The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making

[jayjay]

@Broomstick

So… you’re proposing calling in the SCP Foundation? To Secure, Contain, and Protect? You think things have gotten that bad?

I’ve long suspected that whatever that is on Trump’s head is an escaped SCP…

[Mike_Mabes]

@carnivorousplant

Does that include stealing plans for things the other guy makes well and selling them to him?

I don’t know, I don’t know much about international law;)

[bobot]

Without even learning a lot about that, here’s a dependable rule of thumb. If Donald Trump is for it, it’s a disasterous fucking idea and should be shunned. Likewise if he is against something, then reverse the shunning into an embracing.

[Sherrerd]

@Skypist

Apparently he tweeted from the presidential toilet that he can use the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.

According to the NYT, we should be grateful that this law is available to Trump—because before 1977, he’d have had MORE power to screw things up:

Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a president can declare a “national emergency” in case of “any unusual and extraordinary threat” to “the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States” from abroad. This triggers special authority for the president to regulate “any transactions in foreign exchange” by Americans.

The law was passed to define and restrain presidential power, which until then had been interpreted expansively under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. It has served ever since as the main source of authority for presidents to impose sanctions on countries or individuals in response to specific national security threats, such as the Iranian hostage crisis that began in 1979.

As of March 1, presidents had declared 54 emergencies under the law, of which 29 were still active, according to the Congressional Research Service. Presidents have used it to target international terrorists, drug kingpins, human rights abusers, cyber attackers, illegal arms proliferators and multinational criminal organizations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/world/europe/trump-g7-summit.html?auth=login-email&login=email

(my emphasis)

@Skypist

Wow, was that really his Twitter account? I’ve avoided it all this time because not only does he sicken me but also I don’t get how Twitter works. Message boards are so much easier to understand. Anyway, awful lot of idiots on there declaring that “Americans” stand with him and other barf-inducing comments.

Trump has quite a few real Twitter followers and also quite a few pre-programmed bot followers, both of which praise his every tweet effusively. Rest assured, there are millions more on Twitter who do not “stand with” him.

(Twitter has its good points, but it was never very useful for extended dialogues or conversations. And it’s gotten worse with the recent “upgrade” in which it’s practically impossible to get from one tweet-reply to the thread it’s part of, or to the original tweet to which it is a reply. Very annoying. Guess they figure they’ll make more money off context-less one-off posts. Not sure how they’d make more money that way, but that seems to be what they’re going for.)

[Voyager]

@Great_Antibob

Obviously, and yet this does not stop you from making conclusive statements about international economics. :rolleyes:

Yeah…I’m sure that’ll go over just fine and dandy with Ford, ExxonMobil, the Koch Group, and pretty much every major American company that does any business overseas.

I’d like to see a full page ad from the Business Roundtable:

Dear President Trump:
You can go fuck yourself.

Plus some calls to Moscow Mitch and his ilk that Trump ass lickers are not going to get another penny unless they stomp on this Communist shit.

Where is the John Birch Society when we need them?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@asahi

But taking on China unilaterally while also threatening similar trade wars with allies who could have helped us isolate China was just pure stupidity. In short, we’ve wasted some economic bullets.

Fiting them into the air while shouting “Yeee-haw!” at least offered some short-term entertainment value.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@asahi

I’ve been saying for a while that the only way Americans are going to get rid of the scourge of conservatism is to live with its consequences. Let’s maybe take away social safety nets, including SS and medicare, take away federal stimulus during economic downturns, and then see how Americans like it. They probably won’t.

Well, you’re right. They won’t like it.

But they will blame Obama and socialism, and elect another dumb-ass Republican who will screw things up even more.

I really think you’re fucked.

[Little_Nemo]

@bobot

Without even learning a lot about that, here’s a dependable rule of thumb. If Donald Trump is for it, it’s a disasterous fucking idea and should be shunned. Likewise if he is against something, then reverse the shunning into an embracing.

It doesn’t really matter. Look at infrastructure development; that was one of Trump’s key issues when he was running and it’s a good idea.

But what’s happened since he got elected? Virtually nothing. Trump screws it up even when he has a good idea.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@Little_Nemo

It doesn’t really matter. Look at infrastructure development; that was one of Trump’s key issues when he was running and it’s a good idea.

But what’s happened since he got elected? Virtually nothing. Trump screws it up even when he has a good idea.

He’s still trying to figure out how he can personally make money off this. That’s the most important thing.

[Monty]

@k9bfriender

It’ll be more fun when you can write them from the perspective of him sitting on his toilet in his jail cell while being under suicide watch.

They won’t let him have a phone, so we will just have to fill in for him.

No doubt. Looking forward to it!

Yeah, 25 is really meant for when the President is actually incapable of performing duties, like he’s severely disabled or in a coma. It’s harder to justify it just because he’s dangerously insane. It’s technically harder than impeachment if he contests it at all. I only bring it up as it is one of very few legal methods of removal, and in a rational world, being dangerously insane should invoke the 25th.

That’s the problem. We live in a rational world and for the most part so do those responsible for 25th/impeachment. Trump does not.

His death concerns me a bit too. He needs to be brought down first, otherwise, he’s a martyr. Pretty sure it wasn’t long ago in this thread that someone mentioned that cults have a living leader, religions have a dead leader. We don’t need Trumpism to turn into a religion.

His death concerns me, especially if he dies in office. I think if that happens, many bigots will actually attack minorities, far more than what happened after 9/11.

We just have to keep on working on changing public perception. Congress is not going to lead on this one, they are going to follow. As soon as it seems likely that an impeachment will be confirmed in the senate, the articles will be passed, but until then, I think that Pelosi et al. see it as too much of a gamble with too much potential for blowback.

That’s not going to happen unless and until there is a D majority in the Senate. Trump’s supporters are immune to changing their perception, so that’s a wash. They believe what comes out of Trump’s mouth.

No, I agree and want him out. I just am not sure that we can get him out through the legal avenues that are made available to us. The impeachment process is meant to be hard, and it is made harder because there are a number of people who are also finding ways of profiting from having him in office, and as long as that is the case, it will not succeed in the senate.

I believe we’re stuck with him and it’s going to get uglier.

He’s rewarded for racist behavior, so he continues with racist behavior.

He’s a sociopath, he doesn’t hate black people any more than he hates white people, he just sees more reward in being public with his hate towards minorities.

A racist hates minorities because he believes that somehow or other, those minorities cause him harm by existing. Trump talks about his hatred towards minorities because his followers like it.

It’s just that calling him a racist risks dismissing his actions as simply motivated by racism, when they are much more dangerous, they are motivated by wanting to impress and ingratiate himself with racists.
The point is is that he takes the same actions as a racist, but it is not motivated by racism, or at least, not solely by racism.

I guess the reason that I make the distinction is because I see many racists who are willing to accept harm to themselves, so long as it results in harm to those they don’t like. Trump is not willing to accept harm to himself in order to harm others, but harms others in an attempt to satisfy his own greed. Not that that doesn’t cause him harm as well, but that is due to short sightedness and incompetence, rather than design. If Trump were motivated by mere racism, it would be easier to secure, contain, and protect.

He is racist. Only racists do racist crap. How did he discover he gets rewarded for it? Because his racist self did racist crap. And yes he does hate Blacks more than he hates whites. Did you ever hear him clamoring for innocent whites to be executed? No! The opposite occurred: he used his office to interfere with a white murderer’s trial and then pardoned the scum or commmuted the sentence.

Those racists who accept harm to themselves? They’re just stupid racists as far as doing racist crap. Racists and other assorted bigots gemerally are not long-term planners. In Trump’s cases, he has always been protected and insulated from consequences for his racist and bigoted actions. Only now it’s the Senate is protecting him.

[Buck_Godot]

@Little_Nemo

It doesn’t really matter. Look at infrastructure development; that was one of Trump’s key issues when he was running and it’s a good idea.

But what’s happened since he got elected? Virtually nothing. Trump screws it up even when he has a good idea.

The problem is that Trump views every negotiation as zero sum. There must be a winner and a loser. This makes bi-partisanship impossible. Since Trump by definition won’t be satisfied unless the Democrats are unhappy with the deal.

[Nava]

@Mijin

Chinese culture is less individualistic, and tends to be more long-term (obviously there are pros and cons to this).
The US looks like a country that does not honor agreements and behaves extremely erratically.
China won’t forget that, and the excuse that it was just Trump may not wash.

Of course, the US is far too big a market to ignore, so deals will still need to be made. But trump’s legacy will affect how easy this will be to do, what terms can be expected and the breadth of such deals, negatively in all 3 senses.

And not just for China, but for anybody else: details which previously weren’t put in writing will; more checks will be put in place (inspections! audits! records of whether your bathrooom breaks were for number 1, 2 or 3!)… it isn’t “just Trump”: it’s Trump, those who voted for him and those who stood on the sides saying “oopsies but nothing we can do”. Franco didn’t win the '36 Civil War by himself (despite apparently nobody but him, my grandfather and my great-uncle being on that side), Trump isn’t the only one peeing on every inch of trust the US had built.

[asahi]

@k9bfriender

And just wait for the US dollar to stop being the de facto currency of international trade.

We’ve never successfully impeached a president. If we do that, we show that we don’t find him normal either.

Maybe, but I think the real take-away will be that America’s on fire, that our political system is at a breaking point. Remember, even if it results in the removal of a bad president, impeachment is a bold statement that the American voting public got it way, way wrong.

What would give the world greater confidence is if that same voting public shoved Donald Trump and the entire Republican party out of office and made it clear, with voting power, with people power, that we have certain values that are worth defending and we won’t tolerate those values being trampled on.

The reason I’ve been so radically outspoken and pessimistic about the future of this country is that I don’t see that happening. I still see a country that is shell-shocked and confused a decade after the Great Recession, and one that is still highly tolerant of blatant corruption. I see a citizenry that is susceptible to conspiracy theories and lies.

I don’t think this gets better until people get a taste of truth, and even then, there is no guarantee that they’ll understand what’s happening and respond accordingly. They could just as easily double down on racism and xenophobia. A major catastrophe is probably a necessary condition for change, but not necessarily a sufficient one.

[Nava]

@asahi

Remember, even if it results in the removal of a bad president, impeachment is a bold statement that the American voting public got it way, way wrong.

Is it? Maybe it is perceived that way in the US, but in many other countries it would be considered similar to our “votes of non-confidence” and those are a normal thing (hell, Italy had periods when they changed government more often than fashion season and they didn’t sink into the Mediterranean); usually they mean that whichever situation got that fellow elected has changed. What’s not normal is having a president who’s not mature enough for kindergarten. That the POTUS is both head of state and head of government makes the situation even more dire, not less.

[asahi]

@Nava

Is it? Maybe it is perceived that way in the US, but in many other countries it would be considered similar to our “votes of non-confidence” and those are a normal thing; usually they mean that whichever situation got that fellow elected has changed. What’s not normal is having a president who’s not mature enough for kindergarten. That the POTUS is both head of state and head of government makes the situation even worse.

In a parliamentary system, power is more fluid and thus a no-confidence vote is sort of another mechanism within that system. In a presidential system, the assumption is that the person elected will function with minimal competence for the four year term for which he was elected. I agree that it’s better to impeach someone who clearly turns out not to be competent than to let the situation fester, but in terms of what the impeachment represents, I think impeachment is a pretty bad indictment of voters - about the worst indictment there is really.

[asahi]

Just looking at the G7 headlines, this is probably the moment it’s sinking in (at least for me) that the United States is in a state of rapid decline as a world power. Presumably, people show up there with the understanding that the American president is only to be feared and not respected, and only feared in the sense that nobody knows what the hell he’s going to do next. Trump is doing to American foreign relations what Bolsonaro is doing to the Amazon rain forests.

[Nava]

@asahi

In a parliamentary system, power is more fluid and thus a no-confidence vote is sort of another mechanism within that system. In a presidential system, the assumption is that the person elected will function with minimal competence for the four year term for which he was elected. I agree that it’s better to impeach someone who clearly turns out not to be competent than to let the situation fester, but in terms of what the impeachment represents, I think impeachment is a pretty bad indictment of voters - about the worst indictment there is really.

There’s other presidential systems where the President changing isn’t the end of the world. Yours isn’t the only presidential system. I’m not even clear on whether this is yet another instance of American exceptionalism, or simply a case of being too busy crying to raise your eyes and look out.

[jsc1953]

I love today’s headline from NPR – not a source normally known for snark: “Trump Walks Back Statements on China; White House Walks Them Forward”

[Rick_Kitchen]

So I’ve seen two videos from the G7 summit.
One of Individual 1 with President Macron, and as Macron is speaking, Individual 1 is just aimlessly looking around as if he’s bored.
The second is of Indivdual 1 standing next to Melania, and as Angela Merkel approaches, he sticks out her hand and she ignores him and takes Melania’s hand and talks to her.

[Monty]

He sticks out her hand? Is that his version of “only touching with a ten-foot pole”?