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A fair and objective review of the Lincoln Project from a Southern journalist. Pretty decent actually.

 

 

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3 hours ago, trotter said:

A fair and objective review of the Lincoln Project from a Southern journalist. Pretty decent actually.

 

 

 

The guy makes some fair points but I don;t think that The Lincoln Project has in any way reached the end of it's usefulness. He admitted himself that Trump isn't bright, not the full shilling, thin skinned to an almost manic degree.

Every little prick they put into that thin skinned simple minded mental case will push him ever further over the edge. I would expect advisors to try persuading him not to watch this stuff. But again he just doesn't have the mentality to be able to do that. 

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3 minutes ago, Barack said:

Rick Wilson from the Lincoln Project once liked a tweet of mine.

 

No biggie...

 

:sadrobbo:

 

Interview with Rick Wison from just a few days ago. Discussing how they work to get into Trumps head. Which frankly I don't think is a difficult task. Read his nieces book. He has an ego as fragile as it gets and skin as thin as tissue paper.

How the Lincoln Project Gets Into Trump’s Head
 

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Kayleigh called out for Trump demanding OPENING schools while CANCELING his convention

 

 

Edited by JFK-1
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I don't get the desperation to force the schools open. What in the world does that achieve in terms of curtailing the pandemic or helping the economy? The kids aren't producing in there.

And how long will it take for these kids to spread the virus through every community they live in and beyond? I give it a month at most.

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5 minutes ago, JackLadd said:

Will be 150k deaths by Sunday night. From 15 to 0 to 150k.  Elect dumb get dumb. 

 

Wonder if he could remember and repeat '15 to 0 to 150k"

Not many people could do that.

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2 hours ago, JackLadd said:

Will be 150k deaths by Sunday night. From 15 to 0 to 150k.  Elect dumb get dumb. 

 

For the 4th straight day, 1,000 Americans died from COVID-19.  That's one death every 90 seconds.

 

Trump recently claimed, not for the first time, that he's done a great job containing the epidemic.

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1 hour ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

For the 4th straight day, 1,000 Americans died from COVID-19.  That's one death every 90 seconds.

 

Trump recently claimed, not for the first time, that he's done a great job containing the epidemic.

 

Well I doubt his basic arithmetic is any better than his literacy, but let's try a comparison. Say Germany which has the largest population in Western Europe and a population around one quarter that of the US.

So if the Germans were doing as comparably great a job as Trump they should be looking at around 250 daily deaths. Germany covid deaths July 24th was 14.

Not the 25% of the US number it should be if it were comparable, but rather just 1.4% of the US figure. Almost 18 times fewer deaths per head of population.

In the days before the internet the idiot may have got away with his ludicrous claims. But with global data at our fingertips it can't be hidden.

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Not sure what happened with ordering but the Koko image was meant to be first.

Edited by DETTY29
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Oregon's Senator calling for the removal of Federal agents from all cities in the State as all they are doing is deliberately antagonising and inflaming events.

Attorney General suing  the  Federal Government over unconstitutional use of force to disrupt 1st Amendment rights (as well as other things).

Portland's Mayor attacked by Feds when he went to calm things down himself.

Army veterans on the streets telling Feds to stop following illegal orders as it's their duty to ignore illegal orders.

 

Trump's trying very hard to spark a civil war.

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7 hours ago, Cade said:

Trump's trying very hard to spark a civil war.

 

To me it looks more like trying to impose a military dictatorship. Is he going to deploy these storm troopers in states he knows he can't win come election time?

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Jambo-Jimbo
34 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

To me it looks more like trying to impose a military dictatorship. Is he going to deploy these storm troopers in states he knows he can't win come election time?

 

Trump is rapidly becoming the very thing that the 2nd amendment was written to try and stop, and the irony is that the very people who are the strongest supporters of the 2nd amendment will facilitate the erosion of their own constitutional rights, but by the time they realise it, it'll be too late.

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It disturbs me that the complete about turn regarding the virus, after spending the first half of this year describing it as no worse than flu, fake news, masks are for pussies, let's have rallies, let's try injecting disinfectant, will all be quickly forgotten if he can for just a few months appear to be remotely rational.

Then of course if another election win were acquired/stolen, the full blown crazy would immediately be re-established. 

This BBC article published yesterday perfectly illustrates the problem.

Coronavirus: The week when everything changed for Trump
 

Quote

It's as though in January 2017, Donald Trump was given a shiny, new car. The best, most beautiful car the world has ever seen. And in July 2020, the president made an important discovery about it.

It has a reverse gear.

 

It was an extra on the car he never thought he'd need - and certainly never intended to use. But on Monday, he put the car into reverse, and wrestle as he might with the gearstick and clutch, he now can't stop the blasted thing from going backwards.
 

Or to change the metaphor - and borrow the language used this week by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to describe his Labour opponent - from the president this week there have been more flip-flops than Bournemouth beach.
 

Just to recap, masks - which the president used to deride as "politically correct" - are now an act of patriotism, and should always be worn when social distancing is impossible.

Coronavirus, which until recently was being described in most instances as a bad case of the sniffles, is now something altogether more serious - and it is going to get worse before it gets better.
 

Two weeks ago the president was insisting that all schools had to reopen, or he would take away their funding. He's now saying that, for some of the worst hit cities, that wouldn't be appropriate - and appears much more empathetic towards parents wrestling with the decision about whether to allow their children resume in school education.
 

And the really big U-turn came last night on the Republican Convention in Jacksonville, Florida.

 

The president loves a crowd. A raucous, adoring crowd. The original plan had been to hold the event in Charlotte, North Carolina. But when the governor of that state said there would have to be social distancing, the president went ballistic, went after the governor, and announced huffily that the Republicans would go somewhere else.

Jacksonville would be the venue for the tickertape and hoopla, and thousands of cheering and whooping Republicans.
 

Except it won't be now. It was a stunning and painful reverse, and one the president made with the heaviest of hearts.

 

The announcements have come on three consecutive nights of revitalised White House coronavirus briefings. In this iteration with the president flying solo, and not flanked by his medical advisers.

But they have also been much more disciplined than when the president would spend a couple of hours at the lectern, musing on anything and everything - most memorably on whether disinfectant and sunlight should be injected into the body to treat coronavirus.

 

I was at that memorable briefing with the president, and I was back again for his briefing this Wednesday. This time around he was in and out in less than half an hour, stuck to the messages he wanted to deliver (OK, no-one had anticipated the bizarre foray into the legal difficulties facing Ghislaine Maxwell), and answered a handful of questions.

He didn't get riled. He didn't get into fights. He did what he came to do. And then off. All I would say is that Season 2 is nothing like as much fun as Season 1 - though the episodes are much shorter.
 

I sat discussing this one evening this week in the garden of someone closely involved in the doings of the administration.

It was an insufferably humid evening and the thunder rolled around the city. We spent a time discussing the psychology of the president (yes, a common topic).

And this person was making the point that he has an old-fashioned macho need never to appear weak. Even though he knows at times it would be smart to give ground and concede, that is unconscionable.
 

But if we are still playing pop psychology with the president's brain - whose cognitive strengths we now all know: person, man, woman, camera, TV - there is one thing worse than being weak, and that is being a loser.
 

And though in public - for fear of looking weak - the president insists his campaign is winning, and the American people love him, and polls that show him sinking underwater are fake news, the reality is altogether more uncomfortable.
 

Let's just take Florida, where Trump was to have made his Convention acceptance speech. It is the epicentre at the moment of the appalling surge in coronavirus cases.

With its population of 21 million, last week it was diagnosing more new cases per day than the whole of the European Union (population 460 million). But Florida is also ground zero for US presidential elections. Just think Bush versus Gore in 2000.
 

It was a state Trump won comfortably in 2016. It was a state he thought he would breeze in November. But the latest Quinnipiac University poll has Democratic nominee Joe Biden 13 points ahead.

Thirteen. That is massive. And there is a whole pile of other key swing states which show President Trump lagging behind.
 

What hasn't changed in the past week is the science. You can be sure that his long-suffering public health advisors have been banging on about the same things like a broken gramophone.

Masks, distancing, avoiding crowds. It may be that the president has had a Damascene conversion to listening to his doctors. Possible, but I have to say unlikely.
 

If we're looking for a significant "thing" it is this. Last week, Trump fired his 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and installed a new one. And it appears Bill Stepien has sat the president down and given him the ice cold bucket of water.

That the polls are awful, and going in the wrong direction; that all is not lost but quickly could spin out of control. That a change of direction and tone is urgently needed. Particularly when it comes to anything and everything to do with Covid-19.
 

It is worth inserting one proviso here. I don't know Bill Stepien - although he gets very good reviews. But brilliant though he may be, there is a bit of a pattern of the president making a new appointment, and then for the next two or three weeks he does what he is told - but then reverts to going with his gut; going with his instinct.

The things that he will tell you have served him best throughout his long and colourful career. But we are in new territory.
 

For three and a half years the president has been able to define his own reality; to bend and fashion facts to suit his own narrative.

The coronavirus has been unimpressed by his efforts. This has been a foe like none that Donald Trump has faced. And he has had to bend to its will. Not the other way round.
 

What has happened this week is that what the polls are showing and what his scientists have been repeatedly calling for are totally aligned. And he really doesn't want to be a loser in November.
 

The spectre of these 180s has brought much guffawing from liberal commentators. The man who only knows how to double down, now doubled up in the pain of these very public reverses. Oh happy days.
 

But they should be more cautious. The conversion may be insincere; may well be borne of polling necessity - but what a lot of Americans will see is their president behaving rationally and normally; making decisions consistent with the scale of the threat the American people are facing - and Americans are fearing.

But, I hear you say, surely they won't forget about all those things the president said in March and April when he played the pandemic down and urged the reopening of the US economy prematurely?

 

Well, all I would say is that the circus moves on quickly; everyone seems to have incredibly short memories. Who talks any more about Mueller? Or Russia? Or impeachment?

The beam of the lighthouse doesn't stay long in any one place. With our impatience for new developments, for new story lines, for plot twists, we seem to suffer collectively from attention deficit disorder. And this president understands that better than anyone.
 

Some will no doubt write that this has been the president's worst week ever. If he wins in November it will come to be seen as his best.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53532880

 

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Trump reverses course as the coronavirus surges out of control


President Trump was adamant that Congress cut payroll taxes — until, suddenly, he backed down.


He demanded that all of the nation’s schools reopen for the fall semester — until, suddenly, he allowed for some wiggle room.


He insisted upon filling every seat at the Republican National Convention celebration — until, suddenly, he canceled the event. And he refused to wear a mask in public — until, suddenly, he did, and morphed into a mask evangelist.


For Trump, this has been a week of retreat. Rather than bending others to his will, the president has been the one backing down from long-held positions in the face of resistance from fellow Republicans or popular opposition, scrambling to resurrect his reelection campaign while the coronavirus continues to ravage the nation.


Weakened politically by his response to the pandemic, Trump changed course after polls showed his positions did not align with public attitudes or — as was the case with the payroll tax cut — his Republican allies on Capitol Hill declined to advance his interests.


“The good ship Trump has sprung a leak, and it’s leaking political capital,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian at New York University and a former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.


“I don’t think the president is pivoting,” Naftali said. “I think the president is backtracking because he is facing head winds, and those are head winds from elected Republicans.”


Throughout his 3½ years in office, Trump largely controlled Republicans in Congress, effectively dictating their agenda and, if needed, coercing them to vote as he saw fit.

That makes the opposition among Republicans, as well as Democrats, to the payroll tax cut Trump has strongly pushed for in the latest negotiations over a new federal stimulus package all the more notable.


“I’m still trying to figure out what went wrong, how the wheels came off on the payroll tax cut,” said Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to the president and his team. “Certainly there’s been a retreat on that issue, and it’s frustrating to me because I think President Trump really wanted to do a payroll tax cut.”


Trump had long called for a reduction in the payroll taxes that fund Social Security, suggesting he might not sign a stimulus bill that did not include one. Yet in negotiations this week between the Trump administration and Senate Republicans, the payroll tax cut was jettisoned, with many GOP senators rejecting his idea.

Trump put the onus on congressional Democrats for the tax cut not being included, but it was Republicans who killed it.


Trump’s advisers sought to play down the loss, arguing that the president and his team never expected the payroll tax cut to make it in the final legislation and that it was a natural outcome for the proposal to end up on the cutting-room floor.


“Thanks to the President’s leadership and political prowess, he successfully pushed through three significant rounds of landmark coronavirus relief for the American people and he’ll continue to work on a fourth,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said in an email.

She added that Trump has “fought for the American worker,” and she accused Democrats of trying to advance “a litany of liberal priorities unrelated to the virus.”


Overall, White House officials rejected the characterization of the president’s sudden advocacy for mask usage and cancellation of the convention festivities in Jacksonville, Fla., as a retreat.

They argued that Trump remains popular with Republican voters and that his actions were designed to protect the American people, not a reaction to his political standing.


On masks, Trump for months refused to be photographed publicly wearing one and even mocked people who did cover their faces. But earlier this month he staged a photo op at Walter Reed Army Medical Center wearing a mask, and this week in successive press briefings he advocated that people wear masks whenever social distancing cannot be achieved.


The president’s change in tune came after some Republican governors instituted mask mandates in their states and polls showed a growing share of the public supported mask usage and other preventive health measures designed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.


Before shifting course this week on the Republican convention, the president throughout the spring and early summer had insisted on having a packed, boisterous crowd of delegates and other supporters at the event.

After officials in North Carolina, because of health restrictions, could not guarantee a full house, Trump moved the celebration to Jacksonville, where state and local leaders were more willing to acquiesce to his demands.


But Trump said Thursday that he was canceling the festivities in Jacksonville, citing public safety as Florida, and the Jacksonville area especially, confront a surging number of coronavirus cases.


“I looked at my team and I said: ‘The timing for this event is not right. It’s just not right with what’s happened recently — the flare-up in Florida — to have a big convention,’ ” Trump told reporters.

“I have to protect the American people. That’s what I’ve always done. That’s what I always will do. That’s what I’m about.” 😲


Trump’s safety rationale was inconsistent, however, with his stance last month in regard to staging a large campaign rally in Tulsa. He was adamant about holding the event, despite repeated warnings from local health officials that convening thousands of people in an indoor arena could further spread the virus.

In the days that followed the rally, the rate of coronavirus cases in the Tulsa area increased.


Trump has since come to terms with the reality that the virus is worsening — as opposed to disappearing, as he has predicted it would — and that many Americans are apprehensive about mass gatherings and want to proceed cautiously, according to a former senior administration official briefed on Trump’s decision-making calculations.


Democratic pollster Margie Omero said she thinks what Trump has been doing is “waiting for his ratings to completely fall apart and then trying to find actions more people might support.”


“However much Trump tries to discredit polling, we know one thing about him — he lives for public approval more than public service,” Omero added. “So he seems to be reacting to his political standing.”


Historian Douglas Brinkley suggested Trump’s recent moves were less a forced retreat from a position of weakness and more an awkward attempt at the kind of pre-election triangulation executed to varying degrees of success by Nixon, Bill Clinton and other past presidents.


“Trump is trying to do a giant reset,” Brinkley said. “Just like the new ‘new Nixon,’ this will be the ‘new Trump,’ ” Brinkley said. “. . . Right when you think a politician is set in stone, you can get a makeover. These are the games politicians play.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-week-of-retreat-the-president-reverses-course-as-the-coronavirus-surges-out-of-control/2020/07/24/bf680c2c-cdc2-11ea-91f1-28aca4d833a0_story.html

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Ex-Trump aide Scaramucci says president’s ‘well wishes’ to Ghislaine Maxwell are coded message: ‘Please don’t talk’
 

Quote

Former White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci has accused Donald Trump of covertly imploring the arrested socialite Ghislaine Maxwell not to reveal what she knows about him.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Mr Scaramucci wrote: “She has the goods on him. He is signaling ‘please don’t talk.’”

Mr Trump acknowledged Ms Maxwell during a press briefing on Tuesday, his first since April. Asked by a reporter whether he thought she would turn in other powerful men who were potentially involved with Jeffrey Epstein, the president said he hasn’t been following the case closely.

“I just wish her well,” he said. “I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.”

Mr Trump was photographed alongside Epstein and Ms Maxwell many times over more than a decade, and once called Epstein a “terrific guy”, saying “he [liked] beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”.

Since before Epstein’s death, however, any association between them has been downplayed. Fox News recently had to apologise for “mistakenly” cropping Mr Trump out of a picture featuring the two.

Mr Scaramucci has several times tweeted in support of Epstein-related conspiracy theories, and specifically the idea that the billionaire paedophile was murdered in prison. Among the sources he has retweeted on this subject is far-right male supremacist agitator Mike Cernovich.

Mr Cernovich previously helped propagate the “Pizzagate” theory, which held that Hillary Clinton and her associates were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington pizza restaurant, Comet Ping Pong. (The restaurant does not in fact even have a basement.)
 

 


Mr Scaramucci was hired as White House communications director in August 2017, upon which he immediately became obsessed with leakers and acquired a reputation for turning on both the press and his fellow aides.

In a notoriously coarse phone interview with The New Yorker during his time at the White House, he boasted of his own sense of mission while denigrating the president’s closest advisers.

“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own ^^^^,” he told reporter Ryan Lizza. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the ****ing strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country.”

Mr Scaramucci was sacked shortly afterwards by incoming chief of staff John Kelly.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-ghislaine-maxwell-anthony-scaramucci-jeffrey-epstein-sex-abuse-a9632476.html

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Bindy Badgy
On 25/07/2020 at 05:04, JFK-1 said:

 

Well I doubt his basic arithmetic is any better than his literacy, but let's try a comparison. Say Germany which has the largest population in Western Europe and a population around one quarter that of the US.

So if the Germans were doing as comparably great a job as Trump they should be looking at around 250 daily deaths. Germany covid deaths July 24th was 14.

Not the 25% of the US number it should be if it were comparable, but rather just 1.4% of the US figure. Almost 18 times fewer deaths per head of population.

In the days before the internet the idiot may have got away with his ludicrous claims. But with global data at our fingertips it can't be hidden.

 

Added to this, Germany has a much higher population density, which increases the chances of the disease spreading. There are going to be other confounding variable in there as well.

 

The sad thing is, he will continue to get away with it with his base. The people in this demographic don't give a shit about facts and science. They only care about owning the Libs, even if it costs them their lives.

Edited by Stokesy
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5 hours ago, Stokesy said:

The sad thing is, he will continue to get away with it with his base. The people in this demographic don't give a shit about facts and science. They only care about owning the Libs, even if it costs them their lives.

 

Well didn't his mouthpiece Conway say something like we're not going to let science get in the way of our alternate reality? Stupid science.

Apparently they quit the coronavirus briefings months ago after he made his injecting disinfectant and very powerful lights comment. Maybe they decided you know what, we need to keep him as quiet as possible in this.

Now i'm presuming that afterwards someone had to explain to him how stupid that comment was while somehow still agreeing he's the smartest idiot in the room. He threw a tantrum and decided to just ignore the boring pandemic. Let's get back to fun. Tweeting and planning rallies.

And I hear there were no doctors or scientists on view at the latest incarnation of the briefings. What do they know? As you say there are a hard core of complete and total numb nuts possibly even dumber than he is or even more racist.

They will stick with the idiot even if the entire country is burning down. But surely it's not enough considering how slim 2016 was. Surely the non crazies who voted for him have at last seen this can't go on. We're now the international laughing stock he falsely claimed we were.

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Jambo-Jimbo
7 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Well didn't his mouthpiece Conway say something like we're not going to let science get in the way of our alternate reality? Stupid science.

Apparently they quit the coronavirus briefings months ago after he made his injecting disinfectant and very powerful lights comment. Maybe they decided you know what, we need to keep him as quiet as possible in this.

Now i'm presuming that afterwards someone had to explain to him how stupid that comment was while somehow still agreeing he's the smartest idiot in the room. He threw a tantrum and decided to just ignore the boring pandemic. Let's get back to fun. Tweeting and planning rallies.

And I hear there were no doctors or scientists on view at the latest incarnation of the briefings. What do they know? As you say there are a hard core of complete and total numb nuts possibly even dumber than he is or even more racist.

They will stick with the idiot even if the entire country is burning down. But surely it's not enough considering how slim 2016 was. Surely the non crazies who voted for him have at last seen this can't go on. We're now the international laughing stock he falsely claimed we were.

 

That's the key thing, surely. 

All the people who voted for Trump thinking he'd calm down once he got into the Whitehouse now realise what a huge mistake they made, and it's now time to put a stop this madness, before things get too out of hand.

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Bindy Badgy
24 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

But surely it's not enough considering how slim 2016 was. Surely the non crazies who voted for him have at last seen this can't go on. We're now the international laughing stock he falsely claimed we were.

 

Voter suppression would like a word with you. If the Deocrats get the results they need their first priority should be anti-voter suppression and gerrymandering legislation.

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2 minutes ago, Jambo-Jimbo said:

 

That's the key thing, surely. 

All the people who voted for Trump thinking he'd calm down once he got into the Whitehouse now realise what a huge mistake they made, and it's now time to put a stop this madness, before things get too out of hand.

 

As of this week he's trying to act rational. The virus being played down to "the sniffles", we have it under control, it's going to just disappear like a miracle, has been transformed to , 'it's going to get worse before it gets better", and masks are 'patriotic'

 

It's too little too late and I deem him incapable of playing sane for any length of time. Just give him a press conference in front of enquiring journalists and he will say something crazy, guaranteed.

Maybe why they're trying to keep him under wraps by sending Conway out to answer questions.

 

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1 minute ago, Stokesy said:

 

Voter suppression would like a word with you. If the Deocrats get the results they need their first priority should be anti-voter suppression and gerrymandering legislation.

 

Indeed, it's a scandal. Far worse than the gerrymandering that has been practiced in the UK. Thing is most Americans don't even know what gerrymandering means. They have heard the word but don't know what it means. Believe me, I have asked them.

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A fairly substantial section of Trump's Mexico wall has blown over in a hurricane

 

:jjyay:

Edited by Cade
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Image may contain: text that says "Yay! Congrats Thanks, we are are so excited Have you picked out any names? I'm pretty sure we are naming her Reighfyl Pronounced like "rifle" Oh Message 川 Pay w E R T Y U I A o S P D F G Η J K L"

 

This isn't exactly Trump-related, but I'm not sure I've ever been this embarrassed to be American before

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4 hours ago, Justin Z said:

Image may contain: text that says "Yay! Congrats Thanks, we are are so excited Have you picked out any names? I'm pretty sure we are naming her Reighfyl Pronounced like "rifle" Oh Message 川 Pay w E R T Y U I A o S P D F G Η J K L"

 

This isn't exactly Trump-related, but I'm not sure I've ever been this embarrassed to be American before

If that's genuine, I hope they appreciate that they've condemned their child to an eternity of "Er.... How do you spell that?" 

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8 hours ago, Justin Z said:

Image may contain: text that says "Yay! Congrats Thanks, we are are so excited Have you picked out any names? I'm pretty sure we are naming her Reighfyl Pronounced like "rifle" Oh Message 川 Pay w E R T Y U I A o S P D F G Η J K L"

 

This isn't exactly Trump-related, but I'm not sure I've ever been this embarrassed to be American before

 

Middle name Bullet. Daughter of Pistol Pete Pratt.

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Here’s how to prepare for Trump rejecting the election results in November
 

Quote

President Trump is laying the groundwork to do something that no previous president has ever done: falsely claim that an election was fixed against him in order to discredit the vote. Trump has repeatedly — and incorrectly — claimed the election will be “rigged” against him.

By promoting a series of wacky, debunked conspiracy theories, he has primed his supporters to wrongly believe he is the victim of some unknown, shadowy “deep state” plot. In an interview that aired last week, he refused to commit to accepting the results in November.

His actions challenge the flagship event of our republic: the peaceful transfer of power after an election, accepted by all candidates.

(It’s worth noting that in 2016, Hillary Clinton quickly accepted the results and congratulated her opponent, while also criticizing the election’s integrity based on verified instances of Russian information warfare — a far cry from Trump peddling the debunked myth of widespread voter fraud.)

With about 100 days to go, we are careening toward an extraordinarily dangerous crisis of American democracy.

Such crises never happen in other functioning democracies. But they happen all the time in broken countries around the world.

In contentious elections from Africa to southeast Asia, incumbents who lose often refuse to accept defeat. Welcome to the club, America!

All the warning lights are blinking red. University of Birmingham professor Nic Cheeseman , an expert on contentious elections and political violence with whom I co-authored the book “How to Rig an Election,” normally worries when contested votes happen in Kenya or Zimbabwe. Now, he’s worried about the United States.

“There are five warning I always look for,” he told me. “Organized militias, a leader who is not prepared to lose, distrust of the political system, disinformation, and a potentially close contest. Right now, the U.S. has all five.”

Consider ourselves warned. The question, then, is: What do we do about it? If Trump ends up trying to torch crucial norms of democracy in order to save face, how can we prepare? Other countries offer a series of lessons we should urgently learn from, so that if (or when) the worst happens, Trump’s matches don’t light.

First, we need a bipartisan pact endorsing the results. Incumbents who reject results solely because they lost tend to get more traction when their party backs them uniformly. When cracks show, the self-serving farce falls apart.

Democrats and Republicans who believe in democracy should agree to immediately and publicly accept the election results (barring any major irregularities).

All living former presidents should be involved. It would also be particularly helpful to ensure that former members of the Trump administration — such as John Kelly, H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis — are on board. The broader the coalition, the more Trump’s desperate ploy would be exposed for what it is.

Second, shore up public confidence with oversight. State election officials can conduct quick randomized audits and release results that demonstrate the integrity of the process. Many states do not automatically mandate such audits, but there is still time to expand them before November.

And while some states have put up roadblocks to independent international election observers in the past, now would be a good time to welcome them with open arms. They might shine an embarrassing light on any state’s electoral failings, but can quickly debunk false claims of manipulation made by losers.

Third, the media should do more to educate voters about election administration. Trump’s lies about election procedures work when people don’t understand the process.

For example, Trump tried to attack mail-in ballots while saying that he has no issue with absentee ballots, even though no-fault absentee ballots and mail-in voting are exactly the same thing.

Just as it’s easier to scare people with the risks of dihydrogen monoxide until people realize that it is water, educating voters will make it harder for Trump to get away with lying about how elections are held.

Fourth, state and local election officials should do more contingency planning for a pandemic election. Things will go wrong. The more preparations are done now, the fewer examples Trump and his allies can cherry-pick to make false claims of being the victim of an unfair vote. Again, the media can help expose states that aren’t ready, to help kick them into gear.

Finally, it would help if the margin was clear and court rulings were swift and decisive to uphold democracy. As professor Sarah Birch, author of “Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order,” told me:

“Malawi provides a good example of a country that recently weathered a contentious election more successfully than many observers had expected.”

Even though the president tried to manipulate the vote — and even tried to cancel it — “the clear margin of victory of the winner together with the resoluteness of the courts in insisting on adhering to democratic electoral norms” blunted the damage done by the losing incumbent.

If Trump’s authoritarian populism wins in November, the United States faces an existential threat to its democracy. But if he loses, the period between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20, 2021, will be particularly dangerous, too. It’s not too late. But we must get ready.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/27/heres-how-prepare-trump-rejecting-election-results-november/

 

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Not sure how the election in 100 days can go ahead without postal voting and the orange crook is out to block it.

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47 minutes ago, JackLadd said:

Not sure how the election in 100 days can go ahead without postal voting and the orange crook is out to block it.

 

It can't be done effectively without postal voting. Many people are in places where they're many miles from a polling station and we're in the midst of a pandemic. Many are reluctant to go anywhere they're going to be around a lot of people. Like standing in a line for hours to vote.

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Trump was near here in town today, checking on his multi $m gamble to expedite a COVID vaccine timed to get FDA approval just before the election probably. Given it's just going into Phase 3 trials, going to be interesting to see how that happens!!

 

 

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2 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

" But if he loses, the period between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20, 2021, will be particularly dangerous, too."

 

 

That's the part that should be most worrisome to Americans.  Once his defeat is confirmed, and he has 2+ months before being walked out the door, the freak is liable to do anything and won't care about the consequences.

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2 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

That's the part that should be most worrisome to Americans.  Once his defeat is confirmed, and he has 2+ months before being walked out the door, the freak is liable to do anything and won't care about the consequences.

 

I think we can all be confident he's going to salt the earth behind him in every way possible. A scorched earth policy. And not just in an attempt to sabotage the incoming administration.

It's simply who he is. A malevolent vindictive sociopath.

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Trump's final presidential pardon: himself
 

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Jan. 20, 2021. EXCLUSIVE TO THE HILL: According to official documents obtained by our team of White House correspondents, President Trump’s last official act as president, just minutes before leaving the White House to head directly for Mar-A-Lago, pointedly boycotting incoming President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, was to issue one final presidential pardon.

In a brief written statement, Trump said, “Under absolute powers bestowed on me as president under Article II of the Constitution, I am awarding a full prospective, presidential pardon to the person who has been the most unfairly investigated and persecuted by our corrupt system of justice: Donald J. Trump.”

 

Donald Trump pardons himself? Don’t laugh. Admit it. You know as well as I, that’s exactly where this whole clown show is headed. I’m not a betting man, but I’d bet the ranch on this one: that somewhere in White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s office is a file on presidential self-pardons.

The historical and legal research has already been done. The plan’s already in place. And the commutation of 
Roger Stone is only Trump’s first step in carrying out that plan.

A president pardoning himself? Don’t laugh. While that issue’s never been addressed by the Supreme Court, Trump’s not the first one to think about it.

He’s already said Article II “allows me to do whatever I want.” Richard Nixon’s White House lawyers seriously considered the possibility, but Nixon decided to resign before being indicted with a crime.

In 1998, however, during the Clinton impeachment hearings, House Judiciary Committee member 
Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) stated: “The prevailing opinion is that the president can pardon himself.”

But wait, White House officials could even be pardoned for crimes they haven’t even been charged with yet? Again, don’t laugh. It’s already happened.

One month after he resigned, Gerald Ford gave Nixon a “full, free and absolute pardon” for all federal crimes he “committed or may have committed” during his presidency 
 thereby making it impossible to charge him with anything.

And, in 1992, shortly before leaving office, President George H.W. Bush pulled the rug out from under special counsel Lawrence E. Walsh by 
granting a full pardon to six Reagan officials, including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, under investigation in the Iran-Contra affair. Walsh had no choice but to drop his case.

Most Americans don’t understand that, for Donald Trump, the stakes here could not be higher. For him, what’s at stake is much greater than simply losing the White House. What’s at stake is losing his freedom.

Trump knows that, with Joe Biden in the White House and his ability to hide under the cloak of presidential immunity no longer possible, he could well be indicted for crimes identified in the Mueller report and the House impeachment.

His post-presidential days could be spent in prison, not on the golf course. So he’s adopted a three-part strategy to deny that possibility.

First step: Deny the legitimacy of the Trump-Russia investigation by branding it a Democratically inspired “witch hunt.”

Blame it on Ukraine, instead. Get Sen. 
Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to hold Senate hearings. Tell Bill Barr to conduct his own Justice Department investigation. All underway.

Second step: Do whatever’s necessary to secure the loyalty of anybody on the inside who could tell the truth. Buy Roger Stone’s silence with a commutation.

Promise a pardon to Michael Flynn, if he needs it. Fire the U.S. attorney for New York to keep 
Rudy Giuliani from having to testify under oath. Again, all underway.

Trump’s third and absolutely certain final step: Get ready to pardon himself. He knows he has to do it. He will do it. It’s not a question of if, but of when.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/507070-press-trumps-final-presidential-pardon-himself

 

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One journalists alternative view of Trump's incompetence. Disturbing speculation.
 

Quote

As I stressed last week, the media's preferred storyline that suggests Trump is simply incompetent doesn't add up because Trump has made the wrong decision every single time in terms of how crises like this are supposed to be dealt with. (i.e. Be consistent, transparent, factual, and credible.)

It's increasingly not believable for the press to suggest Trump has been distracted or inept during this crisis, in part because the level of White House uselessness has become so staggering.

Maybe Trump's vengeful. Maybe he wants to wreck the economy to create investment opportunities? He's under the thumb of a foreign entity? He wants to cause panic and cancel the November elections? He's a fatalist? Who knows.

And honestly, the specific "why" isn't what matters now. What matters is asking the difficult questions and pondering what the Trump presidency is truly about, no matter what lurks in the shadows….

Now the press needs to shift some of its focus and ask the truly alarming questions about Trump and his motives. Because we still don't know why he essentially ordered the federal government to stand down for the virus invasion.

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/25/psychologist-john-gartner-trump-is-a-sexual-sadist-who-is-actively-engaging-in-sabotage/

 

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6 minutes ago, Justin Z said:

My now useless passport, and the supporters who made it possible

 

Image may contain: 1 person, text that says "Bruno Maçães @MacaesBruno This is where Americans can travel now 5:53 am 12Jul20 Twitter for iPad 729 Retweets 1,308 Likes Beau Craft @beaucraft23 1d Replying to @MacaesBruno Is there like an imaginary line that thinks they can stop us 46 TARU @Tarushdei 10h So wait, you support illegal immigration now?"

 

:facepalm: :rofl:

 

I was actually recently wondering if I could go home. British citizen with a British passport but been living in Oklahoma. Would they let me in I wondered.

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7 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

 

I was actually recently wondering if I could go home. British citizen with a British passport but been living in Oklahoma. Would they let me in I wondered.

Yup, but you would have to self-quarantine for 14 days. No chance of getting back into tge US for a while though. Predicament I'm in right now as well

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Trump lied about being asked to throw first pitch by NY Yankees because he was triggered/jealous by Dr Fauci doing same in opening game at Washington Nationals. Yankees put out a statement saying news to them and Trump was not invited. Basically the clown lies about everything.

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1 hour ago, JackLadd said:

Trump lied about being asked to throw first pitch by NY Yankees because he was triggered/jealous by Dr Fauci doing same in opening game at Washington Nationals. Yankees put out a statement saying news to them and Trump was not invited. Basically the clown lies about everything.

Thats the other thing about some of the stuff he just makes up: a lot of isnt actually worth lying about!! Who really cares, apart from him, that he didn't get asked? He did the same thing for Last Week Tonight a few years back as well. 

 

His his ego really that fragile?

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Trump and family have been sharing videos and tweeting about Hydroxychloroquine again.

Twitter has deleted the videos and put Trump's son on a 12 hour timer to delete his tweets or they'll limit his account.

MAGA twats raging about "big tech meddling in politics"

 

:gocompare:

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I P Knightley
2 hours ago, JackLadd said:

Trump lied about being asked to throw first pitch by NY Yankees because he was triggered/jealous by Dr Fauci doing same in opening game at Washington Nationals. Yankees put out a statement saying news to them and Trump was not invited. Basically the clown lies about everything.

I've not seen this. Who was he lying to? A press conference or a tweet?

 

There was a Viz character, "Aldridge Prior, the hopeless liar". Very much the way it goes with Trump. Lies about the most inconsequential, unnecessary things imaginable. 

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27 minutes ago, Cade said:

Trump and family have been sharing videos and tweeting about Hydroxychloroquine again.

Twitter has deleted the videos and put Trump's son on a 12 hour timer to delete his tweets or they'll limit his account.

MAGA twats raging about "big tech meddling in politics"

 

:gocompare:

 

Yeah the stuff the FDA initially approved for COVID treatment under political pressure, only to rescind that approval due to the fact that every clinical trial (generating actual scientific data) has been canned early or shown detrimental or no effect.  It shows that the MHRA and EMA did not go anywhere near approving it.

 

Its almost if the Trump social media accounts are actually bots trying to spread disinformation throughout their own people (apart from the fact that a bot wouldn't tweet the amount of shite that Trump does) 

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39 minutes ago, I P Knightley said:

I've not seen this. Who was he lying to? A press conference or a tweet?

 

Press conference, White House briefing room. Just brought it up completely out of nowhere. A 100% lie out of nowhere.

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3 hours ago, JackLadd said:

Trump lied about being asked to throw first pitch by NY Yankees because he was triggered/jealous by Dr Fauci doing same in opening game at Washington Nationals. Yankees put out a statement saying news to them and Trump was not invited. Basically the clown lies about everything.

Does he think by the time his first lie is fact checked, he has told another hundred, and therefore the first one has been forgotten about and taken as the truth.

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34 minutes ago, Justin Z said:

 

Press conference, White House briefing room. Just brought it up completely out of nowhere. A 100% lie out of nowhere.

 

Probably exactly why you wont see much of him as the election nears. Peculiar you might think, not normal for a candidate in an election. But those behind him know that every time he steps out there the chances of saying something ludicrous are high.

It's being suggested he will entirely dodge the usual pre elction presidential debates.As is speculated in this Washington Post article.
 

Quote

Trump’s excuses are comicalNo one outside the White House (and not even everyone in it) could honestly believe President Trump’s latest excuse for not showing up for a previously announced event. Trump tweeted on Sunday:

Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the @Yankees on August 15th. We will make it later in the season!

Yet he finds time for golf, insulting political opponents and watching gobs of TV news? Perhaps he would rather not go to Yankee Stadium because he might not be able to throw the 60 feet and 6 inches from the mound to home plate (certainly the climb down the 10-inch mound is not as treacherous as the West Point ramp).

Maybe he shied away because he would have found himself at an event where the players all “take a knee," which has been a regular and warmly received feature in the new and abbreviated season.

Whatever the reason, in refusing to go, he is avoiding a place where he’s likely to be confronted by those outside his bubble and be widely mocked.

Trump is not a courageous man, as we saw from his flight to the White House bunker during a Black Lives Matter demonstration (and before that, by his unwillingness to sit down with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III). He managed to get out of fighting in Vietnam five times, claiming “bone spurs” for one of them.

His new tactic, it appears, is to accept an invitation suggesting that he is welcome in America and then to cancel with a lame excuse. After the disastrous Tulsa rally in June, he promised to go to New Hampshire for another event.

He begged off at the last minute, claiming bad weather. (It turned out to be a sunny day.) He’ll be back, he promised! (Before or after he throws out a pitch at Yankee Stadium, do you think?)

Trump generally avoids TV interviews other than with Fox News. (After the debacle with Chris Wallace, he might have to further refine his list of acceptable questioners.)

He is not courageous enough to leave the cozy confines of “state TV” for a grilling from independent-minded news interviewers. He sure appears to fear showing up where he cannot control the ground rules, determine the person he will sit down with and be confident he can avoid pesky questions. (Disclosure: I am an MSNBC contributor.)

That brings us to the presidential debates. Do we think he will show up to the three presidential debates set by the Commission on Presidential Debates? While the debate commission picks the moderators,

Trump is likely to hold out for a Sean Hannity or a Tucker Carlson or other character Democrats would find entirely objectionable. Trump will likely avoid making a decision for as long as possible (as he did with Mueller), then claim it is “rigged” if he cannot bring himself to show up.

He might be wise to beg off. It is hard to believe he could stick to whatever time limits are imposed for his debate answers rather than resort to filibustering.

He would be in grave peril of getting called out for not answering questions, being fact-checked in real time and finding no place to hide when asked about his serial failures (especially the tens of thousands of Americans who died during the pandemic).

He might be asked about any number of scandals. How much did you make from foreigners staying at your hotels? Did you commute Roger Stone’s sentence to keep him from incriminating you?

On those rare occasions when Trump has stepped out side the Fox News cocoon, the results have not been pretty. In an interview last year, ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Trump whether he would accept foreign help in the next election.

Trump’s response ended up being used at his impeachment trial. He simply cannot refrain from damaging himself.

I’d put the chances of Trump ducking the debates at about 50-50. I think he would rather throw that pitch before he’d subject himself to debates.

https://www.hmfckickback.co.uk/index.php?/topic/181731-donald-trump/page/331/&tab=comments#comment-8011507

 

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