Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

We're all just reading tea leaves at this point, of course.

We don't know what's going on in the deliberation room.

But I think the prosecution must be feeling relatively good about the substance of this jury note.

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) May 29, 2024

(Thread explains why)

yeah my hope is they just want to focus on the Pecker stuff and not have to go over everything with Michael Cohen, which I believe is what the prosecution wants, while the defense wants it to be more "well it hinges on Cohen and I don't know about that guy..."

Oh come on, we all know it will be not guilty on all counts.

hey take it to the containment thread buddy ;)

i genuinely don't see how a not guilty verdict is possible. unless the jury figured out some loophole that all the lawyers and the press missed

hung jury could be in the works but idk about that either

lmao Trump ranting about key witnesses that were not called while the guy that is supposed to call the witnesses stands next to him

“We had the most perfect witness calls ever”

More bad news for Biden:

Ex-Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt — who says his 20-year NDA just expired — now claims that Trump called former contestant Kwame Jackson the n-word. And it was caught on tape.https://t.co/3VhEjImjoz

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 30, 2024

It was caught on tape, but where's the tape?

Tom Arnold still has it

I seem to remember that Mark Burnett had all the Apprentice tapes

the time for that tape to really move the needle was 2016

Yeah, that tape's not gonna make a significant difference in 2024.

probably would hurt him more if a tape existed where he didn't say something racist

his historic creepy paedo behaviour at the teenage beauty pageant he sponsored, with credible witness accounts and him actually boasting about going into the dressing room and leering at naked or semi-naked schoolgirls during an interview. This hasn't finished him off - so I guess nothing will, really.

oh I can think of one thing

the biggest Big Mac ever

It really is amazing to realize how far the window has shifted on political scandals with this guy. Used to be even the whiff of marital infidelity would pretty much kill a political career dead for good.

that's what you might think! but few remember that grover cleveland also had a marital infidelity scandal (fathering a child out of wedlock) and he went on to become president! i'd tell you more about it but that's as far as i got in the article

First the "grab them by the pussy" video and then mocking the disabled guy? Some people got their political career destroyed by screaming weird one time, and this piece of shit... Meh

"Grover Cleveland" is a name I really hope not to hear in November

otm

Took responsibility for fathering the child during a gang bang, no less.

But can Trump come up with a slogan like this??

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERk6AEhU8AAj3Ws?format=jpg&name=medium

In he comes, out they go, then we'll be in the dump

This article from the Bronx rally is interesting. No conclusion beyond that.

the thing that really kept me up at night after Trump's victory in 2016 wasn't necessarily what he would do in office but rather what it meant for the country. if he had lost you could look back and say "well yeah he was a terrible candidate and an awful person" but since he won it greatly shifted the window of what is acceptable in this country and what 45% of the population will actually vote for. gone were the days where lying to the public actually mattered and you at least had to pretend not to be racist. it feels like the sort of thing that won't just magically come back, leading us directly to the moment we are in now, where the same people who voted for him in 2016 because "Hillary Clinton is definitely a criminal" are voting for him in 2024 despite being a convicted felon (probably), idk how America can exactly recover from that

the thing that really kept me up at night after Trump's victory in 2016 wasn't necessarily what he would do in office but rather what it meant for the country... idk how America can exactly recover from that

Yes. This is what I've been saying for the last eight years. America is now the country that elected Donald Trump president. Not just a racist, not just a criminal, but an obvious fucking idiot. In the eyes of the rest of the world, that is who we are, forever. We are the richest and most powerful and heavily armed country in the world and our chosen leader was — and might be again — a fucking moron. I know for most Americans the rest of the world doesn't count, but for people who actually have to engage with other countries professionally or politically or whatever, it's a stain that will never wash out.

Acting as if this was something new is pitiful revisionism, this country has been electing mostly racist fucking morons since…oh… uh…

Like, you think people didn’t think the country that elected George W. Bush— a failson of a failed president, with the IQ of a peanut— was full of hideous morons and yokels?

The difference is the cruelty being more out in the open. It’s an essential and important difference, but otherwise, that’s it

yeah, there's just less deniability with Trump

table otm, the mask is off now, that's all

Well, I think both frogbs and table are right, America electing racist and moronic leaders isn't new. The fact that no one even tries to hide it is new though, and presents a danger of its own.

Dubya gave lip service to things like being against Islamophobia, etc, that, even though you and I would agree his actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, supported that he didn't actually care at all about Black and Brown people, at least made that (extremely large) violent, hateful sect of his hide underground. Trump openly supporting a Muslim ban and giving people visions of a Berlin-sized border wall, while also refusing to criticize Nazis essentially welcomed those people out into the open.

Sure, on the one hand, it's better to know who/where these people are so you can fight them, but it also lead to open acts of violence against minorities. Hate crime spiked during the Trump administration.

I agree with your overall point, just feel like having a President openly fanning flames and encouraging his racist followers to live their best lives with his undying support does put an extra target on people's backs, and when law enforcement that was already doing a terrible job protecting these people are open Trump supporters and doubles down even more on their protection of racist gun-toting psychos, it basically feels like open season. though I suspect you agree with that so I don't mean that to be condescending :/. just giving a picture of why 2016's election scared me so much.

though I'd also point out I went into a huge depression when Bush won re-election in 2004 in similar fashion. those were horrible years.

Obviously Dubya doesn't deserve any rehabilitation or any credit for dog-whistling his hate rather than saying it outright, plus he owns a lot of the mess we're in today, not least due to the countless, lengthy wars he got us into that cost hundreds of thousands to millions of lives, or the Christofascist nationalism that he and his own cabinet directly fostered, or the increased government surveillance and policing of the general populace.

I think it's more than that, yes he's incredibly racist and a moron which may make him pretty similar policy-wise but there's also something else to Trump which is this sense of self above party and above country. I mean look at the stuff he's been charged with: cheating in the 2016 election, trying to overturn the 2020 election, sending a violent mob to the capital explicitly TO overturn the 2020 election, and stealing a ton of top-secret documents for (apparently) no reason. say what you will about Reagan, Dubya, Mitt, McConnell, etc., but none of them would do shit like that, and if this country decides THIS man deserves another term it means America is done for. they voted for this man because they wanted to burn America down.

Lots of people want to burn America down, it’s just idea of what will come out of the ashes that’s different IMO

^^^

not to mention that I really do think the character issues matter a lot. for one it's been terrible for everyone's mental health. I mean the most powerful and famous person in the world is a guy who's perpetually angry and combative, who lies about everything and has no moral compass whatsoever. if you hate him then the fact that he's on TV all the time and demands so much attention is a constant drain on you. if you *like* him then you are spending your life defending a guy who is fundamentally indefensible. the fact that he exists makes everyone's lives worse.

and, not to get all Maude Flanders here, but what about the children? I have two kids in elementary school and they are learning things like: be nice to each other, be respectful, tell the truth, don't judge others by the color of their skin, obey the law. soon they will grow up and see that America elected a person to its highest office in large part BECAUSE he did none of those things. therefore none of those values are actually important! if you're not succeeding, maybe it's because you're not lying enough! maybe it's because you're not being mean enough! again, this shit makes everyone else's lives worse in ways that go far beyond policy decisions.

Mate <3

He has definitely enabled a lot of petty tyrants out there to be actively worse.

I think it's more than that, yes he's incredibly racist and a moron which may make him pretty similar policy-wise but there's also something else to Trump which is this sense of self above party and above country. I mean look at the stuff he's been charged with: cheating in the 2016 election, trying to overturn the 2020 election, sending a violent mob to the capital explicitly TO overturn the 2020 election, and stealing a ton of top-secret documents for (apparently) no reason. say what you will about Reagan, Dubya, Mitt, McConnell, etc., but none of them would do shit like that, and if this country decides THIS man deserves another term it means America is done for. they voted for this man because they wanted to burn America down.

Exactly. Bush 2 was an idiot, a warmonger, a crook, etc., but he was ultimately a creature of the system. He was literally dynastic succession in action. Trump is none of that; he is a product of America's business community, yes, but he doesn't give a fuck about that because he doesn't give a fuck about anything but himself. He is a destructive force because even as he says the words "Make America Great Again," he doesn't actually care if America goes down in flames or not as long as he is personally rich and insulated. Trump's entire policy agenda is "Donald Trump should be rich and powerful and beloved by as many people as possible, and whoever needs to get fucked or otherwise destroyed in order to shore up Trump's status with his fan base, that's fine." He surrounds himself with hardcore ideologues who have serious agendas, but he switches positions on a dime depending on what he thinks is playing well with whoever he's standing in front of at the moment. He used to be a standard-issue New York liberal when that was the thing to be, just rich and racist. Now he's a fascist, because fascism is selling this year and is the fastest path to making himself richer and more powerful (and legally insulated from consequences).

George W's staff was evil, but somewhat competent in their evil, they had political histories... Anyone competent in the Trump admin didn't last, and were replaced by fellow idiots. If he gets another term, there will be evil idiots, guaranteed.

it's even wilder because over the last decade it's been revealed that basically none of his businesses were legitimate, every single thing he does is predicated on fraud, and anything he tried to do legitimately lost massive amounts of money. you could make the argument he might be the single worst businessman America ever produced. he's so corrupt that he's not even allowed to legally operate a charity anymore!

i think however most of us would agree Trump is an obvious symptom of what his predecessors caused, not an anomaly. which I suspect was the point intended upthread.

I really think the Muslim ban cries were the main thing that bumped him up from fringe candidate to serious candidate. this was a position his competitors weren't willing to entertain as it was believed to be campaign suicide and Islamophobia was at a fever pitch, especially since the GOP had sought to capitalize on ft Hood, Boston Marathon bombings and San Bernardino terrorist incidents and reframe domestic terror as purely an Islam problem (and not the reality, which is a far-right wing white person problem). then of course, Pulse happens during the primaries, and he seized on that too. it made a nice red meat sandwich with The Wall with racist voters.

Perhaps Trump still uses the lack of coalition around another candidate to his advantage and secures the nomination anyway, but outside of the Islamophobia/The Wall rhetoric, most of the rest of his ideas were relatively common GOP positions (and in some cases, he bucked the GOP). he'd also been building more of a public political brand on social media, but I feel like he'd have been an afterthought if not for "hey let's ban Muslims".

which once again is symptomatic - Islamophobia was a problem raging out of control amongst the right wing after 9/11, and politicians regularly entertained "hey what if we banned them", but they were usually state legislators, House representatives, or Senators or Governors in deep red states who didn't have to worry about saying these things costing them their jobs. big escalation with a Presidential candidate saying it.

we're jaded a bit now because our thinking has been shifted by the actual reality of what happened, but most of us in the politics threads expected more of the norms to hold than did, and didn't initially think he was Teflon. his nomination was largely due to a crowded field with no real enthusiasm for one candidate, his Presidency was due to competing against another candidate with low favorability, and the Comey effect. we thought he just said these things to get elected, he'll be disappointing to his entire base once he shows up and accomplishes little. Oh this will sink him, that will sink him.

like there was actual grounded belief based in recent history when his Presidency started, that told us certain things were going to ruin him that then didn't ruin him. it definitely felt like a seismic shift, like ....almost the mindset needed to accept a dictatorship.

Just found my LiveJournal post from 2004 the night Dubya won re-election. Actually much more similar to my reaction in 2016 than I realized in the doom and gloom tone.

doesn't look good for Kerry at all. Plus the dishonorable pile of crap Mel Martinez won.

I'm not sure how to feel about this.

Disbelief isn't even an emotion I'm feeling because I know the general populace is barely capable of carrying out simple tasks, much less voting for a leader. After all, 50 million people thought a bumbling idiot with a poor record in Texas and very little political experience was a good Presidential candidate in 2000.

This is one of the worst Presidents in history, who is far more feeble than his father (who lost after one term), and he's about to be re-elected? Unfuckingbelievable. It just goes to show you religion still runs our nation. And that is goddamn sad.

A large portion of the voters for Bush tout "common sense", which in reality is not "common sense" but rather force-fed archaic ideals passed down from generation to generation without so much as a question of their validity. And usually they pigeonhole solutions to problems in terms far too black-and-white and simplistic to be realistic.

I suppose we can thank the old fossils who are so entrenched in their stubborn, non-compromising beliefs for this.

Perhaps we can also thank many of the school systems for generating generic Republican high school graduates who vote without critical thinking. I know my old High School was guilty of bias. You should have seen my 11th grade History class. We had a Vietnam vet who admitted he "accidentally" shot an unarmed 14 year-old girl in combat and killed her telling us he hated people who questioned war, and didn't notice the irony.

A majority of the states have banned gay marriage. I am disgusted with humanity today.

A sect of my friends have said they'd get a little guilty pleasure from seeing Bush win because they'd subconsciously enjoy watching the world crumble apart. I almost wonder if I feel the same way now.

I'm not saying I think another Bush administration will destroy this world, but we're headed even further in the wrong direction and things are looking bad for our long term. Maybe I'm drawing a little guilty pleasure knowing that the morons who voted for Bush this time around are going to be included in the list of people who suffer under his administration, but that also includes me, my friends, and family, so I can take no pleasure out of it.

It sucks to be gay, Muslim, and, well, anyone since January 2017.

oh god fucking Mel Martinez, who now looks like Frank Church beside Rick Scott

i stand by my 2003 political opinions:

Please Indulge My Fantasy Of A Canadian-led Invasion Of The U.S. And A Subsequent Regime Change

Yes. This is what I've been saying for the last eight years. America is now the country that elected Donald Trump president. Not just a racist, not just a criminal, but an obvious fucking idiot. In the eyes of the rest of the world, that is who we are, forever. We are the richest and most powerful and heavily armed country in the world and our chosen leader was — and might be again — a fucking moron. I know for most Americans the rest of the world doesn't count, but for people who actually have to engage with other countries professionally or politically or whatever, it's a stain that will never wash out.

The rest of the world is used to (Republican) American presidents being morons tbf.