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

those idiots in the republican leadership are in over their heads, reince included

i don't think they have any sort of plot, they are just all about trump bc he is going to cooperate with their radical antigovernment agenda. but he is a legitimate psychopath with criminal intention and the wolves he has brought into the whitehouse are going to make karl rove look like atticus finch.

lol

*is bringing. it hasn't happened yet.

starting to think that the GOP's master plan

I'm not buying it. Everything keys off Trump's popularity with the base. Conflict of interest with his businesses won't cause even a blip in that. Not even colluding with Russia. At this point, I suspect even a video of him in bed with a 13 year old probably wouldn't kill him off. He just needs to keep up flattering the worst prejudices of the base and symbolically pissing on the heads of people they hate.

I don't see it happening. While I'm certain the GOP leadership, i.e. McConnell would actually breathe a sigh of relief should Pence become elevated to the presidency, leadership is too frightened of the base to actually scheme to get rid of Trump. Plus, that's not how politics works.

I'm reminded of what I've read of the Harding years: a decent moron of a man, condescended to by his former Senate colleagues, presides over worst corruption since the Grant years, dies in office, elevates Calvin Coolidge, who is much more the GOP's man.

except Trump is not decent

Plus, that's not how politics works.

Everything I thought I knew about how politics works went out the window last month.

they're not going to get away with this. this administration of thieves and extremists he is putting together is going to do something that will discredit the GOP for good. i don't know what. and as sleepingbag has pointed out my prognostications are not so reliable. but it will be something and it will be bad.

i could be wrong... stuff could just slide into shittiness while the media and larger society re-calibrates its expectations. he could trash the country and leave office without fanfare, with a 30% approval or something. but that's not what i think will happen.

I'm just going to expect that everything I don't want to happen will, and the more I fantasize about something going horribly wrong for him/them, the more they'll succeed. Just basing that on the trajectory since he announced his candidacy.

Defeatism is not useful

you say that, but give it a shot, you never do know

Sorry! Just venting. I would love for a scenario Treeship is describing to play out. It's really amazing though how immune he is to every disaster that seems to be lined up for him. Like Mr. Magoo.

he is putting together is going to do something that will discredit the GOP for good.

My ears are deaf from the death knells rung for the GOP since 2006, 1974, 1964...at best we can hope for smaller GOP congressional minorities and a Dem president in 2020.

this guy is like a cartoon mobster though. we never had a gop president like that before.

treeship you need to lie down, bud, i say this sincerely

if anyone is going to "stroke out" it is going to be you. relax.

Bolton apparently deputy SoS?

old lunch was the one praying for a trump stroke ftr.

but yeah, i am trying to devote less energy to thinking about this. xp

I know there are much more insane things to focus on, but has there been any commentary about how gross it is that Trump is doing a victory lap in states that he won instead of making even the tiniest effort to acknowledge the rest of the country? I mean, y'know, totally in character and unsurprising as hell, but still.

he's a fuckhead that's how he's going to act

To be clear, I haven't been praying for a Trump stroke per se. I'm praying for his imminent death by natural causes. A stroke would be fine but really any ailment that takes him quickly and painlessly is a-ok in my book.

i hope the fake tan stuff he's been using turns out to be highly toxic

I've made it a habit in my life to never actively wish another person ill, and certainly to never wish that someone die. But, well, you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvXxAGPOB4I

" I'm praying for his imminent death by natural causes" I'd be happy with an unnatural cause too

I suppose that means the secret service is going to visit me now

I hope the great leader lives 1,000 centuries

Let me tell you guys I really can't WAIT to find out how the Sunday Shows handle this Russian shit

most likely they'll handle it with kid gloves. the topic will be raised. the trump surrogates will deny and decry and shout "lies! all lies!" and then the host will move on to the next topic.

Tomasky kind of otm - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/10/world-war-iii-democrats-and-america-vs-trump-and-russia.html

I know I often say “imagine if Hillary had done this,” but in this case, it’s not a mere hypothetical. Imagine the situation were reversed, and this lurid right-wing dystopic fantasy were playing out before our eyes—remembering, I should note, that Trump earlier in the campaign encouraged Russia to do more hacking of Clinton! What would the Republicans be doing? A few things, I think:

• They’d certainly be calling the election illegitimate and would declare Clinton an illegitimate president.
• They’d call on the electors to seat Trump, citing—and properly, by the way—the Founders’ view that electors existed for precisely this purpose.
• Noting that Clinton had (in this hypothetical) earlier egged Russia on, they would be accusing Clinton of being an agent of a foreign government; that is, of treason.
• They’d be so legally brilliant and diabolical that it’s far beyond my capacity even to imagine.

And what would rank-and-file conservatives be doing? Hard-shell Trumpists? Richard Spencer? The good folks at Stormfront?

I have no idea, frankly, why we continue to eschew disruptive tactics such as the above, other than maybe that the ~80% of this country that didn't vote for Trump is still mostly waiting for Obama to lead us out of this mess (hint: he doesn't know what to do either)

yeah the dems need to go hard on this, i have zero faith that they will do anything

it makes me wonder what portion of the country thinks favorably about Putin and Russia. I can't imagine it's a lot.

Make no mistake, yesterday’s Washington Post revelation that the CIA has concluded that Russia was actively trying to elect Donald Trump as opposed to just “meddling with” the election, is a nuclear bombshell.

i'm all for more attention on this issue, but as josh marshall pointed out yesterday, it's weird to read all the coverage pretending that we didn't already know all of this. the news that russia was involved came out months ago. of COURSE they wanted Trump to win.

Yeah this is kinda like the Snowden "revelations" - just confirming officially shit I thought everybody already knew

3 months ago, news came out that a high-ranking official was meddling with the admission committee at Yale

*crickets*

yesterday, it was confirmed that the high-ranking official was meddling with the admission committee...on BEHALF OF HER DAUGHTER'S ACCEPTANCE AT YALE

DEFCON11111111

Sad lol

Countdown to Trump tweeting some dumb shit to push this out of the headlines...

also it's something that everyone responds to with silence or eyerolling, but

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-us-has-been-meddling-in-other-countries-elections-for-a-century-it-doesnt-feel-good_us_57983b85e4b02d5d5ed382bd

anyone who mentioned clinton's involvement in the 2009 honduras election was treated like a berniebro, but maybe that's part of why she decided not to press the russian/trump connection too hard back in september? i mean, obviously her campaign did take note of it and mention on it on occasion but you'd think it'd be a bombshell story

democrats aren't going to do a goddamn thing. bet on it.

explain "treated like a berniebro" - you mean argued with?

the Clinton campaign allowed surrogates to point out the fact that Putin was obviously in the tank for Trump, she brought it up at the debate, and made as big a deal out of it as they did anything else - then went on to win the popular vote by over 2%

xpost I assume it means "treated like their objections were insincere and based only in their opposition to Clinton," but I can't check because you could not get me to re-open the relevant thread(s) for less than five hundred dollars.

yep, although i didn't mean just ILX, i meant pretty much everywhere, at least left leaning circles

The Obama administration's approach to addressing our numerous longstanding issues with LAC nations hasn't been spotless or perfect but I would definitely not characterize it as silence and eyerolling

The fact that the big election fucking-with that people can point to most recently is from 2009, after a military coup, when we called for new elections in an attempt to head off a protracted civil war, is actually a pretty good vindication of this administration's foreign policy, but again, what do I know

CNN giving trump/russia gaslighters an open forum rn. Host is giving these evil clowns stern looks but it might not be enough to save the republic.

I want to bet against will but I have zero confidence in current Dem leadership to try anything crazy. What happens when you have to fight crazy with crazy and you only have Very Serious People?

Asked and answered