Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Trump's campaign is threatening Nikki Haley that if she doesn't drop out they're going to after her on her alleged infidelities. It's all part of the pattern.

Pot, meet kettle

Unless it’s with corpses who would ever give a shit.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/46174c5a0f84d87192300ee2f8c984192f85e4d7/0_101_3024_1814/master/3024.jpg?width=620&dpr=2&s=none

Just the amount of money and human effort to move this clown around to do all this crap is crazy in itself.

so he only sexually assaults women that he considers 'his type', good to know

Mushrooms can be choosy.

otm

I mean, this is the argument well-regarded people have been making in newspapers and magazines with better prose. 'If you hold major political figures accountable, a lot of people and politicians might get mad and retaliate in potentially destabilizing ways.' That's basically it. https://t.co/gRbCwMW29p

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) January 18, 2024

YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD for February thread title.

thread title? heck, make it the new board description.

Trump's just getting some payola to promote this:

https://lrdisk.bandcamp.com/album/ten-years-of-trauma

It never really registered until now that he chose that avatar ... the flag overlay I get, but does he actually think looking mean is tantamount to looking good?

weak man feigning strength

Yes.

https://t.co/MlIKklPSJT pic.twitter.com/Mcbf2xozsY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2023

Corey Hart better sue

Given all we've learned about the political leanings of '80s B and C level celebrities, I think I'd rather not know how Corey Hart would react to that.

With ANY MISTAKE, EVEN IF WELL INTENDED is Trump maybe sorta letting it slip that he may have fucked up but it’s okay because he meant well?

xp too late, the 8-episode Netflix doc series is already halfway thru production

Like Nixon, but without the charm.

campaign slogan

i've seen the never surrender t-shirts. the ones with the picture of a guy who was LITERALLY surrendering when his picture was being taken. i hate that guy.

It never really registered until now that he chose that avatar ... the flag overlay I get, but does he actually think looking mean is tantamount to looking good?

He’s mad and strong and handsome and rich

He's the stern father they never had. Or is that the stern father they all had?

personally believe that it is widely not understood how much the cycle of abuse contributes to the popularity of donald j trump

otm

its true, everyone I know who's really into Trump is a miserable fuck

there's something I think of as the "Jesus is coming back" problem.

the people at my Fundie church were insane, and that shouldn't be ignored, but even then, when they said that phrase, it meant "all of our pain and suffering will be over, evil will be vanquished, we'll be at peace for eternity with our Creator" - it was something they looked forward to. or at worst, they'd be saying it to scare someone into getting baptized ASAP.

when the "religious right" says it, it means "Jesus is going to come back and destroy all of my enemies", like he's a junkyard dog on a leash. religion is a revenge fantasy, a way to eliminate the weak by virtue of being on the winning team.

so naturally, a President who essentially promises to do exactly that will do until Machine Gun Jesus comes back.

basically I blame Dirty Harry for everything

Part of the fundie mindset does depend on everything being worse so that Jesus will rescue his flock. At least subconsciously, they're doing what they can to sort of speed up the schedule by actively making everything worse.

They don't wanna be rescued before Jesus takes an AR-15 and blows away their enemies.

in 53 years nobody will be allowed outdoors, and all communication will be done via social media, and it will be 98% bots so nobody will know if anybody but them is alive. or if they are really alive and not just an unaware bot themselves.

The Matrix still has so much to answer for

hearty late-afternoon lol at "junkyard dog on a leash"

He's the stern father they never had. Or is that the stern father they all had?

― nickn, Thursday, January 18, 2024 1:12 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

personally believe that it is widely not understood how much the cycle of abuse contributes to the popularity of donald j trump

― ꙮ (map), Thursday, January 18, 2024 1:17 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

^This. More specifically: how people relate to those cycles of abuse. I've never understood folks (like say Trump's spawn) who keep celebrating big mean glowering daddy in hope of rewards that they will never, ever get. Me, I'm fucked up in all my own special ways but mostly I'm just hyperallergic to bullies now.

I feel like we haven't had enough big thinkpieces on the complete takeover of the right wing by the culture of bullying. Not that it was ever absent, but Trump obviously brought it center stage, made it text instead of the subtext. Just relentlessly picking the softest targets — trans teens, undocumented immigrants, school librarians — and turning a firehose of vitriol and legal harassment on them.

donald trump inherited $400,000,000 from his parents. anyone voting GOP admires that inherent quality over any character or ethical virtue. they want to be rich. they profess reverence for a religion that damns the rich to hell. what can you do

Give them hell, for starters

I have a campaign ad idea... just clips of Trump saying terrible things, followed by a grimacing Joe Biden: "I'm Joe Biden... and I don't approve of this message."

xps - fwiw, Trump's spawn hope for the specific and obvious reward of a huge inheritance. The threat of disinheritance is a well-known way that wealthy families exert abusive control over their offspring. Donald, Sr. wields it like a hammer on his kids.

Yep:

The habitual ways of doing journalism no longer make sense. That the American way of politics has passed a watershed. That change is what Sharlet’s work struggles to characterize, as a desperate imperative—the way “these folks are changing the aesthetic of American politics.”

He gave as an example an infamous interview Lesley Stahl did on 60 Minutes with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. It had been characterized largely by Stahl’s frustration in attempting to fact-check her in real time, and many viewers’ frustration that she wasn’t doing it right, or enough, or adequately; the way Stahl arched her eyebrows in the face of the most fantastical, hateful lies, for example.

Quite brilliantly, Sharlet explained how this made his point about the inadequacy of political journalism’s inherited storytelling frames.

“[Greene], I would say, is the congressman from the fascist party. And I actually would like to speak a little bit more about that term, because I think it’s important.” He noted Stahl’s consternation as a function of the brokenness of the very cosmos in which her career—a great one, he stressed—was built. According to the old rules, a respected gatekeeper from a marquee journalistic institution grills a “rising star,” as a sort of ritual vetting to which the politician cannot but defer. “But Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t a ‘rising star.’ Those old frames don’t work anymore,” Sharlet explained. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is not trying to join the cosmos that Lesley Stahl and much of American journalism is set up to cover.” She inhabited an entirely separate one: a fascist one, which the likes of Stahl have no idea how to comprehend. “Fascism is a dream politics. It’s a mythology. You can’t fact-check myth. You can’t arch an eyebrow and make it go away.”

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-01-17-metaphors-journalists-live-by-part-i/

I am a bit more inclined toward tipsy mothra's viewpoint.

The bullies, the bullied; who's up, who's down, who gets shoved into the locker of a middle school and who does the shoving.

That is WAY more relevant to most people's lives than hazy biblical prophecy shit. Everybody went to middle school. We all experienced that dynamic.

Only a few people have read and understood Ezekiel 3.52 or Amos 4.72 or II Corinthians 4.15 or whatever. That's a tiny slice of the population.

Most Republicans are more like "tell me who I am supposed to hate today." It's a mistake to assume that just because they identify as culturally Christian means that they have any familiarity with Christian theology.

To the extent that they have a religion, it almost always consists of the AR-15 and the Ford F-150, plus camouflage hats. I have a degree in philosophy and am not impressed by the level of intellectual rigor in the MAGA crowd, sorry.

I have had to remind some people here in TN that the same people totally freaked out about drag queens now were totally freaked out about the "immigrant caravan" 5-6 years ago, and about Tennessee being taken over by Sharia Law 4-5 years before that. It's just a nonstop sequence of making people terrified of actually powerless people, and then using them as a scapegoat to vilify in the interest of consolidating political and cultural power. Not like it's a new tactic, but it's kind of become the whole POINT of Republican politics.

Tipsy otm

It is just grievance, weaponized.

Kinda makes me wonder if you could deflate a Republican one-to-one by simply asking them, "So what am I supposed to be scared of this month?"

You could really have fun by asking them, "What are you scared of this month?"

I have a campaign ad idea... just clips of Trump saying terrible things, followed by a grimacing Joe Biden: "I'm Joe Biden... and I don't approve of this message."

― Andy the Grasshopper, Thursday, January 18, 2024 3:21 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hire this guy, Biden campaign (seriously)

I've always likened the Trump phenomenon to a snobs vs. slobs comedy, where his critics are the stuck-up snobs, shaking their fists and issuing decrees of Double Secret Probation, and his slovenly fans have their mouths full of mashed potatoes, manners be damned and ready to go.

I have a campaign ad idea... just clips of Trump saying terrible things, followed by a grimacing Joe Biden: "I'm Joe Biden... and I don't approve of this message."

Hi we kinda tried that in Virginia and lost, with devastating effects.

"Don't elect the obviously horrible person" sometime fails, unless you can also argue for a more inspiring and hopeful alternative. Good luck USA

the campaign ad idea makes sense in a better world, but honestly i think the effect of showing trump saying awful things, followed by joe biden disagreeing with them, is exactly what's happening now. trump's base is made up of people who enjoy the awful things he says. biden's base is made up of people who disagree with the awful things. if you showed 100 people an ad of trump being himself and biden calling him out on it, i think 35 people would say they love what trump said, 35 would say they completely disagree, 10 would be unsure what to think but all their friends and family love trump so they figure it's fine, 10 would unsure what to think but all their friends and family hate trump so they figure biden is right, and then there'd be a leftover 10 undecided people who keep chewing the drywall and forgot the question