The American Coup Fallout thread

Well, dang. There goes her chance to be the next Mrs. Donnie.

She’s waiting for that cosmetic surgeon to come remove the Gorilla Glue she used to attach her lips to Trump’s backside.

“Welcome to the Colin Powell School for Smart People Who Should Have Known Better.”

“I presume you all know Doctor Rice ?”

Haley has always been trying to carve out her own niche, trying to ingratiate herself with Trump on non-racial issues but trying to keep just enough distance between herself and the Stephen Miller wing of the administration. I don’t know if she can pull it off. At any rate, color me unimpressed.

Instead, Haley argues, “what we need to do is take the good that he built, leave the bad that he did, and get back to a place where we can be a good, valuable, effective party. But at the same time, it’s bigger than the party.”

I’m not sure there’s a plastic surgeon in the world who can repair the damage she must be inflicting by speaking out of so many different sides of her face.

Yet another brave, brave Republican who criticizes Trump when she has no constituents to answer to.

Try

Yet another brave, brave Republican who criticizes Trump very mildly criticizes the barest edges of Trump’s works (but never identifying which specific things were wrong), while never criticizing the person himself or any of his fervid followers when she has no constituents to answer to.

Another profile in what passes for courage among traitors and tyrants.

Thanks for fixing that for me. I used to respect Haley, but this finger-in-the-wind crap is nauseating.

It’s another “I don’t know quite where this goes” article, but …

In essence, one of the ex-President’s most valuable commercial properties is one in which he is a minority shareholder. The majority shareholder is apparently contemplating withholding the (presumably prodigious) cash flows from the Gibbon in a sort of hostile takeover move.

Which – given the potential for downward pricing pressure on many of the Gibbon’s properties – primarily those dependent on travel – could put his delicately-balanced, highly leveraged high-wire act at some risk.

Stay tuned …

She pulled the “oh, he changed, I don’t even recognize him anymore” bullshit.

He has not changed. She’s just decided to only support him a little bit now.

Another participant arrested:

His family said, “Eduardo really, really, really wanted the US to end its involvement in Vietnam.” [/s]

Eduardo, you’re not a hippie! You’re too late. The time to protest against Vietnam was over fifty years ago. Same with smokin’ a doobie as a rebellious act of “stickin’ it to the Man, man…”

This is one of my pet peeves. I have college students who are trying so hard to be hippies, but without the underpinnings. They’ve got nothing to lose: no threat of being drafted or jailed for being anti-war… dadburn whippersnappers.

She’s repositioning her portfolio, selling MAGA shares and putting some back into RINO.

I think Nikki is more interested in being the first Madame President.

I don’t see how that happens - a conservative needs the center plus the extreme right, and the extreme right has been conditioned to be fed red meat with lots of blood and won’t take anything less.

True, but 4 years ago most of us couldn’t imagine Donald Trump being president, so hard to rule anything out.

It wasn’t that much of a stretch four years ago, though. I’d be lying if I told you I thought he’d beat Hillary but I think anyone watching the trajectory of the Republican party knew it was heading in that direction a good decade ago – we were just counting on there to be a majority of people in this country who weren’t dumb enough to fall for their lies. We were wrong.

Nikki, like so many others on the right, is counting on her connection to Trump to pull in his followers. Like all of them, she doesn’t seem to realize that Trump followers aren’t loyal to an ideology, it’s Trump personally they worship. Even if Trump anoints her as his successor - unlikely - she’s still female, not as white as they like, and will have stiff competition from his other coattail clowns and probably Ivanka. So she’s not likely to succeed, but I do believe that’s her goal.

It sounds like Nikki’s new position is “I don’t like Trump anymore, but please don’t come burn my house down.”

Agreed. But …

They worship Trump today. After Trump behaved like a standard archetypical populist tyrant wannabe. They have proven they’re willing to worship that archetype. Trump is just the current incarnation.

If Trump is out of the picture they will quickly, willingly, and comprehensively transfer their allegiance to the next actor who plays that role. The $64T question over the next 1-ish years until the 2024 campaign starts up is whether Trump tries to keep the mantle for himself, tried to play kingmaker among the aspirants, or has become irrelevant whether through death, infirmity, legal problems, or exile.