# The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2016, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070 "2016-12-07T00:25:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1378
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27545 "2018-11-27T03:08:12Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > I am not trying to convince everybody that Mitt Romney is a fantastic guy. I do think he understands how money works though, and I do think the financial wrecking ball aspect of the Trump Administration is going to chap his hide (yeah, I know things are going OK now, except for that $1 trillion deficit, rising interest rates and what appear to be looming headwinds). He is going to be critical of Trump for that, and his Mormon supporters will surely prod him to attack Trump over his many other failings. > > And wait until the investigations start! I think Mitt will blow whichever way the political winds blow. But let’s remember that this guy is an oligarch who chose Paul Ryan, another oligarch, as his running mate. Trump isn’t an oligarch as much as he is a scam artist and kleptocrat who uses leverage to pretend to be an oligarch. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27546 "2018-11-27T03:09:15Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > [Trump suggests the US should form a state-run, global news network to counter CNN’s ‘unfair’ coverage](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-suggests-us-should-form-state-run-global-news-network-2018-11?fbclid=IwAR014hAuCGMuPHCXuMo9B93DeC64iG3gmpOCrsUzm109cBAbkx33rEK2cW0) Sputnik America. Problem solved. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27547 "2018-11-27T03:18:38Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > [Trump suggests the US should form a state-run, global news network to counter CNN’s ‘unfair’ coverage](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-suggests-us-should-form-state-run-global-news-network-2018-11?fbclid=IwAR014hAuCGMuPHCXuMo9B93DeC64iG3gmpOCrsUzm109cBAbkx33rEK2cW0) Hasn’t that already existed for decades? Voice of America? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27548 "2018-11-27T03:21:07Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Hasn’t that already existed for decades? Voice of America? From the link: > [@](#): > > The US already has government-funded news outlets such as Voice of America, but it’s not as prominent or well-known as privately run outlets like CNN. Trump apparently wants to change that, though it’s not clear how serious he was in this regard. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27549 "2018-11-27T03:30:32Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > The stock market has been doing terrible all year long. I don’t get it when people say the economy is doing great. Trump says the stock market is tanking because the Democrats won the House. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27550 "2018-11-27T03:31:36Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > And if I said “The American economy is not just GM and Ford”. What would you say? And the farmers … ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27551 "2018-11-27T04:07:43Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > I think Mitt will blow whichever way the political winds blow. But let’s remember that this guy is an oligarch who chose Paul Ryan, another oligarch, as his running mate. Trump isn’t an oligarch as much as he is a scam artist and kleptocrat who uses leverage to pretend to be an oligarch. I don’t think Paul Ryan is an oligarch- he was a waiter in DC before he was in the House. He is more like a servant to the oligarchs. But I agree with the rest. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27552 "2018-11-27T04:20:53Z")
[Check out the picture with this AP article](https://apnews.com/251fb824cd784f5c9fdbe468b724779c) about tonight rally at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. I’ve long wondered about the size of the crowds at his rallies, but I could never be arsed to find out where they took place, exactly, and what the capacity was. But I started to get suspicious when I heard that some of them were taking place at high schools. Gymnasiums and theaters at high schools can typically hold a few thousand people, which is a far cry from an arena. Well this time the story told me exactly where it was and had a picture! [So I checked and the total capacity of this place is 11,500 (for concerts)](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=mississippi+coast+coliseum+capacity&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8). Now look at the upper right and upper left of that picture. LOTS of empty seats. The POTUS can’t even draw 10,000 people to a free rally in a state that voted overwhelmingly for him ([57.86%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Mississippi,_2016#Statewide_results)) just 2 years ago. In fact, Harrison County, where Biloxi is located, went 63.74% for Trump. Yet today, he couldn’t even get 10,000 people to leave their homes to see him. ETA: Also: not a lot of non-white people at that rally, despite black people being 37% of the population of Mississippi and Hispanics being 4%. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27553 "2018-11-27T04:23:09Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > [Trump suggests the US should form a state-run, global news network to counter CNN’s ‘unfair’ coverage](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-suggests-us-should-form-state-run-global-news-network-2018-11?fbclid=IwAR014hAuCGMuPHCXuMo9B93DeC64iG3gmpOCrsUzm109cBAbkx33rEK2cW0) The man is nothing if not brilliant! They could call it “Pravda”, but to shake off the stigma of the Russian, the name should be changed to just “Truth”. The government could also restrict all media to getting its information only from the state news agency, which could be called something like, oh, I don’t know, maybe _Informatsionnoye agentstvo Amerikanski TASS_. Iron-clad state control of media is certainly a very conservative-leaning concept that should appeal to all Republicans. Censoring the Internet is also a terrific idea they might consider. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27554 "2018-11-27T04:27:03Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Censoring the Internet is also a terrific idea they might consider. 😉 Oh I wish they’d try: nothing would galvanize America like learning that their pornography resource was about to be outlawed. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27555 "2018-11-27T04:47:55Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > But the real bind that Trump finds himself in now is how to balance the budget. The deficit is going to be a major issue in 2019 because it’s going to be too big not to notice, and that will force the president and the congress into a political confrontation. We can cut the military, cut entitlements, or raise taxes. We already know they won’t raise taxes, so it looks like cutting defense spending or social security and medicare will be the great debate of 2019. > [@Muffin](#): > > The usual Republican strategy is to let the Democrats dig the country out of the Republican spending. Republicans will try to fix the deficit the same way they always have, by cutting taxes. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27556 "2018-11-27T04:55:19Z")
Fuck white mississippi ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27557 "2018-11-27T04:57:33Z")
For the GOP, cutting taxes is kind of like beer is to Homer Simpson: it’s the solution to (and the consciously unacknowledged cause of) all of life’s problems. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27558 "2018-11-27T05:06:02Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Not sure if people outside the border zone realize it, but slowing or closing the San Ysidro point of entry also has a massive impact here in the Tijuana/San Diego area. This is the world’s busiest land border crossing, and thousands of those who make the trip across the border every day do so for work. It’s not just asylum seekers and vacationers. > > There’s a lot of economic activity relying on that border crossing. When I made a trip to the airport a few weeks back, my Uber driver was a US citizen who lives in Tijuana, but comes across the border to drive. There’s a tamale seller in our neighborhood who lives in TJ. That’s just two of the thousands of examples of people who need the crossing to be open just to make a living. That’s pretty normal through Europe and I expect that it’s the same anywhere you have towns at the border. Lots of Gibraltar workers live in La Línea; people who work in Lausanne, Geneva or Basel often live in France or, in the case of Basel, Germany (work permits are handled by each canton: when I worked in Basel 10 years ago, there were different permits for “resident worker” and “commuter worker”); cooks in Irún and Hendaye consider it perfectly normal to buy their meat at the _carnicero_ and their bread from a _boulangerie_. It was already that way when the crossing required presenting passports; nowadays that you’re only asked for it occasionally it’s akin to living within sight of the Brooklyn Bridge and working in Manhattan. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27559 "2018-11-27T07:20:32Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > [Check out the picture with this AP article](https://apnews.com/251fb824cd784f5c9fdbe468b724779c) about tonight rally at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. > > I’ve long wondered about the size of the crowds at his rallies, but I could never be arsed to find out where they took place, exactly, and what the capacity was. But I started to get suspicious when I heard that some of them were taking place at high schools. Gymnasiums and theaters at high schools can typically hold a few thousand people, which is a far cry from an arena. > > Well this time the story told me exactly where it was and had a picture! [So I checked and the total capacity of this place is 11,500 (for concerts)](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=mississippi+coast+coliseum+capacity&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8). > > Now look at the upper right and upper left of that picture. LOTS of empty seats. The POTUS can’t even draw 10,000 people to a free rally in a state that voted overwhelmingly for him ([57.86%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Mississippi,_2016#Statewide_results)) just 2 years ago. In fact, Harrison County, where Biloxi is located, went 63.74% for Trump. Yet today, he couldn’t even get 10,000 people to leave their homes to see him. > > ETA: Also: not a lot of non-white people at that rally, despite black people being 37% of the population of Mississippi and Hispanics being 4%. This video is from a guy who was at a Trump rally and recorded his own footage of the event. He shows how large the hall actually was and how people were packed into a small section of it that was shown on camera while the rest of the hall was mostly empty. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/IPL11keVyx8/hqdefault.jpg "Real Crowd Size At Trump's Crazy Phoenix Rally") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPL11keVyx8) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27560 "2018-11-27T09:00:55Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Trump says the stock market is tanking because the Democrats won the House. Which (contain your shock) makes no sense because the tanking happened before the election. > [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > Oh I wish they’d try: nothing would galvanize America like learning that their pornography resource was about to be outlawed. If they were as clever about their censorship as the ruling elite in the Orwell novel 1984, they would produce their own pornography for the proles to obtain, letting them think they had something illicit. ---
**Author:** ![catflea12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f6c823/32.png) [@catflea12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catflea12)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27561 "2018-11-27T13:16:09Z")
[quote=“Little\_Nemo, post:27559, topic:774070”] This video is from a guy who was at a Trump rally and recorded his own footage of the event. He shows how large the hall actually was and how people were packed into a small section of it that was shown on camera while the rest of the hall was mostly empty. [/QUOTE] Yeah, it was like that too at the 2018 VFW National Convention, only about 3500 people were at the speech he gave, I and a lot of other people left while he was speaking. There were more protesters outside the convention hall later than there were attendees for his speech. ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27562 "2018-11-27T14:11:03Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > [HIJACK](bolding mine) > > This is how much the world has changed in the past 10 years: people still think that “poor” people don’t have cel phones. [In fact](https://www.statista.com/statistics/274774/forecast-of-mobile-phone-users-worldwide/), more than 4.57 billion people have cel phones (that’s about ⅔ of all humans). A means to communicate is by far the single most helpful survival and life enrichment tool available, and the cost is now negligible. > > The world is a very different place than it was just a few years ago; not all the old suppositions are valid anymore. > > [/HIJACK] I’m really perplexed by that as well. There are Afghan nomads who have cell phones. They charge them with solar panels and car batteries. I don’t know why people assume poor countries don’t have cell phones. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27563 "2018-11-27T14:17:54Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Fuck white mississippi Clinton received 40% of the vote there. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/27564 "2018-11-27T14:32:01Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Clinton received 40% of the vote there. From [538](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-mississippi-senate-runoff/): > [@](#): > > It’s pretty easy for a Democrat to crest 40 percent of the vote in Mississippi — it’s happened in each of the last three presidential elections. That’s because Mississippi has a higher percentage of black residents than any other state — more than 36 percent of the citizen voting age population — and they vote strongly Democratic. But it’s much harder for a Democrat to get those extra 10 points to reach a majority, because the state’s white voters are almost as strongly Republican, and there are relatively few swing voters. Thus, Mississippi is one of the least elastic states in the country — in other words, a perennial 60-40 red state, just like it was in the first round of the special Senate election (in aggregate, Republican candidates got 57.7 percent and Democratic candidates got 42.3 percent). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070.md?page=1377) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070.md?page=1379)