCIA President Matt Schruers, whose trade group was among those who sued to block the law said the ruling was "encouraging."

“Florida’s statute is an extraordinary overreach, designed to penalize private businesses for their perceived lack of deference to the Government’s political ideology," Schruers said. "The court’s ruling is a win for internet users and the First Amendment.”

I would take a victory lap, but it'd be awfully crowded.

EDIT:

The plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that these statutes violate the First Amendment. There is nothing that could be severed and survive.

-- the judge

[cubby]

How fucking far down the drain does the US has to go before its okey to acknowledge that having a two party system of which one is dedicated to North Korean cult mentaltity is nuts. Where is the old reasonable (in perspective) GOP?
Jeeses christ get a fucking grip already. What the hell is wrong with your country.

It's entirely possible we've tipped over into a crevasse we'll never completely escape. The violent cult mentality of the Trump followers have always been around, they just found their leader in Trump, and even if-and-when he dies, they just won't go away. And now were literally electing members of Congress who identify with insane conspiracy theory.

We are in the Post Fact Era.

[beanman12345]

How fucking far down the drain does the US has to go before its okey to acknowledge that having a two party system of which one is dedicated to North Korean cult mentaltity is nuts. Where is the old reasonable (in perspective) GOP?
Jeeses christ get a fucking grip already. What the hell is wrong with your country.

I don't think there is a bottom to the drain unfortunately. We keep trying to reach it but there is always more to go.

[Breccia]

While we wait for the arrests to begin, let's talk about Trump's bestest friend in the whole world, DeSantis. Ah, DeSantis: opened his state immediately, tried to force social media to carry hate speech and incitements to violence, truly a man Trump can trust as he lives in Florida for the rest of his life.

Surely nothing will ever break this Trump attacks DeSantis for asking Trump to push back a Trump rally.

Yep.

"Why would DeSantis ask Trump to postpone?"

You might have heard about the building collapse? DeSantis has other things on his mind.

"Oh shit, right. Well then, why wouldn't DeSantis just force a cancellation? I mean, that's already happened once."

Because DeSantis' popularity is borrowed. He loses Trump, he loses. Trump still runs the Party of Trump, DeSantis is just vying for second in command. DeSantis will run in 2022 and cannot win without the borrowed votes of the rabid fanbase. Therefore, he's not yet ready to tell Trump not to come to his state and spew hate speech and promote deregulation while DeSantis is still pulling bodies from the rubble when a building collapsed under his watch, possibly due to his employees.

"Well at least Trump will be there. Where's Biden during all of this?"

He's set to arrive tomorrow to meet the families of --

"Oh, right, he's actually Presidential. I forget that sometimes. Well, Trump is apparently claiming he'll spearhead some fundraising. What's Biden doing to help?"

He sent FEMA five days ago.

"...I thought Trump knew how to read a room. This looks more and more like he's stomping on land mines on purpose."

Trump is desperate for an audience that will chant his name and believe everything he says at face value. He wants to continue to spread lies about the election without fear of contradiction by logic, evidence, or facts. And he's running out of places to do that. Pennsylvania just vetoed a Party of Trump voter suppression bill. Biden is undoing Trump's policies and executive orders. The Florida social media law was just blocked, I posted that earlier. The AZ recount is going southwest on the GOP.

And, yes, his company is about to be arrested.

Trump needs a rally because that's basically his fix. People cheering his name is a finite resource, and he might even realize that. And DeSantis is telling him "dude, you might have a problem". Which is the correct thing to tell someone you care about when they're addicted, before it's too late.

You'd think Trump would know that.

- - - Updated - - -

CSPAN has done a survey since 2000 involving a bunch of US Presidential historians to rate the at-the-time former Presidents of the US, in order, using a numerical scale on multiple factors such as "Economic Management" and "Administrative Skills".

Since Trump is now a former, he's on the list. In position #41.

"Who was #40?"

William Henry Harrison.

"...didn't he die like a month into his tenure?"

Yes.

"Ouch."

Trump's final score was 312, tied with Franklin Pierce. (Lincoln, untouchably #1, has a 897. Obama is #10 with 664)

"He got the tax cut for the rich passed. Surely his Econominc Management result was high."

I mean, it was one of his better scores. He ranked 34th in that one.

"But the man could lead a crowd, sometimes even into a murderous insurrection. Did he get any credit for that?"

Public Persuasion was his best showing. He came in 32nd.

"Well at least he didn't come in dead last."

He did in Moral Authority and Administrative Skills. No big surprise to the man who blew off COVID while being impeached the first time.

"Wait, he didn't bl--"

Trump said, 'yeah, okay' and hung up the phone when his health secretary warned him about the coronavirus in January 2020, a new book says

"Wait, what?"

The president was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida at the time, a trip that took place roughly a month after the House impeached him over his efforts to solicit Ukraine's interference in the 2020 election. The Senate was readying his trial. Trump aides thought the president needed cheering up and sent him off to West Palm Beach, the book says.

Meanwhile, health staffers in his administration were growing increasingly concerned over COVID-19, according to the book.

"Mr. President, I've got to tell you something," Azar told Trump during a mid-January 2020 phone call, before COVID-19 broke out across the country and forced officials to impose lockdowns. "There's this new virus out of China that could be extremely dangerous. It could be the kind of thing we have been preparing for and worried about."

Azar then relayed to Trump that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had started to screen travelers from China to the US but that additional safety measures probably needed to be taken to mitigate potential spread of the virus, per the book.

"Yeah, okay," Trump replied, seemingly unconvinced of the threat. Then he hung up the phone.

Now I know we've all heard this story before: after a big disaster, we get info about the people who mentioned it beforehand. We saw it with the 9/11 planes, we are seeing it unfold in real time with the Florida building collapse, and this is just another one. People in charge likely hear tons of reports about problems or potential problems. We rarely hear about this kind of warning when nothing happens. But bear in mind the scope of this one, plus the fact that Trump hired Azar for exactly this reason. There is a differnce between some random guy saying "I heard your brakes squeaking, you might want to check them out" versus your mechanic saying "You're out of brake fluid, you can't stop your car, for the love of God please let me fix it before you try to drive home". Trump ignored his mechanic, pulled onto I-95 in rush hour, and caused a massive pileup.

And we'll never know if Trump hung up because
1) Xi had already told him this wasn't a problem, and Trump believed him
2) Trump was still angry at Azar for banning flavored ecigs, which apparently he was yelling at Azar for during that same phone call
3) Trump wanted some alone time and just didn't want to do his job that day
4) It was over 140 characters and Trump lost interest
None of these are redeeming options.

I'm sure Azar wants to be the 1,475th person to claim "I was the only one in the White House to bla bla bla" and escape from having Trump's Shitshow ruin his legacy. Considering how many times I cited what Trump said on Jan 22, this claimed behavior from Trump seems 100% on brand, and therefore I choose to believe it based on existing evidence. But even if Azar claims he did everything he could as HHS, he neither went public with this info to sound the alarm when Trump refused, nor did he resign in protest. I looked for anything in the news from Azar from Jan 1-22 and found only this that was relevant. Oh, and Trump yelling at Azar Jan 17th for not doing enough to lower drug prices. Nothing about Azar screaming for help, nothing about Azar resigning until a full year later Jan 16th 2021. So he can claim he did all he could, but that's a lie. Just like Barr, honestly.

With 400,000 dead while Trump was in office (or was it higher?) Trump's proven inactions killed more Americans than nearly any natural disaster in US history, and any war other than the Civil War. I'm saying the "dead last" place for Trump is warranted.

By the way, people flocked to fill out this survey. In 2017 they had 91 responces, this time it was 142. Historians and professors in history were lining up to answer this. Gee, I wonder why. The survey's website gives scores for everyone, but I don't see a lot of written explanations from the responses so I don't have any quotes. Just the results of an army of professional, qualified experts who said that Trump was equally as bad as Franklin Pierce, slavery advocate in 1853 to 1857.

[pathora44]

CSPAN has done a survey since 2000 involving a bunch of US Presidential historians to rate the at-the-time former Presidents of the US, in order, using a numerical scale on multiple factors such as "Economic Management" and "Administrative Skills".

Since Trump is now a former, he's on the list. In position #41.

"Who was #40?"

William Henry Harrison.

"...didn't he die like a month into his tenure?"

Yes.

"Ouch."

Trump's final score was 312, tied with Franklin Pierce. (Lincoln, untouchably #1, has a 897. Obama is #10 with 664)

"He got the tax cut for the rich passed. Surely his Econominc Management result was high."

I mean, it was one of his better scores. He ranked 34th in that one.

"But the man could lead a crowd, sometimes even into a murderous insurrection. Did he get any credit for that?"

Public Persuasion was his best showing. He came in 32nd.

"Well at least he didn't come in dead last."

He did in Moral Authority and Administrative Skills. No big surprise to the man who blew off COVID while being impeached the first time.

"Wait, he didn't bl--"

Trump said, 'yeah, okay' and hung up the phone when his health secretary warned him about the coronavirus in January 2020, a new book says

"Wait, what?"



Now I know we've all heard this story before: after a big disaster, we get info about the people who mentioned it beforehand. We saw it with the 9/11 planes, we are seeing it unfold in real time with the Florida building collapse, and this is just another one. People in charge likely hear tons of reports about problems or potential problems. We rarely hear about this kind of warning when nothing happens. But bear in mind the scope of this one, plus the fact that Trump hired Azar for exactly this reason. There is a differnce between some random guy saying "I heard your brakes squeaking, you might want to check them out" versus your mechanic saying "You're out of brake fluid, you can't stop your car, for the love of God please let me fix it before you try to drive home". Trump ignored his mechanic, pulled onto I-95 in rush hour, and caused a massive pileup.

And we'll never know if Trump hung up because
1) Xi had already told him this wasn't a problem, and Trump believed him
2) Trump was still angry at Azar for banning flavored ecigs, which apparently he was yelling at Azar for during that same phone call
3) Trump wanted some alone time and just didn't want to do his job that day
4) It was over 140 characters and Trump lost interest
None of these are redeeming options.

I'm sure Azar wants to be the 1,475th person to claim "I was the only one in the White House to bla bla bla" and escape from having Trump's Shitshow ruin his legacy. Considering how many times I cited what Trump said on Jan 22, this claimed behavior from Trump seems 100% on brand, and therefore I choose to believe it based on existing evidence. But even if Azar claims he did everything he could as HHS, he neither went public with this info to sound the alarm when Trump refused, nor did he resign in protest. I looked for anything in the news from Azar from Jan 1-22 and found only this that was relevant. Oh, and Trump yelling at Azar Jan 17th for not doing enough to lower drug prices. Nothing about Azar screaming for help, nothing about Azar resigning until a full year later Jan 16th 2021. So he can claim he did all he could, but that's a lie. Just like Barr, honestly.

With 400,000 dead while Trump was in office (or was it higher?) Trump's proven inactions killed more Americans than nearly any natural disaster in US history, and any war other than the Civil War. I'm saying the "dead last" place for Trump is warranted.

By the way, people flocked to fill out this survey. In 2017 they had 91 responces, this time it was 142. Historians and professors in history were lining up to answer this. Gee, I wonder why. The survey's website gives scores for everyone, but I don't see a lot of written explanations from the responses so I don't have any quotes. Just the results of an army of professional, qualified experts who said that Trump was equally as bad as Franklin Pierce, slavery advocate in 1853 to 1857.

Trump totally deserves to be in the bottom 5, I also completely agree with the top 5 as pretty perfect but you know what surprises me? Why in the hell is Ronald Reagan so damn high, they said he was the 9th best president at Crisis Leadership? The bastard allowed the aids epidemic to ravage the entire country and refused to do anything for years even though community leaders were begging for help from the CDC and the Federal government. In fact beyond not doing anything they allowed their inaction to turn into further discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community as the so called carriers of the disease. That should push Reagan to at least the 30's if not to the bottom of the list in that catagory. Plus not to add the man should have been imprisoned for treason by illegally selling weapons to Iran in order to pay for death squads in Nicaraguans. Finally while Reagan didn't create the trickle-down economic plan he did basically ushered it into the mainstream and it has been nothing but a blight upon America ever since.

[ati87]

How fucking far down the drain does the US has to go before its okey to acknowledge that having a two party system of which one is dedicated to North Korean cult mentaltity is nuts. Where is the old reasonable (in perspective) GOP?
Jeeses christ get a fucking grip already. What the hell is wrong with your country.

Fact that the GOP still calls themselves "the party of lincoln" kind of tells you how far you have to go to be seen as reasonable.

[Breccia]

Why in the hell is Ronald Reagan so damn high, they said he was the 9th best president at Crisis Leadership?

Reagan is often given credit for winning the Cold War. People actually believed Reagan would use nukes. Nobody believed that about Carter, Bush, the other Bush, Obama, or Biden. They might believe Trump would have used them, but probably on Georgia.

"The country or the state?"

Yes.

[TSLM]

They might believe Trump would have used them, but probably on Georgia.

Or on a hurricane.

[Breccia]

Once again, it's time for Guess the Speaker!

Imagine having the empty soul of Greg Abbott to be able to sit there and smile like an idiot while this lunatic talks about his cognitive test like it was a freaking Mensa IQ test and not a means to see if he is losing his mind because everyone thought he was.

"Ah, someone from when Trump said person, man, woman, camera, TV. You shouldn't post things from a year ago unless they're still rel--"

Trump was bragging about the test again when he was in Texas yesterday. The above quote is from the Lincoln Project, basically, and it's a solid point that needs to be brought up because the QAnon Shaman likely took a very similar test for very similar reasons.

The NYTimes article from back when Trump took the test spells it out.

The president said on Fox News that he had to remember those words as part of a test that he said demonstrated his mental acuity. But the test, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, is meant to detect signs of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or other conditions.

Trump bragging about passing, or acing, the test means one of two things:
1) He honestly thinks it's an intelligence test, or
2) He knows it isn't, and is lying to his followers about it

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment is meant to test for signs of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or other conditions, but the president talked about it on Fox News on Wednesday night as if he had aced an IQ test proving his intelligence. Experts said that reflected a misunderstanding about the purpose and value of the exam.

“It is good that he has a good score, and it’s very good that he has a higher than average score, so this is reassuring in terms of cognitive dysfunction,” Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, the neurologist who created the test, said in an interview. “It obviously does not measure whether a person is fit to be president.”

Dr. Nasreddine said about 10 percent of those in their 70s get a perfect score of 30, but it is meant to detect fading capacity, not intelligence. For those suffering from a degenerative condition, summoning the word for elephant when shown a drawing of it can be frustratingly difficult, and Dr. Nasreddine expressed concern that the mockery the president had experienced might discourage patients from taking the test.

The NYTimes article also goes on to point out

• In the first interview where Trump bragged about the test, he could not stay in a coherent sentence
• And there's still a question on if he meant the test his doctor said he'd passed years ago, or a new test, because he said it was the previous year and not two
• Trump suggested injesting bleach
• Trump suggested coronavirus tests increased the amount of coronavirus

And that was just in that article. We've seen plenty.

Trump also, both at the time and yesterday, has challenged Biden on the issue. Yesterday he suggested Biden would get two or three out of thirty. Because that's how Trump, and other conspiracy theorists, work. They create a scenario in which there is no evidence and likely to be no evidence, then proclaim loudly that the lack of evidence proves they are correct. He did it with Obama's birth certificate and Clinton's "stroke". And his followers believed him.

I say the same logic should apply to Trump.

Remember, we really only have Trump's word that he aced the test, and that the doctors were blown away by it. Trump has used "some guy you've never met told me..." over and over to spread lies while feigning deniability if caught. Trump's test, which we did not see, is therefore suspect.

I call upon all our resident Trump supporters, yes you hiding in your bunkers we know where you are, to pick one of these options:
1) Because we have not seen Biden's or Trump's test results, we deserve to see them both, and not just take their word that they passed it.
2) We don't need to see the test scores at all, because they mean nothing.

If the test means something, as Trump brags that it does and demands Biden take the same test, then we deserve to see Trump's actual results. Or, if Trump's test result doesn't mean anything so we don't need to see it, then neither does Biden's.

Pick one. Failure to choose will be deemed hypocrisy, because Trump supporters back Trump (by definition) unless they say otherwise.

- - - Updated - - -

Weaselberg peacefully surrenders.

[Ivanstone]

With 400,000 dead while Trump was in office (or was it higher?) Trump's proven inactions killed more Americans than nearly any natural disaster in US history, and any war other than the Civil War. I'm saying the "dead last" place for Trump is warranted.

The Spanish Flu might've killed upwards of 850 000 Americans. The US didn't handle it well either.

[beanman12345]

Weaselberg peacefully surrenders.

Enron part deux.

[Breccia]

The Spanish Flu might've killed upwards of 850 000 Americans. The US didn't handle it well either.

The CDC puts it at 675,000 including an unexpected number of 20-40 year olds, so yes, that was beyond tragedy into "holy shit" territory. And of course this was 100 years ago so it was a higher proportion too.

I will point out, however, the CDC also says this:

With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.

I will also point out, that the CDC says the Spanish Flu killed about 50 million worldwide, and 675,000 of them American. That's a little over one percent. Look at the death toll worldwide of COVID, and the percent of them Americans. Worldometers says 4 million dead now, 400,000 of them Trump's. That's ten percent. Trump is worse by an order of magnitude.

Does Woodrow Wilson and his WH get some blame about handling this? Of course. He was in charge. While I am pointing out that times and tech were different, I'm not trying to absolve him at all. It was a dark period of world/American health and a massive tragedy. Some historians believe that Wilson also downplayed the virus, and that he caught it himself and nearly died, so the parallels are obvious and Wilson's not getting a pass from me. (C-SPAN ranked him 11 in Crisis Management because, well, World War One kind of padded his numbers there)

But 100 years and change later, and we see Trump fighting these very same methods that Wilson got Americans to rely on, to save their own and each other's lives. Their world-vs-USA percentages show the difference. Trump deserves every hit to his effectiveness that COVID demonstrated he had. Whether you blame him or not, Wilson was caught by surprise. Trump has no such excuse. Azar tried to warn him, directly, personally.

There's an old saying, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...if your country gets devastated by a lethal outbreak you should learn from it and be better prepared for the next one.

Please don't take this post as an attack on you or your post. In fact, part of why this reply is so long, is because I looked into it and said "holy shit, that was a lot worse than I remember". Yes, the Spanish Flu was a monster. This history professor seems to 100% agree with you, for example.

Dr. Keith Lyon is a History Professor at Beaufort Community College. He said, “Think how many doctors with so much expertise and so much knowledge weren’t able to anticipate this because of the lack of information that they got.”

Lyon said, "President Trump’s fear was that by giving out information, he might damage the economy. The lack of information ended up doing more damage. By not doing that, the situation was worse when it manifested, and had a tremendous effect on the stock market and the economy anyway.”

WWI is kind of a grey area, but if I had to choose which was worse, lying about a lethal outbreak to help preserve a world war effort or lying about a lethal outbreak to help preserve money, you can probably guess which I'd pick.

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

I won't stop you from saying "fuck Wilson", and if I had enough research time I might even join you. But I'm still convinced Trump was worse, and he was worse with the benefit of hindsight, medical tech, and better help. And he was worse, for a worse reason, and on purpose.

[Shadowferal]

I won't stop you from saying "fuck Wilson", and if I had enough research time I might even join you. But I'm still convinced Trump was worse, and he was worse with the benefit of hindsight, medical tech, and better help. And he was worse, for a worse reason, and on purpose.

S'okay... Plenty of other reasons to say "fuck Wilson."

[Templar 331]

Supreme Court sides with Arizona on voting restrictions

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...9b2?li=BBnb7Kz

The justices split 6-3 along ideological lines, with the Republican-appointed majority concluding that disparate impacts on minority groups would typically not be enough to render voting rules illegal under the act.

It's shit like this that makes me fear the possibility of another Republican held government. If fucking over minorities from voting isn't a violation of the Voting Right's Act then WTF is? That was the ENTIRE POINT OF THE LAW!!

[beanman12345]

Supreme Court sides with Arizona on voting restrictions

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...9b2?li=BBnb7Kz



It's shit like this that makes me fear the possibility of another Republican held government. If fucking over minorities from voting isn't a violation of the Voting Right's Act then WTF is? That was the ENTIRE POINT OF THE LAW!!

That's the key word, since the law is basically dead now with this ruling. They've weakened it to the point that it's untenable with all the bills being passed at the state level.

[Fugus]

That's the key word, since the law is basically dead now with this ruling. They've weakened it to the point that it's untenable with all the bills being passed at the state level.

And with their shit, I REALLY see things getting REALLY violent in the next few years. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. And this isn't even about a revolution, just the ability to vote.