Donald Trump Presidency discussion Thread VI

Dog Man Star

FartyBlartFast wrote: »

Trump was under investigation for rao9jng a 13 year old child in 2016, and it didn't turn his voters off though. And to be honest, anyone claiming to be one the fence in the wake of child concentration camps is in my opinion, not bei g truthful. That is the type of issue where you either cut all ties to the perpetrator, or decide to stick with them through whatever may come.

If they will stick by him through those issues, they will continue to do so even in the face of video evidence of him violently raping a preteen. I'm not saying that he has for the record, but if he did and it came out on video it would immediately be labelled as fake news by every single trump supporter still following him, and would be shrugged at by more or less everyone who still claims to be "on the fence".

You are, of course, right. But I suspect a plethora of evidence showing Trump involved in the rape of these children will finish him off. We can all cast off media, influence, etc. Any of us with children can pardon men like Trump.

Dog Man Star

FartyBlartFast wrote: »

Eh? I've not heard of this yet?

Heh? Trump's big meeting of social media giants takes place today. He has not invited Facebook, Twitter nor Instagram, he has invited the extreme right wing elements on social media.

Dog Man Star

Is Manic Moran still here? With his pro-Trump stance, Trump deciding his wages? No? He's gone? Manic Moran strategy: bombard thread with boring statistics, claim no bias and disappear for two months.

A US soldier, automatically beyond criticism.

In reality a pro-Trump cretin.

FartyBlartFast

Dog Man Star wrote: »

FartyBlartFast wrote: »

Trump was under investigation for rao9jng a 13 year old child in 2016, and it didn't turn his voters off though. And to be honest, anyone claiming to be one the fence in the wake of child concentration camps is in my opinion, not bei g truthful. That is the type of issue where you either cut all ties to the perpetrator, or decide to stick with them through whatever may come.

If they will stick by him through those issues, they will continue to do so even in the face of video evidence of him violently raping a preteen. I'm not saying that he has for the record, but if he did and it came out on video it would immediately be labelled as fake news by every single trump supporter still following him, and would be shrugged at by more or less everyone who still claims to be "on the fence".

You are, of course, right. But I suspect a plethora of evidence showing Trump involved in the rape of these children will finish him off. We can all cast off media, influence, etc. Any of us with children can pardon men like Trump.

I don't see how though. If throwing them into concentration camps is ok, along with his bragging about going into underage girls dressing rooms in beauty pageants and the fact he was under investigation for exactly this (raping a 13 year old girl) didn't stop them from voting for him last time or supporting him since, I have no idea how more of the same will somehow change their minds.

Don't forget that republicans nearly voted Roy moore (a pedophile who doesn't deny it) into the US senate, and not only because he was a Republican - he had to best out other republicans in the primary first, so they picked a pedophile over other non pedophiles in their party. I think he only lost by a out 2 or 3 percent.

More interesting to me are how single issue voters like miners in the rust belt and anti opioid voters across the country that voted for him last time, will go this time now that he has done essentially nothing to help them. I could understand why they just wanted anything in 2016 that was not 'establishment' due to feeling forgotten about by both sides, but he has shown he is not here to help them, so I'll be intrigued to see if they stick with him or not in 2020.

FartyBlartFast

Dog Man Star wrote: »

FartyBlartFast wrote: »

Eh? I've not heard of this yet?

Heh? Trump's big meeting of social media giants takes place today. He has not invited Facebook, Twitter nor Instagram, he has invited the extreme right wing elements on social media.

I
Like Alex Jones, Laura loomer etc types? Christ... imagine Leo having Gemma odoherty over to Aras to discuss strategy and policy.

Just found a link... Wow.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/07/10/tech/white-house-social-media-summit/index.html

Among them are Bill Mitchell, a radio host who has promoted the extremist QAnon conspiracy theory on Twitter; Carpe Donktum, an anonymous troll who won a contest put on by the fringe media organization InfoWars for an anti-media meme; and Ali Alexander, an activist who attempted to smear Sen. Kamala Harris by saying she is not an "American black" following the first Democratic presidential debates.

O'Keefe, the guerrilla journalist whose group Project Veritas tried to trick reporters at the Washington Post by planting a source who told the paper that she had been impregnated as a teenager by failed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore; Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA who sometimes posts misleading information on social media; and Benny Johnson, the journalist-turned-activist who was fired for plagiarism by BuzzFeed and demoted at the Independent Journal Review for violating company standards.

MrFresh

Dog Man Star wrote: »

To clarify: those on the fence will not vote for a man who had abused children.

They admired him having sex with pornstars, playboy models, "he's a man after all", Trump the alpha male.

Paying 13 year-old girls to suck him off may not be so glamorous. Not many of us are Playboy models, but a lot of us have young daughters. This will kill him, thank God. He's finished.

There was no need to clarify. I reckon they could release footage of him raping that 13 year old and he'd still be in with a chance of getting the nomination for 2020.

ancapailldorcha

Dog Man Star wrote: »

Is Manic Moran still here? With his pro-Trump stance, Trump deciding his wages? No? He's gone? Manic Moran strategy: bombard thread with boring statistics, claim no bias and disappear for two months.

A US soldier, automatically beyond criticism.

In reality a pro-Trump cretin.

Banned again.

duploelabs

Dog Man Star wrote: »

I beg to differ. The Epstein case is a bombshell to Trump. Epstein's arrogance is astonishing, cds labelled with child porn? One image of Trump will sink him for good. As I said yesterday, the Epstein case will explode over the next few weeks. There are potentially hundreds of girls involved, how many will identify Trump if he is involved? Hundreds. The backing of the FBI will give a voice to them. No question, Trump is fretting at this much more than Mueller.

There is still a solid chance Barr will block Mueller's hearing, if he can. Barr has hinted at it already.

Your average Trump supporter cares little for Russian interference. Child molesting is a different story.

Epstein arrest was on the same day the Uk Ambassador leak happened. I know it's a jump to say that it was leaked to obscure that, but if anything it plays in to the Trump narrative to his base of 'the establishment are after poor me', as well as strengthening their bargaining position if/when the no-deal brexit happens

dr.fuzzenstein

FartyBlartFast wrote: »

I have to agree with you unfortunately - their mixture of ignoring or gleefully cheering while young children are flung into concentration camps (and there is zero doubt anymore that they are just that) shows exactly how much they care about kids. Many of these children have also mysteriously disappeared in the interim.

But you see, those are brown children from south of the border.
It doesn't matter a sh*t to the MAGA heads what happens to them.
If they starve, get sick, get shot, drown, raped, disappear, it's all "their own or their parents fault", because their logic dictates that South America is a sh*thole, but you deserve to die if you try to come to the US.

In this case it's white, Christian US girls, so people of value, well, as long as they come from rich, god-fearing, republican households.
If they're trailer trash, it'll be their own fault again.

Remember, it's only bad if it happens to the "right" people, anyone else only has themselves to blame and they deserve what happened to them. Poor people of the wrong skin colour, country of origin and religion are worthless and stupid and therefore disposable. It is ok to bomb, rape or murder them.
That's the American way.

alchemist33

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

But you see, those are brown children from south of the border.
It doesn't matter a sh*t to the MAGA heads what happens to them.
If they starve, get sick, get shot, drown, raped, disappear, it's all "their own or their parents fault", because their logic dictates that South America is a sh*thole, but you deserve to die if you try to come to the US.

In this case it's white, Christian US girls, so people of value, well, as long as they come from rich, god-fearing, republican households.
If they're trailer trash, it'll be their own fault again.

Remember, it's only bad if it happens to the "right" people, anyone else only has themselves to blame and they deserve what happened to them. Poor people of the wrong skin colour, country of origin and religion are worthless and stupid and therefore disposable. It is ok to bomb, rape or murder them.
That's the American way.

I agree they care more about the "right" people, but Trump supporters have an unrivalled ability to disbelieve any bad news about him. They'll say videos have been faked, testimony bought, emails deleted or invented, "oh look what a Democrat did." I honestly believe this will make no difference to Trump voters above and beyond all the nonsense of the last three years.

Frank Bullitt

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1149435562480340993

He wouldn't have liked that.

batgoat

The rose garden was one of those moments where it summarised how much the white house has descended into craziness. It wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Black Mirror.

https://twitter.com/katierogers/status/1149436290707927043?s=19

StringerBell

And the climb down resumes.

Trump backing down, defeated, yet again. Humiliating really. Such a typical bully, all bark and no bite. Though to be fair, your average bully does know how to avoid the no win situation where possible instead of diving headfirst into it with such regularity.

I look forward to hearing how this is yet another win in bizarro land

FartyBlartFast

Gintonious wrote: »

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1149435562480340993

He wouldn't have liked that.

Wasn't transparency in government supposed to be one of his biggest selling points back in 2016?have his fans on this forum had much to say about that since?

aloyisious

Ref the Epstein arrest and the multiple rape allegations, and the remark Don made about Epstein liking young women, it strikes me that there will have been a lot of venal people from high society/both political parties who were aware of Epstein's proclivities and who did nothing to stop him for whatever reason, even if they did not partake in the sex parties.

Taking that to its ultimate conclusion, there must be a lot of very scared people willing to throw others under the bus to save their own skins if some-one starts naming names or the media get a hold of videos/discs of any parties involving girls and high society members. I'd imagine that reporters are working hard for the various versions of US publications to get any dirt tied into the parties which included the use of under-age girls for sex for publication or to use as bait for info. I'd imagine that various law enforcement agencies are also hunting for the same.

Unfortunately it stands to reason to expect Epstein would not have been the only one hosting/attending such parties so Don may not be the only person who is quaking at the moment at the ripples in the pond.

pixelburp

And remember, this is the same administration that basically threw a grenade under Net Neutrality; their concern for the free exchange of ideas on the internet feels hypocritical at best.

Let's call this what it was: group masturbation of Donald Trump, by way of an increasingly belligerent victim complex from outlying conservative voices. A fawning display of toadying behaviour.

Voices who peddle conspiracy theories that I even see leaking into narratives this side of the pond. The phantom "liberal bias" that can be neither proved or disproved given Google et al's proprietary technology. Or the disappearing Followers because they were (sometimes purchased) bot users.

peddlelies

pixelburp wrote: »

The phantom "liberal bias" that can be neither proved or disproved given Google et al's proprietary technology.

When I google searched "Lindsey Graham" after he gave that hearing speech and there was a quite a stir about it, the three news links that came up at the top of the page were two from Vox and one from Salon lambasting him.

I never ever visit those sites, and they say it's some type of personal algorithm so why would they appear as the first links? At the time conservatives were rallying behind Kavanaugh and obviously liberals against it.

I gotta be honest, this whole "google liberal bias" thing doesn't seem like a fantasy to me especially with all the leaks lately. They come across as progressive activists and I don't see how anyone could claim otherwise with a straight face. The difference is they favour one side so that side is happy to go along with it and turn a blind eye. I stopped using google anyway, duckduckgo and even Microsofts bing search yield far more diverse search results.



Just out of interest I googled "Trump" now and below the news stories ( 2 cnn, 1 guardian ) were 3 videos links to msnbc.com, another site i never visit

Carry

serfboard wrote: »

Although I'm not a fan of Pelosi, I don't think she's in the wrong here. What's the point in the House voting to impeach only to have the Senate block it?

It's gesture politics that will take up a huge amount of time and energy and achieve nothing.

Yes, it's gesture politics, but when did change ever happen when people thought what's the point?


No change of society, or revolution if you so will, ever happened when people thought it's too much effort, or as you said "huge amount of time and energy".

That's a very lazy approach to politics.

I'm glad there is young blood like AOC, or in Europe Greta Thunberg or the German captain of a refugee ship, Carola Rackete, who defied the right wing approach of the Italian government to save lives.
Or in the US even Megan Rapinoe who refuses to take any shit from that administration and, as Trumpists so proudly say about their Guru, says it as it is.

They are young women (oops, women) who give hope and confidence in humanity. And they achieved so far much more than any political pussyfooting.

As others said in this thread Pelosi is part of the old guard. She wants to maintain the status quo under Democrats rule which isn't that far away from the Republican rule. Well only slightly.

I applaud everyone who questions and confronts the old lazy way of those who are settled and content and can't even imagine what it's like to struggle along.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can say what she wants, so far she was alway head on.
Pelosi tries to be the sensible stateswoman, but she is part of the establishment that allowed and still allows Trump being in office.

Sometimes being reasonable and accommodating is not the right way to change a direction that threatens to turn into an authoritarian regime.

Look up Germany 1933.

FartyBlartFast

peddlelies wrote: »

When I google searched "Lindsey Graham" after he gave that hearing speech and there was a quite a stir about it, the three news links that came up at the top of the page were two from Vox and one from Salon lambasting him.

I decided to test this and did the same, here are the results I got:

Maybe google desktop is a centrist/left wing conspiracy and google mobile is a far right conspiracy?

mcmoustache

peddlelies wrote: »

When I google searched "Lindsey Graham" after he gave that hearing speech and there was a quite a stir about it, the three news links that came up at the top of the page were two from Vox and one from Salon lambasting him.

I never ever visit those sites, and they say it's some type of personal algorithm so why would they appear as the first links? At the time conservatives were rallying behind Kavanaugh and obviously liberals against it.

I gotta be honest, this whole "google liberal bias" thing doesn't seem like a fantasy to me especially with all the leaks lately. They come across as progressive activists and I don't see how anyone could claim otherwise with a straight face. The difference is they favour one side so that side is happy to go along with it and turn a blind eye. I stopped using google anyway, duckduckgo and even Microsofts bing search yield far more diverse search results.



Just out of interest I googled "Trump" now and below the news stories ( 2 cnn, 1 guardian ) were 3 videos links to msnbc.com, another site i never visit

Extrapolating from a sample of one?


For your sake I'll explain some stuff for you. The videos section is msnbs because they game the google system with pages that look like an article that turn out to be a video. Nobody likes it.


For the craic, I googled Lindsey graham and I got...



Screenshot_20190712_012443.png




That being said, I'm using things like ghostery and ublock origin so maybe they just give me the default.


Maybe you're forgetting all the other sites you visit that google tracks?

mcmoustache

batgoat wrote: »

The rose garden was one of those moments where it summarised how much the white house has descended into craziness. It wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Black Mirror.

https://twitter.com/katierogers/status/1149436290707927043?s=19

The best people. Tremendous people.


Seriously though, these people are the best that he can get these days. Actually, these have always been the best he could get but what were people expecting? Sane MAGA social media characters?

Manic Moran

Carry wrote: »

Yes, it's gesture politics, but when did change ever happen when people thought what's the point?


No change of society, or revolution if you so will, ever happened when people thought it's too much effort, or as you said "huge amount of time and energy".

That's a very lazy approach to politics.

That's not quite what he said, though. Impeachment is a pretty binary outcome. It happens, or it doesn't happen. They can put all the effort in the world into it, they can make it the one and only thing they focus on for the next year and a half, and even if they do that, at the cost of all else, do you really see an impeachment happening? Serfboard has it correct, it'll never get past the Senate, and that's a lot of political capital expended in order to publicly fail.

dr.fuzzenstein

Do NOT use Google to gauge the actual popularity of any website.
Google has absolutely nothing to do with real, actual results.
If you have a website and you want to appear in the top 10 search results, you pay them a ton of money and they will bump your results.
Use another search engine, such as DuckDuckGo and compare the results. Can't do it now due to time constraints.

pixelburp

peddlelies wrote: »

When I google searched "Lindsey Graham" after he gave that hearing speech and there was a quite a stir about it, the three news links that came up at the top of the page were two from Vox and one from Salon lambasting him.

Come on now, that's precisely the kind of confirmation bias you yourself would call out on this thread, and it's not even remotely scientific; starting with a conclusion and fitting one single search to match the theory.

I just google Graham and the very first result was "Lindsey Graham vs. Trump on climate change" headline; next were a Fox News video, his wikipedia entry and Twitter account. So same as you - and honestly it's pretty tame, unbiased stuff IMHO.

Most searches I do tend to throw back News articles as results followed by a personal Twitter account - particularly if it's something in the public eye. I search for Stranger Things and I get a bunch of post Season 3 articles as top results.

Clearly there are algorithms going on but many of these things are completely black boxed - or are theorised considering the whole thing is more closely guarded than a North Korean palace. Extrapolating conspiracy is, as I said, pure Victim Complex on the part of online "shock jocks" who get caught out while trying to "own the libs", so of course they're going to cry Free Speech and try to reframe the narrative.

BUt they're not going to admit they're just trolls and got caught.

Walter Bishop

serfboard wrote: »

Although I'm not a fan of Pelosi, I don't think she's in the wrong here. What's the point in the House voting to impeach only to have the Senate block it?

It's gesture politics that will take up a huge amount of time and energy and achieve nothing.

What's the point of having an impeachment process at all if they won't use it due to perceived political expediency, or lack thereof?

If Pelosi had any spine and wasn't a centrist still hoping for a return to the ridiculous 'let's reach across the aisle and work with the Republicans in a spirit of bipartisanship' days, Trump would have been impeached (or at least the process started) by now.

The GOP of today has moved beyond this centrist stuff and Pelosi and her ilk have no idea how to respond.

Leroy42

Pelosi knows that the GOP, as shown numerous times by McConnell, will under no circumstances have anything to do with impeachment. It is doomed to failure and will be painted as the DNC having no actual policies beyond 'Hate Trump'.

There is clearly more than enough to impeach Trump, he should at the very least be questioned over Ivanka and Kushners roles, KAC breaking the rules and his failure to put his business's in a blind trust. That is before we get to his selection of Putin's word over the CIA/FBI. That is before we get to his refusal to take election interference seriously.

The current set up shows that the much vaunted checks and balances is not fit for purpose as the 3 strands are no longer independent of each other but very much working in conjunction with each other (that may well have always been the case but have been shown in stark reality the last 2+ years).

So to answer your question, there is no point having an impeachment process when the likes of McConnell and the rest of the gop senators are most interested in their party then they are the country.

StringerBell

In one way I can appreciate why the more moderate Dems and Republicans are how they are, as in if they don't try to bridge the gap between them things will only get worse and worse. On the other hand, there are times in life when you simply must fight fire with fire, it is up to everybody to make that decision for themselves individually I suppose.

You could say its an optimist/pessimist v realist problem.

The thing I don't understand is why not to open an inquiry, an impeachment inquiry in the House. Forget the Senate, they aren't going to convict and impeach but it will get as much info as possible out to the public. Issue censure, use it as campaign material for 2020. You won't convince the brainwashed, as sad as it is they are a lost cause and unable to help themselves but you would make sure that the swing voters have as much chance as possible to not vote for this man.

Gbear

Leroy42 wrote: »

Pelosi knows that the GOP, as shown numerous times by McConnell, will under no circumstances have anything to do with impeachment. It is doomed to failure and will be painted as the DNC having no actual policies beyond 'Hate Trump'.

There is clearly more than enough to impeach Trump, he should at the very least be questioned over Ivanka and Kushners roles, KAC breaking the rules and his failure to put his business's in a blind trust. That is before we get to his selection of Putin's word over the CIA/FBI. That is before we get to his refusal to take election interference seriously.

The current set up shows that the much vaunted checks and balances is not fit for purpose as the 3 strands are no longer independent of each other but very much working in conjunction with each other (that may well have always been the case but have been shown in stark reality the last 2+ years).

So to answer your question, there is no point having an impeachment process when the likes of McConnell and the rest of the gop senators are most interested in their party then they are the country.

You're assuming the only purpose of impeachment is conviction, but it isn't. The vast majority of Americans don't know the extent of the President's crimes. Having hearings where he himself might be forced to bumble his way through would expose him far more than attack ads during the election. For the soundbites alone (I'm sure you've heard the famous audio of Howard Baker asking "What did the President know and when did he know it?", or Nixons "I'm not a crook") it could prove invaluable.

There is far more support for impeachment proceedings than there was for Nixon. People are open to hearing the details, at the very least, and I cannot see any way in which his numbers will improve off the back of the sordid details of his presidency - not just the obstruction, but the self-enrichment with Trump Hotel DC and Mar A Lago, any details that are still to come out about his financial dealings, and anything yet to come out from the Intelligence Committee investigation.

People probably won't really care about campaign finance violations, as were brought up with the Michael Cohen hearings, but the weight of different other serious crimes could prove telling.

There's also the fact that it's Congress' ****ing job to do this.

peddlelies

I googled Lindsey Graham at the time of the Kavanaugh hearings after he made that stand, obviously googling him now will yield different results. It was the hottest political topic at that time so claiming now Lindsey Graham yields different results is a moot point.

Point is - when I wanted to see how Lindsey Graham was received on the right in a big political moment, I got linked to three far left sites I NEVER click. Obviously it's not a scientific study on my part.

MrFresh

peddlelies wrote: »

I googled Lindsey Graham at the time of the Kavanaugh hearings after he made that stand, obviously googling him now will yield different results. It was the hottest political topic at that time so claiming now Lindsey Graham yields different results is a moot point.

Point is - when I wanted to see how Lindsey Graham was received on the right in a big political moment, I got linked to three far left sites I NEVER click. Obviously it's not a scientific study on my part.

Would it not be more likely that the right wing sites don't push stories were their politicians look like fools?