Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Machismo]

if Trump is a *low functioning* sociopath, he shouldn't have any charisma or remotely possess the ability to earn genuine loyalty from other people.

Are you saying you only support high-functioning sociopaths like Hitler?

[Belize]

if Trump is a *low functioning* sociopath, he shouldn't have any charisma or remotely possess the ability to earn genuine loyalty from other people.

Oh, Trump isn't the only low functioning part of the Republican party right now.

there's at least 74,223,744 others.

[cubby]

Mar-a-Lago neighbours try to block Trump's permanent move.

And this is only the start of massive legal troubles Trump is rushing into as his eminent eviction approaches.

[Elegiac]

Mar-a-Lago neighbours try to block Trump's permanent move.

And this is only the start of massive legal troubles Trump is rushing into as his eminent eviction approaches.

Hmmm doesn't this technically mean Trump committed election fraud since he voted as a Florida resident when he's not actually a permanent resident as admitted by this suit?

[cubby]

Hmmm doesn't this technically mean Trump committed election fraud since he voted as a Florida resident when he's not actually a permanent resident as admitted by this suit?

It certainly seems that way. Unfortunately, those charges would come from the state, and (fuck) florida has no compunctions about being a drooling slave to the whims of Dipshit-in-Chief.

But man wouldn't it be hysterical if someone, anyone, could bring those charges up against him.

[Elegiac]

It certainly seems that way. Unfortunately, those charges would come from the state, and (fuck) florida has no compunctions about being a drooling slave to the whims of Dipshit-in-Chief.

But man wouldn't it be hysterical if someone, anyone, could bring those charges up against him.

Nah what I mean is that we should be starting a hairbrained effort to have Florida's electoral votes thrown out because of this clear and present case of voter fraud.

[Breccia]

Mar-a-Lago neighbours try to block Trump's permanent move

We've talked about this before, just not in that level of detail.

Trump signed a contract with the local municipality. NOBODY can permanently live there. And the locals hold all the power. If he breaks the contract, they can just shut off his hotel license. BOOM. Problem resolved.

[pathora44]

We've talked about this before, just not in that level of detail.

Trump signed a contract with the local municipality. NOBODY can permanently live there. And the locals hold all the power. If he breaks the contract, they can just shut off his hotel license. BOOM. Problem resolved.

Don't be surprised if DeSantis top tier Trump 'cuck' get his fellow cronies in the Florida legislature to pass something that allows Trump to do whatever he wants.

[Edge-]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...trategy-446408

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD," then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

"Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…" Alexander added.

Presented without further comment.

[pathora44]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...trategy-446408



Presented without further comment.

Spoken like a: a complete sociopath, b: a fucking idiot who doesn't know what they are talking, about or c: both a and b. It really doesn't matter what you choose because all answers fit pretty aptly for a member of the Trumplican party.

[PhaelixWW]

Welp, it was inevitable; the Trump Administration is keeping a spreadsheet of pardon requests. In other (non-)news, Trump is a petulant man-child.

CNN: 'It's turned crazy': Inside the scramble for Trump pardons

President Donald Trump may not be willing to accept his term is ending, but as the clock ticks down on his time in office, hundreds of his allies -- including some of his closest business associates and many high-profile criminals -- are ramping up their efforts to squeeze out the final ounces of his presidential power.

Since Trump lost the election six weeks ago, calls and emails have been flooding into the West Wing from people looking to benefit from the President's powers of clemency. So inundated is Trump's staff with requests for pardons or commutations that a spreadsheet has been created to keep track of the requests directed to Trump's close aides.

Trump, who refuses to acknowledge his loss and who officials say is devolving further into denial, has nonetheless been eager to engage on who is requesting what. He's been handed case summaries to review and, in some instances, has polled his network of associates about whom he should pardon.

With the end of his presidency nearing, Trump appears eager to wield his powers before he finds them gone. Unlike practically any other matter related to the end of his presidency, his clemency powers are a topic Trump actually seems to enjoy discussing, one person in communication with the President said, even though it amounts to another tacit reminder that his tenure at the White House is nearly over.

That's a stark contrast with how Trump has responded to another, smaller effort also ramping up as Inauguration Day approaches: an effort to convince Trump to accept the election results.

The Electoral College's affirmation of President-elect Joe Biden's win this week did not appear enough to shake Trump from his delusions of victory, but it is adding urgency to a push by several of his advisers to gently steer Trump toward reality. Several of his closest allies have urged him to move on from his efforts to contest the election and begin planning his post-White House political future -- including a potential 2024 run.

Yet even amid the intractable movement of the transition and the hurried lame-duck activity -- some of which he is participating in himself -- Trump is steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that he lost.

In his moments of deepest denial, Trump has told some advisers that he will refuse to leave the White House on Inauguration Day, only to be walked down from that ledge. The possibility has alarmed some aides, but few believe Trump will actually follow through.

"He's throwing a f***ing temper tantrum," an adviser said. "He's going to leave. He's just lashing out."

The White House declined to comment for this report.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Biden as the president-elect for the first time, and commenced an effort to prevent Republicans from waging a last-ditch effort to overturn the will of voters -- even as Trump encourages that effort and shuts down any talk of leaving the White House. Overnight, Trump lashed out at McConnell.

"People are angry!" he tweeted, linking to an article about his allies criticizing the Republican leader for his move.

Yet even amid his delusions, Trump is behaving like a president in winter: abandoning the principal responsibilities of his job as he looks for ways to reward loyalists while he still can.


Pardon push
Nowhere is the end of Trump's term more obvious than in the push for pardons.

"It's turned crazy," one person familiar with the efforts said. "There's a lot of activity."

Because Trump has shown little interest in using the Justice Department's Pardon Attorney system for assessing requests for executive clemency, petitioners are approaching the White House directly, calling or emailing senior adviser Jared Kushner, chief of staff Mark Meadows or White House counsel Pat Cipollone -- when they can't get ahold of Trump himself.

"Everyone assumed there's no formal process and they should reach out to the administration directly," the person said. "Everyone hopes they have a friend of a friend of a friend of a cousin who they hope will get them to read their email."

If there is a governing principle in who appears most likely to secure clemency, it is someone the President either knows personally or who has powerful connections lobbying on their behalf. At least one person working on behalf of clients seeking pardons said they hoped their loyalty to Trump over the past four years would pay off now.

As it happens, Trump is mulling the pardons at a juncture when loyalty appears his principal concern, complaining repeatedly over the past weeks that Republicans are deserting him when he needed them to help overturn the election results.

He has largely frozen out those advisers and associates who do not seem on the same page. One person who used to speak to Trump regularly, but who delicately encouraged him to soften his post-election stance, no longer has his calls returned and hasn't heard from Trump in weeks.

In all, the President is considering pardons for more than two dozen people in his orbit whom he believes were targeted -- or could be targeted in the future -- for political ends. That's in addition to hundreds of requests from others who have approached the White House directly, and tens of thousands more whose petitions are pending at the Justice Department.

This week, Alice Johnson and Duke Tanner -- whose prison sentences Trump commuted earlier in his term — were at the White House to petition for additional acts of clemency, according to a tweet from Tanner. Johnson's commutation in 2018 came after personal lobbying from Kim Kardashian West, yet this week a similar effort by Kardashian West to secure clemency for a federal death row inmate, Brandon Bernard, was unsuccessful.

Instead, Trump has focused more on those within his own circle, including Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser whom he pardoned last month.

Another name among the many under consideration for clemency: Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, who has come under scrutiny by investigators for his role in hush money payments.

As of this week, officials said a preemptive pardon for Trump himself has also not been ruled out.


Digging in
Efforts to convince Trump to accept his loss have run up against a President who seems to be increasingly entrenched in his denial of Biden's win, egged on by advisers like Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis who are misleading Trump about the extent of voting irregularities and the prospects of a reversal.

While Trump had begun to privately accept the reality that he lost the election late last month, advisers say Trump has now reversed and dug in deeper -- not only spreading misinformation about the election, but ingesting it himself.

"He's been fed so much misinformation that I think he actually thinks this thing was stolen from him," a Trump adviser said of the President.

Despite his interest in pardons, almost all of Trump's energy over the past six weeks has been spent mulling his loss and devising ways to contest it. When he is not phoning Republican lawmakers to assess their willingness to help him overturn the election results, he is busy devising ways to exact revenge on those he believes abandoned him, including the Republican governors of Arizona and Georgia; hosts and executives at Fox News; certain members of Congress; and key members of his Cabinet, including outgoing Attorney General William Barr.

After it emerged in The Wall Street Journal that Barr had worked to prevent a federal probe into Hunter Biden's finances from becoming public before the election, Trump began raising again the prospect of firing him over the weekend.

The President also began asking whether he could appoint special counsels to investigate Hunter Biden and Trump's baseless allegations of voter fraud, according to a person familiar with the matter, a step Barr is believed to oppose.

Cipollone, who is close with Barr, ultimately helped to arrange a meeting between the two men at the White House on Monday that resulted in a cordial exchange ending with Barr submitting his resignation.

Trump tweeted Barr's resignation letter 23 minutes after the Electoral College officially tipped in Biden's favor. As he has previously on days filled with particularly bad news -- including after the Supreme Court denied his efforts to invalidate votes -- Trump declined to appear at his own Christmas party, held one floor below his residence in the White House.


Avoiding the topic
Inside the White House, on the rare occasion that talk turns to Inauguration Day or life post-January 20, Trump all but shuts down. He has made clear to staff in recent days that he has no desire to discuss whether or not he'll attend Biden's swearing-in and has largely shut down any conversations about leaving office, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions. Because of that, the President's senior aides have been reluctant to bring it up with him.

People close to Trump continue to regard it as highly unlikely that the outgoing president will attend Biden's inauguration. "He won't," one adviser said of the current thinking inside Trump's circle of allies.

Six weeks after Election Day, Trump has spent more than half of his days with no public appearances, showing little interest in the daily work of being president. In all, there have been 20 days with no public events at all listed on Trump's schedule in the weeks since Election Day, and zero intelligence briefings. He's held 13 public appearances open to the press, conducted a single on-camera interview, and taken questions from reporters on only two occasions. By contrast, he has spent nine days on his golf course.

Over the weekend, when he escaped Washington for only the second time since Election Day to attend the Army-Navy game, Trump remained as fixated as ever on his electoral loss. Driving in heavy fog from the airport to the West Point campus, Trump issued a tweet complaining about Georgia's Republican governor.

Once there, Trump didn't even stay until halftime, returning to his plane after taping an interview with Fox News.

[Breccia]

Don't be surprised if DeSantis top tier Trump 'cuck' get his fellow cronies in the Florida legislature to pass something that allows Trump to do whatever he wants.

I would be, it's a local restriction, not state. DeSantis can't touch it.

- - - Updated - - -

"He's throwing a f***ing temper tantrum," an adviser said.

The Trump Tenure, ladies and gentlemen.

I'd love to hear what our resident Trump supporters think of this behavior. Except they're all hiding too.

[Edge-]

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/16/pom...of-a-pandemic/

Pompeo hosts multiple indoor holiday parties. He was criticized for this plan beforehand and dismissed critics.

He's now isolating because at least one person he interacted with tested positive for the virus. He's canceled additional superspreader events.

He's got at least a few comorbidities, so he'd better hope he gets a clean bill of health.

[cubby]

Welp, it was inevitable; the Trump Administration is keeping a spreadsheet of pardon requests. In other (non-)news, Trump is a petulant man-child.

CNN: 'It's turned crazy': Inside the scramble for Trump pardons

Deplorable-in-Chief continues his normal schedule. God what a total shit-stain this guy is on the United States. Hopefully, his general incompetence at getting things done, along with his staff's inability to do things correctly, will result in a faux-hysterical stack of unsigned pardons that Biden can wipe his ass with on Jan 21.

- - - Updated - - -

Trump considering appointing a Special Counsel to investigate Hunter re income tax. Oh, the fucking irony.

I'm wondering how Special Counsels would transition to Biden. Could he just cancel it?

[Belize]

Welp, it was inevitable; the Trump Administration is keeping a spreadsheet of pardon requests. In other (non-)news, Trump is a petulant man-child.

CNN: 'It's turned crazy': Inside the scramble for Trump pardons

I really, really hope Trump decides to not leave the WH on Jan. 20th.

God please, reward us with Trump being physically dragged out against his will.

[Edge-]

I really, really hope Trump decides to not leave the WH on Jan. 20th.

God please, reward us with Trump being physically dragged out against his will.

I'm still on the Michael Cohen train on this. He's gonna go to Maralago over the holidays and simply not come back. It's pretty much the one thing I agree with Cohen on.

But damn if I don't desperately wish that Trump would do this though. I'd love to see him physically carried out of the White House on live TV.

- - - Updated - - -

Less than 10% of the invited people showed and one of them still had Covid.

It looks like he came into contact before last night. And I like the immediate next sentence -

Only "a couple dozen guests" actually showed up, according to ABC News, even though past gatherings have typically drawn crowds of 200 to 300 people.

Sounds like even if Pompeo is a massive idiot, at least most of the people he's inviting aren't complete lunatics?

[Ursus]

Apologies if this has been posted before: https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/16/us/fo...ent/index.html

A former Houston police captain was charged Tuesday with running a man off the road and pointing a gun to his head two weeks before the election as part of a baseless voter fraud conspiracy theory, the Harris County district attorney said in a statement.

Mark Anthony Aguirre, 63, was paid more than a quarter-million dollars by a Houston-based private citizens group investigating unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud claims, prosecutors said.

On October 16, Aguirre asked a lieutenant with the Texas Attorney General's Office to conduct a traffic stop to help with his investigation, according to a Houston Police affidavit obtained by CNN. When the idea was rejected, Aguirre said he would do it himself and "make a citizen's arrest," the affidavit says.

Three days later, Aguirre allegedly ran his SUV into the back of a man's truck, and when the man got out, Aguirre pointed a gun at him, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man's back -- an image captured by police body-camera when officers arrived, according to prosecutors.

Aguirre told authorities he had conducted surveillance on the man driving the truck for four days, according to the district attorney's news release. He said he suspected there were 750,000 fraudulent ballots inside the truck and that the man was "the mastermind of a giant (voter) fraud," the release states.

In fact, the victim was an "innocent and ordinary" air-conditioner repairman, prosecutors said. Responding authorities found no ballots inside the vehicle, only air conditioner parts and tools, prosecutors said.

After an investigation, Houston police said they found the allegations of election fraud "unfounded" and referred the case to the district attorney's office.

Aguirre was arrested Tuesday and is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said. He posted $30,000 bond on Tuesday afternoon and is out of jail, according to Harris County court records.

What a fucking fool. Everybody knows the Dummycrats are using ice cream trucks to transport the fraudulent ballots, not air conditioner repair trucks.

[Edge-]

https://www.wspa.com/news/national/c...-trump-casino/

One of President Donald Trump’s former Atlantic City casinos will be blown up next month, and for the right amount of money, you could be the one to press the button that brings it down.

The demolition of the former Trump Plaza casino will become a fundraiser to benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City that the mayor hopes will raise in excess of $1 million.

Opened in 1984, the casino was closed in 2014 and has fallen into such a state of disrepair that demolition work began earlier this year.

The remainder of the structure will be dynamited on Jan. 29.

Fuck man...that's tempting even if I know I don't have the cash to win. In part because I've always wanted to blow up a building, and in part because it's a failed Trump casino. And the money is going towards a good cause, to boot.

[Breccia]

Could he just cancel it?

No, special counsel is ridiculously hard to cancel. But there's nothing to find, so who cares?

- - - Updated - - -

Less than 10% of the invited people showed

Sounds like a Trump rally to me.

[Benggaul]

No, special counsel is ridiculously hard to cancel. But there's nothing to find, so who cares?

My only gripe with it is that the resources could be better used elsewhere. I'm sure there's a crime family somewhere that needs investigating...
*cough*