How will Trump leave office?

[hrothgar]

Did you read the question mark? I made no accusation, you did.

 

Have you stopped raping 12 year girls?

[ldrews]

Have you stopped raping 12 year girls?

 

Why would I want to emulate you?

[blackshoe]

I voted other as in handcuffs.

 

When the GOP loses control of Congress and possibly the Senate and their partisan protection of him evaporates the truth may well come out and I'm betting on money laundering and mob ties (both Russian and Mafia) taking the lead role.

Whatever happens, I don't expect to see much truth coming out of Washington.

[cherdano]

Whatever happens, I don't expect to see much truth coming out of Washington.

You should try reading newspapers or news sites.

[cherdano]

How will Trump leave office? With all the grace and class that we have come to expect of him.

[barmar]

Did you read the question mark? I made no accusation, you did.

Don't rhetorical questions normally end with a question mark?

 

See what I did there? (And there, too).

[ldrews]

Don't rhetorical questions normally end with a question mark?

 

See what I did there? (And there, too).

 

So, you don't consider rhetorical questions as questions?

[kenberg]

So, you don't consider rhetorical questions as questions?

 

I will probably regret getting into this but your post was

 

Really! You are calling for the assassination of the President?

 

This has the grammatical form of a question. I, and I believe the entire world, sees this as a statement. Changing a period to a question mark does not really change the meaning. I could give many examples of this, but I believe you could also, as could anyone. So I am suggesting that you give up this line of defense.

 

I try to put periods after each of my assertions. Question marks are used when I am asking a question.

[ldrews]

I will probably regret getting into this but your post was

 

 

 

This has the grammatical form of a question. I, and I believe the entire world, sees this as a statement. Changing a period to a question mark does not really change the meaning. I could give many examples of this, but I believe you could also, as could anyone. So I am suggesting that you give up this line of defense.

 

I try to put periods after each of my assertions. Question marks are used when I am asking a question.

 

OK, let me reword that.

 

Are you really asking for the assassination of the President?

[MrAce]

OK, let me reword that.

 

Are you really asking for the assassination of the President?

In another topic you asked me a question and I answered

 

No, I do not support the idea of suppressing your postings.

I changed my mind.

[ldrews]

In another topic you asked me a question and I answered

 

 

I changed my mind.

 

Sorry to hear that. The OP made a statement that could be construed as asking for the President to be assassinated. I was simply asking if that was his intent. He may have thought it was just a joke, but as has been pointed out, some things are dangerous to joke about.

 

But I would be interested in hearing what about the interchange here caused you to change your mind.

[MrAce]

Sorry to hear that. The OP made a statement that could be construed as asking for the President to be assassinated. I was simply asking if that was his intent. He may have thought it was just a joke, but as has been pointed out, some things are dangerous to joke about.

 

But I would be interested in hearing what about the interchange here caused you to change your mind.

 

Barmar wrote something. Everyone except than you got it right.

You wrote something and added a question mark at the end. And pretended as if you asked a simple question. So you are either

 

A-Trolling

 

or

 

B-Having hard time to understand and/or express yourself due to your language skills.

 

From what I have read so far, particularly this last interchange you had, convinced me that (a) is the reason. (in fact I believe your behavior is a textbook example for the word "troll" in option A)

[ldrews]

Barmar wrote something. Everyone except than you got it right.

You wrote something and added a question mark at the end. And pretended as if you asked a simple question. So you are either

 

A-Trolling

 

or

 

B-Having hard time to understand and/or express yourself due to your language skills.

 

From what I have read so far, particularly this last interchange you had, convinced me that (a) is the reason. (in fact I believe you are a textbook example for the word in option A)

 

oK, peace be with you.

[hrothgar]

Good summary of the transcript that Feinstein dumped yesterday

 

https://twitter.com/ECMcLaughlin/status/950884746082562048

[y66]

From NYT Editorial Board:

 

Is Donald Trump mentally fit to be president of the United States? It’s an understandable question, and it’s also beside the point.

 

Understandable because Mr. Trump’s behavior in office — impulsive, erratic, dishonest, childish, crude — is so alarming, and so far from what Americans expect in their chief executive, that it cries out for a deeper explanation.

 

It’s beside the point not because a president’s mental capacity doesn’t matter, nor because we should blindly accept our leaders’ declarations of their own stability, let alone genius. Rather, we don’t need a medical degree or a psychiatric diagnosis to tell us what is wrong with Mr. Trump. It’s obvious to anyone who listens to him speak, reads his tweets and sees the effects of his behavior — on the presidency, on the nation and its most important institutions, and on the integrity of the global order.

 

Presidents should not, for instance, taunt the leaders of hostile nations with demeaning nicknames and boasts about the size of their “nuclear button.” They should not tweet out videos depicting them violently assaulting their political opponents. They should not fire the F.B.I. director to derail an investigation into their own campaign’s possible collusion with a foreign government to swing the election. And, of course, they shouldn’t have to find themselves talking to reporters to insist that they’re mentally stable.

 

This behavior may be evidence of some underlying disorder, or it may not. Who knows? Mr. Trump hasn’t undergone a mental-health evaluation, at least not one made public. But even if his behavior were diagnosed as an illness, what would that tell us that we don’t already know? Plenty of people with mental disorders or disabilities function at high levels of society. Conversely, if Mr. Trump were found to have no diagnosable illness, he would be no more fit for the office he holds than he is today.

 

The problem lies in trying to locate the essence of Mr. Trump’s unfitness in the unknowable reaches of his mind, as opposed to where we can all openly see it and address it in political terms. As the psychiatrist Allen Frances told The Times: “You can’t say enough about how incompetent and unqualified he is to be leader of the free world. But that does not make him mentally ill.”

 

Unfortunately, a number of psychiatrists, politicians and others who should know better have increasingly taken up the Trump-is-crazy line. In “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” released last October, more than two dozen contributors, most mental-health professionals, concluded that Mr. Trump presents a grave and immediate danger to the safety of America and the world. No argument there, but why do we need to hear it from psychiatrists relying on their professional credentials? Dr. Bandy Lee, one of the book’s editors, said the authors are “assessing dangerousness, not making a diagnosis.” Anyone with access to newspapers or Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed can do the same.

 

The psychiatrists say they have a duty to warn the public about what they see as a serious threat to the nation. That’s commendable, but they should consider how their comments will be taken by the vast majority of Americans, particularly in a highly politically polarized time. The language of mental health and illness is widely used yet poorly understood, and it comes loaded with unwarranted assumptions and harmful stereotypes. There’s a good reason the profession established an ethical guideline in 1973, known as the Goldwater Rule, that prohibits psychiatrists from offering professional judgment on public figures they have not personally examined.

 

In the future, it would be a good idea if presidential candidates voluntarily submitted to a mental-health evaluation, just as they often do a physical one — and in that case, psychiatrists would have a critical role to play. But you don’t need to put Mr. Trump on a couch now to discover who he is.

 

So what’s the right way to deal with Mr. Trump’s evident unfitness?

 

Not the 25th Amendment, despite the sudden fashion for it. Ratified in the wake of President John Kennedy’s assassination, the amendment authorizes the temporary removal of a president who is unable to do the job. Its final section, which has never been invoked, was meant to clarify what should happen if the president becomes clearly incapacitated. One of the amendment’s drafters, Jay Berman, a former congressional staff member who has said Mr. Trump “appears unhinged,” still doesn’t believe that the amendment applies to his case.

 

Even if invoking the amendment were the best approach, consider what would need to happen. First, the vice president, plus a majority of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, must declare to Congress that the president cannot do his job. If Mr. Trump disagreed, they would have to restate their case. Only then would both houses of Congress get involved, and each would have to agree by a two-thirds vote. The chances of any of these steps being taken in today’s political environment are less than zero.

 

Impeachment would be a more direct and fitting approach, if Mr. Trump’s actions rise to the level of high crimes or misdemeanors. But this path is similarly obstructed by Republicans in Congress, who are behaving less like members of a coequal branch with oversight power than like co-conspirators of a man they know is unfit to govern.

 

The best solution is the simplest: Vote, and organize others to register and to vote. If you believe Donald Trump represents a danger to the country and the world, you can take action to rein in his power. In November, you can help elect members of Congress who will fight Mr. Trump’s most dangerous behaviors. If that fails, there’s always 2020.

[kenberg]

From NYT Editorial Board:

 

 

 

I really like this, no doubt at least partially because it is along the lines of my thinking. I have felt from the beginning that the objection to a Trump presidency is Trump. Not his policies,but Trump himself. And I have no psychiatric training. The editorial refers to that book by a bunch of psychiatrists.. I commented on that book at the time . There were a bunch of psychiatrists offering diagnoses, may different diagnoses. That alone made it worthless in my eyes. If it were the almost universal opinion of the medical world that Trump had liver disease then I would say he probably has a liver disease. But if one says liver, another says heart, another says shingles, I would figure they don't know what they are talking about. Same with a mental disorder. Someone in that group really should have asked if they really wanted to put out a book with (almost) each of them offering a diagnosis.

 

Anyway, the main point is that anyone with any experience in life can assess the Trump personality. Many of us, myself and many others, do not want such a person in the oval office. We were outvoted. Yes I know, HC won the popular vote (really, she did) but elections are decided by the rules as they now stand. What would have happened under different rules? The campaign would have gone differently. Maybe the result would have gone differently, maybe not. It's pointless to speculate. Trump won the votes in the electoral college and that's the way we run our elections.

 

Trump won't change. Well, he changes often, who is in and who is out is an accelrating revolving door, but his fundamentals won't change. Supporters can take comfort in that, the rest of us will fret. But there will be another election.

[PassedOut]

I really like this, no doubt at least partially because it is along the lines of my thinking. I have felt from the beginning that the objection to a Trump presidency is Trump. Not his policies,but Trump himself. And I have no psychiatric training. The editorial refers to that book by a bunch of psychiatrists.. I commented on that book at the time . There were a bunch of psychiatrists offering diagnoses, may different diagnoses. That alone made it worthless in my eyes. If it were the almost universal opinion of the medical world that Trump had liver disease then I would say he probably has a liver disease. But if one says liver, another says heart, another says shingles, I would figure they don't know what they are talking about. Same with a mental disorder. Someone in that group really should have asked if they really wanted to put out a book with (almost) each of them offering a diagnosis.

 

Anyway, the main point is that anyone with any experience in life can assess the Trump personality. Many of us, myself and many others, do not want such a person in the oval office. We were outvoted. Yes I know, HC won the popular vote (really, she did) but elections are decided by the rules as they now stand. What would have happened under different rules? The campaign would have gone differently. Maybe the result would have gone differently, maybe not. It's pointless to speculate. Trump won the votes in the electoral college and that's the way we run our elections.

 

Trump won't change. Well, he changes often, who is in and who is out is an accelerating revolving door, but his fundamentals won't change. Supporters can take comfort in that, the rest of us will fret. But there will be another election.

I agree with you, and also with the editorial, except for this sentence:

 

The chances of any of these steps being taken in today’s political environment are less than zero.

I'm just going with zero.

[Winstonm]

How will Trump leave office? With all the grace and class that we have come to expect of him.

Yes, class act all the way. ;)

The president, having grown frustrated during a meeting, lashed out after lawmakers proposed restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

[barmar]

Not only was his remark incredibly disparaging of the countries, but it betrays a total misunderstanding of TPS. From Wikipedia:

Congress established a procedure by which the Attorney General may provide temporary protected status to immigrants in the United States who are temporarily unable to safely return to their home country because of ongoing armed conflict, an environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions.

In other words, if someone is allowed in through TPS, their country of origin is by definition a shithole (or was, at the time TPS status was granted).

 

And why do we allow people from these shitholes to come here? Because it's the humane thing to do. Humanity used to be an American ideal. Unfortunately, it's slowly being replaced with xenophobia and racism.

[Winstonm]

Quinnipiac University poll from Jan 2018 shows: (enphasis added)

 

Grading President Trump's first year in office, 39 percent of voters give him an "F," while 17 percent give him a "D." Trump gets an "A" from 16 percent of voters, a "B" from another 16 percent and a "C" from 11 percent of voters, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh- pe-ack) University Poll finds.

 

There is the "Trump base", all 16% of them. That hardly calls for much fear for Republicans to oppose him, so those Republicans that support him must agree with his white nationalism.

 

Personally, I think Americas is better than that and the midterms will show it.