The Trump Presidency

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

To be fair, the Democrats once voted in a dead man, back in 2000.

Dead Man Running was a plot in The West Wing.

He's a poor man's idea of a rich man, a stupid man's idea of a smart man, and a weak man's idea of a strong man. 

He's the anti-Bartlet.

[Obviousman]

The fact that some people not just voted for this man but actually support him makes me want some type of entrance exam for voting.

"I'm sorry Sir but you are too stupid to vote".

[Zakalwe]

Do not underestimate the strong undercurrents of fascism in the US.  It's always been there (Henry Ford thought Hitler was a swell guy), but it's been steadily growing over the decades as more and more people realize that being white, Christian, and male is no longer sufficient for being the guy in charge.  Mediocre white men have been losing positions of power and economic superiority to women and minorities, and that's Just Not Right. 

Then you have the crime-has-never-been-higher, brown-people-are-coming-to-murder-us-in-our-sleep bedwetters, who are the kind of people whom Ben Franklin was talking about when he said, "those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."  These are the people who are just fine with the kind of wanton brutality Joe Arpaio and David Clarke subjected their inmates to. 

Way too many Americans want a strong daddy figure to make all the scary monsters go away, and for some incomprehensible reason they have decided that's Trump.  He's a poor man's idea of a rich man, a stupid man's idea of a smart man, and a weak man's idea of a strong man. 

A divided government will slow him down, but he still has the Senate to approve his appointments and any further SCOTUS nominees (pray to whatever gods you believe in that RBG doesn't kick before 2020).  The last few months have shown us that there aren't that many built-in legal protections against a President going apeshit (yes, there's the 25th amendment, but that requires the VP and a majority of the Cabinet to sign off, and if they're all loyalists, they won't).  The only thing that stopped previous Presidents from wrecking the whole system was a sense of shame.

This is simultaneously the most comprehensively sensible and terrifying piece that I have read on the current state of affairs in a long time.

[gillianren]

The fact that some people not just voted for this man but actually support him makes me want some type of entrance exam for voting.

"I'm sorry Sir but you are too stupid to vote".

The problem with that is that it is all too often used as a way to prevent minorities from voting.  Now, a test for candidates, I can support!

[Obviousman]

The fact that some people not just voted for this man but actually support him makes me want some type of entrance exam for voting.

"I'm sorry Sir but you are too stupid to vote".

The problem with that is that it is all too often used as a way to prevent minorities from voting.  Now, a test for candidates, I can support!

Yeah i know. Even the best of intentions will (not can) be corrupted and used to unfairly discriminate against some group or another.

It was just a small Utopia moment for me.....

[molesworth]

I was saddened, although not too surprised, to read that Trump decided not to go to the Armistice Remembrance at the main US War Grave site in France, because it was raining, and sent his deputies instead.  He seems totally disconnected from reality, and completely lacking in any understanding of the historical context or importance of the occasion.

He also tweeted that he was "...getting ready to celebrate the end of World War One.".  "Celebrate"?!?!  Words fail me...

[jfb]

I was saddened, although not too surprised, to read that Trump decided not to go to the Armistice Remembrance at the main US War Grave site in France, because it was raining, and sent his deputies instead.  He seems totally disconnected from reality, and completely lacking in any understanding of the historical context or importance of the occasion.

He also tweeted that he was "...getting ready to celebrate the end of World War One.".  "Celebrate"?!?!  Words fail me...

It's not that he's disconnected from anything - he just doesn't care.  Seriously.  Trump being disconnected from reality would be an improvement on the current state of affairs. 

Everybody needs to remember, he wasn't supposed to win.  He was supposed to lose ungraciously and continually question the legitimacy of a Clinton presidency. 

And everybody also needs to remember he's not the problem, he's merely a symptom of the problem.  The problem is that we Americans are a bunch of infantile whiny crybabies who expect things to always go our way because we say so, and when they don't we can pitch a blue-lipped fit to rival any two-year-old.  Trump is the American id made real. 

[ka9q]

Not only do Americans sometimes elect dead candidates, they also elect ones already indicted for felonies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_D._Hunter

All he had to do was to label his opponent (who had a conveniently foreign-sounding name) as a terrorist...

[Glom]

Wasn't Jack Swigert a case of dead man elected?

[LunarOrbit]

He died after the election but before being sworn in. Whether or not the voters knew he was dying at the time of the election, I don't know.

[Bryanpoprobson]

[jfb]

We may be reaching an endgame here.

Between the Buzzfeed report that Trump personally directed Cohen to lie to Congress in his testimony about the Moscow Tower project and the news that that White House leaked travel plans for a Congressional delegation to Afghanistan, we're reaching a point where the House pretty much has to start impeachment proceedings.  Suborning perjury is part of what got Nixon, and leaking sensitive data (which can get people killed) as a spite move should instantly disqualify anyone from holding an office that has anything to do with security. 

I'm sure Pelosi et al. would prefer to wait until Mueller releases his report, but we've reached a point where they shouldn't need it to justify starting the process.  Granted, the Senate would never vote to remove him from office; too many Republicans are either similarly compromised (along with at least a couple of Democrats) or willing to put party unity ahead of literally everything else. But that shouldn't prevent the House from laying out the case. 

We've known he was unfit for office from day 1.  We've always suspected he was a security risk, and that case has been getting stronger with each new revelation.  The emoluments case is also bubbling in the background, so we may hit the trifecta of Treason, Bribery, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors. 

[Echnaton]

Not that Trump won't get impeached over this or something else.  But is one of those things that may not make the grade.  Trump says so many offhand comments that no serious person takes seriously, it is still a stretch to me that this rises to the level of suborning to perjury. We'll have to see what this really is beyond two anonymous "federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter," on a less that scrupulous new site.

However it plays into a mosaic of misconduct theory that might be enough for the Democrats to start impeachment process.  It's anyone's guess if it will be enough for the Senate to find him guilty. 

I used to think that we'd be better off let Trump run out his four years. I thought that the cult of personality surrounding him would be best left without a martyr or cause to rally around. But now I'm not sure it would be.  It would really be great if he would just do us all a favor and keel over.

[raven]

I used to think that we'd be better off let Trump run out his four years. I thought that the cult of personality surrounding him would be best left without a martyr or cause to rally around. But now I'm not sure it would be.  It would really be great if he would just do us all a favor and keel over.

Pence may not be quite as embarrassing in a very easily mockable way,  but his religious conservatism, in my opinion, is no doubt behind many of Trump's more outright bigoted moves. I'd rather not see him as President. VP is bad enough!

[Peter B]

Personally I think attempting to impeach Trump any time in the foreseeable future would be a bad idea, for at least three reasons:

1. He's still extremely popular with voters across large sections of the USA. The swing against Trump and the Republicans in the mid-term elections was modest, and there are still plenty who buy into his version of populism. Any attempt to remove him would mobilise supporters across the country as he goes on a Twitter bender.

2. There's no realistic prospect that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to get rid of him. Republican Senators would only need to see how much voter support Trump has to know that voting him out of office would see the end of their own careers, and the Tea Party pretty much take over the Republican Party.

3. Removing Trump would make Pence the President. On the grounds that it's better to be led by a scoundrel than a fanatic, I think a lot of Democrats might look back fondly on a Trump Presidency in comparison with Pence. Based on an article I've read in the "New Yorker" magazine, Pence is a dangerously ambitious Christian extremist who is pretty much in the pocket of the Koch brothers.

The article suggested that research funded by the Koch brothers confirmed that populist anger with the wealthy elite of the USA (of which the Koch brothers are notable examples) is a major force on both sides of American politics, but the intriguing part of the article was the suggestion that the Koch brothers were attempting to co-opt that populism for their own ends. Thus, the ironic situation that Republican populists voting for Trump are effectively supporting a shadowy political movement controlled by the very people they despise, and which is determined to act for the benefit of that elite, not the populists who voted for them.

In this regard I can see some similarities between Trump and, of all people, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela: Chavez gained power because of his ability to mobilise the masses with promises of improving their circumstances, but was maintained in power by a rich elite who had no intention of giving up their wealth to help the poor, and when the poor complained about Chavez's failure to deliver on his promises he simply blamed the middle class (and the USA). Likewise, sadly, I can see people continuing to vote for Trump even as his administration makes life tougher for them while the elite get richer, and Trump will get away with it by blaming Democrats and the Chinese.

What's the solution? I don't know. Maybe the Democrats need to embrace Bernie Sanders's style of Democrat populism.

But in the meantime, let Mueller get on with his work and concentrate on creating an optimistic alternative to Trump.