The August 2019 US Politics Thread is dumb (stupid}

The people who have declared so far are all fairly lame. Chris Bell is a charisma-vacuum, the vet is trying too hard to suck up the Republicans, and the Houston city councilwoman is...a Houston city councilwoman.

Cornyn was tweeting in June about Hispanics invading Texas.

"suck up to"

Beto's already done an unreal amount of ground work for a Texas Senate race, my opinion of him plummeted when he declared for president. Get the fuck over yourself, Beto. Just run against Cornyn already. I assume he like every other Dem presidential hopeful has access to internal polling that shows whoever the Dem candidate for president is has a total lock on winning the race, which is why all these sub-Beeblebrox egomaniac jags insist on crowding the field.

I'm not sold on the idea that Beto is the sole Democrat who could possibly fare well in that race. Why not support one of the candidates who are running?

He’s not the sole candidate, but he has goodwill & name recognition rn that will play better if he drops out IN ORDER TO REPRESENT HIS STATE, than if he takes another swing as a twice-failed candidate later

Wrapping up an out-of-sight weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., President Donald Trump said Sunday that “perhaps” more needs to be done with respect to gun control. “Hate has no place in our country and we’re going to take care of it,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to board Air Force One to return to Washington, D.C.

Trump said he will make a statement Monday on the two mass shootings over the weekend and what can be done in response.

Trump said he has also spoken with Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray about the mass violence. He said his statement will be at around 10 a.m. on Monday.

Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying....

Tweet was going down an interesting path until the follow up

....this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!

"Let us be more racist and we might (won't) tighten gun laws a bit"

But we all knew whose fault it would really be

News coverage has got to start being fair, balanced and unbiased, or these terrible problems will only get worse!

Meant as a threat obv

I couldn't decide whether his 'solution' was gonna entail increased persecution of non-whites or like declaring Antifa a terrorist organization. Whichever way it went, I knew it would be incoherent and unhelpful, so bravo.

The only way to stop this needless gun violence is more tariffs on China.

i was about the post the same thing; I had one brief moment of hope this morning seeing "trump pushing for background checks" and then i saw this shit.

my assumption now is "I'll sign background checks if you give me a wall"

hey fucker why not sign the background check bill Mitch won't allow through Senate, and why don't you accept the immigration plans congress has broght you multiple times?

not sure if Trump's "maybe the mass murderer had a point" strategy is gonna play well here

there are good people on both sides of this AK-47

perfect

Trump says those lost in Toledo will not have died in vain but it was actually Dayton

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 5, 2019

Holy Toledo!

Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying....

who doesn't love a wedding?

Former FBI agent: “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base. It’s a no-win situation for the FBI agent or supervisor.” https://t.co/p5oX0LJbKF

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) August 5, 2019

um excuse me but I think you'll find the FBI is stuffed with angry Trump-hating Democrats

not least the sinisiter LOVERS

beginning to look like James Comey might actually be stupider than Trump

Mr. Hamburglar, please take a stand against stealing hamburgers. pic.twitter.com/C5hhZKNl4K

— Scott Conroy (@ScottFConroy) August 5, 2019

China confirms it is suspending agricultural product purchases in response to Trump's new tariffs

https://fm-static.cnbc.com/awsmedia/chart/2019/7/5/image%20(5).1565046032353.png

markets are taking this totally normal little trade war well

indeed

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBT-y3aUwAAJ_eo.jpg:small

osama_thumbsup.jpg

How is this all playing with the alt-right gaming chuds?

If Trump or another republican politician says something they don't like, they just doublethink the blame onto "the media" that reported it.

I posted this in the AOC thread as well, but this is a pretty amazing clip. She burns through more in two minutes than MSNBC can in a whole evening of panel discussions.

‘I don’t want to hear the question ‘is this president racist?’ anymore. He is.’ — @AOC held nothing back while condemning Trump for using the language of white supremacy pic.twitter.com/3rWCkdYq6n

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 6, 2019

These are rich people who maxed out donations to our racist, asshole president, I know your schtick is to rush to defend power but scumbag multimillionaires are the backbone of the GOP (not just “famous billionaires”) naming & shaming those who need good PR is the least we can do https://t.co/PVr8cA7Tp4

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) August 6, 2019

It's public information, the pushback on Castro is ridiculous.

good morning!

you know it's serious when Joy Fucking Reid is shaming Maggie Haberman:

What am I missing? This is public information via the FEC. Also, the NYT has done these stories disclosing donors to presidential candidates, like this one: https://t.co/bCbA3kfaCr

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) August 7, 2019

that aoc clip is powerful, holy shit

I feel like the pushback against NYT and the rest of the media has been more intense this time around. From O'Rourke just going 'Members of the press: What the fuck?' to the backlash to the NYT Unity headline to this. Might be people think the rules of political discourse are changing when shooters are literally using Trumps rhetoric in manifestoes before mass murder, but a lot of the media wants business to go on as usual.

NYT definitely seemed to get a lot of heat from that headline

The tweets from politicians in the story from The Guardian were pretty good: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/06/new-york-times-front-page-headline-changed It's a mix of the headline just being wrong, and being indefensible, and being cowardly.

AOC: Love Bigger 2020

NYT cowardly “centrist” nonsense shockah

I know we've discussed this already but it's especially irritating how the primary knock on AOC from the right is that she's an airhead or has no idea what she's talking about; practically every old dumb blonde joke has been re-appropriated to be about AOC on Facebook boomer pages. Then again literally all these people do is project so I guess it makes sense

bravo to Castro. It's about time Dems play dirty, and I use the term loosely because this is legal.

This is... fun? Is fun the word?

https://splinternews.com/heres-how-to-find-out-who-donated-thousands-to-trump-in-1837027340

Re: centrist media, I've been very pleasantly surprised at how Esquire has been calling out Trump. For a magazine that highlights $3K sweaters and $10K watches, they could have avoided alienating their rich right-wing readers.

lots of rich ppl think trump is an embarrassment iirc

This is... fun? Is fun the word?

kinda nice, now I know of a few local businesses I'll never shop at again

yeah but just cuz bad manners xp

Only nine people in my town of over 130,000 have ever donated to Trump.

404 error. either lots of people are looking this stuff up or it's TEH DEEP STAET

it should work if you search by committee rather than candidate.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/07/tucker-carlson-white-supremacy-fox-news-hoax

“If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns, problems this country has, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia probably. It’s actually not a real problem in America,” Carlson told his audience on Tuesday night.

Claiming that white supremacy issue was being used by Democrats as a political tool, Carlson continued: “This is a hoax. Just like the Russia hoax, it’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.”

Carlson also claimed all the white supremacists in America could fit inside a football stadium before repeating his belief that white supremacy in the US is a non-existent problem. He went on to insist that he’s “never met anybody – not one person – who ascribes to white supremacy”.

makes you think!

I often have trouble estimating the 'disingenuous/dumbfuck' ratio with people like this. Certainly hefty portions of both.

Carlson also claimed all the white supremacists in America could fit inside a football stadium

typically college and pro football stadiums hold like 50K+ people, up to 80 or 100K right?

uh

I think it's safe to assume the former in Carlson's case but it's a mixture of both when it comes to his audience.

xp