The Trump Presidency

[gillianren]

Honestly?  I think that Richard Nixon, for all his failings, still wanted what was best for the country, and Trump wants what's best for Trump.  Yes, Nixon saw "what's best for the country" through the eyes of it probably also being what was best for Richard Nixon, but he also legitimately thought hippies and so forth were bad for the country.  After all, Vietnam wasn't about power for Nixon.

[Glom]

So let's recap. The election was about a woman running on a campaign of vote me just coz, expecting to walk it against a buffoonish outsider who has said all sorts of reprehensible things and acted in all sorts of reprehensible ways but is able to overperform expectations by putting forward a bunch of outlandish populist policies that can strike a chord despite being hugely expensive, pointless and quite often counterproductive.

Why does this sound so familiar?

It's like the world is stuck on repeat.

[Obviousman]

Scathing, searing and brutal were just a few of the adjectives flying around social media on Sunday following an eloquent takedown of Donald Trump by ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) political editor Chris Uhlmann.

Speaking to Insiders from Hamburg, Uhlmann delivered a wrap on the G20 summit that has since gone viral, resonating with people from around the world and astonishing American political commentators.

https://twitter.com/InsidersABC/status/883829926993862656/video/1

[ka9q]

Yup. Brutal and dead on target. Especially the bit about pushing fast forward on the decline of the United States.

[Obviousman]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/trump-removes-anthony-scaramucci-as-communications-director-just-days-after-hiring-him-20170731-gxmnb0.html

Seriously - impeach President Trump before he actually does something that will kill people.

[Zakalwe]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/trump-removes-anthony-scaramucci-as-communications-director-just-days-after-hiring-him-20170731-gxmnb0.html

Seriously - impeach President Trump before he actually does something that will kill people.

To be fair, that was Kelly showing everyone that a new gunslinger is in town. Scaramucci* did say that he was a front-stabber. I guess he didn't expect that he was the one to be stabbed though.


*will he do the fandango?

[sandopan]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/trump-removes-anthony-scaramucci-as-communications-director-just-days-after-hiring-him-20170731-gxmnb0.html

Seriously - impeach President Trump before he actually does something that will kill people.

Trump has already killed quite a lot of people, if we take the radical, extremist view that Africans and Asians count as people.  His immediate predecessor killed many thousands, and the one before that had a truly impressive body count.  Had the November 2016 election gone the other way, the new US president would have come into office on day one with quite a long trail of dead bodies already behind her.  Whether Trump manages to send more people to their graves than his two predecessors or his election rival, time will tell, although I don't see a whole lot of reason to expect him to show any more restraint than they did.

None of them were impeached, before or after killing large numbers of Africans or Asians who are sometimes alleged to be people.  I’ll be surprised if that changes any time soon.

[sandopan]

To be fair, isn't he the oldest of the lot?

Yeah, but he has been known to brag about how physically fit he is.

Sent from my SM-N920W8 using Tapatalk

He's possibly more fit than William Howard Taft was.

[twik]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/trump-removes-anthony-scaramucci-as-communications-director-just-days-after-hiring-him-20170731-gxmnb0.html

Seriously - impeach President Trump before he actually does something that will kill people.

Trump has already killed quite a lot of people, if we take the radical, extremist view that Africans and Asians count as people.  His immediate predecessor killed many thousands, and the one before that had a truly impressive body count.  Had the November 2016 election gone the other way, the new US president would have come into office on day one with quite a long trail of dead bodies already behind her.  Whether Trump manages to send more people to their graves than his two predecessors or his election rival, time will tell, although I don't see a whole lot of reason to expect him to show any more restraint than they did.

None of them were impeached, before or after killing large numbers of Africans or Asians who are sometimes alleged to be people.  I’ll be surprised if that changes any time soon.

Do you think that the leaders of any powerful country with military presence have never contributed to the death of anyone?

There's no one out there with clean hands. No one.

[gillianren]

He's possibly more fit than William Howard Taft was.

Though Taft, to my knowledge, didn't claim that the human body had a finite amount of energy and that exercise was bad for you.

[gillianren]

Oh, and regarding Scaramucci, because of when his official start date at the White House is listed, served I believe -16 days, which has to be some kind of record.

[Glom]

What a name. That'll play great in the movie.

[sandopan]

Do you think that the leaders of any powerful country with military presence have never contributed to the death of anyone?

There's no one out there with clean hands. No one.

There are lots of countries out there which have not openly declared that they are at war with an ill-defined enemy and that the entire world is a battlefield, so that everyone is a combatant, and may be killed at will.  In fact, to the best of my knowledge, only one country has done that.

Quite a lot of countries have not engaged in aggressive military action for many years, in some cases, centuries.  One country seems to have trouble refraining from doing so for five minutes.

But, some of the people alluded to in my post don't seem to have gotten the "it's all business as usual" message, given the blistering denunciations they issue of foreign leaders who do a small fraction of what they do themselves.  The next time Putin invades someone else's territory, or Duterte conducts a bunch of extrajudicial killings, you can explain why it's all good.

On other fronts, much of the news in the US recently has been about allegations that some other country attempted to influence the election.  Those people don't seem to have gotten the message that it's all business as usual either.

[sandopan]

Seriously, if I were Hilary Clinton, I'd have my bags packed and a place to go with no extradition. Because I can see Trump reaching the conclusion that a good show trial is the best way to divert attention from his actions. I'm sure he remembers how popular the "lock her up" chants were at his rallies.

That seems like it would have been a good to thing to think about before she repeatedly voted in the senate to strengthen the government's ability to detain suspects indefinitely, or just assassinate them.  But I suppose she always figured she would be on the other side of that transaction.  Rather odd, because she is not stupid.  She generally opposed US membership in the ICC, which seems like a good idea for someone with her policies, who was hoping to become president in the same year that "aggression" became a defined crime under the Rome statute.  A bit surprising that she could anticipate the danger to herself in the one context, but completely miss it in the other.

However, I would give her the opposite advice, and tell her to stay in the US - she'll be much safer there, than in some country that might actually try her or send her to the ICC.  She is a spent force, no danger to the Trump presidency; if he wants a show trial, it will be someone who is currently in power and blocking him from achieving his objectives.  And if he just needs a general popularity plug, he can always do what she would have done, and go kill a few hundred thousand Muslims.

[jfb]

http://www.smh.com.au/world/trump-removes-anthony-scaramucci-as-communications-director-just-days-after-hiring-him-20170731-gxmnb0.html

Seriously - impeach President Trump before he actually does something that will kill people.

Here's the problem with that...

Congress (specifically the House) has to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President, and this particular Congress (or at the very least, Speaker Ryan) won't do that, even if Mueller discovers all kinds smoking guns regarding collusion, election fraud, etc.  The fact that Congress isn't batting an eye over President Trump wanting to fire Mueller speaks volumes (part of the reason President Nixon was impeached was for firing Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate break-in). 

Then again, this Congress is on pace for accomplishing absolutely dick-all in this entire session.  That will be a singular achievement on both Ryan's and McConnell's resumes. 

As someone else said, the scary thing isn't that President Trump's approval rating is so low, but that it's so high.  38% of Americans polled are perfectly happy with what he's doing, because what he's doing is pissing off liberals, intellectuals, the media, etc., and that's what they care about.  These are people who've been screwed, repeatedly, by both parties for the last few decades.  They've lost their voice, they've lost whatever power they had, their communities are dying, and their voting for Trump was basically primal scream therapy. 

President Trump didn't actually want to win - he didn't actually want the office.  He wanted to boost his brand, start a new TV network, something like that.  He's manifestly unqualified for the job, and he knows it, and he hates it - it shows. 

The only way President Trump is going to be removed from office is if he loses re-election in 2020 or if he kicks after one too many Trump Tower Taco Bowls.  Much as he hates the job, he won't resign.  He will not be impeached (there's no way we're turning over the House before 2020).  If he ran for re-election, I'm not sure he'd lose.  We have deep, systemic, intractable problems in the US that are not being addressed by either party, and the growing know-nothing movement is a response to that.  President Trump found a direct line into the lizard brain of a lot of voters and yanked on it as hard as he could.