The Former Trump Presidency Thread

[Holman]

It's quite a day on Trump's phone.

After the Morning Hate, Trump tweeted out a spasm of rage recalling a long-forgotten, thoroughly debunked innuendo about the death of an intern (heart disorder) in Joe Scarborough's office when he was a congressman.

That is, he accused one of his prominent media critics of murder, and he called for an investigation.

Edit: Deleted now. I wonder what the WH staff is trading him for concessions.

[tjg_marantz]

That Muslim beating a Dutch boy is actually a dark haired Dutch boy beating a light haired Dutch boy...

Next topic

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 1825763328

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 6701842434

Re the last one:
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/935872721652678656

[pr0ner]

It's quite a day on Trump's phone.

After the Morning Hate, Trump tweeted out a spasm of rage recalling a long-forgotten, thoroughly debunked innuendo about the death of an intern (heart disorder) in Joe Scarborough's office when he was a congressman.

That is, he accused one of his prominent media critics of murder, and he called for an investigation.

Edit: Deleted now. I wonder what the WH staff is trading him for concessions.

Was there another tweet besides this one that was deleted?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 6701842434

So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!

[tjg_marantz]

Right above?

[pr0ner]

Ah, I thought maybe there was another one. My bad.

[msteelers]

Ah, I thought maybe there was another one. My bad.

He sent that tweet twice. The first one had a typo.

[Holman]

I see it's there, but I thought it had been deleted. Possibly it's a repost, possibly I was just confused.

[Rip]

He had to fix it to make sure he didn't look stupid........

[Ralph-Wiggum]

In other Twitter news...

So conservatives are all just like "Fuck it, Sieg Heil!" now? That's where we are?

If Twitter is removing the verification badge from white supremacists, why does Trump still have one?

[tjg_marantz]

In other Twitter news...

So conservatives are all just like "Fuck it, Sieg Heil!" now? That's where we are?

If Twitter is removing the verification badge from white supremacists, why does Trump still have one?

Can you imagine the uproar, it would be glorious.

[stessier]

If Twitter is removing the verification badge from white supremacists, why does Trump still have one?

Can you imagine the uproar, it would be glorious.

I had the same thought.

[El Guapo]

In other Twitter news...

So conservatives are all just like "Fuck it, Sieg Heil!" now? That's where we are?

If Twitter is removing the verification badge from white supremacists, why does Trump still have one?

I will say that I think Twitter deverifying accounts that spread racism (not totally sure what the exact standard is) is a bad idea for Twitter. Now they're going to be in the middle of a lot of arguments on race and politics in a way that they wouldn't be if they were a more completely neutral platform.

[Grifman]

Good lord I can not wait until this thread is a thing of the past.

I wake up everyday hoping it's all just a really really absurd surreal bad dream.

I really can't understand the insanity that gripes our country right now. My only consolation is that Trump is so incompetent at what he does in so many ways. I fear what a real smart savvy authoritarian could do if he ever got elected.

[Zaxxon]

Well, that's the terrifying part. This one's incompetent, but the competent ones are watching.

[El Guapo]

It's also still not out of the question for Trump to consolidate an authoritarian government, let alone a subsequent smarter guy.

[Captain Caveman]

It's also still not out of the question for Trump to consolidate an authoritarian government, let alone a subsequent smarter guy.

The court packing, voter suppression, relentless attacks on the media, scapegoating minority and marginalized populations-- yeah, I'd say the warning signs are there.

[YellowKing]

We are quite literally living the scenario where your senile, racist, technologically handicapped grandfather suddenly became President.

[Grifman]

It's also still not out of the question for Trump to consolidate an authoritarian government, let alone a subsequent smarter guy.

The court packing . . . yeah, I'd say the warning signs are there

There's no evidence that Trump's court nominations would support a move to authoritarianism. They may be conservative, and a few may not be qualified to be on the bench, but there's little indication that they are fascist.

And please, "court packing"?! He's doing what EVERY president has done, nominated those of his party or political POV. Did you call it "court packing" when Obama nominated liberals for 8 years?

[LordMortis]

It's also still not out of the question for Trump to consolidate an authoritarian government, let alone a subsequent smarter guy.

The court packing,

There's no evidence that Trump's court nominations would support a move to authoritarianism. They may be conservative, and a few may not be qualified to be on the bench, but there's little indication that they are fascist.

+1 At least not at the top of the chain. Now his cabinet and heads of department choices and people admires versus people mocks are another matter entirely.

[malchior]

It's also still not out of the question for Trump to consolidate an authoritarian government, let alone a subsequent smarter guy.

The court packing . . . yeah, I'd say the warning signs are there

There's no evidence that Trump's court nominations would support a move to authoritarianism. They may be conservative, and a few may not be qualified to be on the bench, but there's little indication that they are fascist.

And please, "court packing"?! He's doing what EVERY president has done, nominated those of his party or political POV. Did you call it "court packing" when Obama nominated liberals for 8 years?

Well, sort of. The GOP basically blocked or delayed every one of his nominations until Reid nuked the judicial filibuster. That was for several years. Then they stole a SCOTUS seat. I would argue they reverse packed--kept vacancies at a high level--and are now are in fact packing the courts using those vacancies.

[Kurth]

In other Twitter news...

So conservatives are all just like "Fuck it, Sieg Heil!" now? That's where we are?

If Twitter is removing the verification badge from white supremacists, why does Trump still have one?

I will say that I think Twitter deverifying accounts that spread racism (not totally sure what the exact standard is) is a bad idea for Twitter. Now they're going to be in the middle of a lot of arguments on race and politics in a way that they wouldn't be if they were a more completely neutral platform.

+1

Also, I think Ajit Pai is a complete douche and hate him for his smarmy justifications of undoing net-neutrality provisions, but that tweet by Judd Legum seems unfair and misleading. Legum is linking the de-verification of white supremacist accounts to the criticisms being leveled at Twitter by Pai, but Pai never made that connection (CNN made the link):

Pai, a Republican commissioner appointed to head the agency by President Trump, specifically called out Twitter for appearing to have a "double standard when it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users' accounts as opposed to those of liberal users.
He did not specify which conservative accounts he was referring to. Twitter recently removed the verification from several prominent users, including controversial conservative commentator Laura Loomer and white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler.
Pai also criticized Twitter for briefly blocking a campaign ad from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican representing Tennessee.

It's misleading and unfair to assume that Pai was talking about the de-verification of Spencer and Loomer when (1) he never mentioned them, and (2) they were just two of many instances in which Twitter has recently taken action speech-based action against its account holders.

Pai sucks, but this seems like a bullshit attack. But that's the norm these days, I guess.

As an aside, Pai's argument that the edge providers like Google and FB and Twitter are the ones that pose a danger to free speech is complete and utter crap. Those platforms have an absolute right to govern their content as they see fit. I agree with El Guapo that I'd rather see them not get in the middle of content-based arguments, but who gives a shit what I think? It's their call, and if I don't like it, I can go and waste countless hours on some other social media platform or create my own for like-minded folks. That's NOT true of the ISPs that provide infrastructure access to the pipes of the interweb. When they start getting to throttle bandwidth based on content, that's a whole other ballgame.

[El Guapo]

It's also still not out of the question for Trump to consolidate an authoritarian government, let alone a subsequent smarter guy.

The court packing . . . yeah, I'd say the warning signs are there

There's no evidence that Trump's court nominations would support a move to authoritarianism. They may be conservative, and a few may not be qualified to be on the bench, but there's little indication that they are fascist.

And please, "court packing"?! He's doing what EVERY president has done, nominated those of his party or political POV. Did you call it "court packing" when Obama nominated liberals for 8 years?

I wouldn't use the term "court packing", but there are a few key differences between what Republicans (this is more of a GOP thing than a Trump thing) are doing and what Obama / Democrats did during the Obama administration. After Republicans took over the Senate in 2015, they shut down judicial confirmations as much as they could, such that there are already a record number of judicial vacancies. So Trump off the bat is getting to nominate way more judges than most presidents, by design (although again, Trump himself had nothing to do with creating that situation, and I don't fault him for taking advantage of it).

Second, Steven Calabresi, a Federalist Society co-founder and leading conservative legal scholar, has been pitching a plan to double or triple the number of court of appeals spots. As far as I know it hasn't been adopted yet by Trump or McConnell or the like, but Calabresi is no marginal figure, and the fact that he's pitching this plan is pretty goddamn terrifying. Especially since Calabresi is probably right, at least as a matter of conservative self-interest.

Back to your first question, I agree that Trump's court nominations (at least, as far as I know) would be unlikely to support a move to authoritarianism. But in the short run the main thing that Trump needs is not support for outright authoritarianism, but support for things like voter suppression laws and unrestricted gerrymandering. That would be a big help to maintaining power for the next few years (and boost Trump's chances of winning reelection). Beyond those few pending years, the priority (if Trump wants to go authoritarian) is less the lower court and more the Supreme Court (which wouldn't support authoritarian measures now, but could look very different by the end of 2024).

In general I'm less worried about Trump successfully becoming an authoritarian than I was at the start of the year, but his odds of doing so are still uncomfortably high (and I think are much higher than most people realize).

[GreenGoo]

There's no evidence that Trump's court nominations would support a move to authoritarianism. They may be conservative, and a few may not be qualified to be on the bench, but there's little indication that they are fascist.

The question becomes on a scale from 1 to totalitarianism, where would you put the US government at the moment?



Note: That's a trick question. Why on all that is holy are the words totalitarianism and the United States of America being spoken in the same sentence??

[Remus West]

Good lord I can not wait until this thread is a thing of the past.

I wake up everyday hoping it's all just a really really absurd surreal bad dream.

I really can't understand the insanity that gripes our country right now. My only consolation is that Trump is so incompetent at what he does in so many ways. I fear what a real smart savvy authoritarian could do if he ever got elected.

My fear is that he is actually really damned smart. He has gotten his base to do what he wants. He is implementing the destruction of our government in re markedly swift fashion at all levels. He is rapidly devolving our society and turned us all against each other so very easily. I hope for impeachment and incarceration. I fear puppet elections such as Russia has and an unending Trump. I fear even more a closed Canadian border when that happens. Alright, that last was just meant as humor but it is a true fear.

[Remus West]

There's no evidence that Trump's court nominations would support a move to authoritarianism. They may be conservative, and a few may not be qualified to be on the bench, but there's little indication that they are fascist.

The question becomes on a scale from 1 to totalitarianism, where would you put the US government at the moment?



Note: That's a trick question. Why on all that is holy are the words totalitarianism and the United States of America being spoken in the same sentence??

Do you have a couch I can sleep on if it gets worse here?

[Smoove_B]

I really can't understand the insanity that gripes our country right now.

Here's what we've learned over the last year:

(1) About 30% of the American population loves Trump and his antics - he can do no wrong in their eyes. The fact that these people are also apparently motivated to vote in large numbers is alarming.

(2) Powerful individuals in Congress have their own agenda. They also don't care what's happened to the Presidency because apparently it doesn't impact them in any measurable way. In fact, with all of the additional smokescreen cover Trump has provided for them, even better.

(3) Social media has turned America into a narcissistic cesspool. It doesn't matter what you believe, you can now be connected with others that will not only agree with you, but encourage you to continue to spout your nonsense.

Trump is absolutely just a symptom of a much larger problem within American culture and society. I'm actually not surprised anymore at the number of disgusting people that have seemingly been hiding among us for decades. What amazes me is that the silent majority is still collectively shrugging their shoulders. I honestly don't know what it will take anymore and I fear by the time whatever that is happens, it'll be too late.

[Paingod]

My fear is that he is actually really damned smart. He has gotten his base to do what he wants. He is implementing the destruction of our government in re markedly swift fashion at all levels. He is rapidly devolving our society and turned us all against each other so very easily. I hope for impeachment and incarceration.

I don't think he's smart at all. He's a troll of epic proportions who has led a life of casual indifference towards rules and regulations. He's had enough money and assertiveness that few people are willing to spend the time and money needed to stand up to him. I mean, the dude lives in a reality he's built for himself, and every day people try to penetrate the bubble and fail to get through to him.

What we're seeing is how easy it is for one leg of our three-legged system to topple itself in ignorance and flames, and how badly that ripples out everywhere else. I hope that when this is over, the next part of American history documents how we built in safeguards against such hideous idiocy and disregard for law. He's a dumpster fire that keeps getting worse not because he's awesome, but because there's a never-ending row of dumpsters and firefighters barely get one under control before the fire has jumped to four others.

I fear puppet elections such as Russia has and an unending Trump. I fear even more a closed Canadian border when that happens. Alright, that last was just meant as humor but it is a true fear.

I don't think he'll find it in anyone's power to overturn the Constitution, no matter how many people he puts in place as judges. They aren't his people, and don't share his specific disregard for our nation in order to reap maximum profits.

What amazes me is that the silent majority is still collectively shrugging their shoulders. I honestly don't know what it will take anymore and I fear by the time whatever that is happens, it'll be too late.

I'm honestly not sure what the silent majority can do against a tsunami of bullshit. That 30% is basically what I'm comfortable calling the lowest common denominator at this point. People who are themselves seething trolls, ignorant racists, greedy assholes, and/or epic narcissists. That leaves us with 70% of the population as average or decent. I honestly thought that number would be lower when we finally found a way to measure it, but I'm a cynic. It just seems lower because the 30% is so damn loud.

So what does the 70% have as options? We vote, some of us. We protest, some of us. But we don't have the urge to kick and scream like that 30% does. We refuse to lower ourselves to that point. If we try and respond with rationality to the irrationality before us, we go insane. We're not legally allowed to cull anyone. At best, you band together, ride out the storm, vote for change, and try to make things better later. I think that if this goes on long enough, the polarization in politics will eventually drive more and more people who otherwise would remain silent to go vote. I know it worked on me.

[tjg_marantz]

I hate to barge in and interrupt but...

https://twitter.com/MajorCBS/status/935901299085926403

So we're good with our fake news but not yours?

I hope her and anyone who follows in her role for this administration is afflicted by a disease.

[Smoove_B]

So what does the 70% have as options? We vote, some of us.

I don't expect you to follow NJ politics, but you have likely heard about our current (soon-to-be-ex) Governor Chris Christie? Well, the election that was held earlier this month and had voter turnout of around 36%. After the last few years of what Christie has done in NJ and the looming crisis in the White House, about a 1/3 of the state voted for our next governor. That's...absurd. I think the majority of people have stopped voting because they're either completely disillusioned with the process and/or because they believe it doesn't matter.

[Rip]

In other Twitter news...

So conservatives are all just like "Fuck it, Sieg Heil!" now? That's where we are?

If Twitter is removing the verification badge from white supremacists, why does Trump still have one?

I will say that I think Twitter deverifying accounts that spread racism (not totally sure what the exact standard is) is a bad idea for Twitter. Now they're going to be in the middle of a lot of arguments on race and politics in a way that they wouldn't be if they were a more completely neutral platform.

+1

Also, I think Ajit Pai is a complete douche and hate him for his smarmy justifications of undoing net-neutrality provisions, but that tweet by Judd Legum seems unfair and misleading. Legum is linking the de-verification of white supremacist accounts to the criticisms being leveled at Twitter by Pai, but Pai never made that connection (CNN made the link):

Pai, a Republican commissioner appointed to head the agency by President Trump, specifically called out Twitter for appearing to have a "double standard when it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users' accounts as opposed to those of liberal users.
He did not specify which conservative accounts he was referring to. Twitter recently removed the verification from several prominent users, including controversial conservative commentator Laura Loomer and white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler.
Pai also criticized Twitter for briefly blocking a campaign ad from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican representing Tennessee.

It's misleading and unfair to assume that Pai was talking about the de-verification of Spencer and Loomer when (1) he never mentioned them, and (2) they were just two of many instances in which Twitter has recently taken action speech-based action against its account holders.

Pai sucks, but this seems like a bullshit attack. But that's the norm these days, I guess.

As an aside, Pai's argument that the edge providers like Google and FB and Twitter are the ones that pose a danger to free speech is complete and utter crap. Those platforms have an absolute right to govern their content as they see fit. I agree with El Guapo that I'd rather see them not get in the middle of content-based arguments, but who gives a shit what I think? It's their call, and if I don't like it, I can go and waste countless hours on some other social media platform or create my own for like-minded folks. That's NOT true of the ISPs that provide infrastructure access to the pipes of the interweb. When they start getting to throttle bandwidth based on content, that's a whole other ballgame.

That is kind of naive. Google has way more control over what content people access than any ISP ever had.

[El Guapo]

So what does the 70% have as options? We vote, some of us.

I don't expect you to follow NJ politics, but you have likely heard about our current (soon-to-be-ex) Governor Chris Christie? Well, the election that was held earlier this month and had voter turnout of around 36%. After the last few years of what Christie has done in NJ and the looming crisis in the White House, about a 1/3 of the state voted for our next governor. That's...absurd. I think the majority of people have stopped voting because they're either completely disillusioned with the process and/or because they believe it doesn't matter.

I suspect part of that is that it's an off-year, and the marquee race (for governor) wasn't even remotely close. Virginia had much higher turnout, by contrast (although 47% is still lower than it should've been considering).

[GreenGoo]

That is kind of naive. Google has way more control over what content people access than any ISP ever had.

The difference, as you're well aware, is that I can bypass google by typing in a URL. What happens when an ISP decides that URL is invalid because it doesn't generate enough revenue for them?

[LordMortis]

If google suspends my ability to use them tomorrow, I can still get to my content. Not so with my ISP. If Facebook or Twitter limit my access, meh. If Comcast does it, it's a pretty big deal.

That said, I am not fan of being an FB guinea pig or google product nor even of google being political by any means. I have no problem with Twitter or FB protecting their brands against political extremism though.

[Rip]

So what does the 70% have as options? We vote, some of us.

I don't expect you to follow NJ politics, but you have likely heard about our current (soon-to-be-ex) Governor Chris Christie? Well, the election that was held earlier this month and had voter turnout of around 36%. After the last few years of what Christie has done in NJ and the looming crisis in the White House, about a 1/3 of the state voted for our next governor. That's...absurd. I think the majority of people have stopped voting because they're either completely disillusioned with the process and/or because they believe it doesn't matter.

Perhaps since that is about the turnout that got him elected, they are just so happy with how it turned out they want to give the not voting thing another shot?

[Rip]

That is kind of naive. Google has way more control over what content people access than any ISP ever had.

The difference, as you're well aware, is that I can bypass google by typing in a URL. What happens when an ISP decides that URL is invalid because it doesn't generate enough revenue for them?

Because typing in the URL is how people find things on the internet. So now we know ISGs secret, he knows all the URLs.

To answer your question move, sign up for AOL online dialup, or as my community did build a community fiber network and tell the mega ISPs to pound sand.

[Max Peck]

Judging by how a lack of net neutrality is being handled in other countries (yes, I'm looking at you Portugal), ISPs won't necessarily block content so much as as they'll segment access by service type and charge extra for unthrottled access to each flavour of service. Email? Costs extra. Video streaming? Costs extra. Social media? Costs extra. And so on and so forth...



The idea is to spread common activity across as many different segments as possible. The service providers will love it, because it's just like the familiar old cable TV packages that they miss so much.

[El Guapo]

I keep seeing the Portugal example, which is troubling. But it does make me wonder what types of models other countries use. Are there countries without net neutrality that have not seen what's going on with Portugal? Or for that matter, are there countries that have succeeded in creating robust competition amongst ISPs? To some degree the worst potential abuses of net neutrality stem from the fact that most people don't have much of a choice in internet providers - if we could create real competition, I would still support net neutrality but it would at least become less of an imperative.

[GreenGoo]

Because typing in the URL is how people find things on the internet. So now we know ISGs secret, he knows all the URLs.

To answer your question move, sign up for AOL online dialup, or as my community did build a community fiber network and tell the mega ISPs to pound sand.

What difference does it make if there is nothing to find?

Not to mention the ISP's are already lobbying to make community fiber illegal. What makes you think they are going to stop at Net Neutrality?

[GreenGoo]

The idea is to spread common activity across as many different segments as possible. The service providers will love it, because it's just like the familiar old cable TV packages that they miss so much.

Sure, but what happens when, say, the UK offers some types of services or products that are direct competition with your ISP's products and/or services? If the UK plays ball and drops Net Neutrality too, then ISP's will either outlaw each other or scratch each others' backs.

If foreign ISP's don't play ball, what happens?

[tjg_marantz]

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/935908165945786369

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/935915379662229507