Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Daily Beast mostly terrible but https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-is-not-fully-convinced-trump-was-struck-by-a-bullet

I don’t understand how tf the FBI hasn’t determined this yet. What was his ear struck by? Where did the 8 bullets go? That seems like the bare minimum of what they should have been able to figure out by now.

What am I missing about this "late, great" thing? Did Hannibal Lector as a character die in any of the Red Dragon books/films, or have any of the actors that portrayed him passed away?

I'm pretty sure he thinks Anthony Hopkins is dead.

Next presidential debate need to have Hopkins sitting in Trump’s eyeline nursing a nice bottle of chianti.

I think there is also something going on with the idea that Hannibal is in an asylum and immigrants are seeking asylum

surely he'll find some way of connecting cannibalism to the Green New Deal

something about Trump being a "fresh wind"

Well, that's one way of putting it

His ear was struck by a fragment the World's Greatest Dad mug that Eric got him that he uses exclusively as a bullet shield

There's been some discussion among people who have experience with such things that if a bullet from an AR-15 had passed that close to his ear a) there'd be a chunk missing from it and b) the air pressure would have blown out his eardrum. Back to my theory that when he hit the ground, one of the Secret Service agents gave him a lil' paper cut.

maybe there was another shooter on the grassy knoll

there were 8 shooters, all shot one bullet

they were owed one

what interests me about conspiracy theories is not whether or not they're true but why people believe it

like ultimately it doesn't really matter whether the bullet grazed his ear or not

what interests me then is that the conspiracy theory is not about the shooter or the motive (and yes, a lot of people probably would like to kill djt, but it is worth noting again that the shooter was right-wing) but whether or not trump was _actually in danger_. conspiracy theories aren't about the facts, they're about building narratives. about motive. "lbj killed jfk" is a wonderful conspiracy theory, for instance, because lbj had _tremendous_ motive. the only problem is that there's no actual evidence for it - and there _is_ evidence for him doing a _lot of other things_. that's what interests me about caro's bio of LBJ. like a lot of people _underestimate_ the motive. this is a guy whose sole goal for his entire life was to be president. a guy who knew his health history and his family's health history, and had a pretty strong belief that '60 was his last clear shot to grab an open nomination - any time after that it was tremendously likely that he'd be in too poor health or actually dead - and he did, in fact, die almost immediately after nixon started his second term. this was a guy who would, everyone agreed, do _anything_ to be president. who had tremendous power in texas, economically and politically. who did a _lot_ of illegal, crooked, underhanded stuff, both before and since. caro wrote a whole book about lbj rigging the senate election to get into office. on top of that, there was a strong likelihood that lbj was about to lose the vice presidency - time magazine, i think, was preparing an expose about his involvement with a corrupt political fixer when jfk was killed. after jfk died, time spiked the story. now wasn't the time for such things. everybody had to stand behind the new president. on top of that, the warren commission was absolutely politically motivated. it wasn't designed to determine the real truth behind the kennedy assassination but to get a bunch of people in authority to reassure people who were concerned and afraid that, well, communists assassinated the president.

what's interesting is that the warren commission was _effective in doing that_. hardly anybody believes, as far as i can tell, that lee harvey oswald, acting along, shot jfk. the thing is, the conspiracy that eventually emerged is unusual in that it in large part is the _left_ believing his assassination was a _right-wing_ conspiracy. in late november 1963, a lot of people were afraid that the soviet union had killed the president. america had narrowly dodged nuclear war with the soviet union in a _very public_ fashion the previous year. so it was kind of important that americans _not_ believe that the soviets had killed jfk. kind of a complicated task given oswald's conspicuous ties to the soviet union! when it came to quashing that belief, the warren commission apparently fucking worked!

that it didn't, in the long-term, quash the conspiracy theory itself is almost an afterthought. lbj wound up getting the US heavily involved in vietnam (under false pretenses), goes really hard after communism, and because conspiracies are about motive, the conspiracy becomes, oh, well, it was right-wing american profiteers and warmongers. that fascinates me. that really fascinates me. that's very, very different from most conspiracy theories. most conspiracy theories are pretty much openly bigoted. (see: Q, a real outsider theory) but with jfk, the narrative that gets built is one that's kinda... back-projected, they're based on what the people forming the theories _know at the time_. since lbj wound up basically responsible for the war in vietnam, and the vietnam war was bad, this became the motive of the conspiracy, even though lbj's escalation of the war wasn't something _anybody_ was thinking about in november of '63.

the other thing is that the lack of evidence doesn't matter. it's about the _existence of uncertainty_ - and the more you drill down on any event, the more weird things and inconsistencies you find. look hard enough at anything and weird shit will come out, because life is weirder than we like to think it is. since most people don't look that hard at most things, the weird things seem even more unusual. _lack_ of evidence, on the other hand, _isn't_ considered unusual. to me, when you have a politician whose corruption and underhandedness is _so_ well documented... it's super fucking unusual that there would be _no concrete evidence whatsoever_ of his having had anything at all to do with jfk's assassination. it's all motive and opportunity, both of which he had plenty of.

anyway, that's also what fascinates me about the djt bullet conspiracy theories i've heard. they reflect a belief about trump himself - that he's a coward, that he's a liar, that anything that makes him even superficially look like a hero is stolen valor. it's not actually a question of ballistics at all. it's that the assassination attempt makes him look like a hero, and he's not actually a hero at all - he's a coward and a pathological liar. i mean being shot at doesn't make someone a hero. that's just a narrative we have in our heads, and the conspiracy theory, that's a counter-narrative designed to override that narrative.

devolution...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-luF0nLlM3A

it was one of those fake wrestling bloodpacks, y'all

(my theory alone afaik)

this was fascinating. i really like taking longitudinal views of people, seeing how people change across time. are there any of those for other people? i think it'd be interesting to see one for someone like vince mcmahon. or anyone, really - is this a larger thing on youtube? i've never thought about, you know. timelines for cis people, haha. also because... media, the way people in the public eye _talk_, has also changed during the same time period. so maybe someone who's not one of history's greatest monsters (tone: ironic), to see how that compares.

it was also interesting to see the part where my current age and his age at the time intersected, which was circa 1994.

i watched it with the sound off. i don't want to know what's happening in 2009. i just don't.

Classic

“Have a good time with your bitcoin and your crypto and everything else you’re playing with.” Oh my god 💀💀💀💀 pic.twitter.com/H7Mh8LxBUZ

— Jessica (Ka) Burbank (@JessicaLBurbank) July 27, 2024

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

on a good day hes still got it

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ohrghfm2tnjqyyxjh5y3224n/bafkreihgxqp6eog3oilum2kbb2iefq32ka2zlbjpbz35tqtoqy5iq76nmq@jpeg

the thing is, you can share food at Cheesecake Factory

never felt more like a foreigner than the time I went to cheesecake factory

truly an outrageous place

one of the best factories

top five easy

Surpassed only by C+C Music Factory

what a record label

are you supposed to take the menu with you at the cheesecake factory or is this another crime?

those menus are gigantic, they can't be cheap!

it makes his hands look even smaller

imagine how tiny they'd look handling one of those honkin' slices of cheesecake

he probably thinks there are actual union workers making the cheesecake

probably the only union he supports!

the cheesecake factory thing isn't true, though
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-donald-trump-moan-about-cheesecake-factory-vegas-rally-1910460

A mournful whistle calls the grizzled, yet noble, laborers to their shift. A half-mile assembly line of cheesecakes lurches into production. Smokestacks put forth pinkish, sweet vapors. Another day of vigorous production at the Cheesecake Factory, backbone of American heavy industry.

Bill McReady, 53 (CMotW local 563) is a humble welder on the crust line, like his father and his father before him. As he lifts his tools, ypu can see his skill and the pride he takes in his craft. "Sure, the days are long, but it's worth it to see them cakes movin' out. Makin' people happy. That's what it's all about."

The work is not without its dangers. Bill's buddy Frank was lost in a tragic strawberry-vat overspill three years ago.

my parents still hit Cheesecake Factory. Can't say I've ever had a bad meal, though it's been years.

lol YMP

we're relying on newsweek to fact check things now what a world

lol

haha okkaaayyyy

"$37 Korean fried chicken? When I was President, all chicken was American."

lmaoYMP

MILWAUKEE — In the days since he survived a would-be assassin’s bullet, Republicans who have observed and spoken with former President Donald Trump say they have detected a new softness to the man whose brand has been anything but.

There have been many moments since Trump first entered the presidential conversation in 2015 that political observers have predicted a pivot in his fundamentally bombastic political persona — after his election in 2016, after his first speech to Congress in 2017, or at points during the Covid pandemic. And at this particular juncture, Republicans would seem to have a vested interest in projecting Trump as a more reflective, subdued version of himself, after his polarizing rhetoric during his presidency turned off many swing voters.

But GOP allies, in roughly a dozen interviews, used words like “emotional” and “serene” — even “spiritual” — to describe Trump in the days since the attempt on his life. A person close to the former president’s family described him taking on “humility, in the biblical sense.” In moment after moment at the Republican National Convention this week, Trump’s usual resting face — a scowl with squinted eyes — was replaced by a more subtle expression. One Republican who spoke with Trump, granted anonymity to describe private discussions, said he seemed “existential.”

A question remains of whether Trump’s personal response to his near-death experience will last — and if his calls for national unity will mark any real, enduring shift within the GOP.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/18/trump-shooting-mood-elections-00169413

Oh, that was definitely noticeable today

a kinder, gentler asshole

a more subtle expression

"Sources close to the former president report that he's been working on maudlin poetry while listening to The Joshua Tree on repeat..."

a kinder, gentler asshole

increasingly assholated

nothing i want more from a president than s/he be 'existential'

I’m looking forward to him being “post-existential”

Being and Slime