The Trump Presidency

[smartcooky]

Doctor Oz apparently believes we can open the schools with no more danger than a 2-3% mortality rate!

That's 1 to 2 dead children/teachers per classroom.

In a grade school of 500 students, that's 10 to 15 dead children/teachers.

In a university like Georgetown that's 90 to 140 dead students/lecturers.

And the Doctor thinks this is OK?

[Von_Smith]

Doctor Oz apparently believes we can open the schools with no more danger than a 2-3% mortality rate!

That's 1 to 2 dead children/teachers per classroom.

In a grade school of 500 students, that's 10 to 15 dead children/teachers.

In a university like Georgetown that's 90 to 140 dead students/lecturers.

And the Doctor thinks this is OK?

"Studies" have shown that green coffee is high in zinc and hydrochloroquine.  I'm sure it'll be fine.

ETA:  Sorry if that's in bad taste.  Snarkiness and black humor is part of how I process this sort of crap.

[Bryanpoprobson]

The man is insane..

[Bryanpoprobson]

[LunarOrbit]

The man is insane..

Yep.

[JayUtah]

Is the President's reference to the 2nd Amendment really what I think it is?  It's being interpreted as suggesting armed rebellion, but has Trump said anything about what he might have meant instead?

As for the rest of it, it looks like he's encouraging the citizens of states whose governors he doesn't like to rebel against the orders of those governors.  It's one thing to urge political opposition to elected leaders via the social and political mechanisms, and another thing altogether -- sedition -- to incite disobedience.  And I supposed this has arisen because someone Trump trusts has convinced him he really doesn't have the authority as President to overrule them.  And it does no good to speculate about what laws the President may have broken or what consequences there can be for his actions, because the parts of the government that the GOP controls (save one Senator) have shown no intention of opposing him in the ways the U.S. Constitution provides for, if only to save themselves from embarrassment.

That's what baffles me.  Donald Trump's incompetence and instability have been on display long before Day One.  It should hardly surprise us anymore.  But not every Republican is as bat-crap crazy or as nefarious as Trump.  I keep asking myself at what point the rest of the party will say "Enough is enough."  I'm more than surprised to discover that this point hasn't yet been reached.  If not now, then at what point?  Peter B's post is spot-on.  America -- specifically, elected American officials, the wealthy, and the powerful -- seem to believe that any and all outrageous behavior on their part is sustainable because the institutions of the nation will somehow kick in and prevent any actual disaster, or at least insulate them from its effect.  They seem to consider it an infinitely exploitable system.  These institutions have an effect only insofar as the people they affect respect and uphold them.  Instead, people today are behaving as if there is some ineffable something about America that will magically prevent it from becoming no different than a banana republic and having all the problems that entails.

[Zakalwe]

I'm not sure if he's actively calling for civil war in the US, or if he's so terminally unaware that he's only focused on the November re-election. Either which way, what he is doing is incredibly dangerous given the powder-box mentalities of a lot of the US.

Putin's investment in Trump just keeps on returning paying dividends, doesn't it?

[Zakalwe]

Is the President's reference to the 2nd Amendment really what I think it is?  It's being interpreted as suggesting armed rebellion, but has Trump said anything about what he might have meant instead?

Like all bully boys his words leave enough wriggle room for the unhinged to interpret them whichever way they want and at the same time not specific enough so anyone can point the finger at Trump and nail him for it. Add to that that the man appears increasingly mentally compromised so he may not understand the impact of his words. He might just see all those MAGA hats and think that there's a group that he can motivate.

How the GOP can stand and not only ignore this dangerous buffoon's actions but actively enable them is beyond me. America is going to pay a heavy heavy price for Trump's failure to act against coronavirus and COVID-19.

[JayUtah]

I concluded long ago that Donald Trump quite literally does not care about anyone except himself.  He indulges others only to the extent he can exploit them for his own ends.  He sees the world only in terms of winners and losers, and in order for him to win in any way that has meaning to him, there has to be a clear loser.  In terms of good government, this means that the concept of compromise in favor of a greater good simply is not in his wheelhouse.  The only compromise he will entertain is the illusion of one where he sees a personal win at the end of it.  But the winner-loser mentality means he is skilled at creating the impression of losers.  And he's holding the GOP hostage by threatening to do that to its members by turning their electorate against them.  It's been the case in electoral politics for a number of years that you often succeeded only by endorsement from the highest elected official in your party you could access.  It likely never occurred to anyone that this could one day be a person so utterly unhinged from reality.  But it's too late to change that system.  That's my naive view of the world, anyway.  I don't profess to be a political scientist.

[gillianren]

It's funny how they all believe an out-of-control pandemic won't be damaging to the economy.

[Obviousman]

America is going to pay a heavy heavy price for Trump's failure to act against coronavirus and COVID-19.

Absolutely - the US is going to have to face second wave deaths that will make the first wave look like the odd few sick people.

Trump should be apportioned a large slice of the blame, with his incompetence and megalomania merging with complete disregard for human life, and actually encouraging people to break quarantine. On the other hand, there seems to be a significant number of people who actually believe him or hoax theories that have been floated. Is it schadenfreude to savor the irony that some of those same people will die from their own stupidity?

I still cannot understand why someone has not tried to knock off Trump; it could even be seen as justified!

[JayUtah]

I'm sure plenty have tried.  All Presidents are threatened, and this one seems to be a magnet for hostility.  My cousin is a Secret Service agent.  The question, "How can you protect that awful so-and-so?" is the most asked.  When he was doing protective details, he made it very plain that the moral character, personal habits, or public policy position of the protectee are of absolutely no concern.  If a threat is successfully carried out on the protectee, they have failed professionally.  Full stop.  It seems hard to see these days, but there still are people whose commitment to their sworn obligations transcends everything else.

[Ranb]

Is the President's reference to the 2nd Amendment really what I think it is?  It's being interpreted as suggesting armed rebellion, but has Trump said anything about what he might have meant instead?

Trump goes back and forth like a clock pendulum on gun rights.  The Trump administration has required the seizure or destruction (or perhaps hiding) of more privately owned firearms than any other administration since FDR.

He is so often incoherent that I have given up trying to listen to him live and usually only read transcripts of what he says.

[Ranb]

Is it schadenfreude to savor the irony that some of those same people will die from their own stupidity?

I hope it is not.

[Peter B]

I'm not sure if he's actively calling for civil war in the US, or if he's so terminally unaware that he's only focused on the November re-election. Either which way, what he is doing is incredibly dangerous given the powder-box mentalities of a lot of the US.

Putin's investment in Trump just keeps on returning paying dividends, doesn't it?

Certainly appears to be. Though my impression is that Putin has been playing a much longer game than just Trump.

Back in the mid-1990s I remember having the impression that the senior American military leadership couldn't get over the end of the Cold War, and obsessed that Russia was as much of a threat as the USSR had ever been; by contrast to me Russia appeared to be in complete chaos and no threat to anyone.

But my impression has changed the longer Putin has remained in power. He seems determined to ruin the USA by whatever means possible, as revenge for the perceived humiliation of the USSR. And as Russia isn't anywhere close to a military threat to the USA he's using other time-honoured Russian techniques such as misinformation and misdirection and the employment of Useful Idiots. The classic example I remember is how Russian hackers used Facebook to organise competing protests at the same time and place in a city in the USA. And as an article pointed out a year or so ago, a room full of government hackers is cheaper than a single high-tech military aircraft. It's also more easily deniable and able to be applied to a much wider range of projects.

World War Two introduced people to the idea of Total Warfare. The Cold War introduced people to the idea of nuclear armageddon and proxy wars. This is just a new type of Cold War with even less direct military conflict, but there's certainly conflict happening. I'm just not sure many Americans realise the extent of it.

The frustrating thing about it is that it's hardly in Russia's best long-term interests to fixate on the USA. China is playing an even longer game than Russia, and it's going to be of little use to Russia to have fatally weakened the USA when China turns its attention on Russia.