US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[team filler]

[kingv]

You guy remember that story about trump having an illegitimate kid with the house keeper?

So AMI bought the rights to that one...

Like what kind of fuckery are we in for over the bed time 6 months.

[kingv]

You know it’s the real me because of the copious Uncorrected autocorrects.

[Nintex]

The next President if there is one will inherit an empty white house, have no plane, car or helicopter. When they open the treasury vault they will be greeted by a MAGA hat, a picture of Trump and Mnuchin, a DVD box of the apprentice and a bargain bin copy of the Lego Movie.
 

[benjipwns]

When they open the treasury vault they will be greeted by a MAGA hat, a picture of Trump and Mnuchin, a DVD box of the apprentice and a bargain bin copy of the Lego Movie.

So Trump's going to leave a surplus!

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/TarekFatah/status/1073485557139943424

Trump knew where Bin Laden was. Makes you wonder how long he has been time travelling working for Russian intelligence

[benjipwns]

Pretty much everybody assumed he was "probably in Pakistan" by then.

[Nintex]

I like how Trump thinks tall people can't hide and CNN thought it was a useful analysis

[kingv]

He sounded a lot more lucid back then.

Still racist af, but at least cognizant of what he is saying.

[Mandark]

Pretty much everybody assumed he was "probably in Pakistan" by then.

Yup, before that even. This was an issue in the 2008 campaign, with Obama saying he'd order troops into Pakistan to get Bin Laden if we had reliable intelligence and McCain criticizing him for it (and ultimately implying he'd do the same, but you're not meant to say it out loud).

[zomgee]

The Weekly Standard is ending publishing. Where will Benj get all his politcal opinions from now?

[Nintex]

Trump seems to be settling for the guy he can fat shame in public appearances
https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1073627178137513984

[HardcoreRetro]

It's pretty cool that they played Magic: The Gathering.

[Mandark]

I'd guess there's next to no chance of him being indicted while in office.

[Nintex]

Christie locked up Kushner's dad. So him being Chief of Staff would be lit af.

[VomKriege]

By the way I actually do think Trump is getting indicted.

The whole 'Justice Department isn't going to indict a sitting president' thing is fine, but.

I think for Trump they're gonna make an exception because the crimes may have influenced the election.

That's the key difference that would make them take that step.

If it were just some obstruction of justice thing he did, as president, I don't think they would.

It just doesn't make any sense for them to argue we're not gonna indict, because he's president, but he may not have been president if not for these crimes, and therefore ended up in the position of not being able to be indicted in the first place.

I guess we'll see.

2019 is going to be an absolutely bat shit insane year.

Any campaign finance violation "influences elections". The exceptionality isn't that strong and would get abused to hell and beyond.

I think you're (and every one of us) stuck with him until the end of his mandate (where a legal train will crash on him) unless the case gets so ridiculously overwhelming that Republicans will be forced to impeach.

[Nintex]

I would say it depends on how far the Russian collusion actually went.
At some point they might have to take him down for the sake of national security but that seems very unlikely.

The people who were committing the crimes(Cohen, Gates etc.) were simply laundering cash and handing out favors because they thought he would never be President.
Arranging hush money payments and mob like antics was nothing new in the Trumpverse.

It doesn't seem like anyone (including the Russians and his own campaign) planned for the scenario in which he would be elected. So they just took everyone's calls, cash and ran with it.
Outside of Manafort trying to put a line or two in the GOP platform to please the oligarchs he owed money to there isn't a 'smocking gun' of something the Trump admin did policy wise that was beneficial to Russia.

And god knows what the fuck the Russian "junior" spies were doing.
https://twitter.com/emzorbit/status/1073312795461079043

If there was any plan behind it all except for "LOL fuck Clinton and make some money bois" they would've probably tried to keep at least some of it secret.


Trump can claim he even tried to tell everyone that the election was rigged. Yet no one believed him. 

[Mandark]

I think the rule of thumb is that anything so extraordinary that the DoJ would indict a sitting president would also get him impeached.

Or flip it: the DoJ doesn't want to make the Republican party its enemy, so they'd wait until impeachment (or something giving equivalent political cover) before prosecuting Trump.

[CatsCatsCats]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/14/politics/mueller-grand-jury-mysterious-friday/index.html

Gonna need Nintex’s hot take

[Nintex]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/14/politics/mueller-grand-jury-mysterious-friday/index.html

Gonna need Nintex’s hot take

If you come for Cocaine Mitch you better not miss.

[Madrun Badrun]

https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1073640961870348288

[Trent Dole]

https://twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1073665542538608640

[kingv]

By the way I actually do think Trump is getting indicted.

The whole 'Justice Department isn't going to indict a sitting president' thing is fine, but.

I think for Trump they're gonna make an exception because the crimes may have influenced the election.

That's the key difference that would make them take that step.

If it were just some obstruction of justice thing he did, as president, I don't think they would.

It just doesn't make any sense for them to argue we're not gonna indict, because he's president, but he may not have been president if not for these crimes, and therefore ended up in the position of not being able to be indicted in the first place.

I guess we'll see.

2019 is going to be an absolutely bat shit insane year.

Any campaign finance violation "influences elections". The exceptionality isn't that strong and would get abused to hell and beyond.

I think you're (and every one of us) stuck with him until the end of his mandate (where a legal train will crash on him) unless the case gets so ridiculously overwhelming that Republicans will be forced to impeach.

I don’t think we are at the point yet where Republican will impeach, but I do think the writing is on the wall especially if he keeps bleeding support among his base.

Even though I think the Russia case continues to get stronger, I actually think it’s the money laundering and bribes that will get him. This inauguration stuff looks pretty bad and I don’t think he will survive a scandal where he laundered $25 million out of his inauguration committee to line his own pockets.

Doubly so if he actually was taking money from the Saudis as part of it.

One thing that is for certain is that this is as good as it gets for him in the next 2 years. In a month, the Democrats are just going to ass blast him with inquiries and hearings on a weekly basis and the entire White House will be on its back foot constantly. I think the fact that he can’t find a CoS is a recognition that the Bottom could drop out at any moment and maybe already is.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1073674954518847488

Very legal - very cool. I'm sure you'll 'win' George.

[kingv]

Does he have plan to move to east bumblefuckia?

He’s certainly not going to win in Chicago.

[team filler]

[Nintex]

Trump just named a new acting Chief of Staff
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1073703744766922754

Except Mick didn't know
https://twitter.com/jdawsey1/status/1073705029964623872

 

[Nintex]

THE PRESIDENT didn't piss his pants, what more do you people want from us? 
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1073706951354277889

[kingv]

There were a bunch of reports around the inauguration about how involved Trunp was with the planning.

Remember him fretting that they couldn’t get any good musical acts?

Nobody with any sense would believe that DJ Trump would be handsofff of an event that is there to celebrate him.

[agrajag]

Trump better hope he gets reelected for a second term, by the end of which he will be way old and may croak before the weight of the law comes crashing down on him.

[zomgee]

did anyone actually tell mick mulvaney he got the job or

[VomKriege]

By the way I actually do think Trump is getting indicted.

The whole 'Justice Department isn't going to indict a sitting president' thing is fine, but.

I think for Trump they're gonna make an exception because the crimes may have influenced the election.

That's the key difference that would make them take that step.

If it were just some obstruction of justice thing he did, as president, I don't think they would.

It just doesn't make any sense for them to argue we're not gonna indict, because he's president, but he may not have been president if not for these crimes, and therefore ended up in the position of not being able to be indicted in the first place.

I guess we'll see.

2019 is going to be an absolutely bat shit insane year.

Any campaign finance violation "influences elections". The exceptionality isn't that strong and would get abused to hell and beyond.

I'm not talking about that, but other stuff. Like collusion. If it's just campaign finance stuff, then no. But collusion and other much more serious shit, then yes.

I'm not sure it's all that different. If it happens, expect every campaign from now on to dig any sort of contact between candidates and any potential foreign lobbyist (such as any meeting between Demoncrats and famous Kenyan politician Obama). "May have influenced the election" is a fairly immaterial criterion. Not to downplay the blatant criminal behaviour of Trump but you just know no one will play fair. You at least have the possibility of impeachment on the table, flawed as it is.

[Nintex]

Zinke is also out

https://twitter.com/PhilipRucker/status/1073954500925378560

[Great Rumbler]

"We gotta get rid of this guy before the Democrats start opening investigations!"

[agrajag]

why can't they bring Zinke in to testify when he's out of office? Republicans did it with Comey. Or was that voluntary? What am I missing here?

[kingv]

I think they obviously will do that.

Or well, there’s so many things to investigate, who really knows.

I’m expecting this a Congress to have an insane amount of hearings in general.

[Nintex]

The new line for republicans who are asked about Cohen and all seems to be: "It wasn't me go ask the White House" and the White House replies with: "The President is doing a great job" followed by The President starting another dumpster fire.

Today yet another "angry tweet" day in Washington 

[Tripon]

The new line for republicans who are asked about Cohen and all seems to be: "It wasn't me go ask the White House" and the White House replies with: "The President is doing a great job" followed by The President starting another dumpster fire.

Today yet another "angry tweet" day in Washington 

The White House abdicating their tradtional role as spokesperson of the president is one of the things that surprised me. I know the people working in the White House can't control Trump, but I expected the opposite that Trump would basically remake the White House in his own image. Instead what happened is that White House staffers are just trying to hide in the corner. It's not even looking for their own interests, the White House staffers are acting like they have no idea why they're there, what their mission should be and what to accomplish.

[kingv]

Isn’t that kind of remaking the WH in his own image?

[Tripon]

https://twitter.com/jjoyce/status/1073640739861659648

 

[Nintex]

Walker is also Trump's top pick for Zinke's job. 

You think you've reached the bottom of the barrel yet? Son, you didn't even start scraping.

[Tripon]

Eh. Walker will take a cushy lobbying job that will pay him millions in the first year and not be threatened with investigations? He's going to wait until the next republican administration for a cabinet job, in my opinion.

[benjipwns]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/opinion/weekly-standard-closing-conservatism.html

I’ve only been around Phil Anschutz a few times. My impressions on those occasions was that he was a run-of-the-mill arrogant billionaire. He was used to people courting him and he addressed them condescendingly from the lofty height of his own wealth.

I’ve never met Ryan McKibben, who runs part of Anschutz’s media group. But stories about him have circulated around Washington over the years. The stories suggest that he is an ordinary corporate bureaucrat — with all the petty vanities and the lack of interest in ideas that go with the type.

This week, Anschutz and McKibbin murdered The Weekly Standard, the conservative opinion magazine that Anschutz owned. They didn’t merely close it because it was losing money. They seemed to have murdered it out of greed and vengeance.

If [The Weekly Standard] stood for anything, I would say it stood for this: that the good life consists of being an active citizen and caring passionately about politics; that it also consists of knowing something about Latin American fiction, ancient Greek culture and social impact of modern genetics; that it also consists of delighting in the latest good movies and TV shows, the best new cocktails and the casual pleasures of life.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Socrates
Downtown Verona. NJ4h ago
Nice to see you showing a pulse, Lord Brooks.

Look, if you're a conservative and don't blindly toe the Trump Titanic fascist line, then there's no place for you in 2018 Republican America, David.

Unless a magazine or journal can contribute Fox-Pravda-Sinclair-News-style predigested propaganda gruel to the Trumpistan masses, there's simply no place at the table for thoughtful polysyllabic essays and nuanced conservative discussion that the Weekly Standard provided.

Remember, the Republican Party is no longer a 'conservative' party and has not been one for some time now.

It's the party of Trump...the party of unvarnished white spite, white power, white supremacy, white victimhood, 'persecuted' Christians, xenophobia, isolationism, tyranny of the minority, voter suppression, voter file purges, stolen elections, rigged courts, oligarchy, corruption, rejection of the will of the people, cheating, gerrymandering on steroids, science denialism, massive deficit spending, hypocrisy, and the party that fundamentally rejects representative government.

The 2018 Republican party is a hothouse of intellectual, moral and economic bankruptcy that has as much room for thoughtful policy discussion and 'ideas' as St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital in Washington DC does.

The Weekly Standard should have bowed more obsequiously to the oligarchic right-wing and their Naked Emperor.

Differences of opinion and dissent are simply not welcome in the Trump Reich.

The Weekly Standard had to go.

207 Recommend

[close]

[benjipwns]

                                                                                                                                           

[Trent Dole]

What, no Martin O'Malley?

[kingv]

It will be Beto, such a high profile POC 

[agrajag]

Beto/Sanders 2020

 

[kingv]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1074313153679450113

This guy probably didn’t do any illegal shit.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1074313153679450113

This guy probably didn’t do any illegal shit.

Trump: "Why didn't they repeat watergate wtf"

 

[Phoenix Dark]

Beto having such high name ID in Iowa already suggests he's going to do well. I think Sanders support will be cut in half now that he's not the defacto anti-Hillary choice.

[agrajag]

I just hope whoever becomes the nominee, they pick their VP out of the other candidates, not a lame like Time Kaine who doesn't add anything to the ticket. It needs to be a coalition that attracts different demos. A combination of Beto = everyman charisma, good looks, young white male, Bernie bro, Kamala or Warren for feminists, etc. Booker for the POC vote, but Kamala covers that and the female angle, so she wins.

[kingv]

From what I know now, I think nominating Beto would be a mistake and I don’t plan to vote for him in the primary.

He just is sort of a not very accomplished political cipher that’s never won a competitive race.

One way to look at it is that he overperformed ina red state but the other way to look at it he lost against a terrible candidate. I’m not sure which one is more correct, but losing a Senate race is not something I lol at and say “gee, we should run that guy for President”

[kingv]

I just hope whoever becomes the nominee, they pick their VP out of the other candidates, not a lame like Time Kaine who doesn't add anything to the ticket. It needs to be a coalition that attracts different demos. A combination of Beto = everyman charisma, good looks, young white male, Bernie bro, Kamala or Warren for feminists, etc. Booker for the POC vote, but Kamala covers that and the female angle, so she wins.

How they picked Tim Kaine bewilders me. I suspect it’s because one speaks Spanish and his from VA so she figured it would shore up VA and help with the Latinx. But he is also a wet shirt and pro-life.

Imo Hillary would have been better served picking Bernie or someone that is very progressive but not actually Bernie, like Sherrod Brown.

[agrajag]

if she picked Bernie, they would've won, and easily so.

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm not a Beto fan and also am wary to nominate a loser but clearly people like him. A lot. If he was from just about any other non southern state he'd be a senator-elect right now.

Being a senator or governor isn't required to be president but I feel like state wide election experience vets a candidate more. This dude has a DUI in his past but what else is there? He's a good looking dude...does he have a mistress, or is he a faithful black man like Obama? I'd hate for this dude to sweep through the early states only to be hit with some bombshell accusation. I remember John Edwards, after all.

[agrajag]

in the age of Trump, I doubt anyone cares about mistresses anymore. Sexual assault is the new bar to clear.

[Nintex]

I just hope whoever becomes the nominee, they pick their VP out of the other candidates, not a lame like Time Kaine who doesn't add anything to the ticket. It needs to be a coalition that attracts different demos. A combination of Beto = everyman charisma, good looks, young white male, Bernie bro, Kamala or Warren for feminists, etc. Booker for the POC vote, but Kamala covers that and the female angle, so she wins.

From what I know now, I think nominating Beto would be a mistake and I don’t plan to vote for him in the primary.

He just is sort of a not very accomplished political cipher that’s never won a competitive race.

One way to look at it is that he overperformed ina red state but the other way to look at it he lost against a terrible candidate. I’m not sure which one is more correct, but losing a Senate race is not something I lol at and say “gee, we should run that guy for President”

As long as you guys don't nominate Hillary Clinton it should be fine. 

[Phoenix Dark]

I agree, as long as your VP isn't a detriment it doesn't matter much. Did Biden help Obama with white voters in the midwest in 2008? Perhaps, but Obama was going to win by huge margins regardless of who his VP was. If Beto is the nominee, you fire up the base to the point where all you need as VP is someone experienced. Or maybe not...would picking Kamala Harris hurt him at all? No. To quote Symere Woods, it do not matter.

[Nintex]

Mike Pence telling the Republicans to 'come home' really helped Trump.
Cheney was also an asset for George Bush politically and of course Biden for Obama (especially when he showed the world what an empty vessel so called policy wonk Paul Ryan was).

A decent VP might've made a difference for Clinton. Likewise for McCain, because people feared he might kick the bucket and Sarah Palin would become President.

[Mandark]

no