U.S. Politics megathread (merged)

[Jambo-Jimbo]

Coal.

 

Remember back in 2016 Trump promised to save the American coal industry, well it's not working out to well, in fact there is less people working in the coal industry now than when Trump became president, yet another election pledge that hasn't been kept, many miners are feeling betrayed by Trump and his lies.

[EH11_2NL]

4 hours ago, jonesy said:

I'm no fan of the orange bell-end, but the way some folk talk about Trump supporters is not helpful.

 

I remember thinking the same, however, about Bush voters until I spent an evening in a bar in Oregon chatting with one. He was capable of justifying his vote and support of Bush quite eloquently and reasonably.

As much as Bush was a banana as well, he isn't in the same league as Trumpet. Bush could at least hold a semi-literate press conference. Trumpet blusters, obfuscates, lies, and avoids probing questions. My huge issue with Trumpet supporters, and I meant the educated ones from a deeper gene pool, is that they must listen to some of his stuff and think WTAF. They must! And yet they still vote for him. What the hell is wrong with them?

[Justin Z]

10 hours ago, trotter said:

 

To answer your question JFK, see Justin's reply. These are two incredibly brilliant, successful, intelligent people, yet for whatever reason they have bought into the Trump propaganda machine. For what it's worth, I don't think and I have had the conversation/argument with both, that they think he is the Messiah. Rather they, and a lot of Americans are so disenfranchised with the country, they will go with him because he simply shouts MAGA.

 

Cheers for this. I'm against Democrats for being do-nothing-for-regular-folk, corporatist knobslobbers, and it's exactly these kinds of situations I have in mind when I criticise them. This stuff is exactly why imo the Dems deserve as much of our scorn as Trump and the GOP.

[Justin Z]

34 minutes ago, EH11_2NL said:

As much as Bush was a banana as well, he isn't in the same league as Trumpet. Bush could at least hold a semi-literate press conference. Trumpet blusters, obfuscates, lies, and avoids probing questions. My huge issue with Trumpet supporters, and I meant the educated ones from a deeper gene pool, is that they must listen to some of his stuff and think WTAF. They must! And yet they still vote for him. What the hell is wrong with them?

 

There's always a rationalisation. Anything from “Oh he talks like this for effect but when he's actually working, he's serious” to “Democrats are radical leftist Nazi communists who hate America and want to destroy it from within.” I am paraphrasing a very intelligent person who worked at Intel for decades with that second one. His ability to think critically shuts completely down when politics is the topic of discussion.

[DarthVodka]

All that’s needed to rile up some of the American population is the mention of ‘communism’ - some will basically vote any other way even at the hint of the word. Some may not even know what it means 

[CJGJ]

12 minutes ago, DarthVodka said:

All that’s needed to rile up some of the American population is the mention of ‘communism’ - some will basically vote any other way even at the hint of the word. Some may not even know what it means 

They don't even know what Socialism is without confusing them with mention of Communism

 

It always amazes me for a country that has so much many of the population have so little in their heads

 

I guess you have to look at the education system as a starting point

[Lovecraft]

14 minutes ago, DarthVodka said:

All that’s needed to rile up some of the American population is the mention of ‘communism’ - some will basically vote any other way even at the hint of the word. Some may not even know what it means 

Pretty much just Catholics and Protestants here.

 

Loads of Protestants don't actually know what Protestantism actually is.  They just hate Catholics because they were told to.

 

All in all.  Loads of people are gullible ****ing idiot sheep.

 

If only there was a Latin  phrase to represent this method of maintaining power.

 

 

[Boston Jambo]

Justin Z and JFK -1 you guys make a lot of sense, good posts. 

 

What on earth would you even try talking to a Trumper for?

 

Unless they stand to gain millions from his policies, which I can understand but certainly don't condone,

then you are talking to someone who is comfortable with a  president who is:

 

a pathological liar

a misogynist

a racist

a tax cheat

mocks an afflicted reporter

mocks a gold star family while being a draft dodger.

The list is endless.

 

Ignore them, I do it in all the facets of my life.

 

Socially I just move away, or  if they are on my bar I find something better to do, like clean the floor with my tongue.

 

Quite simply they are beneath you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Statts1976uk]

Can someone explain to me, like I've no exposure to the election, something?

 

How is Hunter Biden and possibly his father dealing with the Chinese a bad thing but Trump having business dealings is ok?  I thought at the time the Bidens were private citizens so if they wanted to work with them then they could.

[Maple Leaf]

9 minutes ago, Statts1976uk said:

Can someone explain to me, like I've no exposure to the election, something?

 

How is Hunter Biden and possibly his father dealing with the Chinese a bad thing but Trump having business dealings is ok?  I thought at the time the Bidens were private citizens so if they wanted to work with them then they could.

 

They'd rather talk about Hunter Biden than talk about Trump's performance as President.  We saw on '60 Minutes' how Trump reacts when he think he's being asked tough questions.

[Maple Leaf]

I'm looking forward to this time next week when we'll be discussing Trump's frantic efforts to stay in power despite having lost the popular vote by ten million.

 

Feel free to quote me and laugh if I'm wrong.

[theshed]

Sorry if I’m being lazy here as can’t be bothered checking back this thread  but is trump going to win or is it to close to call? 
 

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by theshed

[Maple Leaf]

1 minute ago, jonesy said:

It's not the popular vote I'm worried about. 

 

Still got a feeling the polls are way off and he's going to sneak it.

 

If the polls are away off, for the second election in a row, that industry will take a long time to recover their credibility.  I'm assuming/hoping that they learned their lesson in 2016 and have it right this time.

[Maple Leaf]

2 minutes ago, theshed said:

Sorry if I’m being lazy here as can’t be bothered checking back this thread  but is trump going to win or is it to close to call? 
 

 

 

If you believe the polls, and many people do not, it will be an easy Biden win.

[theshed]

1 minute ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

If you believe the polls, and many people do not, it will be an easy Biden win.

Ok thanks 👍

 

Haven’t  really follow this election but what I do know if he does get beat he won’t go easily 

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

1 minute ago, theshed said:

Sorry if I’m being lazy here as can’t be bothered checking back this thread  but is trump going to win or is it to close to call? 
 

 

Biden is almost certain to win the popular vote by a large margin and is likely, but not certain, to win the actual election. There are several states which could be won by very small margins. So a Biden landslide is possible in the electoral college but so is a narrow Trump win.

 

[JFK-1]

14 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

They'd rather talk about Hunter Biden than talk about Trump's performance as President.  We saw on '60 Minutes' how Trump reacts when he think he's being asked tough questions.

 

Blows my mind that he says this and doesn't grasp what an idiot it makes him look. Tough questions? What is this? Advanced nuclear physics? No it isn't.

There is nothing "tough" about political questioning provided you have even a basic idea of what you're talking about. If you do it's easy to provide an answer.

All he's doing is further revealing that "tough questions" to him simply boils down to why are you such an idiot? Why is the pandemic spiraling out of control with no coherent strategy to deal with it?

Ask Biden about the pandemic and he will have ready answers. Trump doesn't. So it's "tough"

Anything but conspiracy bullshit there isn't a shred of evidence for. The insanity was further revealed in his whining that serious journalists like 60 minutes aren't reporting on the conspiracy bullshit aside from mentioning that he introduced it.

He may as well ask them why they're not investigating any number of David Ickes fantasies. Lizard people, you're not investigating them.

[Lovecraft]

6 minutes ago, jonesy said:

It's not the popular vote I'm worried about. 

 

Still got a feeling the polls are way off and he's going to sneak it.

Flat out steal it.

 

 

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that ballots received after election day on 3 November cannot be counted in Wisconsin, regardless of when they were posted. Now officials are asking voters to put their postal ballots in the post or drive them to a polling station - nearly 327,000 absentee ballots in the state have yet to be received by election officials, reports the Washington Post.

Democrats and civil rights groups in Wisconsin had sought to extend the deadline after which postal votes could be counted, after more than 79,000 arrived late for the state's primary elections in spring. The deadline was extended then, but this time the Supreme Court has ruled that it cannot be.

In Wisconsin, late ballots could be critical if the election is close.

In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by fewer than 23,000 votes.

[JFK-1]

5 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

If the polls are away off, for the second election in a row, that industry will take a long time to recover their credibility.  I'm assuming/hoping that they learned their lesson in 2016 and have it right this time.

 

Saw one pollster say that if they got it so badly wrong again his profession is finished.

[Justin Z]

37 minutes ago, DarthVodka said:

All that’s needed to rile up some of the American population is the mention of ‘communism’ - some will basically vote any other way even at the hint of the word. Some may not even know what it means 

 

Most Americans, even people in favour of “socialism”, don't really know what any of these words actually mean. They are meaningless in much the same way “conservative” and “liberal” are meaningless.

 

Re-branding the working class as the “middle class” in the US was such a massive propaganda coup.

 

 

[JFK-1]

7 hours ago, Des Lynam said:

One of the reasons will be the moral superiority from people like yourself. Hilary Clinton is the main reason this lunatic is in charge. 

 

Well if you think people would vote for Trump because other people point out how incompetent, how deceitful, how immoral, how outright criminal he is then these people are a lost cause from the start. There isn't a single complimentary thing that could be said about Trump. There is no other way to discuss him.

If he's in charge because of Hillary Clinton then that just makes it all the worse. Until now I took little interest in US elections. Trump is so far beyond the pale I and many others are forced to sit up and take notice.

Hillary Clinton was probably one of the most qualified and perhaps the most qualified candidate ever to run. Anybody who thinks he was a better choice than her has serious issues going on. I could pick a random individual from any college campus who would be a better choice than him.

[Lovecraft]

 

[Justin Z]

54 minutes ago, Boston Jambo said:

Justin Z and JFK -1 you guys make a lot of sense, good posts. 

 

What on earth would you even try talking to a Trumper for?

 

Unless they stand to gain millions from his policies, which I can understand but certainly don't condone,

then you are talking to someone who is comfortable with a  president who is:

 

a pathological liar

a misogynist

a racist

a tax cheat

mocks an afflicted reporter

mocks a gold star family while being a draft dodger.

The list is endless.

 

Ignore them, I do it in all the facets of my life.

 

Socially I just move away, or  if they are on my bar I find something better to do, like clean the floor with my tongue.

 

Quite simply they are beneath you.

 

Cheers Boston.

 

While all of us know everything you wrote to be true, I'm sure you've seen the power of propaganda here—and how widespread it is. The greatest danger imo to all democracies, not just the playing-at-democracy we do in the US, is disinformation, and it's rampant.

 

Many of these folks will have an even worse picture of the various mainstream Democratic politicians, and they won't be entirely unjustified in that, either. So, trying to find common ground and correct the lies they've been fed may be super frustrating, but to me, it's also vital.

 

“Yeah I don't like Obama either, it took him three days before he ordered his first drone strike and killed 19 civilians, including several children, in Waziristan. Yes, Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State was behind much of this warmongering, and I agree she's terrible too. But let's criticise her, and him, for their actual record, eh? Rather than this garbage about Obama being Muslim or married to a transexual woman, or Clinton and Pizzagate. Let's engage with the facts.”

 

I absolutely despise this timeline But it's the hand we've been dealt, so may as well give it a go.

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Justin Z

[Boof]

33 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

We saw on '60 Minutes' how Trump reacts when he think he's being asked tough questions.

 

Just curious - how many minutes did he actually last? Waaay less than 60, or just a bit?

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

3 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Saw one pollster say that if they got it so badly wrong again his profession is finished.

 

Think that was probably Frank Luntz, of whom I’m not a fan.

In 2016, the national polls were actually fairly accurate about the overall popular vote (Clinton ‘won’ by over 2.8 million votes) but were in many cases badly off at state level in swing states such as Michigan. But even then, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a reasonable (28.6%) chance of winning, so it’s not like he had been completely written off. I’m paying a lot more attention to state polls than national polls this time round, as only ten or so states are really ‘in play’. And many of those polls have Biden’s lead close to or within the margin of error.

 

[Lovecraft]

3 minutes ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

 

Think that was probably Frank Luntz, of whom I’m not a fan.

In 2016, the national polls were actually fairly accurate about the overall popular vote (Clinton ‘won’ by over 2.8 million votes) but were in many cases badly off at state level in swing states such as Michigan. But even then, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a reasonable (28.6%) chance of winning, so it’s not like he had been completely written off. I’m paying a lot more attention to state polls than national polls this time round, as only ten or so states are really ‘in play’. And many of those polls have Biden’s lead close to or within the margin of error.

 

 

Check this as I posted above.

 

 

 

As I said before, Trump needs a lot to go his way by hook or crook if he is to win again.

 

 

[JFK-1]

1 minute ago, Justin Z said:

 

Cheers Boston.

 

While all of us know everything you wrote to be true, I'm sure you've seen the power of propaganda here—and how widespread it is. The greatest danger imo to all democracies, not just the playing-at-democracy we do in the US, is disinformation, and it's rampant.

 

Many of these folks will have an even worse picture of the various mainstream Democratic politicians, and they won't be entirely unjustified in that, either. So, trying to find common ground and correct the lies they've been fed may be super frustrating, but to me, it's also vital.

 

I was thinking perhaps the unprecedented level of Trump lying and disinformation alongside the undeniable inappetence may initiate a sea change.

The blatant lying aside it's never been so obvious that the entire Republican ethos is at root basically undemocratic at best and outright criminal at worst. Never been so obvious they're openly in the business of rigging 'democratic' elections. No attempt to even hide the undemocratic reality of it.

[JFK-1]

2 minutes ago, Lovecraft said:

I said before, Trump needs a lot to go his way by hook or crook if he is to win again.

 

An awful lot.

 

Quote

The Cook Political Report on Wednesday moved the presidential race in Texas from "lean Republican" to "toss-up" on Wednesday, another indicator that the longtime Republican stronghold could finally turn blue in November.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/523136-cook-moves-texas-to-toss-up

 

[Justin Z]

4 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

I was thinking perhaps the unprecedented level of Trump lying and disinformation alongside the undeniable inappetence may initiate a sea change.

The blatant lying aside it's never been so obvious that the entire Republican ethos is at root basically undemocratic at best and outright criminal at worst. Never been so obvious they're openly in the business of rigging 'democratic' elections. No attempt to even hide the undemocratic reality of it.

 

I know, but when your opponents have litigated in multiple states to keep the greens and other parties off the ballot and also went to court to argue that they had the right to rig their own primary elections, why not run with that as a political strategy? If that's where the bar is set.

[JFK-1]

10 minutes ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

I’m paying a lot more attention to state polls than national polls this time round, as only ten or so states are really ‘in play’. And many of those polls have Biden’s lead close to or within the margin of error.

The economist model is predicting electoral votes which is the real winning factor isn't it.
 

Quote

Right now, our model thinks Joe Biden is very likely to beat Donald Trump in the electoral college.

Chance of winning the electoral college: Joe Biden, Democrat. Better than 19 in 20 or 96%. 

 

https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president

[Cruyff]

I don't think polls in a Country the size of America and with the way their system works are particularly reliable. However, It does look like Bidens lead is holding firm. 

 

There's meant to be a 3% margin of error but studies have shown it is more likely to be a 6 or 7%. margin of error. 

 

Around this point last time around, Oct 26th 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 14 point lead in the polls. So I'd take them with a pinch of salt. 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Cruyff

[JFK-1]

1 minute ago, Cruyff said:

I don't think polls in a Country the size of America and with the way their system works are particularly reliable. However, It does look like Bidens lead is holding firm. 

 

There's meant to be a 3% margin of error but studies have shown it is more likely to a be 6 or 7%. margin of error. 

 

Around this point last time around, Oct 26th 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 14 point lead in the polls. So I'd take them with a pinch of salt. 

 

I'm taking the increasing desperation of Trump as a sign he's going to crash and burn. Over half the country has already voted, he will have data from that. And it doesn't appear to be encouraging him.

Trump continually shoots himself in the foot. He himself has commented that if the people turn out to vote "Republicans would never win an election again"

His open efforts to stop them voting is resulting in a record breaking turn out. He has been instrumental in motivating them to vote.

[Lovecraft]

30 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

An awful lot.

 

 

 Can't see the GOP losing Texas.

 

****ing hilarious if they do though.

 

 

[Maple Leaf]

40 minutes ago, Boof said:

 

Just curious - how many minutes did he actually last? Waaay less than 60, or just a bit?

 

I'm not sure in terms of minutes, but after he left Lesley Stahl said to the producer, "I still have lots of questions I wanted to ask him," so the interview had a long way to run.

[Maple Leaf]

1 minute ago, Lovecraft said:

 Can't see the GOP losing Texas.

 

****ing hilarious if they do though.

 

 

If Trump loses Texas he will be apoplectic.  But, like you, I can't see it happening.

[JFK-1]

11 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

If Trump loses Texas he will be apoplectic.  But, like you, I can't see it happening.

 

I have my doubts too but then I think is it any more unlikely than Trump beating Hillary? Everything appears to be going against Trump his own incompetence and stupidity aside. It's like fate intervened with a once in a century pandemic to scupper him big time.

[Lovecraft]

13 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

If Trump loses Texas he will be apoplectic.  But, like you, I can't see it happening.

  

They may drop some points that will give them a bit of a scare, but really see them losing it.

 

I'm hoping that the Democrats get a clean sweep of House, Senate and Presidency.  That would be funny as ****.

 

The Democrats are still slimy politicians, as are all politicians, but the Republicans just abandoned any semblance of being legit when they all jumped behind Trump.  Especially all the ones who publicly spoke out against him at the beginning.  Utter sleazebags.

 

Regardless what happens with the election, I hope America burns.  Which after all the guaranteed court cases due to the election, it will.

 

It will also end all their talk of being the best democracy on earth, which is nonsense too.

 

🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lovecraft]

13 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

I have my doubts too but then I think is it any more unlikely than Trump beating Hillary? Everything appears to be going against Trump his own incompetence and stupidity aside. It's like fate intervened with a once in a century pandemic to scupper him big time.

  

Hilary was just unlikeable.  Biden is just meh.

 

The amount of Democrat voters that either never voted, or voted for independents in the last election is why Trump won.  He won states that pretty much always been Democratic states.  The last election wasn't a vote for Trump as much as a no vote for Hilary.

 

Add in that people have seen how Trump actually is now.

 

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Lovecraft

[Jambo-Jimbo]

8 minutes ago, Lovecraft said:

  

Hilary was just unlikeable.  Biden is just meh.

 

The amount of Democrat voters that either never voted, or voted for independents in the last election is why Trump won.  He won states that pretty much always been Democratic states.  The last election wasn't a vote for Trump as much as a no vote for Hilary.

 

Add in that people have seen how Trump actually is now.

 

 

 

And I think for a lot of people another 4 years of him is unpalatable now, so it could very well have flipped and a vote for Biden is more of an anti-Trump vote than anything else.

[Lovecraft]

In the US  -  the supposed leader of the free world -  you have their elected leader openly saying that their elections aren't fair, as there is a chance he could lose.  Let that sink in.

 

This is despite all the things that the ruling party have openly been doing to try and stop people from actually voting.  Also let that sink in.

 

It sounds like something that would be happening in all the countries that the US have been speaking out about for literally centuries.

 

[Sharpie]

Trump has dubbed Biden as a corrupt politician in a corrupt political party. He has also described Biden and his family as being corrupt. It will be interesting to see if or when, he is removed from the White House the reports of his  doings in and out of the Presidency will be hailed as angelic white, or if they will be shown that he and many of his enablers wee guilty of neglect of duty and Trump himself accused of corrupt dealing in his financial world. No effort will be spared in publishing the facts, and his accomplices in his many still to be proven, but reasonably certain mis doings. Have you ever with a President seen more motivating factors to fight election results and refuse to leave office, even if it means civil disobedience close to a war situation.

Edited October 28, 2020 by Sharpie

[Lovecraft]

6 minutes ago, Jambo-Jimbo said:

 

And I think for a lot of people another 4 years of him is unpalatable now, so it could very well have flipped and a vote for Biden is more of an anti-Trump vote than anything else.

 

 

Possibly.  My reading of things is that the Rebublican supporters are less likely than other parties to vote for someone else.  Almost blind faith as it were, and most of the followers will probably be doing that as well.

 

The Republicans seem to have the huge majority of crazies on their side and still lap up anything they are told.

 

Liberal people in general are more likely to change their mind when new information becomes available.  Conservatives by definition don't want things to change.  IMO.

 

 

[Mysterion]

9 hours ago, alfajambo said:

Bobulinski explains at length how integral Joe Biden was to Hunter Biden’s China deal.

 

 

 

I think Carlson/Fox have deliberately conflated Ukraine and China business dealings deliberately in this.

 

From what I have seen/read the push back last week was on claims of corruption around the laptop/Ukraine. They’ve conflated that to create grievance with Bobulinski. The timings of any China deal were outwith Biden’s time in office too so as a private citizen he can use his network of contacts. That doesn’t mean it’s corrupt (unless you are Carlson).

 

Carlson as ever leads the story in a specific way to suit the idea that Democrats are more corrupt than Trump. 

[Lovecraft]

6 minutes ago, Mysterion said:

I think Carlson/Fox have deliberately conflated Ukraine and China business dealings deliberately in this.

 

From what I have seen/read the push back last week was on claims of corruption around the laptop/Ukraine. They’ve conflated that to create grievance with Bobulinski. The timings of any China deal were outwith Biden’s time in office too so as a private citizen he can use his network of contacts. That doesn’t mean it’s corrupt (unless you are Carlson).

 

Carlson as ever leads the story in a specific way to suit the idea that Democrats are more corrupt than Trump. 

Whereas this was while he is President and she is ...   Ermmm...  Whatever she does in the goevrnment.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/business/ivanka-trump-china-trademarks.html

 

BEIJING — China this month awarded Ivanka Trump seven new trademarks across a broad collection of businesses, including books, housewares and cushions.

At around the same time, President Trump vowed to find a way to prevent a major Chinese telecommunications company from going bust, even though the company has a history of violating American limits on doing business with countries like Iran and North Korea.

[JFK-1]

11 minutes ago, Lovecraft said:

Whereas this was while he is President and she is ...   Ermmm...  Whatever she does in the goevrnment.

 

She wanted the office and title of 'First Lady' changed to 'First Family'

[JFK-1]

55 minutes ago, Sharpie said:

Trump has dubbed Biden as a corrupt politician in a corrupt political party. He has also described Biden and his family as being corrupt. It will be interesting to see if or when, he is removed from the White House the reports of his  doings in and out of the Presidency will be hailed as angelic white, or if they will be shown that he and many of his enablers wee guilty of neglect of duty and Trump himself accused of corrupt dealing in his financial world. No effort will be spared in publishing the facts, and his accomplices in his many still to be proven, but reasonably certain mis doings. Have you ever with a President seen more motivating factors to fight election results and refuse to leave office, even if it means civil disobedience close to a war situation.

 

He will have 77 days between election day and being removed from the office. Many people are contemplating what could happen in that time. And that alone is also unprecedented. Valid worries about what this deranged maniac may do in the final weeks of power.

We all know how petty, spiteful, outright malevolent this maniac is. And we all know that being removed from the office could mean a lot more to him than it ever has to any other president.

I suspect none of us doubt he could become truly deranged as the days count down to his personal Armageddon.

Politico published an article today contemplating potential scenarios. Six major points ranging from the entirely expected flurry of pardons to starting a war to sabotaging the pandemic response capabilities of Biden .

By GARRETT M. GRAFF - 10/28/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Garrett M. Graff is a journalist, historian and author, most recently of the New York Times bestseller The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. He is the director of cyber initiatives at the Aspen Institute.

 

‘I’m Absolutely Expecting Him to Do Something Weird’: How Trump Could End His Presidency

Presidents typically reserve their most controversial decisions for their last weeks in office. Imagine what that could mean for Trump.

 

As we count down the days to Election Day, the pundit class is wringing its hands in worry over whether President Donald Trump will accept a possible win by Joe Biden and agree to leave the White House.

But even if Trump calmly walks out the door of the White House on the morning of January 20th, a more immediate problem looms: What might Trump do with the final 77 days of his presidency if he loses? There are 1,860 hours between Wednesday, Nov. 4, and noon on Jan. 20, when Trump’s first term expires. And that’s plenty of time for him to upend plenty of presidential traditions.

The lame duck period is always a time when outgoing presidents feel free to stir up controversy. Even presidents who care deeply about their legacies and abide by democratic norms often take uniquely unpopular actions in the closing weeks of their presidencies: George H.W. Bush pardoned six officials behind the Iran-Contra scandal; Bill Clinton pardoned more than 140 people on his final day in office — a third of all the clemencies he granted as president — including financier Marc Rich, a controversy that dogged him as he moved into the post-presidency and launched one final investigation of his time in office. Just days before he left office, Barack Obama commuted the sentence of leaker Chelsea Manning.

So, imagine what might happen in a post-election period when Trump — a president who has spent four years demonstrating his lack of interest in norms and practices of a democracy — retains all the powers and authority of the presidency and officially has nothing left to lose?

Conversations with presidential legal experts, Constitutional scholars and national security officials identified six areas where Trump could do real damage to the country, his successor or presidential traditions — a list informed both by his past executive actions as well as the considerations he’d face as he considered a life outside the White House for him and his family. From a last-minute resignation to guarantee himself legal immunity to destroying historic records to launching a war, there’s reason to wonder if a Trump transition might actually be the start of the wildest chapter of an already controversial presidency.

Here’s what a Trump transition could include:

1) A pardon-a-palooza: If Trump loses, nearly everyone expects an unprecedented flurry of presidential pardons in his last 77 days — a way both to reward friends, protect his family, tweak his opponents and curry favor with those who may help him when he is back in private life. “The pardon power operates in the way he imagines the presidency to operate — you wave your hand and it’s done,” says Quinta Jurecic, the managing editor of the blog Lawfare. “I’m absolutely expecting him to do something weird.”

“The pardon power is the easiest to exercise,” says law professor Jack Goldsmith, who used to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Presidential clemency, which Trump seems to remember from time to time and then issue a flurry of pardons in short order, has already proven to be one of his most controversial areas of executive action. And given his willingness to self-servingly commute the sentence of associate Roger Stone even while his reelection hung in the balance this summer, it’s clear that loosed from any political restraints, he might hand out pardons far and wide.

Experts expect a few different buckets of post-election pardons: First, presidential get-out-of-jail-free cards for those already caught up in the Russia investigation — people like Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and perhaps including Paul Manafort, who has repeatedly obstructed and stymied efforts to pierce what really transpired during the 2016 campaign. The one exception who might be left out in the cold? His former lawyer Michael Cohen, who Trump believes betrayed him by cooperating with investigators and speaking publicly.

Second, look for the possibility of blanket, preemptive pardons for the president’s own family, close friends and campaign associates. Presidential pardons — as Gerald Ford demonstrated in pardoning Nixon — don’t require existing criminal charges; they can also be used to block attempts to bring federal charges in the future.

Trump’s application in this category could include both people already under criminal indictment — like Steve Bannon — those who appear to be under federal investigation, like Brad Parscale and Rudy Giuliani, as well as perhaps even family members like Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric who may face investigation and charges after Trump leaves office.

As president, he’s repeatedly offered pardons to officials involved in some of his controversial policies, like immigration enforcement and child separation, and he could also issue blanket pardons to cabinet secretaries, agency heads and other loyal government officials that would allow them to skirt any post-Trump investigations into their actions in office.

Any actions along these lines would surely ignite political firestorms — and might lead to Congress attempting to legislate limits on presidential pardon authority going forward — but for now there’s not much that can be done to appeal or fight a presidential pardon.

The third type of presidential pardons or commutations that might emerge from the White House post-election is what might be called the “Fox & Friends and Friends of Fox” category. Throughout his presidency, Trump has seemed uniquely susceptible to being lobbied for presidential clemency directly through his friends or on-air through his favorite TV programs.

He has pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza, Scooter Libby, Rod Blagojevich, Bernard Kerik, Conrad Black and the Hammond family — and he also intervened in the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s war-crimes courts-martial — causes championed by Fox hosts, guests or others with the president’s ear outside the normal clemency process run by the Justice Department Office of the Pardon Attorney.

He pardoned one Tennessee woman at the request of Kim Kardashian West, who lobbied Trump to grant her a pardon through his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

He’s also shown an odd flair for “historic” pardons, including suffragette Susan B. Anthony and boxer Jack Johnson. While he’s talked publicly about pardoning Martha Stewart, the most controversial pardon that might be on Trump’s mind appears to be whistleblower Edward Snowden, a move so stunningly explosive that even attorney general Bill Barr opposes it. “I’m going to take a very good look at it,” Trump said this summer.

Most experts don’t think Trump would pursue more sweeping actions aimed at bolstering his historical legacy, like, say, pardoning everyone in federal prison convicted of a marijuana-related offense or every police officer convicted of murder — or further tweaking his foes, as in pardoning everyone ever prosecuted by Jim Comey. Trump, our experts suggested, is simply too transactional for such grand gestures — and it’s not clear how such moves would play nor what benefit would accrue to him for doing them.

Moreover, the more complicated and sweeping the legal action, the less easy it is to execute quickly or cleanly — and the Trump administration has demonstrated time and again that attention-to-detail is not its strength.

Regardless of who ends up getting clemency in the closing days of a Trump presidency, his pardons aren’t all-powerful and wouldn’t necessarily allow anyone to escape criminal sanctions entirely: Presidential pardons only wipe away federal charges, and there’s plenty of reason to believe that state and local prosecutors — particularly in New York — are pursuing separate investigations of his family and other associates. New York actually tried just that tack with Manafort, indicting him on state fraud charges, but a judge dismissed the charges after deciding that it overlapped with his federal case too much.

The biggest open question would be if Trump could engineer a way to ensure that he himself isn’t charged: The Mueller Report accepted that a president has federal legal immunity while in office, but currently there’s nothing to stop a federal prosecutor from picking up post-January 20 where Mueller left off.

Trump has previously asserted he has the “absolute right to PARDON myself,” but legal experts doubt whether a president could successfully “self-pardon,” and the legal battle over such an attempt would unfold only after criminal charges were brought against the former president and he sought to offer as a defense the fact that he’d pardoned himself.

The cleanest — and legally bulletproof — way for Trump to escape any further federal investigation post-presidency would be for him to resign early, even just minutes before noon on January 20, and have a newly sworn-in President Mike Pence grant him a full and complete pardon. However, such a move would seem to be un-Trump — he seems unlikely to be willing to leave the presidency a minute early — and would be incredibly dicey politically for Pence, who clearly has own presidential ambitions for 2024.

2) Revenge on the Deep State: The area where a defeated Trump’s transition might look most normal is in its rush and whirl of actions to codify and cement various policies and practices before the clock expires on his presidency — but it’s clear that Trump’s reserving his biggest battles for the imagined forces that have held him back in office, as well as perhaps one final stab at cementing a decade-long tilt to the GOP in Congress.

As is often the case as a presidential term winds down, government agencies already appear to be racing to unveil major actions, from the long-awaited filing of an antitrust case against Google to the settlement of a long-running lawsuit against Purdue Pharma for its role in opioids.

But, experts say, Trump could go farther than his predecessors in trying to unravel the way the federal government operates. In recent weeks, there have been a flurry of actions that appear aimed at exacting lasting change on the government — particularly if Trump wins reelection. In particular came a surprise, sweeping executive order last week that would undo decades of civil service protections and allow the president to reach deep into the bureaucracy to fire federal employees he disliked.

The move — met with shock, an immediate lawsuit and at least one protest resignation from a Trump official — had been in the works for years.

While the executive order changes might be short-lived if Biden takes office, the carefully laid groundwork suggests that Trump will continue to wage war on his imagined “Deep State” until the final hours of his presidency. “They’ve actually given some thought to this already — it’s a little bit surprising. I’m even a little taken aback by the institutional-type things that have unfolded just in the last week,” says one legal observer.

Another particular area of concern for lame duck mischief is the U.S. Census, which the Trump administration has spent all year handicapping and undermining. Just weeks after the election, the Supreme Court is likely to rule on the Trump administration’s hope to exclude noncitizens from its population counts for the purposes of congressional apportionment — a move with potentially dramatic consequences for federal funding and congressional representation in states that have large numbers of undocumented immigrants; the move would likely help largely homogeneous states at the expense of diverse states.

One think tank’s analysis suggests that the Trump approach would cost California, Florida and Texas each one congressional seat (and thus, one electoral vote), while delivering an extra congressional district (and electoral vote) to Ohio, Alabama and Minnesota.

Census watchers, already alarmed at the Trump administration’s battle to cut short the count mid-pandemic, fear that the White House — rather than acting an honest broker pass-through to Congress for apportionment purposes by the December 31st deadline — might instead doctor the decennial numbers itself.

There is a limit to what Trump will be able to pull off. Push-back from the more process-oriented bureaucracy — and the normal checks and balances on executive action — would likely hinder his ability to deploy the powers of the government at whim.

And any broadly controversial unilateral executive actions — like say, ordering ICE to embark on a mass deportation campaign in Trump’s final weeks or expanding the administration’s Muslim travel ban — would immediately run into the same problems such programs already have earlier in the Trump administration: Court injunctions, prolonged legal fights and limits imposed by congressional appropriation procedures. But that’s not to say that a defeated Trump might not try some wilder actions anyway.

“Early in the administration they threw just a lot of stuff at the wall. ‘We’ve got 100 ideas, let’s just try it all and see what sticks,’ and they weren’t really paying attention to what the odds were whether it got through,” says one legal observer. “It seems like they might try to do the same here — even if it just ties up the Biden administration for a while undoing it.”

3) The mass firing of top officials: Trump’s already widely telegraphing that he has a list of people to fire ready in the event of a win. The list includes officials who have rankled him through the year — including FBI Director Christopher Wray, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel — and presumably might include an even wider housecleaning of people viewed insufficiently loyal to Team Trump.

Even if Trump loses, though, he may move to fire some officials, simply symbolically or for pure pettiness. It’s unlikely that the Senate in its own lame duck session could move quickly enough to confirm replacements for them, which means the firings of Wray and Haspel in particular would almost certainly be a gift to an incoming Biden administration: No president has ever had the opportunity to immediately select a new FBI director.

Other career government officials, like American heartthrob Dr. Anthony Fauci, who serves as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would be more isolated from presidential umbrage. Trump, in theory, could order Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar or the head of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, to fire Fauci — and fire them if they refuse — but the current civil service protections would mean that Fauci could likely appeal and successfully run out the clock on the Trump administration before he would be forced to leave his office.

4) The destruction of records and obstruction of the new administration: The Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act in theory guarantee the preservation of the official history of the White House’s work, presidential actions and staff debates. However, just how closely the Trump White House plans to abide by them remains an open question.

“They’re just going to not care about the Records Act — just like they didn’t care about the Hatch Act. It falls into the category of nuisance laws that they just don’t think apply to them. Like what’s going to happen to them if they don’t?” says one legal observer. “That’s less indicative of him and more about the type of people he has brought around him.”

A coalition of 12 open-government organizations wrote a letter earlier this month to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) asking Archivist David Ferriero to take affirmative steps to preserve Trump records. “We are alarmed and deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s failure to honor its legal responsibility to create and preserve records. Reportedly President Trump rips up his papers and had concealed documents detailing meetings with foreign leaders. Agency leaders have shown similar disregard for records creation and preservation,” the group wrote. “These actions subvert the public’s right to know and obstruct future efforts to hold the administration accountable.”

While the automatic backups and preservation procedures for some electronic records of the White House and government agencies would make them difficult to delete or destroy entirely, other sensitive, controversial hard-copy records might be tempting to destroy, even if illegal. “Golly, the documents they must have,” says one observer. “Email is regularized, but the documents kept in safes and SCIFs, next to burn bags? It’s an open temptation.”

It already seems likely that historians will never be able to fully reconstruct the foreign and domestic policy thinking in the Trump years: Reports show that Jared Kushner used WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders and that White House aides have used secure apps to talk amongst themselves — actions that violate federal law if those exchanges are not preserved.

One fact working against any Trump effort to bury the truth: He famously does most of his ethically questionable business face-to-face. In congressional testimonies and interviews damning Trump by figures like Jim Comey, Michael Cohen and Gordon Sondland, they’ve all compared him to a mafia boss who gives opaque — but unmistakable — orders.

“Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates,” Cohen said. “He would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.” As Comey explained pressure from Trump, “I mean, this is a president of the United States with me alone saying, ‘I hope this.’ I took it as, ‘This is what he wants me to do.

’” Such behavior, in some ways, would be easier to preserve than a paper record, since the witnesses to it will be walking out of the White House themselves too. As a former government lawyer says, “His verbal orders might live to haunt him. He appears to commit obstruction of justice as a way of life.”

Beyond simply making it impossible for the country and historians to ever fully understand what happened — and why — during the Trump administration, the destruction of such records could also make it enormously hard for the Biden administration to assume power smoothly on Jan. 20 as a lack of documentation or institutional history would stymie their ability to understand government plans or actions already underway.

Especially if uncertainty about the outcome post-election lingers, Trump may also stall engaging with Biden’s team — or refuse to participate in any transitional conversations at all. Given the acrimony of the year already, it’s not clear that the two sides would even trust each other even if they do engage in normal transition exercises and meetings. Instead, Biden “landing teams” at agencies will likely find a patchwork of cooperation and noncooperation, depending on agency leadership and engagement. The Biden transition team is reportedly already planning for the possibility where the Trump administration refuses customary briefings.

While records-destruction presents one problem, the opposite problem seems likely to unfold too in the closing days of any Trump administration: Trump has been rushing to settle scores with past political foes by releasing the Durham report on the origins of the Russia investigation and has been pressuring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to declassify more emails from Hillary Clinton. The administration might well rush to push out any remaining dirt on political opponents in its final days.

5) Military conflict or covert action: Up until the final minutes of a presidency, the so-called “nuclear football” remains close at hand for the commander-in-chief, and while presidents have traditionally delayed potentially escalatory actions during a transition to avoid hamstringing their successor, such restraint is merely a norm.

In theory, Trump could launch military strikes, initiate covert actions and even launch a full-scale nuclear war right up until 11:59 a.m. on Jan. 20.

There are precedents for other officials in the chain of command attempting to curtail a president’s unilateral nuclear authority; Nixon’s defense secretary, James Schlesinger, said later that he had left orders in the closing days of Nixon’s administration unraveling amid Watergate that if the president gave a launch order, it should be double-checked with him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. More recently, under Trump, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly are said to have made a pact in the early days of the administration that both men wouldn’t travel abroad at the same time, ensuring one would always remain available in the U.S. to monitor presidential orders.

However, such orders or plans are strictly extra-constitutional and wouldn’t necessarily forestall a valid, legal order from the commander-in-chief to execute an attack or operation.

Military leaders have previously said they would not comply with an illegal order, but that’s actually a much more narrow viewpoint than the public usually interprets. It’s not a blanket reassurance that the military would ignore an illogical presidential order, it literally means that they would not comply with an order that violates international or military law, a tightly proscribed set of actions that revolve around questions like proportionality and the status of noncombatants.

What if Trump begins to up the pressure on China in the South China Sea or decides in his closing weeks as president to go after Iran either in cyberspace or the real world, as he started the year assassinating top military leader Qasem Soleimani? Would the White House staff or military chain of command resist reckless actions that could lead to a lame duck war? “I can imagine a low-level constitutional crisis if he starts being aggressive,” says one former official.

It’s possible too that if the president greenlights actions against foreign adversaries in cyberspace or certain covert actions, that his final presidential actions may go publicly unnoticed and emerge only months or years later. Covert actions routinely are handed off from one administration to another; President Bush initiated cyberattacks against the Iranian nuclear program before handing off the operation, known as OLYMPIC GAMES, to Obama in 2009. Obama, for his part, deferred a major special forces operation targeting Yemen for Trump to execute after he took office; the operation, approved just days into Trump’s presidency, went awry and ended with the death of a Navy SEAL.

Would Trump offer the same courtesy to a successor — or push forward with any proposed covert actions over the weeks ahead to claim the possible credit himself?

6) Giving up on the pandemic: One widespread concern is that if Trump loses, the White House will just cease any effort to combat the pandemic, perhaps slowing the push for a vaccine or abandoning any congressional push to jumpstart the still-ailing economy — a three-month delay ahead of a Biden administration that might have catastrophic consequences for millions of families and hamstring the Biden team even further as they inherit an even-deeper hole to dig out of in 2021. Already, even pre-election, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appears to be throwing in the towel on the pandemic.

The good news — if you can call it that — is that our experts see little real effect if Trump loses next week and then retires to Mar-a-Lago to tweet and golf out the remainder of his presidency. As Meadows’ comment made clear, the sad truth is that the White House has been so disengaged from the pandemic response for so long that a total abdication of its role wouldn’t likely look all that different. Similarly, congressional and administration action on economic relief for the Covid-19 pandemic has already been stalled since May.

One area of concern, though, is if the Trump administration decides to take its foot off the gas on vaccine efforts — the president’s much vaunted Operation Warp Speed and relentless push for a pre-election vaccine might quickly lose momentum after Nov. 3. But even if the government attention wanes, so much of the vaccine race is being managed by private companies (as well as by foreign governments) that it may not matter dramatically for the vaccine calendar.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/28/trump-wild-transition-433025

 

[Mysterion]

18 minutes ago, Lovecraft said:

 

 

Possibly.  My reading of things is that the Rebublican supporters are less likely than other parties to vote for someone else.  Almost blind faith as it were, and most of the followers will probably be doing that as well.

 

The Republicans seem to have the huge majority of crazies on their side and still lap up anything they are told.

 

Liberal people in general are more likely to change their mind when new information becomes available.  Conservatives by definition don't want things to change.  IMO.

 

 

Nailed it.

 

Biden could have the cure cancer, offer to pass laws to make the drugs/medicine free and they would still say “nope, he’s too socialist for our liking” 

[JFK-1]

33 minutes ago, Mysterion said:

Nailed it.

 

Biden could have the cure cancer, offer to pass laws to make the drugs/medicine free and they would still say “nope, he’s too socialist for our liking” 

 

Classic example of their complete ignorance of what socialism means. This was a placard held up by Republican supporters.

[Sharpie]

Watched Trump for a short time today, he is in Arizona. He talked about Biden saying he would take him out behind the barn, then he went on about what he would do to him, he is certainly in his own mind a hardman. He is nuts,.

[Norm]

I know a lot of folk are saying Trump might enact some kind of scorched earth policy if he loses, but I can just as easily see him taking the huff, ****ing off to his golf course and doing absolutely hee haw until January. Like, proper hee haw. A spoiled child who just says "Ah'm no playing" and takes his ball with him.

 

A president who does absolutely nothing, especially during a Pandemic, can be just as dangerous.