Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Edge-]

Tbf, it wasn’t actual rehab. He was just out there denying he’s a racist while also admitting he’s spent nearly 2 years working with a professional to remove n***** from his vocabulary.

...2 years? I gotta wonder how much he pays the guy, because I could do it for far less and achieve his goal in a fraction of the time.

And I have delivered results before. Buddy in highschool used to routinely use it pretty casually as a expletive (at least he wasn't malicious about it), I started hitting him in the arm hard every time he did (even when he was driving) and increased the force as time progressed. I think we worked together to kick that bad habit and remove it from his vocabulary in in a semester. And I did that shit for free.

[cubby]

But we know that Trump is cash-poor. And at this point utterly unable to raise funds from any reputable lender. And quite possibly any lender FULL STOP. So it wouldn't be his channel, it would be somebody else's, started with someone else's money, with Trumps name on it. Which means what money Trump actually makes out of it would come down to how good his contract lawyers are, compared to the contract lawyers of an actual real billionaire and genuinely successful businessman.

Bottom line; if this happens, Trump will get a pittance out of it in cash terms, but he'll get a weekly (nightly?) show where he can rant to his followers. Then it will be interesting whether snippets of his word-salads get anyone that tries to post it banned from the various social media sites.

I have to disagree.

Trump doesn't need a lot of personal money to grab hold of a communications network. Donnie Dumb Dumb Jr and the Trump Organization already acquired a stake in OANN, although I'm not sure how far they will take it. But Trump can use cash-on-hand to grab a majority stake, and then write up the manager's agreement to reflect whatever profit share he wants. There are plenty of idiots with cash who will give it to Trump.

After the agreement is in effect, Trump can write up an addendum (or include it in the original agreement) that any subscription based earnings are his. It would be that easy. And Trump does one thing well - he hires (or at least has in the past) good attorneys. Probably a lesson from his father.

[Paranoid Android]

In a Tweet praising Gov. Greg Abbott for his leadership, Rep. Madison Cawthorn says Twitter won't let him send Tweet praising Gov. Greg Abbott for his leadership.

No this is not from The Onion.

[Edge-]

In a Tweet praising Gov. Greg Abbott for his leadership, Rep. Madison Cawthorn says Twitter won't let him send Tweet praising Gov. Greg Abbott for his leadership.

No this is not from The Onion.

I genuinely think that he may be a serious contender for, "Biggest douche with the most punchable face in Congress."

[Breccia]

Trump makes plans to run in 2024 without Pence

UPDATE: Trump and RNC at odds about whether the RNC can use Trump's name.

His name.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) on Monday dismissed a cease-and-desist letter from former President Trump’s attorneys, arguing that the GOP campaign arm has the right to use Trump’s name in its fundraising efforts.

The letter from RNC chief counsel Justin Riemer says the GOP “has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech, and it will continue to do so in pursuit of these common goals.”

The letter was sent to Alex Cannon, the counsel for Trump’s Save America PAC, which sent a cease-and-desist letter to the RNC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee over the weekend demanding the groups stop using Trump’s name in their fundraising appeals.

That letter said the RNC and the congressional campaign arms must “immediately cease and desist the unauthorized use of President Donald J. Trump’s name, image and/or likeness in all fundraising, persuasion, and/or issue speech.”

But this was somehow okay.

That move comes amid tensions between Trump and GOP leaders in Congress after 10 House Republicans and seven Senate Republicans voted to impeach him.

The former president has vowed to retaliate against the Republicans he views as insufficiently loyal.

Trump and his allies have built up a considerable grassroots fundraising machine, and the former president’s name is a valuable asset for his PACs and across the GOP campaign committees.

Many suspected that Trump would cut off the NRSC to spite Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has urged the party to move on from Trump.

But Trump’s broad cease-and-desist letter, which would impact allies such as RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), suggests a broader effort by Trump to exert control over the party.

The RNC's letter notes the “close” relationship between Trump and McDaniel and contends that Trump personally approved the RNC’s use of his name for fundraising, including for the upcoming donor retreat in Palm Beach, Fla., where Trump is expected to speak.

“The RNC is grateful for the past and continued support President Trump has given to the committee and it looks forward to working with him to elect Republicans across the country,” Riemer wrote.

There are two options (maybe more):

1) Trump is attempting to wrestle some kind of leverage to say "I don't support all Republicans because some are not Party of Trump members" while the RNC is saying "You ran with our party, we get to remind people of their 90+% voted-with-Trump record". You might think thisi s a civil war. Those D&D players out there will call this the "Blood War" instead. Trump wants to have big rallies (spending other people's money) to hear his name chanted over and over, and the RNC wants to keep his base. Meanwhile, the RNC knows Trump was a destructive influence who might go to jail, and Trump wants revenge on anyone who dared vote their conscience over pledging their soul to him. Meanwhile $1,400 checks are going out to peiple struggling and/or dying due to Trump's pandeic, and neither Trump nor a single Republican signed them.

Or!

2) Trump is broke, and has only one thing left to sell: his brand. Desperate for funds before he gets Deutsched right in the Bank, he has only two groups left willing to hand him money for doing no work:
a) the rabid fanbase, who are busy being too sick from COVID to freeze to death, or
b) the RNC, who wants the rabid fanbase to send them money/vote for their candidates.

Aside from that slice of OANN they apparently got, Trump has no marketability. Public sources mostly shun or disparage him and he's still banned from Facebook, Twitter, and Golden Corral ("All you can eat" is a slogan, not a legally-binding contract). While he may yet get something up and running, time is doing him any favors -- and not just because his wife is past the usual Trump expiration date. We've seen the headlines. We know a reckoning is coming, as in "I reckon you owe us hundreds of millions of dollars".

Then, while watching MSNBC NBC FOX News TMZ, his tiny greasy hands shoved into a bag of Doritos up to the elbow, Trump sees the golden idol wheeled out onto the RNC's altar. And the guy who made it (*cough* in China *cough*) asking $100,000 for it.

Seriously, check the timeline. It matches up nearly perfectly.

So, which is it? Evil turning on itself, or Trump needing enough cash to actually pay a bill for once? Or is there a third option?

[bladeXcrasher]

In a Tweet praising Gov. Greg Abbott for his leadership, Rep. Madison Cawthorn says Twitter won't let him send Tweet praising Gov. Greg Abbott for his leadership.

No this is not from The Onion.

I feel like these aren't the best people. LOL

[Edge-]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-...a=twitter_page

So who's buying stocks while working on legislation during a pandemic, and then failing to report those purchases?

Dan Crenshaw.

Shocking.

Granted we're looking at much smaller amounts compared to the likes of Loeffler etc. ($30-120K vs millions), but it's yet more ammo for the argument that lawmakers, and their spouses, should be banned from trading stocks while in office and only allowed to engage in the market via a blind trust, if at all.

[Benggaul]

Monday quick report:

Once again the numbers are pretty incredible. As in "not credible". Sundays and Mondays are always underreported drastically, but this time around it's worse than usual. Busy celebrating International Women's Day, I guess?

45,116 new cases; 788 deaths, bringing the total to 538,628. I'm expecting several corrections over the next couple days. We'll see how it shakes out.

Stay safe, folks.

[Paranoid Android]

Trump with a message and an explicit ask to send him money, and not other Republicans: https://t.co/R62agEjmLP

https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/...142542337?s=19
@Breccia. Possibly from the story above you posted.

So I wonder if this is the ultimate grift or Trump is having one of his tantrums.

Oh please be the grift, the long con where he actually tries to get as much money as he can. Also yes, he charges the Republicans every time they use name and likeness.

[szechuan]

Yet even more proof that the Right Wing is either ignorant or Racist.

[Breccia]

So I wonder if this is the ultimate grift or Trump is having one of his tantrums.

I wonder how the classic Republican Party feels about their choice to ally with Trump. I wonder if they feel they got a good deal.

[Bodakane]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/texas-...a=twitter_page

So who's buying stocks while working on legislation during a pandemic, and then failing to report those purchases?

Dan Crenshaw.

Shocking.

Granted we're looking at much smaller amounts compared to the likes of Loeffler etc. ($30-120K vs millions), but it's yet more ammo for the argument that lawmakers, and their spouses, should be banned from trading stocks while in office and only allowed to engage in the market via a blind trust, if at all.

I wonder how he could not see that as a problem......

[Masark]

Yet even more proof that the Right Wing is either ignorant or Racist.

/r/InclusiveOr

[solinari6]

It would be just terrible if Trump and Co. got clapped with racketeering charges.

I'm no expert on racketeering, but how could trump trying to get the Georgia SoS to find him votes be racketeering?

A racket, according to the current common and most general definition, is an organized criminal act or activity in which the criminal act or activity is some form of substantial business, or a way to earn illegal money either regularly, or briefly but repeatedly.

[Breccia]

The Texas attorney general’s office asked the Legislature for $43 million to pay the outside counsels for Google lawsuit.

UPDATE (kinda): Twitter sues Texas attorney general over investigation into content moderation practices

I hope Paxton can find another $43 million!

The social media giant said in its filing that the investigation requested by Paxton was an abuse of his power and a retaliatory action over Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump from the platform, which was the former president’s preferred method of communication with his supporters.

“Twitter seeks to stop AG Paxton from unlawfully abusing his authority as the highest law-enforcement officer of the State of Texas to intimidate, harass, and target Twitter in retaliation for Twitter’s exercise of its First Amendment rights,” the company wrote.


On Jan. 13, five days after the company suspended Trump in light of the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol, Paxton announced he was launching an investigation into the content moderation policies at Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Apple.

“First Amendment rights and transparency must be maintained for a free online community to operate and thrive,” he said in a statement at the time. “However, the seemingly coordinated de-platforming of the President of the United States and several leading voices not only chills free speech, it wholly silences those whose speech and political beliefs do not align with leaders of Big Tech companies.”

In its filing, however, Twitter maintained that First Amendment protections guaranteed the company’s ability to decide what was permissible on its platform, as well as what to remove or restrict. Cooperating with the state’s request for “volumes of highly confidential documents” related to content moderation, the company said, would undermine the effectiveness of Twitter’s policies and compromise its abilities to carry out such moderation.

The company said it tried to work out an agreement with the Texas attorney general to limit the scope of his office’s request, which sought all of the company’s policies, but the two parties were not able to do so.

“Instead, AG Paxton made clear that he will use the full weight of his office, including his expansive investigatory powers, to retaliate against Twitter for having made editorial decisions with which he disagrees,” the company said.

Trump has always made it a point to use his money and power to crush people who were doing the right thing, such as "asking to be paid". I guess they can't be mad when the same thing happens to them. I'm also interested to see how this plays out. Maybe I'm biased, but I'm fairly sure that Twitter was enforcing its terms of service which Trump signed. Meanwhile, I've yet to see which law Twitter actually broke -- Twitter is not capable of breaking the First Amendment.

[Shadowferal]

I'm no expert on racketeering, but how could trump trying to get the Georgia SoS to find him votes be racketeering?

In the link he provided;

"It’s not a stretch to see where she’s taking this,” said Cathy Cox, the dean of Mercer University’s law school in Macon, Georgia and a former Georgia secretary of state. “If Donald Trump engaged in two or more acts that involve false statements - that were made knowingly and willfully in an attempt to falsify material fact, like the election results - then you can piece together a violation of the racketeering act.”

Racketeering, a felony in Georgia, can carry stiff penalties including up to 20 years in prison and a hefty fine. “There are not a lot of people who avoid serving prison time on a racketeering offense,” said Cox. .

[Breccia]

Racketeering, a felony in Georgia

I'm willing to bet it's a felony everywhere else, too. Not sure if the journalist was trying to imply something or not.

[Verdugo]

“There are not a lot of people who avoid serving prison time on a racketeering offense,” said Cox. .[/i]

That implies that there are some that manage to do just that.

[Belize]

That implies that there are some that manage to do just that.

You can do whatever you want with enough money.

[solinari6]

https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia...le-2/16-10-20/

Ok, that's pretty crazy:

upon conviction thereof, be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000.00 or by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than five years, or both.

$1000 fine OR 1 to 5 years in jail. LOL ... Seems like a lot of wiggle room for a conservative judge to just sweep this away.