We might be talking past each other. I have no problems with people calling Trump a white supremacist; his unwillingness to condemn it during the debate is pretty good evidence. I just don’t think that Trump is a genius orator who who can walk a fine line extemporaneously.
I disagree, he clearly and regularly does exactly that. He panders to white supremacists and then denies he did. It’s not that he’s a genius, it’s just that most Americans don’t pay much attention.
That’s some really fine slicing you’re doing there.
He can’t turn a phrase? He has proud boys on the brain. He says stuff to them in his sleep.
He can’t cognitively do something? There are so many things he can’t do but making up a line about his white supporters is not one of them.
I agree with you as well, at least with regard to that one particular two word phrase. I think there is a possibility he was going to say “Proud Boys, Stand Back, Stand Down” in what I call his “hostage video voice”. You know - when his advisors absolutely INSIST that he support a responsible mainstream POV and he comes out in front of the camera and reads those words in that flat sing song voice, signaling to his supporters that he doesn’t mean it, he means the opposite.
But that’s not what he said, and he had every opportunity to correct himself and didn’t. This is politics, dammit and you are allowed to use your opponents words against him. And you are allowed to exploit your opponent’s weaknesses. One of the weaknesses they are exploiting is Trump’s refusal to admit even the smallest error. The other his is reluctance to fully distance himself from his more extreme supporters. You are allowed to manipulate your opponent into doing stupid stuff.
Remember when Obama, I think it was, made a slip of the tongue and said something about “fifty-seven states”? Now, imagine that if instead of saying “Ooops, I meant fifty“, he took a map of the US and carved out some extra states with a Sharpie. The Republicans and Republican media outlets would have a field day with that, of course.
He said “stand by.” He is a native speaker of English. He was calling on them to be available. He might have done it off the cuff but why would that make any difference? It is a thing that any authoritarian or autocrat likes to say. I haven’t seen him act in any other way in 4 years. Trying to land the plane for Donald to be blameless is so weird. Who benefits?
Watch his body language and his tone change. When he was saying to mr Wallace who, who, give me a name. He was acting like mr Wallace couldn’t come up with a group name. He really leaned into it and got very belligerent. He was planning to say, you can’t name any and I can; antifa, antifa, antifa.
Ok this is a total thread hijack.
Moderating
It really is a hijack, and I’m sorry I didn’t redirect it earlier. Let’s take the conversation about the Proud Boys commentary to another thread.
No. Certainly he has done that in the past.
ETA: raventhief: Sorry. I didn’t look down the page for this.
I would agree that he never said anything explicitly, but when someone repeatedly undermines the legitimacy of an election and tells tens of millions of his supporters that he may not (read: probably won’t) accept the results of a free and fair election, that by itself has the potential to sow the seeds of violent unrest.
Democracy doesn’t just function on its own magically. It requires cooperation - including cooperation by people who lose elections. People who lose elections must agree to cooperate with those who win elections by agreeing to accept the outcome, to accept the laws and policies that come with the results. When they don’t, they are essentially saying that any law, any rule, any policy that you are telling me I have to live with is not legitimate. Historically, people tend to resist governments that don’t rule with legitimacy. Resistance can be both nonviolent and violent.
This is true, regardless of how we choose to interpret his comments about Proud Boys, whether we believe they were told to stand down or stand by. In the greater context of delegitimizing the election results and claiming that there are ‘good people on both sides,’ though, it’s easier to understand why people assume the worst of the president’s intentions.
ETA: Sorry, just read the Mod note. Will refrain from further discussion of the issue.
Being that as it may, Musk is at least opening up his company to public view, which is something we can’t say about Trump.
Whether Musk pays $0 on his income tax return, nobody knows because he’s not running for president. But we at least have some idea of how much Musk’s companies are earning, or not earning. Investors at least have an idea. Musk is probably paying himself in stock because he can – it’s not as clear whether Trump can do the same (at least not as clear as with a publicly-indexed company).
In any event, it is exceedingly rare for someone to perpetually lose so much money that they don’t pay any income taxes over a 15-20 year period on one hand, yet can claim to be so rich that they can legitimately claim to be billionaires, attract investors, and secure loans on the other hand. That just seems highly unlikely to be true. Something has to give.
Given Trump’s track record of running businesses into the ground and screwing investors, I’m more inclined to believe that he’s not a real billionaire, that he’s in fact not making a lot of money, but is still nevertheless very good at getting cash in his hands. And he has some tools that enable him to do that. He has a brand name with recognizability in markets all over the world. He can use that for licensing, which gets him some cash. He also has an entertainment brand. He can get cash the same way an indebted singer or actor gets cash. Being broke and millions in debt doesn’t preclude one from generating cash, and by that same token, being able to generate cash doesn’t preclude one from being millions in debt. We know that this is how millions of people live today: as long as you can keep making the minimum payments, you can still go deeper and deeper into debt, until lenders figure you out, or until they think you’re no longer of value to them.
-never mind-
You mean his 98% success rate?
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2175187-trump.html
I’m not following, sorry. What are you referring to?
515 businesses, 7 bankruptcies.
Yeah, that’s what we know of. His bankruptcies have been spectacular.
He was not in control of 515 businesses.
So how many was he in control of?
This alone is just ridiculous shady shit.