He shouldn’t expect any respect after the “Adam Schitt” tweeting. Pelosi and Schumer should call him Don if he calls them Nancy and Chuck with that tweet at the ready.
Plus the fact that it’s a WOMAN who’s fighting back and throwing the shit back in his face, and he is totally baffled.
Nah, his nebbishness is no biggie. I’m very glad he’s around.
Madmonk28 - Is it possible you might have underestimated Pelosi so far?
Trump’s shtick relies heavily on insults, which makes it fall flat when the target is a woman. It’s even worse when the target has strong message discipline, like Pelosi. It’s still worse when the target understands Trump’s weaknesses, as Pelosi does.
Hillary was a weak campaigner, but even she got under Trump’s skin.
For most politicians, psychology is over-emphasized and the boring fundamentals of the situation are under-emphasized. So ordinarily I would disagree.
Not in this case. All Presidents preceding Trump have cared about their political party. They couldn’t get where they are without the party, and they know their destiny is tied to it. So if someone is popular but not particularly bright, they surround themselves with decent advisors and listen to them. They consult with other party leaders.
But Trump really doesn’t care about the GOP. He never held political office before; if he had, he wouldn’t have been re-elected. Psychological quirks in general and NPD in particular are central to Trump, in a way they are not for any other politician throughout US history of any party. Trump is not susceptible to peer discipline, only to changes in popularity within his base. That’s it.
That said, the fundamentals were against Trump: shutdowns have never worked in the past. Pelosi played a strong hand well. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/government-shutdown-ends/
Phooey, the whole freakin’ world understands thump’s weaknesses.
Nancy did not engage with him. It’s the same tactic that works with trolls here that few avail themselves of. Don’t take the bait. Don’t play their game. Don’t argue. Don’t attack. Don’t defend. Don’t go back and forth page after page after page. IOW don’t **engage **at all.
She told him how the cow ate the cabbage and then she shut up. THAT’S how it’s done.
Disagree. She engaged, but in a very particular way. Her attacks were brutal, but indirect.
She hit him where it hurts, by gradually taking away something he wanted: the TV spectacle of the State of the Union address. With Charles Shumer, she baited him into taking responsibility for the shutdown on television. And check this out: “Federal workers will not be receiving their paychecks,” Pelosi said of the ongoing government shutdown. “What that means in their lives is tragic in terms of their credit rating, paying their mortgage, paying their rent, paying their car payment, paying their children’s tuition.”
Pelosi then accused Trump of being “insensitive” to federal workers, and took an apparent jab at the money Trump received from his father.
“The president seems to be insensitive to that,” she said. “He thinks maybe they could just ask their father for more money. But they can’t.” As Trump’s fortune is grounded upon silver spoon, that was a cutting attack. But since it didn’t involve name calling, it wasn’t juvenile in the way Trump’s frankly successful attacks on males are.
We might agree though. Pelosi didn’t engage on Trump’s level, but at a couple of levels higher. That helps.
ETA: Also agree troll management is relevant here. To take another example, Parkland survivor Hogg has a good approach: don’t engage (directly) cutoff their oxygen.
That was my entire point. She didn’t do it at his level. She didn’t engage in the sense that she didn’t jump down into the pit where he was beckoning her and go a few rounds with him. She didn’t take the bait. She kept control of the game and didn’t play on his field. She didn’t get into a back-and-forth, name-calling contest. THAT is the way to beat a weak, stupid, immature bully like him.
And critically, with a quiet, calm demeanor. The only jabs she threw were occasional one-liners with the offhand timing of a master comic.
“We could plant these [plants in her office] along the border and call it a wall.” Dorothy Parker material, I tell you.
This is a good analogy. Earlier in the thread I believe I used the term aikido-ka. Whatever we call it, she used Trump’s aggression and turned it against him. This is why Trump is puzzled. Trump brags about being a counter-puncher but a lot of times he’s just a straight up bully. Pelosi didn’t want the shutdown but she knew it was coming and prepared for it. She let Trump have his stage time in advance of the shutdown. She let him play gladiator and he boasted that he would take the blame for the shutdown, probably with the assumption that people would forget what he actually said. They didn’t, and Pelosi made sure of it.
She was also realistic. She knew she couldn’t play Trump’s game of tweeting and trying to compete with sound bytes. One, she knew would lose to the master, and two, she knew it wouldn’t get her results. Pelosi beat him at a game that he hadn’t prepared for. She let his decision’s consequences speak for themselves, and then she took her fight to the public on the side of the 800,000 federal workers, many of whom are blue collar.
Trump is like a dog who just got into a fight with a nasty skunk or a racoon. His nose his bloodied and while he wants to strut around like he’s the top dog, his nose hurts, and he has no idea what to do next.
That’s the shutdown. He caved on the SOTU a day or two earlier, and I’m reasonable sure that planes will fly just fine without a State of the Union address.
So weak she won the popular vote?
I’m hoping the twerp refuses to even (have)writ(t)e(n) a speech until he’s fired. Then future presidents will get a homework assignment from Congress for every future SOTU. And that will be Tan the Conman’s legacy on government.
Bonus: The nation won’t have to listen to 45. (Actually, the only 45 I want to hear is the one he uses to blow his brains out.)
I was a huge Hillary backer, but winning the popular vote by three million over Donald fucking Trump does not prove she’s a good campaigner, nor does having to go the distance with Bernie. Kerry in '04 was better IMO.
I’d settle for this 45.
I’m back from work travel and I will give Nancy “Nancy” Pelosi credit. She scored an important victory against Trump, one that might have finally done some lasting damage to the support he has from his base.
ETA: and she did it in a way that I did not think would work.
Madmonk, in what way did you anticipate it not working? You thought voters would blame Democrats for not just funding the wall?
Or that Trump would keep the shutdown going instead? That was my fear.
Nancy invited thump to STFU [sic] on February 5. I expect the cameras to spend a lot of time on her face as she sits behind him.
Pelosi knew that shutdowns are unpopular. They usually result in dropping poll numbers for the instigator. She used this knowledge to her advantage.
Trump is threatening to shut down the government again if he doesn’t get what he wants by February 15. Is he really so stupid that he’ll try this again?
A good chunk of his base apparently wants him to, if we can believe the interviews on NPR today. One woman grumbled that Pelosi and her Democratic caucus were “smartasses with college degrees”. :smack: Why are these people allowed to vote again?
It got to hm.
He’s not used to being told NO. She did it.
He’s not used to being called on specific lies. She did it.
She hammered on the fact that this was HIS shutdown and wouldn’t let him slime away like he’s used to.
Part of above, she wouldn’t let him blame someone else. He’s not used to that.
She took away his so called SOTU, which would have been a bullshit stream of lies anyway - no captive audience to abuse.
Pointing out that he is a spoiled no-count trust fund brat who never earned anything, but had the world handed to him, was just the icing on the cake.