Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Acidbaron]

I'm not blaming the victim, I'm confused at why he did it in the first place. We've all heard horror stories about North Korea and what they do to criminals there, so why would you commit a crime there? It's like knowing there's a dangerous, crime heavy neighborhood that's well known by everyone for muggings, murders, and worse and going for a late night stroll through it alone. Why would you do that?

You are assuming there was a crime in the first place. And by assuming that you assume that NK has a fair court system.

[Breccia]

You are assuming there was a crime in the first place. And by assuming that you assume that NK has a fair court system.

It's still beyond that.

The guy is accused of stealing a poster. Even if that was 100% true, he was punished by being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, thrown in jail for 17 months, then shortly after his release was arranged being beaten into a coma, during which he died, then having NK lie and say "he had botulism". (He didn't have botulism)

If a parent picking up their kid jaywalks in a 20MPH school zone, and someone runs them over at 120MPH and flees the scene, you don't say "the parent shouldn't have jaywalked". And you sure as hell don't say "I have great warmth for the driver and I take their word they were watching the road".

Related: Both Graham and Schumer defended Trump on walking away from North Korea within an hour of each other. Because sometimes leaving with nothing is a better result than what everyone expects you to do.

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Does Kasich even represent the current GOP anymore?

No, and that'd be the point. Having him go into the primaries with any realistic point would be the GOP's admission their party, as it stands, is broken, and needs to be redesigned. Kasich could do such.

[Zaktar]

"I know, this idea is still young and undeveloped," Moore didn't say but I'm pretending he did, "but that just makes me more attracted to it."

JFC you monster... is what I would be saying if I hadn't spit my drink out laughing.

I'm not blaming the victim, I'm confused at why he did it in the first place. We've all heard horror stories about North Korea and what they do to criminals there, so why would you commit a crime there? It's like knowing there's a dangerous, crime heavy neighborhood that's well known by everyone for muggings, murders, and worse and going for a late night stroll through it alone. Why would you do that?

If we assume he did it, which we shouldn't, is it really hard to imagine that a 22 year old did something extremely risky for very little gain? Maybe you weren't that kind of 22 year old, but most of the rest of us were. And wondering about it does open the door for blaming him, "how could he be so stupid?" No. How could they be so cruel.

[The Stormbringer]

You are assuming there was a crime in the first place. And by assuming that you assume that NK has a fair court system.

I KNOW THAT NK DOESN'T HAVE A FAIR COURT SYSTEM! That's why I know you should never even think about committing any crimes there, or doing anything that could be misconstrued as a crime! They're untrustworthy as fuck and completely bug-nuts insane! I never would've gone there to begin with.

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JFC you monster... is what I would be saying if I hadn't spit my drink out laughing.

If we assume he did it, which we shouldn't, is it really hard to imagine that a 22 year old did something extremely risky for very little gain? Maybe you weren't that kind of 22 year old, but most of the rest of us were. And wondering about it does open the door for blaming him, "how could he be so stupid?" No. How could they be so cruel.

We know they're cruel. We've seen the fucking travesties, heard the stories from people who managed to escape, and in general know when they're hiding shit. I'm not blaming the kid, I think it's fucked up, wrong, and most likely illegal what happened to him, but I dearly wish to know what was going through his head.

[Acidbaron]

I KNOW THAT NK DOESN'T HAVE A FAIR COURT SYSTEM! That's why I know you should never even think about committing any crimes there, or doing anything that could be misconstrued as a crime! They're untrustworthy as fuck and completely bug-nuts insane! I never would've gone there to begin with.

I don't agree with the idea that people should just stay away, if people stay away we would have no information out of NK other than what the state there wants us to see.

And in that light i find blaming the victim to be rather misplaced.

[The Stormbringer]

I don't agree with the idea that people should just stay away, if people stay away we would have no information out of NK other than what the state there wants us to see.

And in that light i find blaming the victim to be rather misplaced.

By reporters who know what they're doing and are very careful, sure. By random people touring the madhouse? That's just asking for trouble. This goes way beyond stupid things like, "Well she shouldn't have dressed so provocatively!" and right into, "What was he thinking, willingly going into the middle of that gang's HQ and asking to look around?"

[ati87]

I don't agree with the idea that people should just stay away, if people stay away we would have no information out of NK other than what the state there wants us to see.

And in that light i find blaming the victim to be rather misplaced.

Only thing people do see is what the North Korean state wants you to see. You can't really walk around free when your visiting.

[Zaktar]

By reporters who know what they're doing and are very careful, sure. By random people touring the madhouse? That's just asking for trouble. This goes way beyond stupid things like, "Well she shouldn't have dressed so provocatively!" and right into, "What was he thinking, willingly going into the middle of that gang's HQ and asking to look around?"

The point is, it's not a question worth a lot of energy because a) it may well not have happened and b) people, especially teens-early 20s people, do insanely risky things for little-no reward on a daily basis. Many of them end up dead. "What were they thinking?" None of us know, it doesn't really matter, and it's the wrong question to focus on in this case.

[Edge-]

https://twitter.com/sambrodey/status...522139648?s=19

Whew! People he was only being a racist when he was campaigning.

"I have an excuse for being racist, I was trying to appeal to a racist voterbase at the time but I'm not really a racist!"

For fucks sake, the lack of awareness from Republicans continues to amaze me.

[Mekkle]

And Duterte. And Xi. And I'm sure we're forgetting a few others.

Benito Mussolini

[Vermented]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-n...-idUSKCN1QG2BZ

So much transparency

Almost unconstitutional. I realy don't get it that this is accepted from a US politician.

[Breccia]

The NYTimes reports that Trump ordered R. Kelly to give Kushner his security clearance in 2018 after he failed multiple times and got downgraded in 2017.

When --

"John Kelly. The Chief of Staff."

Damn, I keep getting all those Trump fans confused. When John Kelly was given the order, he filed it with the date, and therefore contradicts Trump's claim that he had nothing to do with Kushner getting special treatment in this context.

When What He Meant Was was confronted with the story today, she just fucking gave up and refused to comment. It's been a hard week for her.

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Who knew disarming North Korea could be so difficult?

Apparently, everyone. As this NBC News article points out, "Trump's North Korea summit was doomed from the start"

What happens when you hold a summit without doing your homework, and after ignoring warnings from your own intelligence chiefs that Kim Jong Un would never give up his nuclear weapons?

Your summit falls apart, as President Donald Trump's did early Thursday morning. The outcome suggests that the biggest mistake made by the president and his top advisers was agreeing to the meeting with the North Korean leader in the first place.

Fucking ouch.

After last year's meeting in Singapore, which at times appeared more like a buddy movie than a serious nuclear disarmament negotiation, Trump was widely criticized for saying "there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."

He left it to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to nail down Kim's vaguely worded promise to denuclearize. But the past eight months have been frustrating for the secretary of state: On one fruitless trip to Pyongyang last July, Pompeo was snubbed by Kim, who refused to see him; and shortly after Pompeo left Pyongyang, the North Korean foreign ministry excoriated him for what it called "gangster-like tactics."

There are also plenty of signs that Trump has been relying excessively on his budding "bromance" with Kim, rather than the real hard slog of nuts-and-bolts arms negotiations by his team.

Last September, he told a rally in West Virginia that Kim "wrote me beautiful letters, and they're great letters. We fell in love." Visitors to the Oval Office say the president has shown off Kim's letters as testimony to his pride in the emerging relationship.

In fact, there were plenty of warnings that what some were calling the "pen-pal summit" was doomed before it got underway. As the administration's special representative for North Korea, Steve Biegun, told an audience at Stanford University on Jan. 31, "before the process of denuclearization can be final, we must also have a complete understanding of the full extent of the North Korean weapons of mass destruction missile programs."

But 10 days earlier, on Jan. 21, NBC News had reported that North Korea was expanding its weapons programs with as many as 20 undisclosed missile sites.

Yeah, I know, I bolded half the text. There's a lot of emphasis.

Now the author does say, at the end, that failure here is not proof there will never be progress. He points to Reagan/Gorbachev as a parallel. And he probably has a point. Thing is, Reagan had a proven success rate leading into 1986. Trump does not have a proven success rate going into 2019. Not only has he routinely doubled down on mistakes in the past, he's facing issues ranging the spectrum from faltering economic growth, his Shutdown, increasing investigations into Team Trump and no Wall in sight. There's also the issue of rapid staff turnover, which can't possibly help.

[Belize]

Benito Mussolini

And the Blue Meanie. Coboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie.

[Mekkle]

And the Blue Meanie. Coboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie.

I'm proud of you.

[Edge-]

So Matt Gaetz sure seems to be enjoying his spotlight recently after attempting to intimidate Cohen before his testimony, threatening his family in the process.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/pol...226861944.html

Democrats are calling for Labor Secretary Alex Acosta’s resignation. Republicans support an internal investigation into Acosta’s role in a controversial plea deal for multimillionaire sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein in 2008.

But Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of President Donald Trump’s biggest defenders in Congress, is taking a different approach.

In an interview with the Miami Herald on Wednesday, Gaetz said reexamining Acosta’s handling of Epstein’s case, which came under increased scrutiny after the Herald’s three-part series Perversion of Justice, sets a “dangerous” precedent for prosecutors. A federal judge ruled last week that prosecutors run by Acosta, then the U.S. attorney for South Florida, broke the law when they failed to inform Epstein’s underge victims of the plea agreement. The judge gave federal prosecutors 15 days to confer with Epstein’s victims and their attorneys to come up with a resolution

“I don’t know what I don’t know and certainly if there is ever an indication of misconduct, that has to be thoroughly reviewed, but I think it’s a dangerous thing to go back and second-guess decisions that prosecutors have to make in real time,” Gaetz said. “I’m deeply troubled by Mr. Epstein’s actions, I think that he certainly should have faced a far stiffer consequence than he did, but having tried cases I know that it’s hard to go back and sort of second-guess the risk analysis that goes into putting witnesses before a jury and subjecting them to cross examination.”

Please ignore that a judge literally just found that Acosta violated the law in withholding information from the victims.

Man, what's with Republican officials and cozying up to pedophiles?

[Breccia]

Clinton's UN Ambassador says the idea that Kim didn't know about the US student that was beaten to death in prison "inconceivable".

There was another former UN Ambassador who also contradicted Trump. It was Nikki Haley.

By the way, did we bring up Trump brought the kid's parents to the SotU and said "you are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength inspires us all"? Because this seems like he's kinda reversing course.

[Adam Jensen]

And the Blue Meanie. Coboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie.

They came out of nowhere lightning fast and kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass.

God I haven't heard that in years.

[Masark]

"you are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength inspires us all"?

So the menace is Republicanism?

[Fincayra]

Clinton's UN Ambassador says the idea that Kim didn't know about the US student that was beaten to death in prison "inconceivable".

There was another former UN Ambassador who also contradicted Trump. It was Nikki Haley.

By the way, did we bring up Trump brought the kid's parents to the SotU and said "you are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength inspires us all"? Because this seems like he's kinda reversing course.

yeah, the chances that Un didn't know about this, let alone was the one who authorized torturing a confession out of him, is slim to none.

Trump's optics of this situation are incredibly bad, and it's pretty mind boggling that he's blind to it. I understand that he's wanting to bring home an iron clad peace deal no matter the cost, but this kid's family has to see this and live with the fact that the President officially is on record being in Un's corner. Despicable. Everything else about this situation is forgettable to forgivable, but the deal with this kid is just amazing. I feel so sorry for Otto's family.

[Breccia]

Trump's optics of this situation are incredibly bad

There's a pretty good chance Trump is acting, pushing a PR angle to try to sell the deal. Granted, he can't go back on his word now, Trump never does that, he'd have to admit he was wrong.