President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Aquila89 » Fri Sep 07, 2018 3:53 pm

Crimson847 wrote: what these officials are really doing is not so much active defiance as waiting out his bad moods in order to better pursue his "true" goals, like a friend hiding your phone when you try to drunk-dial your ex so you won't make a mistake you'll regret in the morning.


Except Trump never drinks. He's doing all this sober. If he really gives orders that are really just whims he'll later change his mind about, he's still unfit for office.

I guess the officials are doing a good thing when they ignore his stupid orders that he'll forget about tomorrow. But still, on some level I hate it that he's saved from his own stupidity. I'm tired of him getting away with everything. If Woodward's reports are true, he's acting like a capricious, uneducated asshole even when it comes to the most important matters, and yet he escapes consequences again.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby JamishT » Sat Sep 08, 2018 6:44 am

I'm of two minds when it comes to the Op-Ed.

On one hand, it's nice to know that there are staffers that care about the country enough to ignore crazy ideas and/or orders. I've seen many takes, even from NeverTrumpers, that if the staffer isn't willing to go along with every whim of the President, they should resign. The logic I've seen used is that they "serve at the pleasure of the President" regardless of whether that pleasure is in the country's best interest. In my opinion, that's stupid.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem to be a great idea to shout to the world that you are undermining your boss if your boss is definitely going to hear about it. That seems to be a good way to make your boss even more paranoid and less trusting of advisors. And if he comes up with an idea that he knows is going to be unpopular, he's gonna try to make it happen with the help of someone he knows to be fully loyal to him.

I wonder how bad it could be if the whims were followed. If Veep is accurate at all (and from what I've read it isn't too far off), it could be pretty freaking bad.

Also, I've seen theories that it was written by Pence, but who knows if he's conniving enough to do that.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Sep 08, 2018 5:01 pm

No whim of his will be followed, they just take whatever executive order he whipped up that would be disastrous or devastating to the administration off his desk, and he completely forgets about it due to a lack of object permanence that the rust belt states apparently saw themselves in.
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Last edited by Deathclaw_Puncher on Sat Sep 08, 2018 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Sep 08, 2018 8:14 pm

The culprit is likely in their late 30's to early 40's and is a Gen 1 Transformers fan.

This is textbook Starscream behavior.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Krashlia » Sat Sep 08, 2018 10:27 pm

JamishT wrote:I'm of two minds when it comes to the Op-Ed.

On one hand, it's nice to know that there are staffers that care about the country enough to ignore crazy ideas and/or orders. I've seen many takes, even from NeverTrumpers, that if the staffer isn't willing to go along with every whim of the President, they should resign. The logic I've seen used is that they "serve at the pleasure of the President" regardless of whether that pleasure is in the country's best interest. In my opinion, that's stupid.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem to be a great idea to shout to the world that you are undermining your boss if your boss is definitely going to hear about it. That seems to be a good way to make your boss even more paranoid and less trusting of advisors. And if he comes up with an idea that he knows is going to be unpopular, he's gonna try to make it happen with the help of someone he knows to be fully loyal to him.

I wonder how bad it could be if the whims were followed. If Veep is accurate at all (and from what I've read it isn't too far off), it could be pretty freaking bad.

Also, I've seen theories that it was written by Pence, but who knows if he's conniving enough to do that.


Pence:
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If it were true, and it worked?
It would make that man the most Machiavellian political player in US politics, and mark a major Come-from-behind Victory for the Religious Right.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Sep 08, 2018 11:11 pm

According to OMB Director and Zika Truther Mick Mulvaney, Trump is constantly asking why Roy Moore lost.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Sep 09, 2018 12:24 am

Krashlia wrote:It would...mark a major Come-from-behind Victory for the Religious Right


Meh. Catholic leaders have already come from behind plenty of times.

Aquila89 wrote:
Crimson847 wrote: what these officials are really doing is not so much active defiance as waiting out his bad moods in order to better pursue his "true" goals, like a friend hiding your phone when you try to drunk-dial your ex so you won't make a mistake you'll regret in the morning.


Except Trump never drinks. He's doing all this sober. If he really gives orders that are really just whims he'll later change his mind about, he's still unfit for office.


If he was drinking to that extent he'd be unfit for office anyway. In this context it really doesn't matter why he's so mercurial and unreliable, just that he is.

Interestingly, people say this situation is "unprecedented", but that's not entirely true: in the last days of Nixon's administration, as the president became increasingly paranoid and started drinking heavily, his secretary of defense James Schlesinger ordered the military to double-check all orders from the President with him or the secretary of state, to prevent Nixon from, say, starting a nuclear war in a fit of drunken rage. Technically an illegal usurpation of power, but under the circumstances no one questioned it.


I guess the officials are doing a good thing when they ignore his stupid orders that he'll forget about tomorrow. But still, on some level I hate it that he's saved from his own stupidity. I'm tired of him getting away with everything. If Woodward's reports are true, he's acting like a capricious, uneducated asshole even when it comes to the most important matters, and yet he escapes consequences again.


I get the feeling that's a common reaction. It was certainly mine for some of these interventions. For instance, had Trump officially notified Congress of his intent to withdraw from the US-South Korea free trade deal, as he allegedly attempted to do early in his administration, Congress would almost certainly have declined to go along with that. But the attempt would be on the record. It would remain on the record later that summer as Kim tested his missiles. Like firing Comey, the original Muslim ban, or the attempted Obamacare repeal, it would be a solid example of Trump not just saying something awful (which hasn't surprised anyone since the Access Hollywood tape) but doing something awful in his capacity as president. Anonymous reports of Trump allegedly declaring his intent to do crazy things aren't going to discredit Trump; Trump actually doing crazy things is what will discredit Trump.

Which is why I think I'm mostly on Frum's side in the aforementioned debate over the ethics of this internal resistance. If you're an administration official and you think the president is so unstable you have to do this kind of stuff to keep him from making terrible mistakes, that's a pretty severe indictment of the president no matter how you spin it and no matter how many papers you steal off his desk. Having such an unstable president is a crisis waiting to happen, because when shit hits the fan the president needs to be able to remain centered and deal with the problem intelligently right now, not next week when he's in a better mood. The latter works okay for legislative policy or judicial nominations, but not so well in response to terror attacks or foreign policy crises or natural disasters. By hiding hard evidence of such a problem from the public, the internal resistance is only lengthening this security crisis.

Of course, that argument has its limits. If Trump signaled his intent to, say, nuke Beijing, I really couldn't blame his staff for deciding that stopping that from happening at any cost takes priority over being transparent with the public. So if Trump tried to order the military to commit an atrocity I think Mattis would be justified in doing whatever he needed to do to prevent that. However, delivering notice to withdraw from a trade deal if Congress consents is not nearly irreversible enough or devastating enough to world peace to qualify for such an emergency exemption. Also, in such an extreme circumstance Step 2 should always be to invoke the 25th Amendment and get the nutter out of office immediately, so even in such a case the deception should be short-lived, not something that goes on for almost 2 years.

So in the end, the public doesn't really benefit from this. The resisters benefit a little by making it more likely they'll get their way on policy, but also sacrifice by running the risk of being detected, fired, and possibly exiled from the Republican community, so despite what some Trumpers have argued it doesn't seem plausible that they're purely looking to advance themselves--with the possible exception of the guy who wrote a self-serving op-ed about it.

Who does benefit? Mainly, the GOP establishment and its policy agenda. If Trump were off the reins blatantly wrecking the china shop, the GOP's attention would have to be squarely on dealing with him. Sure, they'd be fine with Pence as President, but getting him there would be difficult and acrimonious for a party reliant on Trump supporters, including the diehards who still manage to believe he's a humble and deeply religious man.



Once they succeeded at getting him out of there, they'd still probably lose the House in 2018, both because of butthurt Trump supporters staying home and because Pence and the "establishment" GOP agenda aren't popular enough to maintain a governing majority. And after a bruising impeachment fight, odds are pretty good that other than a moral victory in cleaning their own house they would have little to show policy-wise for their time in power. No record number of rock-solid conservative judges, no tax cuts, no mandate repeal, none of that. They'd walk out of power having given nothing to their supporters to reward them for their support. Given that the GOP base was already furious at the party for failing to deliver on its policy promises, the backlash against such a failure would have been devastating for the GOP.

Contrarywise, with the issue of Trump's character swept neatly under the rug for a while by the actions of the internal resistance, the GOP "establishment" in Washington gets a window of opportunity to make use of their hard-earned control of the government to direct more resources to their donors and constituencies, tilt the legal and political playing fields toward their supporters, and generally do their best to deliver the goods they promised to their voters so their current political coalition can survive a little longer. Problem is, the act of sweeping this under the rug also leaves the GOP establishment with full ownership of Trump's character problems, which will have much longer-term consequences for their goals that are difficult to foresee.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Aquila89 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 3:54 pm

Hurricane Florence is striking North and South Carolina. While talking about that, Trump praised himself over the response to hurricane Maria.

"I actually think it was one of the best jobs that's ever been done with respect to what this is all about. The job that FEMA and law enforcement and everybody did working along with the governor in Puerto Rico, I think was tremendous. I think that Puerto Rico was an incredible, unsung success."

It is now estimated that Hurricane Maria caused almost 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico, making it one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history. Trumpie, you're doing a heck of a job.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Sep 13, 2018 4:04 pm

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/ ... ump-818266

It seems to have become conventional wisdom in Washington that Trump is going to fire Sessions after the midterms, now that he's got some cover in Congress. However, Republican senators are apparently having trouble finding anyone who both wants the attorney general job and could get 50 votes in the Senate. The article discusses some of the reasons why, but IMO it leaves out perhaps the most important problem for any mainstream Republican thinking about taking that job:

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Life as Trump's AG: a mild dramatization

Orrin Hatch suggested that Trump might want to "consider" nominating a Democrat, which is both a sign of true desperation these days and potentially cannier than it sounds. A proposal I've heard floated before is to nominate Joe Manchin, on the theory that picking a Democrat would provide political cover and likely win at least some Democratic votes, Manchin would be unlikely to refuse given his political situation, and getting him out of that Senate seat would almost guarantee a Republican taking it given how red West Virginia is.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Aquila89 » Thu Sep 13, 2018 6:51 pm

Crimson847 wrote: Manchin would be unlikely to refuse given his political situation, and getting him out of that Senate seat would almost guarantee a Republican taking it given how red West Virginia is.


What is his political situation? Currently, he seems to have a safe lead in the polls.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Sep 13, 2018 7:24 pm

Aquila89 wrote:
Crimson847 wrote: Manchin would be unlikely to refuse given his political situation, and getting him out of that Senate seat would almost guarantee a Republican taking it given how red West Virginia is.


What is his political situation? Currently, he seems to have a safe lead in the polls.


Which he maintains, despite representing one of the most Trump-friendly states in the union, because he's relatively friendly toward Trump as Democrats go. Manchin is careful not to attack Trump's legitimacy or obstruct him on theoretically nonpartisan matters like nominating qualified Supreme Court justices. His approach has been to oppose Trump on certain policy issues where the latter's views are unpopular even in a red state like West Virginia (e.g. healthcare, tax reform), as well as calling out some of his more egregious rhetoric that even many Republicans dislike, while professing fondness for the man personally and respect for his legitimacy and executive prerogatives so as to mollify Trump supporters.

As a result, Manchin would be hard-pressed to turn down a presidential request to serve in the administration. Under old Washington norms such a request is traditionally seen as a nonpartisan matter of duty to the country, so refusing without a good reason would be a polarizing breach of decorum. Precisely the sort of thing Manchin has assiduously avoided so far.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Aquila89 » Fri Sep 14, 2018 3:32 pm

I still find it hard to imagine that Trump would appoint a Democrat to that position, even a Democrat like Manchin. He would also be obviously unqualified. He never studied law, he has a degree from business administration.

Anyway, Trump now denies that 3,000 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. He tweeted:

000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000... This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!


He used to be a birther; now he's a deather.

The number comes from a study by researchers at George Washington University. It was comissioned by the Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló who is not a Democrat (he's a member of the Puerto Rican New Progressive Party). In 2017, after the hurricane, Trump praised Rosselló as "a great guy and leader who is really working hard".

The funny part is that this death toll did not make Trump look bad until he started talking about it. It has been reported for months that there were hundreds or even thousands of excess deaths in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria. The Puerto Rican government officially accepted the number as 2,975 in August 28. All of this was largely ignored by the media. It only got attention when Trump called a relief effort "an incredible unsung success".
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:50 am

Aquila89 wrote:I still find it hard to imagine that Trump would appoint a Democrat to that position, even a Democrat like Manchin.


Then your instincts are good. According to the article I posted, it's not even clear that Trump trusts any Republican Senator enough to nominate them, let alone a Democrat. Republicans are looking for someone who the public can trust not to hinder the Mueller investigation, but Trump is looking for someone he can trust to protect him from "unfair" investigations--in other words, someone he can trust to hinder the Mueller investigation. So some of the same factors that make Manchin an appealing choice from Hatch's perspective make him an unlikely choice from Trump's perspective.

ETA: That said, if Democrats beat the odds and manage to take the Senate (especially if it's only by one seat), I think it's vaguely plausible that Trump would try something like that just out of desperation to give Sessions the boot and possibly flip the Senate back to Republican control. If need be he could give the Democrat the Scaramucci treatment once a Republican has taken their Senate seat and allowed him to get a Republican AG confirmed. Doing that would be a breathtakingly cynical violation of norms and probably be recognized as such even by many Republicans, but that's Tuesday for this administration. [/edit]

He would also be obviously unqualified. He never studied law, he has a degree from business administration.


Damn, you're right. That'd be an odd thing for an op-ed to suggest then; maybe I'm confusing Manchin with Heitkamp, who apparently has a law degree and was a state attorney general.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby iMURDAu » Sun Sep 16, 2018 1:11 pm

The Washington Post ran an article about the P.R. death toll written by all those democrats who are just out to get him

Knowledge would help Trump not look so damn stupid all the time. But facts don't fit the "I'm The Best" narrative so oh well. Ignorance is truly bliss. If he knew how the numbers were totaled he couldn't conspiracy theory. And his fanbase would think he was a government shill instead of the divine outside force taking down the cretins left behind by the black guy.
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Re: President Trump makes himself an even BIGGER asshole

Postby Aquila89 » Sun Sep 16, 2018 7:21 pm

Someone should ask Kanye West whether he thinks Trump cares about Puerto Rican people.
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