The August 2019 US Politics Thread is dumb (stupid}

At a rally in Manchester, N.H., last week, he noted that “it is not the gun that pulls the trigger, it is the person holding the gun,” paraphrasing a decades-old bumper sticker slogan from the gun rights group.

it is not chlorofluorocarbon gases in aerosol sprays and refrigerator coolant that decides to float up into the stratosphere and destroy the ozone layer, it's humans that decide to use those products. but yet, we just banned the fuck out of most CFCs and the problem was (largely) addressed. in retrospect, i guess we should have kept the CFCs and instead addressed the important problem of humans who choose to use them. (good bumper sticker idea!!!)

maybe we can figure out a way to get the guns to also pull the trigger, and then we'll all feel ok about banning them

yeah, it's time we let all of those innocent guns out of prison.

President Play-Doh takes on the form of the most recent mold he was squished into, more at eleven.

Sorry, I don’t buy Rep. Tlaib’s tears. I have watched her violence, craziness and, most importantly, WORDS, for far too long. Now tears? She hates Israel and all Jewish people. She is an anti-Semite. She and her 3 friends are the new face of the Democrat Party. Live with it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 20, 2019

Really nice that her colleagues on the other side of the aisle are totally cool with this disgusting shit

the asshole that does the "sorry, but" routine and doesn't even bother to add the "but"

Dem strategy should be "aren't you tired of this shit?" because a majority of voters are tired of this shit

Yeah I think a lot of the "don't make it about Trump" cautionary stuff is just so focused on the solidity of Trump's base that they lose sight of how many people think he's a raving jackass. When you're running against a raving jackass, "he's a raving jackass" is a fairly persuasive argument.

Meanwhile, this talk of a payroll tax cut is totally infuriating, because it's a.) probably not going to do a lot to stave off a recession if one is coming; and b.) would produce bigger Social Security deficits, leading to more talk about how it's in a crisis and needs to be privatized. It really is true that he's running the country like one of his companies.

My thoughts on this most recent libelous and hateful turn in Trump's tweets can basically be boiled down to: hanger, stove, tssssssss

Like every time I think he's gone beyond the pale, he manages to find a whole new range beyond that. This is just basically an expression of psychosis, complete detachment from reality.

Really nice that her colleagues on the other side of the aisle are totally cool with this disgusting shit

Maybe the battle plan is to not amplify his words, and just let himself hang himself with them, but yeah if I were in charge of the Dems I would rally a unified 'shut up, fucker' to this.

They're totally cool with this disgusting shit because they believe this disgusting shit.

i can't believe the party that stood behind the golden boy bret kavanaugh would support dangerous lies about Tlaib

again, the only real difference between Trump and any other Republican is he says the quiet part loud

have even any Dems told him to fuck off yet

accusing a member of Congress of literally "hating all Jews" seems like a pretty big deal idk

pretty easy to disprove too

she can just post a pic of herself shaking hands with Bernie

have even any Dems told him to fuck off yet

like they should be unified in condemning this fucking hate speech from the President. ffs why do i even bother

in slightly better news, the FBI finally did their jobs

NEW: The FBI arrested an open neo-Nazi Trump fan for allegedly threatening to "exterminate" every Hispanic person in Miami and trying to wire someone $25,000 to kidnap a Miami woman and stuff her in a Rubbermaid plastic tub. https://t.co/pojh1AHrCZ

— Jerry Iannelli (@jerryiannelli) August 20, 2019

the FBI finally did their jobs

They've been pretty on the ball lately, and I don't even get the idea that they've been sidling up to latent psychos and saying, "Hey, you know what? You should exterminate all the Jews and Mexicans. Here's a 'bomb,' ha ha ha" and then arresting them when they try it.

how recently is "lately"

https://www.salon.com/2019/08/14/leaked-documents-show-fbi-targeted-post-ferguson-black-identity-extremists-over-white-supremacists/

They just arrested a similarly threatening nazi dude in Memphis

uh that story is, how can I put this delicately... fucking nuts

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECbtBj3VAAIoAcx.jpg:small

he just wants to wet his beak

niiiiice

GOJ raised $1 million in less than 100 days and no Republicans have said they're running in this district. https://t.co/PaEIpGSXpI

— Drew Savicki (@SenhorRaposa) August 20, 2019

Trump on Omar/Tlaib: "Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat -- I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty."

— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) August 20, 2019

2020 is going to suck so much

it's funny how the GOP harps on this shit without really making any headway with Jewish Americans at all. But then they're target with this shit isn't Jews, it's evangelicals.

Bingo!

to wit In the 2018 midterms, Jews were again the most Democratic group as designated by religious identity, with 79% voting for the Democrats while 17% voted for the Republicans.

it's pretty rare that I meet any evangelicals but sometimes I feel like they would treat me like some kind of unicorn - a magical creature of totemic significance, and at the same time totally bereft of any agency or recognizable humanity

people will treat that quote like it's par for the course with Trump, but "great disloyalty" is a disgusting and blaring dog whistle and it would be nice if the media thought about it for two seconds

media is absolutely going to both sides it with Tlaib and her unstoppable reign of carnage

one thing i did not exactly need coaxing into but am eager to endorse now is all the 'authoritarian personality / psychology of fascism' stuff that was produced in the wake of WWII, there is clearly zero ideation as such going on inside his soft wet brainhole but evidently you only need a certain fortuitous combination of maladaptive drives and tics to get things going

</oldlunch>

accusing a member of Congress of literally "hating all Jews" seems like a pretty big deal idk

Members of Congress having been calling the POTUS a racist, which is also a pretty big deal. This is just Trump punching back in his normal reflexive way.

Of course, it is fairly easy to find dozens of instances of Trump saying or doing blatantly racist things, while it is necessary to twist Tlaib's words around to create 'evidence' of rabid anti-Semitism. But tribalism will do all the heavy lifting needed to give Trump's baseless accusation credence among the Republican base, and he knows this. So, to a large extent, it works in his favor.

I cannot believe that quote even for him. Or I cannot believe this will be tolerated.

The thing is, Trump doesn't come up with this stuff himself; he gets it from guys like Jeff Ballabon and David Friedman and, I don't know, listening to Tablet's Liel Liebovitz on Gorka's white nationalist radio show. This is what right-wing Jews think about the rest of us.

— David Klion🔥 (@DavidKlion) August 20, 2019

yeah I guess in some ways this isn't much different than him constantly bringing up the black unemployment rate as if to imply that black people are ungrateful and have no agency of their own, but he doesn't explicitly say it

but I guess there's still time

yeah we're all a bunch of race traitors "self-hating Jews"

xps

President Trump on Rep. Tlaib: "Yesterday, I notice for the first time, Tlaib with the tears. All of a sudden, she starts with tears. I don't buy it…I've seen her in a very viscous mood at campaign rallies...I saw a woman that was violent and vicious and out of control." pic.twitter.com/4j2GgG5Ksn

— CSPAN (@cspan) August 20, 2019

Tlaib doesn't do campaign rallies

I know we do this every week but holy shit does this guy project hard

I hope he really said "viscous"

which kind of makes it sound like he got drunk and hallucinated her at one of his rallies

still waiting to see how AIPAC will spin this. hopefully a little better than RJC did

President Trump is right, it shows a great deal of disloyalty to oneself to defend a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion. The @GOP, when rarely confronted w/anti-Semitism of elected members always acts swiftly and decisively to punish and remove. https://t.co/mEBgd84qkf

— RJC (@RJC) August 20, 2019

am I wrong here? if you watch the CSPAN video I swear he says he used to see Tlaib at his campaign rallies "before she was a congresswoman"

yes he did!

That's actually true!!! There's video!

My god! Tlaib back in 2016. pic.twitter.com/7RNRpv32TO

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) July 20, 2019

(lmao at the guy yelling "Get a job"...that she did!)

oh wow, thanks I didn't know that!

good on her!

that is some really violent skipping she does there

anti-Semites skip like this