trump is serious!!!!!

[ex-khobar Andy]

For a treat watch Sarah Cooper and Helen Mirren doing the Trump / Billy Bush 'pussy grabbing' tape.



And sixty million people voted for this guy twice.

[Guinevere]

Both Sue and my Swede directed me to Sarah Cooper - she is hysterical. With Helen, even better. And then the towels. Genius!

Also sad. This pisses me the eff off.

[Sue U]

Honestly, I don't know how they did that scene without throwing up.

[Bicycle Bill]

Honestly, I don't know how they did that scene without throwing up.

It's called "skilled acting" — a subject that I thought was a part of pre-law curricula too, considering some of the actions and statements made in total sincerity by attorneys in open court.

-"BB"-

[Scooter]

[Joe Guy]

I noticed it was a white turkey.

No surprise there...

[Sue U]

I noticed it was a white turkey.

No surprise there...

You mean Flynn?

[Guinevere]

I noticed it was a white turkey.

No surprise there...

You mean Flynn?

GAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!

[BoSoxGal]

Trump declares Twitter national security threat after #DiaperDon trends following meltdown

US president demands fundamental change to internet in angry late-night tweets

Donald Trump has angrily declared Twitter a national security threat after #DiaperDon went viral following a news conference in which he repeatedly complained about perceived injustices.

“Twitter is sending out totally false ‘Trends’ that have absolutely nothing to do with what is really trending in the world. They make it up, and only negative ‘stuff’,” the US president tweeted without providing evidence in the early hours of Friday morning.

Mr Trump did not say which trending topic upset him, but following Thursday’s press briefing, which saw him furiously assail a reporter from behind a surprisingly small desk, the hashtag #DiaperDon surged towards the top of Twitter’s trending list in the US and UK.

“For purposes of National Security, Section 230 must be immediately terminated!!!” Mr Trump added, in reference to part of a 1996 law which protects websites from lawsuits over content posted by users. Any changes to these protections would fundamentally change how the internet works.

MeidasTouch, an anti-Trump political action committee, took credit for the initial use of the hashtag on Friday morning.

“We made #DiaperDon the number one trend in the US,” the group tweeted, adding: “Trump had a meltdown and wanted to declare Twitter trends a national security threat.”

After Mr Trump was spotted sitting at the miniature desk, another user wrote: “The staffer in charge of the optics of this tiny Resolute Desk must be a secret resister. His makeup artist has clearly always been one of us #DiaperDon”

Star Wars star Mark Hamill later tweeted: “Maybe if you behave yourself, stop lying to undermine a fair election & start thinking of what's good for the country instead of whining about how unfairly you are treated, you'll be invited to sit at the big boy's table #DiaperDon”

Mr Trump and many Republican allies have repeatedly attacked Section 230 and have used its possible repeal as a threat against large internet companies they perceive as biased against conservatives.

Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has said in the past that while employees may have a left-leaning bias, this does not affect how Twitter makes decisions on content on its platform.

Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that social media companies are in fact catering more to conservatives in order to avoid political bias.

This includes a recent report that suggested Facebook executives took the decision to end research that would make the social media site less polarising for fears it would unfairly target right-wing users.

In the tense briefing, Mr Trump again repeated his so-far unsubstantiated claims of “massive fraud” and said he is not ready to concede.

[Econoline]

Looking for some Christmas gift ideas?

Too expensive?

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

We have had this thread for more than 4 years; I suggest we end it the day Biden inaugurated and just stop posting in it at that time. We can still dscuss Trump if we want, in other threads, but who cares if he thinks he's "serious"? Out with the old and good riddance.

[Sue U]

I said back then:

This is a great day for Comedy.

While Trump has certainly given us so much to laugh at, I did not expect so much of it to be so cringe-y or so black. Nor did I expect a buffoonish con-man to lead us to the doorstep of fascism. If nothing else, American politics is still pretty surprising.

[Big RR]

Which brings me to the question i have had for years; Trump does not really have the intellect nor the personality to plan this ( doubt he could string two thoughts together)--who is pulling his strings? And since he has the tendency to always go off script, how are they keeping him in line ad preventing him from not revealing it? Some say he is an evil genius pretending to be an asshole, but he is so good at it that I sincerely doubt he is acting; there clearly is another power behind the throne.

[Joe Guy]

[Sue U]

Which brings me to the question i have had for years; Trump does not really have the intellect nor the personality to plan this ( doubt he could string two thoughts together)--who is pulling his strings? And since he has the tendency to always go off script, how are they keeping him in line ad preventing him from not revealing it? Some say he is an evil genius pretending to be an asshole, but he is so good at it that I sincerely doubt he is acting; there clearly is another power behind the throne.

I don't think there's any one person or even a secret cabal controlling Trump. Instead, it's Trump's complete lack of moral compass, his fundamental pettiness and his desire to do only what he thinks most aggrandizes Donald Trump that allows him to be buffeted and played by larger forces. He is shallow. vain, unprincipled and therefore easily manipulated. All he cares about is ego-stroking; whatever gets him that is his "policy."

[BoSoxGal]

I continue to disagree with you on this Big RR; true he is not a reader not interested in history or science etc., but he is clearly a very clever manipulator of people, the media, the law, etc. and by all accounts of his many prior close associates who have spilled beans he’s very much in charge of what’s going on, whether chaotic or controlled. But look at who he’s been associated with for decades; Roger Stone et al. are certainly responsible for steering him in the direction of politics and a successful play as a populist candidate.

Do you think 45* is a manifestly less inherently intelligent person than the Fuhrer, and if yes, why do you think that?

[Sue U]

Yes, Trump is markedly less intelligent and less able than Hitler was. Donald Trump has never thought of anything other than Donald Trump. He twattered his way into politics because it gave him attention, and he ran for President out of sheer spite because Obama poked some fun at him at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Hitler at least had ideas, as monstrous as they were, that went beyond himself and into a program that he put into action. We are very lucky that Trump is as stunted as he is, both in intellect and ability.

[BoSoxGal]

That wasn’t the view of the day.

Though the rise of the Nazi leader was often met with carefully considered language in public, in private ambassadors would offer scathing assessments of the man. Andre Francois-Poncet, the French ambassador to Germany, repeatedly offered warnings to Paris throughout his time in Berlin from 1931 to 1938.

At first he was dismissive, writing in 1933 that “if intelligence consists essentially of a critical spirit, then Hitler is not intelligent”.

Only a couple of years later, Francois-Poncet made a harsher assessment, describing Hitler in 1935 as a man of “brutal arrogance, violent, devoured by the madness of greatness ... obstinate, stubborn and mean to the point of madness”.

American accounts were hardly much kinder. As the Nazis took power in 1933, George Messersmith, then the head of US consulate in Germany, wrote to Washington: “some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere”. Even Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Germany in the days before World War II who came to symbolise London’s “appeasement” policy, sent home critical notes about Hitler’s mental health and megalomania.

“He may have crossed the borderline into insanity,” he wrote after seeing the German leader speak in 1938.

Hitler was an unusual, and uniquely alarming, historical case.

Do we have IQ results for either man?

Indisputably both are of above average intelligence, whether Adolf had many more digits than Donald doesn’t seem as relevant to me as the common aspects of their psychological development in youth, which is what made them narcissistic paranoid abusive megalomaniacs and had the greatest effect on their method of manipulating people and systems to grab power.

Also before we count out the damage of 45* let’s not forget we haven’t yet exited the theme park. Who knows what the next several years will hold in store? Hitler fell on his face a number of times over a number of years before cementing his stranglehold and carrying out his evil vision, and no doubt he learned a lot along the way from every failed attempt.

45* is working inside a stronger system but one that has proven highly vulnerable, he has the active support of 72,000,000 citizens and most of the GOP and is already strategizing his 2nd act which will be crafted in a time period of economic and social upheaval very much still ripe for the rise of fascism. We are no where near out of the woods, I think.

Personally I’m fine with this thread continuing to be the central narrative of the Plan B response to the rise of the ugly populist; it’s a living archive which I think is pretty cool. But that’s just my .02

eta: In 1932 a leading German newspaper wrote “It is obvious that [Hitler] is now headed downhill . . . the republic has been rescued.”

Never count your chickens before they hatch.

[Bicycle Bill]

Yes, Trump is markedly less intelligent and less able than Hitler was. Donald Trump has never thought of anything other than Donald Trump. He twattered his way into politics because it gave him attention, and he ran for President out of sheer spite because Obama poked some fun at him at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Hitler at least had ideas, as monstrous as they were, that went beyond himself and into a program that he put into action. We are very lucky that Trump is as stunted as he is, both in intellect and ability.

Well, to be honest, Hitler came to power during a "perfect storm"-like set of circumstances.  The German economy was shit due to the heavy and punitive reparations forced onto it after WWI; national pride was scraping bottom; the German military had been emasculated and subject to treaty limitations in terms of manpower, ship size, and materiel.

Germany also had multiple political parties and trade unions involved in government, rather than the de-facto two-party situation we have here in the USA.  After becoming a German citizen in 1932 and subsequently a member of the Nazi party, he was appointed Chancellor of a coalition government (in which the Nazis held only 1/3 of the seats in the Reichstag) in 1933.  As Chancellor, he consolidated his power through the Enabling Act, which handed legislative powers to his cabinet for a four-year period, making him a virtual dictator.

Then, taking full advantage of this, he struck while the iron was red-hot.  During the rest of 1933, he proclaimed the Nazi Party to be the only political party permitted in Germany — all other parties and trade unions are disbanded (and subsequently banned entirely).  Individual German states lost any autonomous powers while Nazi officials become state governors.  He unilaterally withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and trebled the size of the German army (and started building superships like the Bismarck and the Graf Spee) in blatant disregard to the Treaty of Versailles — selling it to the German people as ⃥"⃥M⃥a⃥k⃥i⃥n⃥g⃥ ⃥G⃥e⃥r⃥m⃥a⃥n⃥y⃥ ⃥G⃥r⃥e⃥a⃥t⃥ ⃥A⃥g⃥a⃥i⃥n⃥"⃥ "German Nationalism".  He then purged his own party and eliminated any potential rivals or opponents in 1934 during "The Night of the Long Knives", sold the country on regaining territory that Germany had been forced to cede following WWI and creating a restored and reinvigorated Germany for Germans, a concept known as 'Lebensraum'.

Following the death of German president Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler then eliminated/abolished the office and title of president, declaring a Third German Empire (Third Reich) with himself as "Fuehrer and Reichschancellor".  He followed that up with involvement with other Fascist regimes (Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy) and finally, four years later in 1938, had one of his hand-selected pawns 'invite' him to occupy Austria.  He then met with British PM Neville Chamberlain and lied himself green in the face, assuring Chamberlain that all he wanted was to be allowed to reclaim the Sudetenland (in what was then Czechoslovakia) and he would be content.

Once Chamberlain agreed, Hitler must have realized at that point that the rest of Europe was pretty much a paper tiger.  So the Blitzkrieg rolled, and WWII would have been over almost before it started if it hadn't have been for (to paraphrase Churchill) "those few to whom so many owed so much" who bought enough time to draw America into the conflict and bring its military muscle and manufacturing manpower to bear against the forces of the Third Reich.

Not that Trump didn't try the best he could !!!

-"BB"-