The Donald J. Trump Presidency

This guy's really all-in on rape, isn't he? Shit's fucked up.

No reply to that post comes to mind that seems worth posting.

I mean I could give it a shot but I think we'd all be better off without it.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/27/census-citizenship-ruling-supreme-court-trump-question-verdict-2020

This is such a funny picture. Italian puppet Prime Minister Conte, welcome to the resistance baby!

There was like a 5 minute stretch today when that story broke about Pence making an emergency return to the WH where I was super optimistic that Trump died taking a shit.

Trump administration will go forward with 2020 Census without citizenship question

The Trump administration confirmed Tuesday the 2020 Census questionnaire will be printed without questions regarding citizenship status.

The administration was looking at delaying the census after the Supreme Court blocked a question regarding citizenship on the annual head count of people int he United States.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-says-he-s-considering-executive-order-add-citizenship-question-n1026771

this guy is a crusin' for a brusin'

he's not leaving office if he loses in a year and a half. november-january will be the most dangerous time we've seen yet.

In the darkest corners of your heart, is there any morbidly sick part of you that kind of wants to see how that scenario would play out?

Does the slight but ever so slightly increased possibility of forcing him into a corner where he's got no cards left to play, where he's finally deserted by the careerists who made this all possible, etc., where he is most likely to finally cross that line and break the spell that has bamboozled our world, where he asserts himself with an authority that suddenly feels naked and absurd and devoid of the charisma that made his authoritarian style so appealing to the avg American, only to see it lose its currency in a fashion that invites scorn and spite and delight in his fall and failure--the only thing Americans love more than a winner is piling on a loser and once they no longer identify with his Winning Ways, who's to say what will happen?

I am on my phone and shopping for a quality used car at a reasonable price while listening to "Cocaine Cool" by Laid Back,, so perhaps my judgement is clouded and my attention is diverted in ways detrimental to the validity of the ideas presented in this post. As always, please neg this post if such action is an expression of your honest and informed opinions.

I want to see him go to jail. I realize this would not change much for any of us in the material world. The average voter in this country is dumb as shit and we'll be lucky to not repeat all of this again within a decade or less, to say nothing of the rest of our lives.

In the end, perhaps I am just as vengeful as his supporters, to the degree that I no longer really believe in a future that's not defined by punishing the enemy. The irony here is not lost on me.

I am going to make burgers for lunch.

I was a vegetarian for a year when I was 21 and that was probably the height of my ethically principled living, it's been all downhill since then.

Why are there 2 threads?

Sorry for the double post if that's really what I somehow did

Maybe we have a 40 page limit? I just tried to merge the topics and there are still two of them, except now the smaller one is locked instead for some reason.

I'm not gonna tempt fate by screwing around w/ the controls any further, I'm probably a hazard in that department

jesus jones wrote:he's not leaving office if he loses in a year and a half. november-january will be the most dangerous time we've seen yet.

Where is this coming from? Trump has been able to do a lot more than he should have been because of the expanded powers of the Executive Branch over the last couple of decades, but he hasn't been outside of the law. In fact, a lot of his earliest executive orders were annulled by state and federal courts because they broke the Constitution. This is worthless fear mongering. He is an incredibly unpopular President who has also alienated most members of his own Cabinet as well as several branches of our intelligence gathering and war-making agencies. Who is he going to rely upon to maintain his hold on executive power after losing a Presidential election? A group of armed Internet virgins in Oregon who call themselves the "Oath keepers" or some stupid shit like that.

Get a grip of yourselves.

^ “Hasn’t been outside of the law?”

I mean... not my neg, but what? I don’t really feel like digging up examples since it’s well past midnight and I have a Doctor Who episode to watch but...

Just looking at popular articles published today anyway: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2019/07/10/trump-census-citizenship-question-supreme-court-department-justice-227280

https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1148295028604903424

A progressive democrat saying “Trump hasn’t been outside of the law” is fucking terrifying. This is the Trump/far left populist overlap our feckless centrist baby boomer parents warned us about.

Not my neg either for whatever it is worth. Are you denying the fact that the Constitution and court systems have significantly limited Trump's legislative power, because they have. As President, Trump has too much power and we need to go back to Congress and the Executive being co-equal branches of government, but Trump is only continuing a pattern that began decades ago and it is a response to other institutional problems (i.e. decades of legislative gridlock).

Here is the thing, it doesn't do you or anyone else any good to exaggerate the scale of the Trump problem. Hysterically predicting that he is going to perform an actual coup d'état after losing the Presidential election in 2020 is absurd and you all know it. The threat and cruelty of this administration is already on full display. We are actively separating children from their families, caging them (in horrible conditions), and denying them of even the most basic sanitary supplies. We don't need to pretend that worse is going to come because that's already incredibly bad.

What should be happening right now in the United States is for the opposition party to be calling for mass protests to protect these children and their families. Despite not being the leader of the Democratic Party, Bernie has used his e-mail list to send out information to everyone living within 100 miles of the "sanctuary cities" where ICE raids are expected to take place this weekend. This helps to make sure that immigrant and undocumented communities know their rights and that their neighborhoods are aware of the threat that they are currently under. He isn't doing it to score political points, he is doing it because that is what solidarity looks like and he actually gives a shit about protecting the legal rights and political interests of migrant workers in this country.

Nancy choosing to sign the Senate version of the recent bill without even consulting the House is completely fucking absurd and a total abnegation of her responsibility as Speaker. For the one hundredth time, I don't have other forms of political representation in the United States other than the Democratic Party so when they fail in this obscene way to even pretend to give a shit about the suffering being inflicted on these poor people, it sucks. I am sorry if you guys can't, or just don't want to, understand that.

My biggest problem is that while you're accusing us of exaggerating the scale of the Trump problem, I think you're going too far in the opposite direction, normalizing his administration and ignoring his frequent efforts to undue the rule of law and work around the checks and balances of American politics. The "Trump hasn't done anything outside the law" comment fucked with my head.

All that said, pretty much fuck yeah (surfing dog gif) to all of this:

WP64 wrote:The threat and cruelty of this administration is already on full display. We are actively separating children from their families, caging them (in horrible conditions), and denying them of even the most basic sanitary supplies. We don't need to pretend that worse is going to come because that's already incredibly bad.

What should be happening right now in the United States is for the opposition party to be calling for mass protests to protect these children and their families. Despite not being the leader of the Democratic Party, Bernie has used his e-mail list to send out information to everyone living within 100 miles of the "sanctuary cities" where ICE raids are expected to take place this weekend. This helps to make sure that immigrant and undocumented communities know their rights and that their neighborhoods are aware of the threat that they are currently under. He isn't doing it to score political points, he is doing it because that is what solidarity looks like and he actually gives a shit about protecting the legal rights and political interests of migrant workers in this country.

Nancy choosing to sign the Senate version of the recent bill without even consulting the House is completely fucking absurd and a total abnegation of her responsibility as Speaker. For the one hundredth time, I don't have other forms of political representation in the United States other than the Democratic Party so when they fail in this obscene way to even pretend to give a shit about the suffering being inflicted on these poor people, it sucks. I am sorry if you guys can't, or just don't want to, understand that.

Pelosi can eat a bag of dicks and watching her foment infighting, throwing the young progressive coalition under the bus while she should be fighting against this "the cruelty is the point" administration is some infuriating bullshit.

Surely Pelosi can get primaried by someone, right?

Ned Braden wrote:My biggest problem is that while you're accusing us of exaggerating the scale of the Trump problem, I think you're going too far in the opposite direction, normalizing his administration and ignoring his frequent efforts to undue the rule of law and work around the checks and balances of American politics. The "Trump hasn't done anything outside the law" comment fucked with my head

So that's a pretty fair concern. I definitely think the Trump presidency is unique, but I don't know if I would go as far as saying it is exceptional. I actually think it is important to understand that while he has authoritarian tendencies (and is also just a bumbling, stumbling, fucking idiot), he isn't a tyrant. I think attempts to paint him as such does a real disservice because it prevents people from understanding the institutionalized nature of his abuses of power.

Just a general point, when I try to push back against anyone criticizing Donald Trump, it isn't because I am trying to be a contrarian asshole or to come to his defense. I stay hating this man. I hate this guy so much that when he won the election I decided to move out of the country and unlike other people who threatened that shit I really followed through with it. He can eat my entire fucking ass as far as I am concerned.

That said, I don't think he should be the focus of our politics and I am really resistant to anyone trying to return to a pre-Trump world because 1) that isn't ever going to be possible and his far-right/nationalist electorate is going to be an enduring fixture in American politics for at least a generation and 2) we need to be fighting for real progressive policy agendas around universal healthcare, environmental protection, real immigration reform with dignified pathways to citizenship, etc. We can't lose sight of those struggles because they are what should always be animating our politics and it is what separates us from the MAGA chodes.

I also just really wish people like Jesus Jones, Undo, etc. were less pessimistic all the time. Liberals have slowly won the cultural wars of the last decade (reproductive justice, same-sex marriage, marijuana decriminalization/legalization, etc.). Progress obviously isn't linear and it is hard to be optimistic when you have States denying women reproductive healthcare on bullshit religious freedom grounds. It's vile and disgusting, but the national outcry is deafening and we are certainly in the majority on these issues.

I think the infighting that exists between leftists, progressives, socialists, liberals, etc. makes it seem as though we are less effective and we would be better off if everyone just shut the fuck up and fell in line like conservatives do with the Trump-McConnell agenda. I think that's a gross misunderstanding of politics and it ignores the ways in which these arguments are starting to shape public demands and develop new political imaginations.

We need to be fighting more often. You all are going to neg me into a fucking post-work socialist utopia where we expropriate Trump's undeserved/inherited real estate wealth to start building affordable, eco-friendly, smart public housing and it's going to be so great. Trust me.

WP64 wrote:I also just really wish people like Jesus Jones, Undo, etc. were less pessimistic all the time.

Me too!

Ned Braden wrote:A progressive democrat saying “Trump hasn’t been outside of the law” is fucking terrifying. This is the Trump/far left populist overlap our feckless centrist baby boomer parents warned us about.

He hasn't been. Our system is explicitly designed so powerful people can break the law and face zero consequences because there's not enough political will to prosecute them. Up until he's held accountable for his actions, he's fully within the law. That's what is fucking stupid about our legal system/institutions. They run entirely on the dynamics of power and money.

How can any nation claim to have a checks and balances when its own Justice Department is promulgating advisories that a sitting president can't be indicted? America is a stupid ass house of cards.

Also, George W. Bush was still worse.