US Politics May 2019: " If I was burned at the stake, I would ask for a mirror"

maybe he'll die

yeah let's just wait it out until he dies . what harm could he even cause in the meantime?

I can see her tactic. She can turn to the moderates elected last November and their constituents and go, "Sigh, see, motherfucker's making us wanna impeach him." But I still dislike it and the modern trend of sticking "self-" where it doesn't belong (I have to deal with "self-introductions" in class).

I saw focus groups of Trump voters in 2016. They thought the fact he was a hugely successful businessman would make him a successful president. The fact he was a loser in business will hurt him. And that is why he’s kept his taxes secret.

— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) May 7, 2019

jfc.

(prominent and extremely bad clinton advisor)

what was neera's reaction to the universal Non-reaction to the earlier NYT story about the trump family's long history of laundering, tax fraud, the trump children getting tens of millions from Fred, etc?

even after being prepared a bit for his supporters not caring about what he does wrong, i was still kind of shocked by how little that affected him

he was able to glide past all of it with a pair of "nuh uh, nyt fake, i am a good smart business leader" tweets

the NYT ran the story during the Kavanaugh hearings iirc, which certainly did't help either.

It would not have changed anyone's minds except given women who turned against the president more reason to stand longer in line in November.

ummm we definitely knew this guy was unambiguously terrible at business in 2016

We thought we knew but then the inveterate liar who's only interested in protecting his fabricated reputation said otherwise, so now I don't know what to believe.

But I saw him being rich.

I hope subsequent generations see us for the overly-credulous rubes we are and develop whatever psychological buttressing is necessary to see through the fabrications of serial bullshitters.

I mean, we're clearly fucked on that front, but won't somebody please think of the children.

god I knew this administration was gonna be a corrupt shitshow but the President of the United States bragging about committing tax fraud on Twitter is a new one for me

if he was consistently reporting the *biggest* losses for any american, i'm pretty confident that was some kind of outlandishly illegal accounting. why can't he be investigated and tried for tax fraud? they did it to paul manafort.

the fact that he is "bad at business" seems like the wrong angle here. the times even flagged that some of these numbers make no sense. like the $59 million in interest income one year, after having negligible interest income for the years surrounding it

tax fraud is one of the coolest most badassed things an american can do

That’s great but there are laws against it and sentencing guidelines

i'm pretty confident that was some kind of outlandishly illegal accounting

our country seems very not on the ball when it comes to things like this

see: Tesla, who after nonstop losses suddenly and mysteriously became the most profitable car company on the planet for two quarters, and then magically turned unprofitable again after all their accounting guys quit

if he was consistently reporting the *biggest* losses for any american

oh Treeship, so unaware of the ways of the real estate world. see, losses are good to report, everyone does it. the fact that Trump had the most losses of any US citizen just shows that he is the biggest player in the real estate world!

Or when zillions of dollars worth of mortgage backed securities vanished suddenly

Or turned out to never have really existed

The economy seems somewhat fake to me.

He was campaigning on the trail with his plane behind him that’s as big as a Delta jet, with his name on it. We can’t even fathom that kind of money.

I hope subsequent generations see us for the overly-credulous rubes we are and develop whatever psychological buttressing is necessary to see through the fabrications of serial bullshitters.

But I saw him being rich.

lol

He never really was a businessman. To be actually good at business you need to sell a product or service people find valuable and be rewarded by the market. He never did anything like that—it was just grifting and bullshit.

He would make money by like breaking contracts and threatening lawsuits and shit. Everything he’s ever done has been predatory.

some folk peoples love narcos because they kick ass, and other folk peoples love tax fraud grifters. i took a cultural anthropology survey course once i know shit.

Republicans are supposed to like free market economics. The defense of free market economics (which i don’t buy into) is that the market rewards good actors who do things efficiently, creating a wider social benefit. Trump makes a movkery of all of that. He didn’t even pay the contractors who did work for him.

That’s what’s so stupid about all of this.

That’s great but there are laws against it and sentencing guidelines

apparently if you're a (white, Republican) president they let you do a lot of things that are "against the law".

which make it even more badassed. he's just a lazy whiny vulgar POS like me, and he's doin it to em, by gawd.

truly, the American Dream™

its almost as if the entire Republican party ethos is "do as many financial and sex crimes you can get away with"

Basically by embracing trump they are moving from “the market, however harsh it sometimes seems, is ultimately fair” (an empirically wrong but internally consistent view) to “stealing is good” (weird nihilism)

treesh i think you are talking about never-trumpers who immed snapped into line because while they are ~aware~ of principles of accounting, they love winning, money, nice cars, trophy wives, ivied children more especially money.

They’ve always been rewarding grifters on the sly but trump represents an idea of capitalism that is like just about that

Why would a voter vote for this?

bc he’s instrumental in creating conditions for making the wealthy even wealthier.

and for beyond else he’s being cool and racist, owning the libs, breaking laws and not getting busted.

everyone else*

Yeah i know. Just being rhetorical

this financial news is much less news than him exerting executive privilege, isn't it?

Who cares about the mueller report. I wish I saw the avengers instead of reading it

Avengers probably had more of a measurable impact on the world tbf.

the report is important u can still see the FUCKING AVENGERS GROW UP.

spoiler

Good read: https://theintercept.com/2019/05/07/mueller-report-trump-obstruction/

guessing glenn didn't edit that one

It will be interesting to look back in 5-10 years and reflect on what the ultimate effects of the Mueller Report were. Whole lotta people got mad, whole lotta people got defensive, WaPo sold a dece number of paperback reprints, etc.

brb going watch avengers 😐

I especially liked the part where people in a position to do something about it kept suggesting we were in the midst of a constitutional crisis and then didn't do anything about it. Man, the Donald Trump Years sure were crazy! Thank goodness we're finally safely in the Era of Ivanka.

That the president can issue an executive order of this sort is insane to me. I know these things will never change because of the quasi-dystopian cult of the Founding Fathers but boy the executive wing in the US just has so much power.

Can't wait until he starts wearing a crown and robes of the finest silk.