Donald Trump Presidency discussion Thread VIII (threadbanned users listed in OP)

Tchaikovsky

Has he said he was being sarcastic when he said "stand back and stand by" yet?

VinLieger

Tchaikovsky wrote: »

Has he said he was being sarcastic when he said "stand back and stand by" yet?

No he actually came out yesterday and said he mis spoke and specifically told them to stand down.

Now it doesn't actually make a difference because the likes of the proud boys, qanon et al will all still believe he was talking in code to them during the debate.

gmisk

Brad Parscale up until very recently was a senior advisor to Trump.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29/politics/brad-parscale-donald-trump-mental-health/index.html

The other story seems to be he also has stolen between 25-40 million dollars...how could he possibly have access to that kind of money...well seemingly the Trump campaign masked millions and likely broke the law...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/complaint-accuses-trump-campaign-of-masking-170-million-in-spending.html

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/brad-parscale-facing-investigation-for-stealing-40-million-from-trump-campaign-report/

Drain the swamp....etc....

What a sh#tshow!

amandstu

VinLieger wrote: »

No he actually came out yesterday and said he mis spoke and specifically told them to stand down.

Now it doesn't actually make a difference because the likes of the proud boys, qanon et al will all still believe he was talking in code to them during the debate.

If he is "now" saying he meant to say "stand down and stand by" I think that is just as bad.

It is the "stand by" that gives me the creeps

How can they protect the election against intimidation from mobs of these Proud Boys or their affiliates?

Itssoeasy

I saw this morning that the majority leader Mitch McConnell wanted to associate himself fully with comments made by senator Tim Scott who is black about the condemning on white supremacy that the president swung and missed on during the debate Tuesday night.

check_six

Regarding the taxes thing, there is something I don't understand. If your company pays you an income of say $1 million you have to pay income tax on the income that you have been paid. How can it be that if your company doesn't do well you don't pay income tax? Surely the corporation tax would be low for the company if the company was shown to be not making a profit. How does a companies low profits affect the income tax on the income its employees are receiving?

It seems to make a mockery of the idea that big companies doing accounting tricks to avoid corporation tax is made up for by high income taxes paid by their well paid employees.

Maybe I've just got the wrong end of the stick, or it's completely different in the US.

Can anyone explain?

Wanderer78

check_six wrote: »

Regarding the taxes thing, there is something I don't understand. If your company pays you an income of say $1 million you have to pay income tax on the income that you have been paid. How can it be that if your company doesn't do well you don't pay income tax? Surely the corporation tax would be low for the company if the company was shown to be not making a profit. How does a companies low profits affect the income tax on the income its employees are receiving?

It seems to make a mockery of the idea that big companies doing accounting tricks to avoid corporation tax is made up for by high income taxes paid by their well paid employees.

Maybe I've just got the wrong end of the stick, or it's completely different in the US.

Can anyone explain?

i cant explain it, but many high level employees of major corporations would receive a large proportion of their income in stock options, sometimes its the larger part of their income, and i believe this part of their pay is rarely available to the public, and from this, they probably pay little or no tax on stock options

listermint

check_six wrote: »

Regarding the taxes thing, there is something I don't understand. If your company pays you an income of say $1 million you have to pay income tax on the income that you have been paid. How can it be that if your company doesn't do well you don't pay income tax? Surely the corporation tax would be low for the company if the company was shown to be not making a profit. How does a companies low profits affect the income tax on the income its employees are receiving?

It seems to make a mockery of the idea that big companies doing accounting tricks to avoid corporation tax is made up for by high income taxes paid by their well paid employees.

Maybe I've just got the wrong end of the stick, or it's completely different in the US.

Can anyone explain?

one thing you can be sure of, trump not taking the presidents salary was for a very specific tax reason. Not out of genuine caring.

fly_agaric

VinLieger wrote: »

No he actually came out yesterday and said he mis spoke and specifically told them to stand down.

Now it doesn't actually make a difference because the likes of the proud boys, qanon et al will all still believe he was talking in code to them during the debate.

I haven't listened to the debate (don't know if I have enough interest in US politics to bother), but I did listen to that piece (the "stand back and stand by" line) as was curious about what exactly Trump said and the context of it.

I think he got muddled up to be honest (i.e. he wasn't going for some sort of implied threat) because he'd really ignored the question + branched off into bashing the "left", "antifa" etc.

It's still pretty damning as any normal candidate/politician (not American...I wonder is that still true in the US post Trump?) would have just answered it & said "yes I unequivocally condemn such groups and their actions". It is very simple and hard to mess up, even for someone whose brain has been deteriorating.

IMO he didn't do that because he knows the racists and bigots who are members or support these groups are a highly active & energetic part of his (shrinking?) base and doesn't want to upset them!

amandstu

listermint wrote: »

one thing you can be sure of, trump not taking the presidents salary was for a very specific tax reason. Not out of genuine caring.

Yes,it might have been the one source of income they couldn't finesse.

looksee

Or maybe he felt somehow that if he didn't take the salary he was not in any way obligated to the job or the people? He certainly acts as though he is doing everyone a favour by giving of his valuable time and skills to the country. Notwithstanding the bone spurs.

listermint

looksee wrote: »

Or maybe he felt somehow that if he didn't take the salary he was not in any way obligated to the job or the people? He certainly acts as though he is doing everyone a favour by giving of his valuable time and skills to the country. Notwithstanding the bone spurs.

doubt it, its money. The guy never feels obligated to do anything. Its not a word he recognises. There is always an angle. - self interest.

Justin Credible Darts

Leroy42 wrote: »

If Trump gets back in, then every American should not only be upset but deeply worried about the future of their country.

Trump is tearing it down. Justice is now a political plaything, division is a key target, corruption is indemic, appointments are made based on personal loyalty rather than ability, truth and accountability is gone, responsibility is for someone else.

I could go on.

To vote for Trump in 2016 could at least be understood on the basis of him beining a largely unknown quantity politically, the distaste for HC and a call for change.

None of that holds up in 2020, so a vote for Trump is a vote for all the above and more. It is an acceptance of the continued decline in US standing, it is an acceptance that the US us weak and losing and needs to shrink into itself to survive.

And its an acceptance that the next 4 years will be much worse.

I totally agree.


I dont know why, but anytime I slate Biden who is also bad, people on here automatically presume I therefore must be a Trump fan despite me saying I am anti trump countless times..


However it still does not alter my post

looksee

listermint wrote: »

doubt it, its money. The guy never feels obligated to do anything. Its not a word he recognises. There is always an angle. - self interest.

Would accepting the salary make his other financial interests, taxes etc, available to the White House for administrative reasons? As you say, he is all about money, and since it seems to be a commodity in short supply for him at the moment there has to be a reason for not taking it.

Penn

looksee wrote: »

Or maybe he felt somehow that if he didn't take the salary he was not in any way obligated to the job or the people? He certainly acts as though he is doing everyone a favour by giving of his valuable time and skills to the country. Notwithstanding the bone spurs.

The reason he doesn't take the salary is simply because a) he can brag about it and b) he profits far more from all the trips to his own resorts and having Republicans, businessmen and anyone else who wants access to him booking events at his properties. The salary is chump change compared to that.

Quin_Dub

looksee wrote: »

Would accepting the salary make his other financial interests, taxes etc, available to the White House for administrative reasons? As you say, he is all about money, and since it seems to be a commodity in short supply for him at the moment there has to be a reason for not taking it.

I suspect it's something like , although based on the flowery announcements of him signing over cheques to various places austensibly from his Salary it looks like he is paid, but he then gives it away..

AbusesToilets

pixelburp wrote: »

One could, but given my post was explicitly rebuking the contention that "Proud Boys aren't White Supremacists", I'm not sure what you're reaching for except some "both sides" reminder that yes, extremists exist in any walk of life. However, pertinent here is the notion that Fringe Groups - like Proud Boys and the myriad supremacist groups found in biker gangs etc - attract more of that cast of person; perhaps due to their inherently anti-establishment credentials. This goes double in America where the engrained culture of individualism has often mutated into militias, lone-wolf bombers, and the kind of anti-lockdown resistance seen across the country (and in its President).

Equally relevant to your contention, is that White Supremacists currently possess far more of am immediate security threat to the US than any number of ranting "feminists" who might believe themselves the superior gender. Which would be a pretty vague, insubstantial number given there's no sign of any organised groups to the level of PB. If the next, 4th Wave of feminism begin to form militias or attacking minority groups, then there might be parity to your comparison. Until then, fringe ranting on Twitter from randomers is hardly comparable.

Respectfully, that's not really been born out anywhere outside of the FBI's press releases. It's not Proud Boys or other white supremacists causing chaos in American cities the last few months.

You only have to look at the loudest aspects of BLM to see the presence of radicalized feminists, as they are present in other movements. It's not fringe ranting when they are leading groups to loot and destroy cities.

kowloon

AbusesToilets wrote: »

Respectfully, that's not really been born out anywhere outside of the FBI's press releases. It's not Proud Boys or other white supremacists causing chaos in American cities the last few months.

Except for those murders that don't count.

Gbear

kowloon wrote: »

Except for those murders that don't count.

And driving into crowds.

And paintballing and teargassing them.

The protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful.
Where they have not, that has been mostly a function of police crack downs escalating the situations needlessly.

Additionally, we've seen agents provacateur, like the so called "Umbrella Man", who was identified by Minneapolis police as a white supremacist, who've sought to encourage and propagate violence.

There are a subset of white supremacists who are accelerationist and overlap a lot with the Boogaloo crowd, who take a lot of their inspiration from the fascist uprising novel "The Turner Diaries", and are looking for any kind of degeneration of the stability of the state in order to justify the kind of militia violence that we saw with the Kenosha shooting.

Again, it's something that people in denial in places like the UK or Ireland about how far the US has degenerated, and to some extent, how extremist it has always been, need to educate themselves about.

The US has elements of it that wouldn't seem out of place in a civil-war wracked post-colonial country in Africa. It is not like Ireland, or really anywhere else in Western Europe. There is not an apprecialble number of people in Ireland who are trying to instigate a race war, and even fewer who are also armed.

AbusesToilets

Gbear wrote: »

And driving into crowds.

And paintballing and teargassing them.

The protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful.
Where they have not, that has been mostly a function of police crack downs escalating the situations needlessly.

Additionally, we've seen agents provacateur, like the so called "Umbrella Man", who was identified by Minneapolis police as a white supremacist, who've sought to encourage and propagate violence.

There are a subset of white supremacists who are accelerationist and overlap a lot with the Boogaloo crowd, who take a lot of their inspiration from the fascist uprising novel "The Turner Diaries", and are looking for any kind of degeneration of the stability of the state in order to justify the kind of militia violence that we saw with the Kenosha shooting.

Again, it's something that people in denial in places like the UK or Ireland about how far the US has degenerated, and to some extent, how extremist it has always been, need to educate themselves about.

The US has elements of it that wouldn't seem out of place in a civil-war wracked post-colonial country in Africa. It is not like Ireland, or really anywhere else in Western Europe. There is not an apprecialble number of people in Ireland who are trying to instigate a race war, and even fewer who are also armed.

One unsubstantiated claim of an umbrella man, vs numerous riots, with extensive video evidence of BLM involvement. I know which group I'm more concerned with when it comes to my community.

Roanmore

fly_agaric wrote: »

I haven't listened to the debate (don't know if I have enough interest in US politics to bother), but I did listen to that piece (the "stand back and stand by" line) as was curious about what exactly Trump said and the context of it.

I think he got muddled up to be honest (i.e. he wasn't going for some sort of implied threat) because he'd really ignored the question + branched off into bashing the "left", "antifa" etc.

It's still pretty damning as any normal candidate/politician (not American...I wonder is that still true in the US post Trump?) would have just answered it & said "yes I unequivocally condemn such groups and their actions". It is very simple and hard to mess up, even for someone whose brain has been deteriorating.

IMO he didn't do that because he knows the racists and bigots who are members or support these groups are a highly active & energetic part of his (shrinking?) base and doesn't want to upset them!

I don't think so, read somewhere yesterday that the phrase was in his debate notes (apologies can't find the source now). Done with the intent of getting the phrase out there and then row back after which is what he did.

kowloon

AbusesToilets wrote: »

One unsubstantiated claim of an umbrella man, vs numerous riots, with extensive video evidence of BLM involvement. I know which group I'm more concerned with when it comes to my community.

Do you live in one of the affected areas? Genuine question.

Leroy42

Roanmore wrote: »

I don't think so, read somewhere yesterday that the phrase was in his debate notes (apologies can't find the source now). Done with the intent of getting the phrase out there and then row back after which is what he did.

It has been a feature of his entire presidency. He says something, fails to retract it. leaves it floating for at least 24 hours (when of course he could Tweet a retraction etc within minutes) and then after seeing the outcry or impact looks to tone it down or laugh it off.

Now one either has to believe that he is a person with such little control over what he says that he consistently makes remarks that are almost the opposite of what he meant, or he meant them and only rows back when the heat gets too much.

Option 1 is very scarry as essentially you have a POTUS that is either massively stupid or dangerously unhinged.
I doubt very much that any of his supporters would agree to that.

So we are left with the second option, that he knows what he is saying and only rows back when the heat is too much - and lets be clear, he did the bare minimum yesterday.

pixelburp

AbusesToilets wrote: »

Respectfully, that's not really been born out anywhere outside of the FBI's press releases. It's not Proud Boys or other white supremacists causing chaos in American cities the last few months.

You only have to look at the loudest aspects of BLM to see the presence of radicalized feminists, as they are present in other movements. It's not fringe ranting when they are leading groups to loot and destroy cities.

Look, I'm not going to get drawn into an emotive pivot about how The Left are the real evil, cos it's clear enough that's your perspective, and trying to draw equivalence between civil riots & historically proven domestic terror threats is not something I'm engaging in. If I do, I'll join in on the very thread elsewhere here I can see you've added to.

The original assertion was made that Proud Boys weren't White Supremacists; yet in terms of ideological overlap, there's a generous Venn diagram demonstrating how the two grouping intermix with each other. There is a link. As is the case with a lot of these isolationist, conservative or right-leaning, hyper-individualistic groupings that often have heavy racial or chauvanistic grievances.

valoren

There are two options. Taking what he said literally and taking what he said as a mistake i.e. in the same vein as when he “misspoke” about Russian electoral interference. Neither option is a good look nor are they in the least bit Presidential.

If he said and meant “stand back and stand by” then he was addressing a group of cosplaying white supremacists and asking them to stand by to await the election results. Obviously a Biden win will be touted as a stolen election, a fraud, because a narcissistic Donald Trump never loses and so it will be framed as deep state coup. The Proud Boys, who are armed, are then compelled to no longer stand down and invited to engage in a confrontation against the forces of state oppression. Fomenting violence and civil unrest? Adopting a scorched earth approach instead of accepting a democratic result? Classic Trump. Clashes with the National Guard and armed protesters would be a sight and would result in unnecessary deaths and casualties all in the name of protecting the ego of a spoofer.

On the other hand there is the explanation touted by his son that Trump misspoke. He meant to say “stand back and stand down”. That he wasn’t condoning white supremacists at all but rather he was compelling them to stand back and let the National Guard do it’s job.

A completely ambiguous response and any leader worth their salt is capable of providing clear, unambiguous and understandable answers to easy to answer questions. He couldn’t even do that and was unprepared for an expected question. He either refuses to condemn white supremacists or he is a dolt who can’t speak properly and coherently when necessary.

PropJoe10

I strongly believe that Trump made that statement because he knows he is cornered and in serious deep water. He's most likely going to lose the election, which will then leave him wide open to tax fraud cases all over the shop.

If anyone thinks that Trump is going to even accept an absolute landslide victory for Biden, they have another thing coming. Any possible defeat for Trump will be launched straight to court and be dragged out for months. If people think it's been messy so far, things are about to take a much worse turn over the next few months, I reckon.

AbusesToilets

pixelburp wrote: »

Look, I'm not going to get drawn into an emotive pivot about how The Left are the real evil, cos it's clear enough that's your perspective, and trying to draw equivalence between civil riots & historically proven domestic terror threats is not something I'm engaging in. If I do, I'll join in on the very thread elsewhere here I can see you've added to.

The original assertion was made that Proud Boys weren't White Supremacists; yet in terms of ideological overlap, there's a generous Venn diagram demonstrating how the two grouping intermix with each other. There is a link. As is the case with a lot of these isolationist, conservative or right-leaning, hyper-individualistic groupings that often have heavy racial or chauvanistic grievances.

It's not my position that the "Left" are evil, given I hold positions that would largely fall under that umbrella. My point is that there is an uncritical acceptance of groups on one side, yet a denunciation of those on the other. This tends ignore the pervasive commonalities between both. You speak of an overlapping association of groups on the right with racist ideology, would you also accept the same for those groups on the left? There is pervasive racism and ant-Jewish sentiment among assorted BLM groupings. Antifa like groups frequently display hardline Marxist/ anarchist goals, which stand in opposition to the fascist sentiment found among groups on the Right.

Yet where are the calls for Biden or other politicians to denounce those ideas?

AbusesToilets

kowloon wrote: »

Do you live in one of the affected areas? Genuine question.

I live in NC, which thankfully hasn't seen much unrest.

Justin Credible Darts

AbusesToilets wrote: »

It's not my position that the "Left" are evil, given I hold positions that would largely fall under that umbrella. My point is that there is an uncritical acceptance of groups on one side, yet a denunciation of those on the other. This tends ignore the pervasive commonalities between both. You speak of an overlapping association of groups on the right with racist ideology, would you also accept the same for those groups on the left? There is pervasive racism and ant-Jewish sentiment among assorted BLM groupings. Antifa like groups frequently display hardline Marxist/ anarchist goals, which stand in opposition to the fascist sentiment found among groups on the Right.

Yet where are the calls for Biden or other politicians to denounce those ideas?

you will be waiting a while sadly.


The democrats are as guilty for the troubles if not more than the republicans.

I see the false equivalences are back and constantly being trotted out. I'll take them seriously when Biden tells Antifa to get ready to monitor polling stations. Until then it's just white noise.