Branch Trumpvidians 2: The Basket of Deplorables

[47of74]

Branch Trumpvidian painter mocked for latest painting of his hero

Quote

Jon McNaughton, the Trump-loving artist whose worshipful portraits of the president have drawn comparisons to North Korean propaganda, has revealed his latest work just in time for Thanksgiving.

In the painting, President Donald Trump is portrayed as a muscle-bound football player easily running past dejected-looking players in blue uniforms that represent Democratic politicians ranging from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to former President Barack Obama.

Once twitter got a hold of his painting the mockery commenced...

 

[Cartmann99]

A heads up for those of you with Trumpers in your circle. If you are not already, you will very likely be hearing praise for MBS in the near future.  A pro-Trump and MBS hashtag is being heavily promoted right now on Twitter, and once it gets picked up by some of the big accounts, it will rapidly spread through the pro-Trump ranks.

Sorry.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

6 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Branch Trumpvidian painter mocked for latest painting of his hero

Once twitter got a hold of his painting the mockery commenced...

 

I posted one of the "updated" copies of this dreadful picture in the cartoons or meme thread -- in the updated version, Dumpy is carrying a bucket of KFC instead of a football. I'd rather have a black velvet rendition of dogs playing poker than anything by this schlub of an "artist".

Playing football in a leather helmet and sustaining multiple head injuries might explain Dumpy, if it weren't for his bone spurs...

[47of74]

4 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I posted one of the "updated" copies of this dreadful picture in the cartoons or meme thread -- in the updated version, Dumpy is carrying a bucket of KFC instead of a football. I'd rather have a black velvet rendition of dogs playing poker than anything by this schlub of an "artist".

Playing football in a leather helmet and sustaining multiple head injuries might explain Dumpy, if it weren't for his bone spurs...

I'd rather have his works on toilet paper for a rather obvious reason.

[GreyhoundFan]

To be added to the "must not bother reading" list: "New book by Trump advisers alleges that the president has ‘embedded enemies’"

Spoiler

Two of the president’s longest-serving advisers allege in a new book that scores of officials inside the White House, Congress, the Justice Department and intelligence agencies are “embedded enemies of President Trump” working to stymie his agenda and delegitimize his presidency.

The authors, Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, are both Republican operatives who do not work in the administration but are close to Trump and fashion themselves as his outside protectors. They portray the president as victim to disloyalty on his staff and “swamp creatures” intent on extinguishing his political movement.

Their book, “Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency,” which is being released Tuesday and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post, paints a dark and at times conspiratorial portrait of Trump’s Washington. The authors identify by name a number of Trump appointees who they claim have formed a “resistance” inside the government during the first two years of Trump’s presidency.

Lewandowski and Bossie write that these officials “attack the administration with a thousand cuts. They do this in complete disregard to the millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump. They do it only for their own ends. There are far too many people in the deep reaches of the federal government who harbor as deep a hatred of Trump as does anyone from the Clinton/Obama cabal. The thing is, they get away with it when no one is looking.”

Anticipation of the book — the latest memoir by Trump aides or allies — has caused consternation inside the president’s orbit, in part because the authors are controversial figures. Its release comes at a moment of transition for Trump, who is weighing a number of changes to his Cabinet and senior staff and is preparing for a realignment of power in Washington in January, when Democrats take control of the House.

Lewandowski, the president’s former campaign manager, and Bossie, his former deputy campaign manager, enjoy personal relationships with Trump and traveled with him on campaign trips this year. But some White House aides are said to be suspicious of their motives and worry about them influencing the president — including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, who routinely restricted their access to the West Wing, the authors write.

“Trump’s Enemies,” which is 288 pages and published by Center Street, is a sequel to the first book Lewandowski and Bossie wrote together, the campaign memoir “Let Trump Be Trump,” which was released last year.

Lewandowski and Bossie met with Trump in the Oval Office on Sept. 20 for a friendly interview, an edited transcript of which appears in the new book. Trump told the authors that he considers the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to have helped him politically.

“I think it makes my base stronger,” Trump said in the interview. “I would have never said this to you. But I think the level of love now is far greater than when we won. I don’t know, what do you think, Mike?”

Vice President Pence, who sat in for a portion of the interview, replied, “As strong or stronger.”

Trump spent much of the interview complaining about the news media. When Bossie asked him who or what is his biggest enemy, Trump replied: “The greatest enemy of this country is Fake News. I really mean it.” He went on to say, “I think that one of the most important things that I’ve done, especially for the public, is explain that a lot of the news is indeed fake.”

Trump told Lewandowski and Bossie that he regrets not immediately dismissing James B. Comey as FBI director. “I should have fired him the day after I won and announced please get the hell out,” Trump said. The president also said congressional Republicans “let me down” by not fighting harder to secure funding to construct a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lewandowski and Bossie use their book to settle scores with a number of fellow Trump advisers. They refer to Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who are cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, each as a “rat.”

The authors describe a cohort of White House aides — including former press secretary Sean Spicer and former deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin — as “the November Ninth Club,” arguing that they are establishment Republicans who did not fully support Trump until the day after he was elected, when they began angling for powerful government jobs.

Lewandowski and Bossie also savage former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn as a “limousine liberal” and “the poster boy for the disloyal staff conspiring against President Trump.” And they accuse former staff secretary Rob Porter of working to thwart Trump’s agenda and style to make him more traditionally “presidential.”

The narrative reads in part like Trump’s Twitter grievances in book form. Lewandowski and Bossie write at length about the same FBI and Justice Department officials whose names pepper so many presidential tweets — Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok and Sally Yates. And they go after the same intelligence officials that Trump often targets — James R. Clapper Jr. and John Brennan — and accuse them of wanting to “nullify the election and bring down the president” by detailing Russia’s interference.

The authors also go after many of Trump’s Democratic foes. They refer to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) as “crazy”; call Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “many people’s favorite liberal wacko”; and label Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) an “enemy of President Trump.” They also spell out former president Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, echoing a common Republican tactic meant to falsely suggest that the 44th president is a Muslim.

Like Trump, the authors use colorful language to dismiss the Russia investigation, specifically the notion that the Trump campaign conspired with Russians, as a made-up excuse for Democrats losing the 2016 election. They call it “a sweeping work of fiction so complex, so audacious, so unbelievable that if they gave out awards for bad excuses, the Democrats would win an Oscar, an Emmy, and maybe even the Heisman Trophy.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Right-wing extremists are already threatening violence over a Democratic House"

Spoiler

Seeking a more lenient sentence for Patrick Eugene Stein’s plot to murder hundreds of Somali immigrants in a small Kansas town, Stein’s attorneys turned to a novel strategy: They blamed the inspiration for his actions on Donald Trump.

“The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mold-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president,” the lawyers wrote.

Stein and his two cohorts planned their attack to take place the day after the November 2016 election. Anticipating a Hillary Clinton victory, the three Kansans wanted to make a violent first strike against her presidency by setting off a set of Timothy McVeigh-style truck bombs at a Muslim immigrant community in Garden City, then gunning down survivors as they fled.

The plot had been exposed, and the men arrested, a few weeks before they intended to carry it out. It took place amid a national environment in which far-right militiamen had been vowing a violent resistance to a potential Clinton administration. That resistance was, at least temporarily, mooted by Trump’s victory.

But those same rumblings can now be heard from the very same far-right factions, likewise threatening violence, in response to this month’s takeover of the House of Representatives by Democrats. There is legitimate reason for concern that right-wing terrorist violence will continue and perhaps increase — and that extremists could soon begin targeting politicians in office, especially if Trump singles them out for scorn.

The question of whether Trump’s rhetoric is inspiring acts of political violence now echoes nationally. Acts of violence in Florida and in Pittsburgh in the run-up to the midterm elections have already been inextricably linked to Trump’s hyperbolic language.

According to Chip Berlet, an expert on the populist right, the phenomenon we’re watching unfold is known to sociologists as “scripted violence.” “If a very popular leader who is high up — it doesn’t matter if it’s a political or a movement leader — basically alleges that some group of people is conspiring against the common good, and they harp on that for a long time, it’s only a matter of time before people get killed,” he recently explained.

There’s a long history of this kind of violence, dating from well before the Holocaust and continuing well into recent decades and even the present. In 1990s Rwanda, for example, thousands were massacred when radio talkers targeted communities for lethal violence as part of a tribal/ethnic cleansing campaign. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte’s state-condoned death squads follow his cues to target alleged “drug users” for execution, leading to thousands of deaths. Trump has tacitly endorsed the tactic.

His rhetoric at home is part of the same violence for which he is writing the scripts.

“Trump clearly isn’t going to tamp this situation down, and he will likely escalate his anti-immigrant and extremist rhetoric as we move toward 2020,” says Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “Since the GOP is becoming a bastion of older, white males who are angry, that’s the base they will be moving to turn out. This just follows a trend of more than a decade of increasing numbers of terror plots from the far right. And, at least at this point, it doesn’t seem the feds have a real strategy here, so they will likely be behind the eight ball on these issues as well.”

When confronted by reporters about the connection of his rhetoric to this violence, Trump has denied and deflected, accusing the media of fomenting violence instead for their “fake news”: “You’re creating violence by your questions,” he told reporters after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, pointing at them. “You are creating — you. And also a lot of the reporters are creating violence by not writing the truth.”

His true believers notwithstanding, the public likely takes a different view: One poll, taken before the mail-bombing attempts and the synagogue shooting, found that a majority of Americans already believe that he enables white supremacists and that many have come to see him as a “legitimizing force” for hate groups.

Critically, those hate groups themselves appear to feel empowered by Trump, in no small part because of his propensity to hesitate to criticize them, embodied by the president’s description of white-nationalist Charlottesville protesters as “very fine people.” Trump’s defenders point to the president’s official disavowals, such as the statement he had issued two days before.

The problem is that not even the hate groups he’s disowning believe him. In chat rooms, message boards and alt-right blogs, the repudiations are interpreted as political necessities and dismissed as meaningless. Alt-right guru Richard Spencer sneered at Trump’s post-Charlottesville disavowal as “kumbaya nonsense,” adding: “Only a dumb person would take those lines seriously.”

Certainly Trump’s far-right devotees, including the white nationalists who have both marched in his name and have used his name while committing hate crimes have taken the example of his bellicose rhetoric and expanded on it in extremists’ inimitable fashion. As they did in the weeks before the 2016 election, militiamen across the nation have referenced violent uprisings and civil war in defense of Trump around the election.

At Gab — the white-nationalist-friendly social media platform allegedly used by Pittsburgh shooting suspect Robert Bowers — speculation about civil war has been part of its site-wide discourse since this summer, as in this since-deleted post:

Two young neo-Nazi activists who associated online with Bowers, Jeffrey and Edward Clark of Washington, allegedly planned to follow in the killer’s footsteps, or at least fantasized about it on Gab. Edward, 23, killed himself shortly after the Pittsburgh massacre, reportedly because news reports indicated Bowers was cooperating with police.

Jeffrey Clark, 30, was arrested Nov. 9 after family members warned authorities of his increasingly violent behavior and rhetoric. The brothers had long fantasized about killing Jews and blacks in a “race war,” police say. On Gab, Jeffrey had praised the Pittsburgh killings as a “dry run for things to come.”

The leader of one “Patriot” group, Chris Hill of the Georgia Security Force III% militia, told reporters before the election, “If they succeed in impeaching President Trump, then we will back President Trump.” Asked how they intended to support him, he answered, “With a use of force if need be.”

Both militiamen and other far-right factions, including white nationalists and street-brawling “Proud Boys,” have been ginning up rhetoric about a “civil war” — depicted, in their telling, as a coming armed struggle between rural conservatives and urban minorities and liberals. Alex Jones has been leading that torchlight parade for several years, but it has spread widely throughout various far factions of the far right.

In addition to white supremacists, “Patriot” militias also have been spurred to action by Trump’s demonizing rhetoric targeting Muslims, the press and liberal Democrats. In recent weeks, they apparently are being spurred, like the Pittsburgh shooter, over right-wing hysteria about the approaching “caravan” of Central American asylum seekers.

A number of self-described militia units have announced to the press their intention to make their way to the Mexico border in the coming weeks, as the refugees draw nearer. “My phone’s been ringing nonstop for the last seven days. You got other militias, and husbands and wives, people coming from Oregon, Indiana. We’ve even got two from Canada,” Shannon McGauley, president of the Texas Minutemen, told The Washington Post.

It’s entirely likely that, with the midterm elections past, the hysteria over the “caravan” will vanish into the same memory hole as the 2014 midterm Ebola panic (similarly born and bred in the media), and with it the militias’ fervor over defending the border from refugees. So far, none have actually shown up, but they have certainly worked themselves into a frenzy over it.

However, given their predilection for following the president’s cues, it is probably only a matter of time before they find fresh targets for their eliminationist anger. Nor will it surprise anyone if these targets are the same new enemies in the Democratic House that Trump faces in Washington after the midterms.

Acts of domestic terrorism such as those in Pittsburgh and elsewhere in recent weeks come amid a rising tide of hate crimes and bigotry-fueled violence generally. Gutting of anti-terror efforts by the administration, recently reported by NBC News, bode ill for efforts to prevent this kind of violence from spreading.

This is especially so when the president himself is throwing rhetorical lighter fluid on his political targets. He, and we, can’t be shocked when someone else provides the match. Indeed, it’s becoming clear that’s exactly the script he intends.

 

[Howl]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

To be added to the "must not bother reading" list: "New book by Trump advisers alleges that the president has ‘embedded enemies’"

From the WaPo article: 

Quote

....scores of officials inside the White House, Congress, the Justice Department and intelligence agencies are “embedded enemies of President Trump” working to stymie his agenda and delegitimize his presidency.

I'd have to say this is technically true and is being done by any sane person with at least one functioning brain cell.

[fraurosena]

11 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

A heads up for those of you with Trumpers in your circle. If you are not already, you will very likely be hearing praise for MBS in the near future.  A pro-Trump and MBS hashtag is being heavily promoted right now on Twitter, and once it gets picked up by some of the big accounts, it will rapidly spread through the pro-Trump ranks.

Sorry.

 

Yep. Guess who’s asking Americans to pray for MBS? Evangelicals!

Do you think they realize he’s a Muslim?

[GreyhoundFan]

I found this Funny or Die video that parodies Branch Trumpvidians. I just had to share. Sadly, many BTs would think this is the truth.

 

[mamallama]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Yep. Guess who’s asking Americans to pray for MBS? Evangelicals!

Do you think they realize he’s a Muslim?

No, I think they believe he's a good Christian using the same logic they use to believe Trump is a good Christian.

[Cartmann99]

14 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Do you think they realize he’s a Muslim?

I bet there's a conspiracy theory about him secretly converting to Christianity, but pretending to still be a Muslim.

[47of74]

Yeah this is one Thanksgiving that went off the rails in a hurry.

Quote

A North Carolina man has been arrested after police said he shot his son during a family argument over athletes kneeling during the national anthem.

According to arrest warrants, the man told police that the gun went off when his son threw something at him.

It happened just before 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Officers were called to the home in the 100 block of Fallsworth Drive for reports of gunfire.

Upon arrival, officers found that a 21-year-old man had been shot.

Putting it here cause I gather that at least one of the parties involved is a Branch Trumpvidian.

[Howl]

Laura Loomer, alt-Reich nut case and "fringe right-wing personality," was banned from Twitter for viciously anti-Islamic posts directed at a Muslim lawmaker.  When you're on the fringe of the right-wing.....just sayin'. 

To protest this indignity, she put on a yellow star and locked herself to Twitter's office door yesterday.  Twitter says they don't care and won't call police, so her protest has kinda backfired.  She looks like an idiot who randomly chained herself to an office door.

No word on if she's still there and, if so, what she's doing about bathroom issues.  Depends can only take you so far....

[AmazonGrace]

Some local RW nutters wear baseball caps bragging that FB banned them

[47of74]

Laura Loomer, alt-Reich nut case and "fringe right-wing personality," was banned from Twitter for viciously anti-Islamic posts directed at a Muslim lawmaker.  When you're on the fringe of the right-wing.....just sayin'. 
To protest this indignity, she put on a yellow star and locked herself to Twitter's office door yesterday.  Twitter says they don't care and won't call police, so her protest has kinda backfired and she just looks like an idiot who chained herself to an office door.
No word on if she's still there and, if so, what she's doing about bathroom issues.  Depends can only take you so far....

Where’d you get the handcuffs from Laura? Wanna tell us something about yer extracurricular activities?

[fraurosena]

Not sure where to put this, but as it's about as stupid as you can get, in the BT thread it goes...

 

[AmazonGrace]

He's lucky they didn't deport him. 

Probably would have if his name was Sanchez. 

[Howl]

Hah, the Laura Loomer protest lasted all of two hours!

And this from @fraurosena
"A District of Columbia clerk and a supervisor refuse to accept a New Mexico man's state driver's license for a marriage license. The reason? They thought New Mexico was a foreign country."

If it was a foreign country, it would have been Nuevo Mexico, duh!  However, if you queried a lot of well traveled New Mexicans, you might find that they have encountered this exact situation here and there. 

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Hah, the Laura Loomer protest lasted all of two hours!

And this from @fraurosena
"A District of Columbia clerk and a supervisor refuse to accept a New Mexico man's state driver's license for a marriage license. The reason? They thought New Mexico was a foreign country."

If it was a foreign country, it would have been Nuevo Mexico, duh!  However, if you queried a lot of well traveled New Mexicans, you might find that they have encountered this exact situation here and there. 

And of course anybody from  Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut or Massachusetts are really British.

[Cartmann99]

On 12/1/2018 at 8:55 AM, Howl said:

If it was a foreign country, it would have been Nuevo Mexico, duh!  However, if you queried a lot of well traveled New Mexicans, you might find that they have encountered this exact situation here and there. 

Mr. Cartmann99 is originally from New Mexico, and he has experienced this nonsense.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Nice try, Alan, but you're a disgusting jerk.   I started reading Filthy Rich last night, about the Jeffrey Epstein case, by James Patterson, Michael Connolly, and Tim Malloy.  The details are simply horrible and 100% consistent from girl to girl.  "Old old Russian" in this context would refer to a 17- or 18-year-old girl.  You're in trouble because young girls were what  Jeffrey Epstein was all about. Also, the "massage" element of Deshowitz' defense is significant.  Epstein had a massage fetish and this was the first element in determining how far each young girl was willing to go. 

That Epstein skated for the most part is a scandal in the true meaning of the word.  I'm so glad this is being resurrected and brought back to light.  There are some many roaches wealthy powerful men scurrying around for sure in the bright light of day. 

James Patterson lives in Palm Beach.  Here's what he says:

Quote

I had been hearing hair-raising stories about Jeffrey Epstein for a couple of years.  Our interests could not have been more different, but Palm Beach, where we both live, is small and tightly knit, and we knew some of the same people. So I had followed Epstein's case in the media and talked about it over dinners with friends. I wondered why it had taken so long for the Palm Beach police to catch up with Epstein.  And, once they did, why he had served so little jail time. Those were the obvious questions, but there were others: How had Epstein made his money, possibly billions? No one seemed to know. 

Epstein had powerful friends. Were his connections the reason that Epstein was a free man? I wanted to know.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[smittykins]

I totally need to shoehorn "fucktangle of shitweasels" into a conversation. 

[onekidanddone]

22 minutes ago, smittykins said:

I totally need to shoehorn "fucktangle of shitweasels" into a conversation. 

I just suggested this for the next BT thread title, but it would work in any thread in this forum. It might even work as a user title.