Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

Yeah, you just gotta own that shit nowadays. Include your dick pic with all your mailings.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-security-force-232797

cool

Aside from the obvious downsides (to protesters and the general public), I honestly do think it's kinda cool that Trump seems determined to make it difficult for the Secret Service to protect him.

really?

Yeah! I'm all for Trump being the first president to win a Darwin Award.

I'm pretty sure that he's smart enough that this is the one group of employees he doesn't try to trick and cheat.

Well, pretty sure...

I'm pretty sure that he's smart enough to feed himself without choking to death but that's about as far as I'd go.

That story is one of the scariest I've seen btw

It makes me simultaneously very scared and kinda hopeful, tbh. He's so determined to be a maverick wrt being president and incurious enough to never wonder why certain systems are in place that it's likely that he winds up doing at least as much harm to himself as he does to the country-at-large.

But then he Mr. Magoos his way through all kinds of shit that would definitively end most people's careers or livelihoods so who even fuckin knows with this guy.

Eh, I think if you asked me to fill out the headline "Firefight at..." "...Trump rally" would be the least worst option.

yeah why is that scary idgi. dude's an idiot and for once his idiocy mostly results in harm to himself

just keeps taking the dead zone parallels further. private security force has all kinds of potential for abuse - imagining them beating up protestors or cheering on/standing by as a larger force of trump-fan brownshirts does worse, and trump trying to shroud them all under some presidential immunity bullshit. versions of that basically happened all year, so it's not SO farfetched especially as he has done nothing else to suggest that "oh, those were just campaign shenanigans, now i'm gonna act like a grownup" or whatever.

i continue to hope trump chokes on a Hardees cheeseburger before inauguration day. i really don't go around wishing death on people but this fascist fuck is pure evil. someone assassinating him would not necessarily lead us to a safer calmer healed nation.

the scariest part to me is if local police forces were to basically side with/work with all the 'minutemen' gun nut ppl. they kinda exist on the same spectrum as it is

I don't get how this doesn't come off as scary. The guys with guns surrounding the President at public events are supposed to be officers of the law. These guys are loyal to Trump -- not as the holder of an office, but as a person -- and they're accountable to no one. Who's going to stop these guys from beating down a protestor and saying "he made a move towards the President?"

^^^

xxp And other people, some of whom may not be appalling and some of whom might definitely be there to protest. But least worst.

The line about his private bodyman approaching the stage 3 seconds too late through the space that the secret service would have used to evacuate Trump produced some dark lols - there hasn't been a properly slapstick world leader death since I guess Franz Ferdinand.

Assault is still illegal, right? Of the two groups, it's not the security force that's actually able to go "It was necessary" and that's that.

the scariest part to me is if local police forces were to basically side with/work with all the 'minutemen' gun nut ppl. they kinda exist on the same spectrum as it is

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/heres-what-biggest-police-union-wants-trump-his-first-100-days

The policy ideas, released through the union's official website with little fanfare, includes more than a dozen proposals. Many involve aggressively dismantling the modest reforms suggested by the Obama administration in a 2015 plan called President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, such as increasing the use of body cameras nationwide and implementing a national database on police use of force. The FOP also wants Trump to bring back racial profiling in federal agencies by lifting or changing the 2003 ban put in place by the Bush administration. The union suggests he should cut off some or all federal aid to "sanctuary cities" and bring an end to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), using its database to deport the individuals who had been protected by being included in it. Using police officers to participate in the deportation of undocumented immigrants was an idea Trump suggested in his immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona, last August. Several large cities have indicated they will not use police officers or relinquish their status as sanctuary cities to help deport immigrants.

Yeah, I don't mean to underplay the extent to which this is terrifying. It's kind of a race at this point to see whether Trump or any semblance of democracy in the US dies first.

Very proud to live in a city that just strengthened its sanctuary city ordinance.

The police union thing was reported incorrectly -- the police union circulated a memo listing what the trump campaign had proposed. It was not a list of requests.

The fact that it includes cops participating in deportations should underscore that -- most cops do NOT want to do that.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/22/donald-trump-national-fraternal-order-of-police-at/

I assume one reason he's loyal to his personal security is that they've signed NDAs. Does Secret Service sign NDAs?

I wonder what the liability of personal security is, vs secret service. I assume secret service shooting someone vs. private security doing it would offer distinct legal challenges.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm overstating their ability to just shoot someone - as you say they're just very different contexts.

Now, secret service shooting one of his private security goons ...

Don't know if I'm just being overly-cynical, but every time someone brings up some legal obstacle that would prevent Trump from doing whatever he wants, I wonder why anyone assumes he gives a shit about 'laws'.

Where we're going, we don't need ... laws.

I don't get how this doesn't come off as scary. The guys with guns surrounding the President at public events are supposed to be officers of the law. These guys are loyal to Trump -- not as the holder of an office, but as a person -- and they're accountable to no one. Who's going to stop these guys from beating down a protestor and saying "he made a move towards the President?"

x1000

I assume secret service shooting someone vs. private security doing it would offer distinct legal challenges.

And now you hit on the main point. Trump's attitude towards the law is "make me." Ask yourself this: if Trump's guys beat the hell out of a peaceful protestor in public, and the city cops try to arrest them, and Trump's people refuse to comply, who backs down?

‏@nytimes
Sylvester Stallone suggested that he was not interested in taking an arts-related job in the Trump administration

@DougHenwood
Maybe Ted Nugent is available

This is his opportunity to cross the aisle and see if Tipper's interested.

It's not too late
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/BruceWillis_-_ReturnOfBruno.jpg

Inching toward an Archduke Ferdinand moment:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/gunfire-wounds-russian-ambassador-in-turkey-reports-say/2016/12/19/ae32d1c8-c608-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html

Today's electoral college vote is forcing me to recognize that I perhaps quite seriously have some PTSD from election night that is now being triggered. Feeling flashes of that same intense dread.

I was going to post about the shooting in Turkey. the photos are ... striking

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/19/europe/turkey-russian-ambassador-shot/index.html

I assume secret service shooting someone vs. private security doing it would offer distinct legal challenges.

And now you hit on the main point. Trump's attitude towards the law is "make me." Ask yourself this: if Trump's guys beat the hell out of a peaceful protestor in public, and the city cops try to arrest them, and Trump's people refuse to comply, who backs down?

This seems like the run up to a coup. A president whose own security team has a rivalrous relationship with national security forces? Come on

This also ties into his antagonizing of the CIA. He is trying to create factions within the government and bully different agencies into proving their loyalty to him. He may be illiterate but he knows how to exploit an advantage.

Really dont understand how this has gotten this far. This guy is an obvious gangster.

I was going to post about the shooting in Turkey. the photos are ... striking

he really dressed sharp

Ask yourself this: if Trump's guys beat the hell out of a peaceful protestor in public, and the city cops try to arrest them, and Trump's people refuse to comply, who backs down?

i don't see the cops arresting anyone in the president's security team tbh.

If Trump is smart he'll try to stay tight with police unions. FOP endorsed him. That's one reason why I question whether he'll really go through with his deportation and sanctuary city defunding plans -- police rely on a lot of federal funding, and also generally don't want to spend their time assisting with deportations rather than focusing on local crime.

i don't see the cops arresting anyone in the president's security team tbh.

Exactly. And once that's seen not to happen, how does that affect people's ability to dissent visibly?

More like 'do they assist in the cover-up, suppression of on-site media, etc., or do they just maintain a respectful silence about the whole affair'?

Although if I were to make a prediction, I'll bet he tries to find an equivalent of the carrier deal in deportations -- something showy and headline grabbing that will please the base but not move the needle much.

I think every time Trump does something that presidents have not previously done, or doesn't do something that previous presidents have done, why those things have typically not been done or done becomes pretty obvious.

@ZaidJilani
Chuck Schumer congratulates Trump's pick for Secretary of the Army, who is also a Schumer donor

https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/810914918409048068

lolol

the kinda guy who gets Chuck's respect

"Viola joined the New York Mercantile Exchange in 1982 and was its chairman from 2001 to 2004. But he owes his fortune to Virtu Financial, the electronic-trading outfit he founded in 2008. The company — which uses powerful computers to make large numbers of transactions at very high speeds — turned a profit on 1,484 of its first 1,485 days in operation. Michael Lewis, in 2014 his book “Flash Boys,” pointed to Virtu’s winning streak as evidence that high-frequency traders have a huge informational advantage over other investors. Viola took the company public in April 2015."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/12/19/five-things-to-know-about-vincent-viola-trumps-billionaire-pick-for-army-secretary/#5eefd44f6547