n/m
I said no one can predict specifics, only generalities.
But you’re the OP. Why don’t you give some specific situations and Trump’s immediate responses as examples for us?
This. Dems hate him; Pubs hate him. Politically, he’s fucked from Day One.
I did that in the second and sixth posts of the thread.
He would use executive orders and control over federal agenices (appointments, etc.) to vastly curtail if not completely stop immigration from countries he suspects of fostering terrorism.
He would shift the priorities of and tone for federal agencies to focus on Guliani/Arpio/Palin-like scrutiny and treatment of our Muslim population. Domestic terrorism is already a high priority for the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc., and there have already been some fairly egregious oversteps, but his administration would remove as many constraints as possible and actively encourage profiling, infiltration, etc. Hoover tactics would be paired with McCarthyism, modernized, and applied.
He would use his commander in cheif powers to authorize large-scale air strikes against ISIS strongholds. He would be not be restrained in targeting, using collateral damage as justification for why ISIS (i.e. blame isis for the civilian deaths because they are not surrendering and it’s good because we’re inflicting pain on them).
If not easily forthcoming, he would violate airspace of countries as needed, knowing that superior arms and economic clout means less likelihood of retaliation. If a flyover country still objects and takes hostile action against a sorte, then he would retaliate against that country. Again, these are just CIC powers, not a formal war.
He would not get dragged into a ground war (and therefore in need of some congressional approval), because he would not consider the destabalization of the area as an American interest worthy of such a commitment. That is, a civil war is their problem, we are just punishing them for promoting attacks on our soil. For every new attack we suffer, he will ramp up his bombing campaign.
This makes me think of one of the greatest unknown lines of any movie in history:
Death Race 2000 (the original): when the PA is introducing Machine Gun Joe Viturbo, he says, “Loved by thousands, hated by millions!”
To me, that describes Trump.
No press conferences for President Trump! It’s still five months to the actual election and he’s already banished a long list of media outlets from his presence, including Washington Post, Politico, Buzzfeed, HuffPo, Daily Beast, Des Moines Register, Fusion, Univision, Mother Jones, and the National Review. Once he’s in office and they start asking awkward questions I’m sure many more will follow. FoxNews may stay on as the Official White House News Outlet but only as long as they toe the line.
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the return of “Free Speech Zones”, requiring protestors to remain far, far away from the POTUS.
Thus are the consequences of electing an extremely thin-skinned man to one of the most criticized jobs in the world.
I think this is awesome, and I hope this list grows and grows over the coming weeks and months.
It’s like the rest of Trump’s mutually exclusive “reasoning”. He’s already said that he does not have to fundraise much, because the media loves him, and he just has to snap his fingers to get all the press attention he needs. Now he’s telling the press to screw off.
I suggest that the press simply ignore him. I think this article was spot on A free press does not mean they have to dance like puppets to the whim of every racist demagogue who demands attention. The author proposes a “cordon solitaire” around Trump to “prevent something atrocious from occurring, which would do permanent damage to your party, your country and the democratic system.”
Trump has called for a “temporary” halt on Muslims entering the United States (as immigrants or visitors). He says it would only be in place long enough for the Muslims to be vetted as “safe” whereupon they would be allowed to enter America.
But he’s also explicitly linked this policy to Omar Mateen and his family. Mateen didn’t enter this country from somewhere else; he was born in the United States in 1986 (in fact, he was born only a couple of miles away from where Trump was born). It was his parents who immigrated to America from Afghanistan before Omar’s birth.
Trump has said his policy would have prevented people like Omar Mateen from being in America. So apparently Trump’s ban on Muslims would be extensive enough that no Muslim would be allowed to enter the United States if any of their children, including future children, might commit a crime. I don’t see how you can call this a temporary ban; such a ban would clearly be a permanent ban on Muslims entering the country.
This also raises the issue of what President Trump might do about Muslims already living in the United States. Would he seek to deport Muslim immigrants who are living here? Would he try to revoke the citizenship of Muslims (including Muslims like Omar Mateen who were born in this country)? If, as is likely, no other country was prepared to accept these people, would Trump seek to hold them in detention centers? How would Trump respond to an American citizen converting to Islam? Would that be a crime?
I realize this may sound like paranoid anti-Trump fantasies but they are factually based on things Trump has said.
IMO, Trump would flail from one asinine proposal to another, depending on the day of the week, and what nutty thought popped into his head. Many of these proposals would be mutually exclusive. He would not be able to focus on anything for longer than a week. He’d go through advisers and assistants like tic-tacs, firing them willy-nilly, as they patiently tried to explain to him that he could not do whatever he wanted.
Hey, we’re just speculating, so with that understanding:
A President Trump is likely going to mean that the Democrats didn’t pickup the Senate, Merrick Garland is still waiting for that vote. Several vacant positions in regulatory boards are left unfilled.
The Donald has a clear mandate as well: Nativism, Protectionism, and Isolationism.
As others have mentioned, Trump needs to fill his Cabinet. Trump is no Abraham Lincoln or even a Barack Obama. His Cabinet is going to be loyal to him, because Trump is going to delegate much of the day to day governing to them. [This seems very much like how Trump runs his business empire.] He’s not going to take the best people, he’s going to take people who have his back.
Behind the scenes, this loyalty is an implicit promise that government bureaucracies aren’t going to be tightly monitored by President Trump. He doesn’t have time for that anyway. This is going to cause many problems later on, but for the moment Trump has people who tell him that things are great and to him, that’s really true.
Trump has little choice but to work with the Congress to try to fulfill his mandate, and while he can fudge the details, he can’t get away from the Wall on the Border, the Order to Stop Muslim Immigration, and some kind of protectionist policies.
One fight isn’t waged. Trump has little use for a hardline conservative supreme court justice; he himself is not a conservative in any sense of the word and so takes a truly populist tack in picking the new 9th justice. He will feign outrage as said justice fails to vote for social conservative positions–but he really doesn’t give a damn.
Trump’s only real shot at getting what he wants from Congress is at the start of his Presidency; he has a GOP majority in the Senate and the House. They’re still smarting over the Presidential Race, and the handful of Republicans that have came out against Trump are wildcards in his administration. It’s a big ask to push for the Nativist / Protectionist / Isolationist policies that many of these Republicans disagreed with. And its too much to ask for the Democrats to give these ideas the time of day.
Trump is a hell of a fighter, but there’s little reason to suspect that pit fighting will succeed where polite deal-making has failed. Trumpet attacks against legislators begins, but Trump is stymied. The Midterm Elections are a disaster for Trump, throwing the Senate back into the hands of Democrats and shaving their lead in the House. If that were not enough, Trump has come out against various disloyal Republicans and attempted to support their primary opponents. Another round of defections from the GOP into the hands of the Democrats.
Trump’s Presidency becomes a race to determine what happens first: A political scandal caused Trump’s loyal men? A 9-11 style event that allows Trump to transcend political squabbles and give him wide latitude to do much more of what he wants?
Without these sorts of events, Trump is busy using the Bully Pulpit as his own way to hear himself. Trump’s media clique does what he wants, but he’s lost most of the media months before coming to Washington. Trump is a formidable tactician, capable of winning all kinds of points in the short run…but his administration has only the halting N/P/I policies as legislative victories. Trump can come out ahead on little issues, but he’s going to be close to a big zero unless he gets a 9-11 style break.
Look at what Gov. Lepage has done to Maine. I think Trump will do the same thing to the country. They are both experts at embarrasing their constituents and making ridiculous threats.
When oh when oh when will we finally do the right thing and start rounding up everybody from Queens?
We can put them into a grossly overcrowded, unlivable, hellhole of like-minded psychopaths. Manhattan.
If only we had tighter immigration standards back in 1930. We could have kept Mary Anne MacLeod out of America and avoided all of these current problems.
Thanks Hoover.
What’s truly ironic is that we did have tighter immigration standards in 1930. The Immigration Act of 1924 cut off almost all immigration from eastern and southern Europe, those homes of swarthy-skinned peoples with a strange religion who couldn’t possibly adapt to American customs. That allowed a disproportionately high number of good ol’ white Protestants from Anglicized countries to immigrate.
To Queens.
I think he will defer to Vice President Palin on decisions involving religious faith.
And to more directly answer the OP – a President Trump (though I don’t believe there will be one) – will be the biggest blamer, and biggest whiner President in American history. Everything bad that happens will be someone else’s fault, and he will expend enormous amounts of energy trying to punish his critics using whatever tools he can get away with using.
It would not surprise me a bit if he ended up impeached.
Impossible to comply. Any sufficiently accurate prediction of what Donald Trump would do as President is indistinguishable from bashing.
I suggest that if he’s not going to cooperate with normal press coverage, they should go into guerrilla candid-camera mode, getting (for example) recordings of his rally audiences. :eek:
The whole thread is in the comments section.
This caught my eye.
It’s so wrong but I still laughed.