Well, he’s got the “speak softly” part down . . .
Back when the Four Seasons Total Landscaping thing happeded people said that it was like something lifted directly from a comedy TV skit. Well, 2021 already has that one beat, this time taken from an edgy drama. The QAnon conspiracy theorist trampled to death by her own fellow Y’all Qaeda mobsters? She was carrying a “don’t tread on me” flag. It is like the scene in Red Dawn where the guy with the bumper sticker has his gun pried from his cold dead hand.
Maybe Disney was testing its new and improved audioanimatronic Trump
I posted most of this in another thread, but I think it’s important.
C’mon, you know what went down.
It will probably come out that multiple agencies voiced serious security concerns about the event. I’m sure many of them knew it was a really bad idea to muster the #TrumpArmy at the Capitol while the ejection* was being formalized. I’m also sure that Trump shut them up and shut them down.
And it will come out that Trump, or one of his insiders, insisted on as little police presence as possible because of the optics. But that’s not the issue.
What needs to be investigated is why the event was allowed to happen at that time and place, at all..
Because it seems to me that the President shouldn’t have the last word on matters involving other people’s security - especially since he considers so may of them enemies. How did Trump so thoroughly bend the entire federal government to his will?
This was not a rally that got out of control. This wasn’t even a terror attack.
The President of the United States raised an army to attack the legislative branch because he didn’t want them to formalize the election.
He did this openly, on federal property, and conservatives were cool with it.
Everyone needs to understand this.
*that was a typo, I meant election, but I liked it so I left it.
This is the most precisely accurate description I’ve read of what went down on Wednesday.
It’s how we need to be framing it.
In order to prevent this in the future, our system would either need to offer the institutional ability to remove a strongman President from office and prosecute them, or have a system where the legislature was obviously more powerful than the president and had enough factional diversity that a strongman couldn’t take over that. Even if you tried to address the immediate issues with this insurrection by giving congress more unilateral control over their own security, the next Trump will always figure out a way to undermine it in the system we have where the President has near absolute power when it comes to the military/security forces.
Unfortunately it’s essentially baked into our system that impeachment is nearly impossible as an avenue for this, and presidential veto power is probably going to make it impossible to claw back how singularly powerful the president is.
And her dumb as a post friend knows just who to blame for his friend being trampled to death by his fellow Trumpsters: Antifa.
Fucking seriously. This is the idiocy we’re dealing with. Attack the capitol building, trample your own people to death and blame someone else.
Yes yes yes yes YES yes yes!
His favorite toy has been taken away.. 
I just found out about this:
And during the attack on the legislative branch, the president of the United States was calling a Senator, exhorting him to defy the Constitution and stop the certification of the election.
Of course, Trump and Gouliani, being fucking stupid muppets, ended up calling the wrong Senator. This really is a coup attempt by absolute fucking morons. I’m just surprised that Gouliani did not actually call a phone sex line by mistake (it was probably on his speed dial)
ETA I honestly don’t remember how to spell Grouliani’s name, and can’t be bothered to look it up. He’s a mentally unstable asshole, so I don’t care.
I suppose Rudy noticed that “trial by combat” was not going as he expected. But dammit he used to at least be operationally competent. I think his kids need to find him a nice peaceful care center.
Wow. I cant imagine their disappoitment when they realize that they chose to carry water for Donald Motherfucking Trump.
Every week or so for the past year I have gone to 538 to see what Trump’s approval rating was, hoping it had gone down some so he would not be re-elected. Just went there, it was at 45% on election day. Now it has gone down.
By 3 points. It’s the same as it was mid-October.
Yeah, but he lost. The Republican who comes next will inherit those numbers.
That is true, and you can’t get elected with a 42% approval rating so that is the good news. And I suspect it will go down a bit more, but it shows that there is almost literally nothing that could cause most Repubs to ever disapprove of any Repub President. Maybe there will never be another one
… and thus we conclude the first week of 2021.
I’m sorry if this has been mentioned (I’m a full day behind on this thread…I’ve had one terrible day…) But some talking head…it very may well have been Skinny Al Sharpton…was demanding to know:
WHO FILED FOR THIS PERMIT?
WHO GOT THE PERMIT FOR THE RALLY?
HOW MANY PEOPLE DID THEY ESTIMATE WOULD BE THERE?
HOW MUCH MONEY IN INSURANCE DID THEY PUT UP FOR THE EVENT?
HOW MUCH SECURITY AND LOGISTICS DID THEY FIGURE THEY WOULD NEED?
I guess they have a point–don’t these events take some kind of permit process, and don’t they calculate in a police presence?
No system can truly protect democracy if the citizenry is corrupt, but the problem with American democracy is that, from the beginning, it was designed to protect antiquated values. In doing so, it was designed to give disproportionate power to a political minority, a planter aristocracy. Even today, it still protects rural whites and aristocrats. And it’s pretty much baked into the system.
I think the only thing that can change it is civil war, or absent of that, some other kind of existential crisis like the Great Depression. It should be noted that concurrent with FDR’s New Deal was a rise in right wing authoritarianism and fascism, even here in the US.