The Former Trump Presidency Thread

Vorret · Post by **Vorret** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:21 am

Isgrimnur wrote:Well, that lasted all of twenty-five days. I'm sure the lawyers are already scrambling.

That chart is... shitty.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:22 am

Was there a sudden influx of people joining the military to transition?

Octavious · Post by **Octavious** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:27 am

He just gets joy out of riling people up. I mean how many people could there possibly be that this is even worth worrying about?

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:36 am

He's proven repeatedly that he's no friend to the LGBT community. This latest response is perfectly in line with his agenda. He wants gays back in the closets, blacks back in chains and women back in the kitchen.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:53 am

Vorret wrote:
Isgrimnur wrote:Well, that lasted all of twenty-five days. I'm sure the lawyers are already scrambling.

That chart is... shitty.

There's not even a zero marker.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:53 am

Keep digging that hole you orange monster. Keep digging.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:54 am

Skinypupy wrote:
Last but not least, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke to a crowd of Scouts at the jamboree last Friday. I was honored and humbled to be sitting about 40 feet away from Secretary Tillerson while he shared a very amazing, inspirational and nonpolitical message. Sadly the media barely covered it. A few key points of his excellent message are shared in this article:

Thank you very much.

Matthew S. (Matt) Devore
Scout Executive / CEO
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
Cascade Pacific Council
That last bit bugs me. Of course "the media barely covered" Tillerson's speech. That's because the Sec of State delivering a speech to Boy Scouts isn't particularly newsworthy. It's a very normal thing for a political leader to do and I'm glad he did it, but no one really cares.

Trump's speech wouldn't have been newsworthy either, if he hadn't gone batshit insane.

The lying press doesn't even mention crooked Hillary and the fact that she couldn't be bothered to speak to the BSA. Not. One. Mention.

Octavious · Post by **Octavious** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:54 am

This is just to distract from everything else that is going on this week. He really is the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 9:57 am

I'm curious what happens to transgender soldiers already in the military. Read in a couple places this morning that could be up to 4K, but have no idea if that's accurate (it was Twitter info).

Do they simply get booted? That seems very...problematic.

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 10:12 am

YellowKing wrote:Keep digging that hole you orange monster. Keep digging.

This is only going to get worse as the walls close in around him. He'll continue to set fires on culture war issues to satiate his base and hold them close. Just in the last 16 hours, you see this both in this policy change and his disgusting torture-porn story about immigrants "slicing and dicing" beautiful teenage girls. And I don't think it's a coincidence that in both the most vulnerable people are targeted.

I'm expecting things to get much darker.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 10:34 am

I do worry that this transgender order is designed to throw up a distraction (and reengage his base) while the health care votes happen over the next few days.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 10:35 am

As it happens, today is the 69th anniversary of Truman's desegregation of the military.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 10:36 am

It feels like he's ramping up the hate rhetoric lately.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 10:59 am

reddit /r/army

Chaz · Post by **Chaz** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:16 am

Isgrimnur wrote:reddit /r/army

On top of that, his tweets imply that this is primarily a budgetary thing. Well, how much will we have wasted getting to this point, only to have him reverse course with no warning? Reportedly, the Pentagon didn't even know this was coming.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:18 am

Meanwhile, on the clickbait front: 13 Trump Scandals You Forgot About

The first six months of the Trump presidency have been a whirlwind of Russia-related news, with revelations about the Kremlin’s attempt to sway the election and the Trump campaign’s possible role in the effort surfacing nearly every day. But imagine for a moment a world in which the Russia scandal didn’t exist. Pretend that Trump didn’t fire FBI Director James Comey, or that Don Jr. never met with a Russian lawyer and a former Soviet spy promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Forget that Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort had to register retroactively as foreign agents, or even that Trump said he wouldn’t have hired Jeff Sessions if he’d known the attorney general would recuse himself from the Russia probe.

What you’re left with is still a remarkable amount of other Trump administration scandals—from the State Department’s Trump hotel stay to Jared Kushner’s disclosure problems—that would have been major news any other year, with any other president in the White House. Here are a few to remember.

tl;dr:

Foreign governments are paying Trump
The Defamation lawsuit
The White House promotes Melania’s jewelry line
Kellyanne Conway endorses Ivanka’s clothing line
Wilbur Ross keeps investments that he affects as commerce secretary
Mar-a-Lago jacks up its rates
Trump’s campaign pays his businesses
The Kushners tout Jared’s White House connections to do business in China
Kushner fails to disclose key assets
Ivanka and Jared are still making a lot of money from their businesses
Trump’s products aren’t made in America
The government writes Trump a $15,000 check
The administration sidelines climate scientists

That's not even close to a definitive list, of course. I think they just went with 13 off the top of their head, because it's a nice clickbaity number.

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:19 am

hepcat wrote:He wants gays back in the closets, blacks back in chains and women back in the kitchen.

Maybe, but not sure his thoughts go that deep, or that he even holds beliefs beyond "Trump is a God".

The more worrying issue is how many of your fellow citizens and neighbors think that way and want a return to the 'good ol' days' when America was great? More than you suspect, probably. As much as I literally hate Trump, I am much more pissed off/disappointed/saddened by the fact that he has a following. Even in his most egregious speeches, if you can call them that, you see the nodding heads behind him as he spouts nonsense! How can anyone be shaking their head in agreement when the word salad vomit is in full effect?

Trump: "The thing of it is, no one really knows about this, but she was going there, believe me, and that is where we are today, folks, sadly, it's where we are! Chain link fences and shoe laces, up against a tree. It's true! The change to the color green is coming, I promise you that. I've got my best people working on it. 30 days from now, you will see that tomorrow's future is the past. Amen! But North Dakota! Have you heard? It's amazing what's happening there, you have no idea."

Mass of people listening to Trump nod their heads in agreement and clap in appreciation and awe.
Rip, listening intently, cringes slightly, having the intelligence to know he's backed a disaster, and also knowing what's coming on OO, but soldiers ahead preparing his deflection strategy of "OK, yes, I barely admit he is a complete and utter moron and has likely put us on an irreversible race to the bottom, but...HILLARY!"

McNutt · Post by **McNutt** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:24 am

Can someone give me a little educating here? I'm still iffy on what transgender means. It just means identifying against your birth gender, right? It does not necessarily mean undergoing any physical transformation (hormones, surgery, etc).

I don't think I would have a problem with a ban on someone who is about to go through a medical procedure that prevents them from being combat ready. This, however, does not sound at all like what this ban covers and excludes many people who are not hamstrung by surgeries or treatments. Am I way off or is my ignorance not getting the better of me?

wonderpug · Post by **wonderpug** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:35 am

Skinypupy wrote:I'm curious what happens to transgender soldiers already in the military. Read in a couple places this morning that could be up to 4K, but have no idea if that's accurate (it was Twitter info).

Reddit groupthink says ~2,500 according to a RAND study, possibly ~15,000 (not from RAND) if you extend the count to include reserves.

em2nought · Post by **em2nought** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:45 am

Next thing you know he'll be tweeting out that we're actually gonna start trying to win the wars that we start. Oh, the humanity.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:54 am

Two New England senators caught on hot mic

Susan Collins (R) ME and Jack Reed (D) RI

After Reed praises Collins’s handling of the hearing, held by the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she laments the administration’s handling of spending.

‘‘I swear, [the Office of Management and Budget] just went through and whenever there was ‘grant,’ they just X it out,’’ Collins says. ‘‘With no measurement, no thinking about it, no metrics, no nothing. It’s just incredibly irresponsible.’’

‘‘Yes,’’ Reed replies. ‘‘I think — I think he’s crazy,’’ apparently referring to the president. ‘‘I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.’’

‘‘I’m worried,’’ Collins replies.

‘‘Oof,’’ Reed continues. ‘‘You know, this thing — if we don’t get a budget deal, we’re going to be paralyzed.’’

‘‘I know,’’ Collins replies.

‘‘[Department of Defense] is going to be paralyzed, everybody is going to be paralyzed,’’ Reed says.

‘‘I don’t think he knows there is a [Budget Control Act] or anything,’’ Collins says, referring to a 2011 law that defines the budget process.

‘‘He was down at the Ford commissioning,’’ Reed says, referring to a weekend event launching a new aircraft carrier, ‘‘saying, ‘I want them to pass my budget.’ Okay, so we give him $54 billion and then we take it away across the board, which would cause chaos.’’

‘‘Right,’’ Collins replies.

‘‘It’s just — and he hasn’t — not one word about the budget. Not one word about the debt ceiling,’’ Reed says.

‘‘You’ve got [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney saying we’re going to put in all sorts of stuff like a border wall. Then you’ve got [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin saying it’s got to be clean,’’ Reed continues. ‘‘We’re going to be back in September, and, you know, you’re going to have crazy people in the House.’’

In a more salacious part of what was recorded, Collins then addressed a radio interview in which US Representative Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican, suggested that if Collins were a man, he’d have challenged her to a duel for opposing the Senate Republicans’ Obamacare overhaul bill.

‘‘Did you see the one who challenged me to a duel?’’ Collins asks.

‘‘I know,’’ Reed replies. ‘‘Trust me. Do you know why he challenged you to a duel? ‘Cause you could beat the s___ out of him.’’

‘‘Well, he’s huge,’’ Collins replies. ‘‘And he — I don’t mean to be unkind, but he’s so unattractive it’s unbelievable.’’

‘‘Did you see the picture of him in his pajamas next to this Playboy bunny?’’ she continues, referring to an infamous photo of Farenthold.

At that point, the mike went dead.

msteelers · Post by **msteelers** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:14 pm

Conservative media has jumped on the narrative that thousands of transgender people were about to join the military simply so the government would pay for their transition surgery.

They're trying to claim that this was all about the budget. Except if that was true, why not just announce that the transitions wouldn't be covered?

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:40 pm

em2nought wrote:Next thing you know he'll be tweeting out that we're actually gonna start trying to win the wars that we start. Oh, the humanity.

Nah. He can't spell war.

Combustible Lemur · Post by **Combustible Lemur** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:11 pm

McNutt wrote:Can someone give me a little educating here? I'm still iffy on what transgender means. It just means identifying against your birth gender, right? It does not necessarily mean undergoing any physical transformation (hormones, surgery, etc).

I don't think I would have a problem with a ban on someone who is about to go through a medical procedure that prevents them from being combat ready. This, however, does not sound at all like what this ban covers and excludes many people who are not hamstrung by surgeries or treatments. Am I way off or is my ignorance not getting the better of me?

In a broad sense, it's someone who often was born different from their birth sex, not gender. Growing research is showing that gender much like most biological attributes exists on a spectrum. Sex is dick or vagina, except it's not even that simple. Maybe you're hermaphroditic, or born without a uterus, or balls, or just have an uncommon mix of hormones. The reason it suddenly seems like we have so many transgender people is they finally somewhat can stop hiding for fear of exile, shame, arrest, violence or death. The last estimate I saw said about .3 (per wikipedia) of the population. So one out of every 170 people is likely not on the hetero normative gender binary and always have been.

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Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:54 pm

Combustible Lemur wrote:The reason it suddenly seems like we have so many transgender people is they finally somewhat can stop hiding for fear of exile, shame, arrest, violence or death.

I would opine that it is also because that an open dialogue has allowed people to gain a better understanding of themselves, leading them to realize they aren't cisgendered. People that, years ago, would have just felt out of place or awkward can now listen to others talk about their experiences and say, "Oh! That's what's going on!"

Combustible Lemur · Post by **Combustible Lemur** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:55 pm

Blackhawk wrote:
Combustible Lemur wrote:The reason it suddenly seems like we have so many transgender people is they finally somewhat can stop hiding for fear of exile, shame, arrest, violence or death.
I would opine that it is also because that an open dialogue has allowed people to gain a better understanding of themselves, leading them to realize they aren't cisgendered. People that, years ago, would have just felt out of place or awkward can now listen to others talk about their experiences and say, "Oh! That's what's going on!"

That too.

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Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:01 pm

em2nought wrote:Next thing you know he'll be tweeting out that we're actually gonna start trying to win the wars that we start. Oh, the humanity. [/bigimg]

Yeah, we haven't done that in a while. Now we just need to get rid of the women and the gays and we'll be back the nation that won the wars. Oh, wait - Korea, Vietnam... better get those blacks their own base, too.

Ok, now we're winning.

Red Cloud's War. War of 1812.

You know, we haven't really been winning consistently since we were run by British trained officers.
Maybe we just need to have them recolonize us.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:32 pm

Make America Straight Again!

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:37 pm

Oh, my.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:40 pm

Let's hope that is true. I can't imagine anyone worse, but there was a time I couldn't imagine Trump being elected so my imagination is apparently not that strong.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:41 pm

And everyone knows social media belongs to Takei. The rest of us are just tourists, Trump inclusive.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:46 pm

coopasonic wrote:Let's hope that is true. I can't imagine anyone worse, but there was a time I couldn't imagine Trump being elected so my imagination is apparently not that strong.

Worse is a matter of definitions.

For example, IMO worse would have been someone who is competent and malicious versus a petty, narcissistic, and extremely ignorant man.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:51 pm

So...Pence?

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:53 pm

I was using Takei's terms of stupid, incompetent, cruel and petty.

Pence or Cruz would be crueler perhaps, but couldn't compete on the other fronts. I am not sure I have ever met anyone who could. Not on more than one or two fronts anyway.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:54 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:So...Pence?

That's a real fear of mine. I don't know if it's grounded in reality or not but he had some pretty heinous stuff pass in Indiana when it comes basic human rights. Terrible enough that group after group threatened to take their national business elsewhere. I even think the NCAA was one of those groups.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:00 pm

Pence is atrocious, but he is neither stupid or incompetent.

Moliere · Post by **Moliere** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:08 pm

tgb wrote:Oh, my.

This is stupid and shows George is a one issue guy. FDR literally confiscated the property and imprisoned Japanese Americans. That sounds petty and cruel. FDR also allowed the Jews to get slaughtered instead of increasing the immigration of Jews and bombing the train tracks leading to the the death camps. Again, kind of petty and cruel. Jackson was both cruel and petty when it came to the Indians. Other Presidents were slave owners. Announcing Trump as the worst President ever is as ignorant as Trump calling himself the greatest President ever.

Octavious · Post by **Octavious** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:12 pm

If he isn't the worst president ever, he's well on his way, and will surely achieve his goal by the end... We can't go one god damn day without something new blowing up.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:23 pm

Did this really happen?

I just read that Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced that they were going to start some press briefings by reading letters from citizens, and she starts with one from "nine-year-old Dylan" who wrote to Trump to tell him that he loves him and doesn't understand why some people don't.

That is some Pyongyang flower girl bullshit right there. What are they thinking? Does this president require flattery at all times?

Holy Shit. You can watch it right here:

"I'm happy to say that I directly spoke to the president, Dylan, and he would be more than happy to be your friend."

Great Leader loves all loyal children of Motherland!

Defiant · Post by **Defiant** » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:25 pm

transgender people show more courage when they leave their fucking houses in the morning than donald trump has shown his entire life

— Matt Bellassai (@MattBellassai) July 26, 2017