Trump, May 2017: 100 days of [unintelligible]

I know it is an old saw, but it is worth dragging out into the air once in a while:

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

It's the second of those three conditions we are considering here. As long as there are powers who benefit from keeping some people fooled all the time, those fools will be kept mired in their delusions. It's just that the apparatus for fooling people has grown more complex and consequently its reach has been extended. Don't ask me how to solve it, I don't know the answer.

W was a different figure than Trump for sure, but there totally was a cult of personality around him post-9/11. People on the right were practically messianic about him.

But my point is that nobody loves a loser. I don't think whatever fealty Trump commands will survive his White House tenure.

The hits just keep on coming.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/19/politics/michael-flynn-donald-trump-russia-influence/index.html

Russian officials bragged in conversations during the presidential campaign that they had cultivated a strong relationship with former Trump adviser retired Gen. Michael Flynn and believed they could use him to influence Donald Trump and his team, sources told CNN.

The conversations deeply concerned US intelligence officials, some of whom acted on their own to limit how much sensitive information they shared with Flynn, who was tapped to become Trump's national security adviser, current and former governments officials said.
"This was a five-alarm fire from early on," one former Obama administration official said, "the way the Russians were talking about him." Another former administration official said Flynn was viewed as a potential national security problem.

lmao

"If [Trump] took a dump on his desk, you'd defend it."-Anderson Cooper to Jeffrey Lord. pic.twitter.com/yhqb0gwVlm

— Jack Runyan (@JackDRunyan) May 20, 2017

I said uh COOPALOOP

How do we get them to rejoin the mainstream? How do we get them to understand the complications and nuance of issues?

I don't think its really a matter of education. I don't believe education standards and critical thinking have declined much in my lifetime. The main thing that's changed is that once we received our news, and often opinions, from nuanced thinkers, and now many don't.

― it's just locker room treason (Sanpaku), Friday, May 19, 2017 5:29 PM (forty-five minutes ago)

won't somebody please think of the white people

u folx don't take any time off from this? live a little

Anyone who wants to win has to. We on the Left need to dissect Trump's appeal, identify what is compatible with our other values (and some is), and use it to bludgeon the Right for the next generation.

The things are coming so hard and fast in this thread that I'll just throw this out here Re:the query about Trumpsters still on the bus and how they get news.

Trump has strong ties to American Media Inc, who publish, among other things, The National Enquirer, Globe, and US Weekly--all of which to varying degrees have become propaganda arms for his campaign and now the White House. Week after week Trump's remaining base is seeing on every supermarket checkstand fawning cover stories about "How Trump Will Bring World Peace", "How Trump Will Lock Up Hillary & Obama", "How Trump will DESTROY ISIS FOREVER" and so on. They eat that shit up.

WaPo On This In January

Trump may be bad but Hillary would have sold the Chinese the secret KFC recipe

knives comin out https://t.co/vekUIFSRwG

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) May 20, 2017

The comments are a joy.

first response hall of fame

What a bizarre metaphor

“If after all of the talk, after all of the chest-thumping, we can’t get anything done, we may get clubbed like baby seals in 2018,” said Stipanovich, who was an early Trump critic.

Sealthumping

ime you can push trump supporters pretty far by confronting them with the facts of this administration but only up until "but hillary would've been worse" which is a concession that trump is terrible but ultimately preserves their support. i hear this a lot in the form of, "well i don't even like trump but..." which admittedly weeds out his absolute die-hard fans (like the guy who tells me whenever he sees me that trump is the greatest US president and when i laugh he follows up with, 'well at least you agree he /is/ president, right?'). once you can replace trump with someone better (in their eyes - which is really the whole trick right there how to square that circle) a lot of them will move on willingly i think. the easiest way to co-opt trump's appeal is by running politicians who don't code instantly as 'educated coastal elites.' that doesn't mean you have to find someone pro-life or a racist or someone white or a male. you just need to find someone who ppl see as outside the system, not compromised by the dc corruption, a challenge to the party duopoly, etc, able to speak in a register that rings as 'authentic' in 2020.

like i don't think trump's cult of personality even has a whole lot to do with him qua his trumpness. it's all about how he ticks off the right people. that's easily replaceable. angela nagle (iirc) argues that the alt-right doesn't think he's competent or intelligence. in fact they like him because he's the opposite - a worthless troll & conduit for dank memes.

agreed but fp'd you for 'qua his trumpness'

tough but fair

ha! made me laugh...

Trump's aides did an "intervention" with him over his tweeting, WSJ reports: https://t.co/BNv5jAamEu pic.twitter.com/LgE3wbs5Lk

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 20, 2017

"we used to have a better class of criminal..." is my quote of the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrdEts4cHLc

the easiest way to co-opt trump's appeal is by running politicians who don't code instantly as 'educated coastal elites.' that doesn't mean you have to find someone pro-life or a racist or someone white or a male. you just need to find someone who ppl see as outside the system, not compromised by the dc corruption, a challenge to the party duopoly, etc, able to speak in a register that rings as 'authentic' in 2020.

This is like a game of Guess Who where the only card left standing is The Rock.

the easiest way to co-opt trump's appeal is by running politicians who don't code instantly as 'educated coastal elites.' that doesn't mean you have to find someone pro-life or a racist or someone white or a male. you just need to find someone who ppl see as outside the system, not compromised by the dc corruption, a challenge to the party duopoly, etc, able to speak in a register that rings as 'authentic' in 2020.

This is like a game of Guess Who where the only card left standing is The Rock.

nobody ever suggests en masse slaughter of the problem voters

yeah they do, it's called the american health care act

i might as well take that to the trenchant social commentary thread myself

youd best, im not touching it

I'm hearing that the Mueller investigation is likely to take at least 2 years. So isn't there anything that will sort things out faster?
Fingers crossed for assassination after the Saudis hear what Stephen Miller has to say , but not holding my breath.

Also what is the story on expelling foreign ambassadors? Hearing that John McCain is calling for the Turkish guy to get the boot. But what the F*** is Kislyak doing still being in the country last week? Or did Trump just say it's all ok and nobody object? Would have thought that somebody would have had him expelled by now, presumably any other President would have called for a replacement?

Kislyak isn't known to have done anything illegal and expelling him would mean the US ambassador in Moscow getting kicked out, at the very least. The Turkish ambassador is highly unlikely to be removed.

kushner getting fingered by the FBI puts his support of firing + comey + support of pushing back at special counsel in a new light

had a thought in the shower that what we need next is FBI director PREET BHARARA

for real. instead though we will get CIA director VIKTOR MEDVEDCHUK

is it confirmed that kushner is the wh official "close to the president" who is being investigated?

i was hoping it was sessions.

no confirmation. other rumors suggest stephen miller or steven bannon

It's a trick question, no one is close to the president.

I thought Kushner was amateur at everything he was trampling on. So hardly official, or is that proffessional.
Would give me most joy right now if it was Sessions.
Bannon just needs to sink further into the drain they're already swamping.

able to speak in a register that rings as 'authentic' in 2020.

so not the register we heard much too loud and close to the mic in 2016

http://i64.tinypic.com/wbs5rp.png

"I'm hearing that the Mueller investigation is likely to take at least 2 years. So isn't there anything that will sort things out faster?"

part of me keeps thinking he'll just resign. make some excuse. blame the swamp until he dies. leave us in the capable hands of mike pence. and then he can say hey i was da president and eat steak and go golfing until he farts to death. of course it might not end up being his idea. he might have to resign before they bring charges against him.

i mean he's REALLY good at being a martyr. it's one of his greatest strengths. he was born to be a disgraced ex-president.

OTM. He could just be like Billy Joel and sell out Madison Square Garden (or the buttholeville equivalent) once a month to keep the money/praise flowing.

The tRUMP tHEATER of Branson MO

my money is on him resigning before the end of the year

Depends, how much are you willing to pay him to resign?

Mr. Trump dismissed talk about a split inside his White House between aides with a nationalist or globalist orientation. “Hey, I’m a nationalist and a globalist,” he said. “I’m both. And I’m the only one who makes the decision, believe me.”

Is that a real quote?

Surreal that I cannot tell the difference

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/28/donald_trump_now_says_he_s_a_nationalist_and_a_globalist.html