Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[johnu]

Dennison invokes War of 1812 in testy call with Trudeau over tariffs. "Didn't you guys burn down the White House?"

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-invokes-war-of-1812-in-testy-call-with-trudeau-over-tariffs/ar-AAyiWs7?li=BBnb7Kz

 

OK, so it was the British who burned the White House, but British, Canadians, Mexicans, does it make a difference, the point is it was those foreigners who don't speak American that were responsible. I give Dennison an "A" in History class for knowing about the War of 1812 and nearly being successful in using it in a real world conversation.

[Winstonm]

Oh, look, another Dennison accomplishment:

New York State Judge Jennifer Schecter, in the case, Zervos v. Trump, 150522/2017, New York Supreme Court, New York County, has rejected arguments by Trump that he is immune from litigation under the Constitution.

 

I am wondering how long it will be before we start hearing the cries that Dennison would have been a great president but the left treated him SO unfairly!

[Winstonm]

Lordy, I wish there were tapes. It just keeps getting weirder and weirder, with daughter of Dennison involved.

 

Amid intense scrutiny of contacts between Donald Trump's inner circle and representatives of Vladimir Putin, Ivanka Trump's name has barely come up. But during the campaign, she connected her father’s personal lawyer with a Russian athlete who offered to introduce Donald Trump to Putin to facilitate a 100-story Trump tower in Moscow, according to emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News and four sources with knowledge of the matter.

 

A spokesperson for her attorney wrote that Ivanka Trump did not know about the Trump Moscow project “until after a nonbinding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, and, even internally, was only minimally involved. Her only role was limited to reminding Mr. Cohen that, should an actual deal come to fruition (which it did not) the project, like any other with the Trump name, conform with the highest design and architectural standards.”

 

But emails and interviews suggest that her involvement ran deeper.

 

Why all the continued denials of this bunch?

[kenberg]

Ivanka was Trump's daughter only for a brief period of time in the early part of the campaign and anyway it is Mueller's fault.

[ldrews]

The cognitive dissonance on this forum is amazing.

 

Trump was elected by a majority of the Electoral College, the only way to be elected President. That means he won the popular vote in the states with the majority of electors. This is how you do it in the "United States of America".

 

Two years ago Obama and the economists where telling us to get used to 2% annual GDP growth, and that those manufacturing jobs were never coming back. Today, after 18 months of Trump administration, GDP growth is approaching 5% on a quarterly basis, unemployment is at record lows, wages are rising, workers have received bonuses, businesses are making significant investments, and today it was announced that there are more jobs available than people to fill them.

 

ISIS is decimated, North Korea is coming to the negotiating table, troops are being withdrawn from Syria.

 

Major trade imbalances are being rectified by renegotiating trade agreements, Trump is tackling China head on.

 

Trump's Cabinet contains a black person (Dr. Ben Carson), an indian-american (Ambassador Nicki Haley), and a Taiwanese-American (Elaine Choa). Trump has appointed several women to senior executive positions, and has appointed the first gay Ambassador (to Germany). So from the direct evidence, Trump is not racist, anti-feminist, nor homophobic.

 

Trump's popularity continues to rise, currently between 45%-50% depending on which polls you believe. He apparently is gaining significant support among blacks (called "leaving the plantation") and hispanics. The Trump base voters continue to remain loyal. Trump's prospects for a 2nd term continue to improve.

 

After 18 months of investigation there is no evidence publicly available that Trump colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election, while there is ample public evidence that Hillary Clinton and the DNC did do so.

 

So, given all of this, exactly what is your beef with Trump?

[cherdano]

I believe Trump even once said "Hello" to a woman he wasn't sexually interested in, clearly he can't be a misogynist sexual harasser!!

[Winstonm]

I believe Trump even once said "Hello" to a woman he wasn't sexually interested in, clearly he can't be a misogynist sexual harasser!!

 

You're confused. He didn't say, "hello", but "Hell, no!"

[Winstonm]

This is not only remarkable but remarkably unsettling.

 

Late on Tuesday, President Trump tweeted something that’s embarrassing even by his standards: an unfounded conspiracy theory that originated in some of the internet’s worst “fake news” corners.

 

“Strzok-Page, the incompetent & corrupt FBI lovers, have texts referring to a counter-intelligence operation into the Trump Campaign dating way back to December, 2015,” the president wrote. “SPYGATE is in full force!”

 

The supposed source for this claim is text messages between two FBI employees, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were having an affair during the 2016 campaign. Their text messages reveal that they were openly hostile to Trump and supportive of Hillary Clinton.

 

The problem is that, as far as we know, none of those texts mentioned anything about there being a counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign as early as December 2015. So where the hell did the president come up with that idea?

 

ThinkProgress’s Judd Legum did some sleuthing and seems to have pieced together the series of events that led to this tweet. It goes roughly like this:

On Monday afternoon, an anonymous Twitter account notes that Page texted Strzok in December 2015 about “oconus lures,” which in FBI parlance means intelligence operations aimed at arresting someone outside the continental United States. The texts do not mention Trump at all, and likely had nothing to do with him, since the FBI’s investigation into Trump didn’t open until July 2016. That didn’t stop the anonymous Twitter user from speculating that this might be “an admission that the FBI wanted to run a baited Sting Op using foreign agents against Trump.”

 

Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump blog with very low editorial standards but a surprisingly wide readership on the right, picks up the tweet in a Monday article titled “Breaking: Senate releases unredacted texts showing FBI initiated MULTIPLE SPIES in Trump campaign in December 2015.”

 

By Tuesday evening, the story has spread to Fox. At 7:22 pm, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs tweets about the oconus lures texts.

 

At 8:37 pm on Tuesday, Trump sends his tweet about the conspiracy theory.

 

About an hour later, Fox News host Laura Ingraham says on air that “when you read those texts, it certainly looks like they [the FBI] were trying to put more lures into the campaign in December 2015.” Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis, one of her panelists, agrees with Ingraham’s interpretation, saying that it is now “clear” that the FBI investigation into Trump started earlier than July 2016.

 

 

So what happened, it seems, is that a conspiratorial interpretation of texts between two FBI employees, one entirely unfounded in the actual evidence, got laundered from the fringe right-wing media to the right-wing mainstream through Fox News personalities — and eventually reached up to a member of Congress and the president of the United States

 

From Vox

[johnu]

State Department spokeswoman notes D-Day in answer on 'strong relationship' with Germany

 

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/05/politics/state-department-heather-nauert-germany-israel/index.html

 

The spokeswoman could also have brought up Armistace Day as an example of our strong relationship with Germany. Americans can be proud that Dennison has brought in the best and brightest in America.

 

It's a good thing that nobody reminded her that

[johnu]

 

From Grifters Gonna Grift by the NYT Editorial Board:

Meanwhile, Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has once again burnished his reputation as the Trump administration’s biggest grifter.

 

 

 

With all due respect to the NYT Editorial Board, Pruitt is a choir boy compared to the Dennison gang. China coughs up a 500 million dollar loan for a Trump project in Indonesia in exchange for lifting of penalties on Chinese company ZTE. Jared Kushner and his family have received hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Qatar and other foreign governments who want to make deals with the White House.

 

Pruitt has made do with a few thousand dollars in subsidized apartments, a bunch of first class plan tickets and stays at luxury hotels, a custom phone booth, etc. Absolutely peanuts. Really, Pruitt is just an insignificant piker compared to you know who. I think the NYT Editorial Board owes Pruitt an apology.

[Winstonm]

With all due respect to the NYT Editorial Board, Pruitt is a choir boy compared to the Dennison gang. China coughs up a 500 million dollar loan for a Trump project in Indonesia in exchange for lifting of penalties on Chinese company ZTE. Jared Kushner and his family have received hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Qatar and other foreign governments who want to make deals with the White House.

 

Pruitt has made do with a few thousand dollars in subsidized apartments, a bunch of first class plan tickets and stays at luxury hotels, a custom phone booth, etc. Absolutely peanuts. Really, Pruitt is just an insignificant piker compared to you know who. I think the NYT Editorial Board owes Pruitt an apology.

 

WaPo responds:

 

This is a tragic case of low self-esteem.

 

Pruitt could be shaking down corporate polluters for tens of millions of dollars — and he’s trying to use his influence to get a deal on a used Trump mattress that costs $1,750 new? He could get so many sweetheart deals from those he regulates that his wife would never have to work again — and he’s using pull so she can sell $3.99 chicken sandwiches?

 

 

Pruitt’s problem isn’t that he’s corrupt; it’s that he isn’t corrupt enough.

[FelicityR]

I, with many other people in the UK, thought 'Oh, my God' when Donald Trump became your country's president, however he does seem more dedicated to sort out America's problems than the spineless politicians on this side of the Atlantic.

 

Here, in London - thank goodness I don't live there - there is a major crime wave of gang-related theft, with moped gangs attacking people and property in broad daylight robbing them of watches and phones, or anything else they can get their thieving hands on. Add to this a surge of knife crime, and London, not New York, has had more murders this current year.

 

The rudderless government does nothing. The opposition is just as hopeless. The Police have their hands tied through political correctness and staffing levels. Londoners are probably beginning to despair: many are leaving the capital, and have been doing so for the past few years. London is now very unsafe.

 

As much as I don't like Trump. I'm sure that he wouldn't have left this scenario unchecked if it happened in Washington DC or New York. He would be doing something. As for Teresa May and her Conservative Party, the political party that traditionally supports Law and Order, well they failed the people of the UK time and time again.

 

Even if these criminals get caught, many of the sentences that are handed down are derisory. At least in America I see hardened criminals and persistent offenders locked away for a long, long time.

 

You might complain about Trump in the USA, but I'd rather have a politician that actually wants to get things done than the lacklustre, hopeless bunch that have been elected to our own House Of Commons.

[barmar]

But not the electoral college, which is the vote that counts.

Only in getting elected, not in determining the opinion of the populace.

[barmar]

The cognitive dissonance on this forum is amazing.

 

Trump was elected by a majority of the Electoral College, the only way to be elected President. That means he won the popular vote in the states with the majority of electors. This is how you do it in the "United States of America".

Talk about delusion!

 

The Electoral College makes the election dependent on just a handful of swing states. From Vox.com:

 

Why the Electoral College is the absolute worst, explained

[ggwhiz]

I would love to be a fly on the wall for the one on one meetings at the G7 (make that G6 + Trump) meetings starting tomorrow.

 

Trumps plan is so dumb he is inflicting modest pain spread over 6 of us and the collective not so dumb response is equal retaliatory tariffs targeting industries in Trump supporting States. I believe the EU package already has an escalator clause. Hopefully the pain kicks in before the mid-terms.

 

Better would be if Trump gets his head out of his ass but who would bet on that?

[Winstonm]

I, with many other people in the UK, thought 'Oh, my God' when Donald Trump became your country's president, however he does seem more dedicated to sort out America's problems than the spineless politicians on this side of the Atlantic.

 

Here, in London - thank goodness I don't live there - there is a major crime wave of gang-related theft, with moped gangs attacking people and property in broad daylight robbing them of watches and phones, or anything else they can get their thieving hands on. Add to this a surge of knife crime, and London, not New York, has had more murders this current year.

 

The rudderless government does nothing. The opposition is just as hopeless. The Police have their hands tied through political correctness and staffing levels. Londoners are probably beginning to despair: many are leaving the capital, and have been doing so for the past few years. London is now very unsafe.

 

As much as I don't like Trump. I'm sure that he wouldn't have left this scenario unchecked if it happened in Washington DC or New York. He would be doing something. As for Teresa May and her Conservative Party, the political party that traditionally supports Law and Order, well they failed the people of the UK time and time again.

 

Even if these criminals get caught, many of the sentences that are handed down are derisory. At least in America I see hardened criminals and persistent offenders locked away for a long, long time.

 

You might complain about Trump in the USA, but I'd rather have a politician that actually wants to get things done than the lacklustre, hopeless bunch that have been elected to our own House Of Commons.

 

I think if you look at historical precedents, it is disparity of wealth that has a greater correlation with violence than any other single factor. It is true that this can be helped by government policies, but to think a demagogue will solve the short term problem of increased violence is giving in to emotion over cognizance.

[Winstonm]

I would love to be a fly on the wall for the one on one meetings at the G7 (make that G6 + Trump) meetings starting tomorrow.

 

Trumps plan is so dumb he is inflicting modest pain spread over 6 of us and the collective not so dumb response is equal retaliatory tariffs targeting industries in Trump supporting States. I believe the EU package already has an escalator clause. Hopefully the pain kicks in before the mid-terms.

 

Better would be if Trump gets his head out of his ass but who would bet on that?

 

Which country has benefited from Dennison's policy changes?

 

1) Backing out of the Iran deal has caused higher oil prices. What country has a huge oil reserve? Russia

2) Destabilizing the Middle East will have the effect of destabilizing currencies, pushing gold price higher. What country has a large gold reserve? Russia.

[Winstonm]

Talk about delusion!

 

The Electoral College makes the election dependent on just a handful of swing states. From Vox.com:

 

Why the Electoral College is the absolute worst, explained

 

Wapo supplies some data that refutes the "true believers":

 

A new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll suggests this might be the case. It finds that Democrats lead among registered voters nationally in the House generic ballot matchup by 50 percent to 40 percent.

 

But even more tellingly, the poll finds that by a whopping margin of 48-23, voters are more likely to support a congressional candidate who promises to be a check on Trump. And by 53-31, they are less likely to vote for a candidate who has supported Trump’s positions more than 90 percent of the time.

 

 

These numbers get more striking when you look at how they break down in all of the House districts that the Cook Political Report designates as competitive. According to the good folks at NBC, who sent over these numbers:

 

By 52-19, voters in competitive House districts are more likely to support a congressional candidate who promises to be a check on Trump.

By 55-28, voters in competitive House districts are more likely to support a congressional candidate who has opposed Trump most of the time.

It should be noted that the vast, vast majority of these seats are held by Republicans. The seats that this poll designates as competitive are the ones that Cook Political Report rates as Toss Ups, Lean Democratic and Lean Republican. Cook puts 25 seats in the Toss Up categories — 23 GOP-held, and two held by Democrats. Cook puts 27 in the Lean Republican category and seven in the Lean Democratic category — and of that 34, 31 are held by Republicans.

 

And so, in a whole lot of competitive seats mostly held by Republicans, majorities are more likely to vote for the candidate who will act as a check on Trump and will oppose him on most of his policies.

 

The poll’s other findings underscore the point. Nationally, Democrats enjoy a large enthusiasm gap: 63 percent of them are extremely interested in the midterms, while among Republicans, that number is only 47 percent.

 

We don't have that much longer to wait - 6 months until the midterms.

[hrothgar]

 

You might complain about Trump in the USA, but I'd rather have a politician that actually wants to get things done than the lacklustre, hopeless bunch that have been elected to our own House Of Commons.

 

Mussolini made the trains run on time!

[Winstonm]

As much as I don't like Trump. I'm sure that he wouldn't have left this scenario unchecked if it happened in Washington DC or New York. He would be doing something. As for Teresa May and her Conservative Party, the political party that traditionally supports Law and Order, well they failed the people of the UK time and time again.

 

A good bridge player should not fall for a conman's emotional argument. You mention Washington D.C. and New York.

 

Are you aware of the violence problem in Chicago? Are you aware that the failed drug policies from the 1980s of maximum prison sentences and active prosecutions for drug violations have been reintroduced by this administration, policies which have been proven to be useless unless the real goal is to increase profits for private prisons.

 

Real law and order cannot be produced by a simplistic motto. There are many, many theories of violence, but the essence is that it becomes at some point a personal choice, and the less empathy one has, the more sociopathic or even psychopathic one is, the greater chance that the choice will be based on impulses.

[kenberg]

Mussolini made the trains run on time!

 

Fake News!

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/loco-motive/

But yes, I understand this is now metaphorical rather than a serious historical claim.

As to the metaphor, it's a decent lead-in to an earlier question of "What's my beef with Trump?". I did not vote for the first Bush, just for a simple comparative example, but I regard him as a decent and qualified person. Trump is a whole different case. I see him as fundamentally rotten, meaning that I would not support him if he agreed with every political view that I held. Every gut instinct that I have tells me to have nothing to do with him. Trains may run on time, or perhaps they won't, but my expectation is that sooner or later we will seriously regret having him as a president.

 

Usually arrogant bullies succeed at first and for a while. And just about always, this comes to an inglorious end and others have to pick up the pieces.

So that's my beef with Trump. Not provable, but it is my view of him, it has been from the beginning. It's very unlikely to change, no matter how well the trains adhere to their schedules.

 

 

 

[cherdano]

Mussolini made the trains run on time!

Aber, aber...die Autobahnen!!!

[Winstonm]

From Charles Blow, NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/opinion/trump-central-park-five.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

 

Some people will never admit that they are wrong, even when they are as wrong as sin.

 

But it is the language in the body of Trump’s 1989 death penalty ad that sticks with me. Trump wrote:

 

“Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”

 

He continued:

 

“Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”

 

 

That to me is the thing with this man: He wants to hate. When Trump feels what he believes is a righteous indignation, his default position is hatred. Anyone who draws his ire, anyone whom he feels attacked by or offended by, anyone who has the nerve to stand up for himself or herselfand tell him he’s wrong, he wants to hate, and does so.

 

This hateful spirit envelopes him, consumes him and animates him.

 

He hates women who dare to stand up to him and push back against him, so he attacks them, not just on the issues but on the validity of their very womanhood.

 

He hates black people who dare to stand up — or kneel — for their dignity and against oppressive authority, so he attacks protesting professional athletes, Black Lives Matter and President Barack Obama himself as dangerous and divisive, unpatriotic and un-American.

 

He hates immigrants so he has set a tone of intolerance, boasted of building his wall (that Mexico will never pay for), swollen the ranks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and attacks some as criminals and animals.

 

He hates Muslims, so he moves to institute his travel ban and attacks their religion with the incendiary comment that “I think Islam hates us.”

 

He always disguises his hatred, often as a veneration and defense of his base, the flag, law enforcement or the military. He hijacks their valor to advance his personal hatred.

 

So I remember that. I center that. I hear “I want to hate” every time I hear him speak. And I draw strength from the fact that I’m not fighting for or against a political party; I’m fighting hatred itself, as personified by the man who occupies the presidency. That is my spine stiffener.

[johnu]

He hates immigrants so he has set a tone of intolerance, boasted of building his wall (that Mexico will never pay for), swollen the ranks of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and attacks some as criminals and animals.

 

This is very unfair to Dennison. He loves white, Christian immigrants and goes out of his way to hire them for his hotels and golf course. And he married 2 of them.

[hrothgar]

From the "Trump will restore our standing with the world department", Trump has decided to flee the G7 meeting and the French President issued the following statement

 

The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be. Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force