Trump 36: We Shall Overcome

[fraurosena]

 

My, he's angry today... something to do with the Manafort news perchance? 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

How to make things worse, presiduncial style.

Hahahahaha... take away the subsidies, and it'll help America's workers? Uhm... GM is a business, and it will leave the US if it isn't profitable for them to stay, you moron. Nice try at deflecting from losing bigly in your precious Tariff War though. 

[GreyhoundFan]

He's becoming more and more unhinged: "Trump slams Fed chair, questions climate change and threatens to cancel Putin meeting in wide-ranging interview with The Post"

Spoiler

President Trump placed responsibility for recent stock market declines and this week’s General Motors plant closures and layoffs on the Federal Reserve during an interview Tuesday, shirking any personal blame for cracks in the economy and declaring that he is “not even a little bit happy” with his hand-selected central bank chairman.

In a wide-ranging and sometimes discordant 20-minute interview with The Washington Post, Trump complained at length about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. “Jay” Powell, whom he nominated last year. When asked about declines on Wall Street and GM’s announcement that it was laying off 15 percent of its workforce, Trump responded by criticizing higher interest rates and other Fed policies, though he insisted that he is not worried about a recession.

“I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” Trump said. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

He added: “So far, I’m not even a little bit happy with my selection of Jay. Not even a little bit. And I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing.”

Sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Trump also threatened to cancel his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at a global summit this week in Argentina because of Russia’s maritime clash with Ukraine.

Asked whether he thought Putin was within his rights to capture three Ukrainian ships and their crews Sunday in the Black Sea, Trump said he was awaiting a “full report” from his national security team Tuesday evening about the incident. “That will be very determinative,” Trump said. “Maybe I won’t have the meeting. Maybe I won’t even have the meeting.”

When asked whether Russia’s aggression is a cause for concern for the American people, Trump responded with a more forceful critique of Putin’s actions than those he has delivered in the past.

“I don’t like that aggression,” he said. “I don’t want that aggression at all. Absolutely. And by the way, Europe shouldn’t like that aggression. And Germany shouldn’t like that aggression.”

Trump also dismissed the federal government’s landmark report released last week finding that damages from global warming are intensifying around the country. The president said that “I don’t see” climate change as man-made and that he does not believe the scientific consensus.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump said. “You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean.”

The president added of climate change, “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it.”

The comments were Trump’s most extensive yet on why he disagrees with the dire National Climate Assessment released by his own administration Friday, which found that climate change poses a severe threat to the health and financial security of Americans, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources.

Trump again questioned the CIA’s assessment that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a contributor to The Post, and said he considered Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s repeated denials in his decision to maintain a close alliance with the oil-rich desert kingdom.

“Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t,” Trump said. “But he denies it. And people around him deny it. And the CIA did not say affirmatively he did it, either, by the way. I’m not saying that they’re saying he didn’t do it, but they didn’t say it affirmatively.”

Trump said he could visit with Mohammed on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, though no formal meeting has been scheduled.

The CIA has assessed that Mohammed ordered Khashoggi’s killing and has shared its findings with lawmakers and the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. Intelligence assessments are rarely, if ever, ironclad, and Trump has repeatedly stressed that there is no evidence that would irrefutably lay the blame at Mohammed’s feet.

But the CIA based its overall assessment of Mohammed’s role on a number of pieces of compelling evidence, including intercepted communications; surveillance from inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed in October; and the agency’s analysis of Mohammed’s total control of the Saudi government.

Meanwhile, Trump said he had “no intention” of moving to stop special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“The Mueller investigation is what it is. It just goes on and on and on,” he said. When pressed on whether he would commit to letting the probe continue until its conclusion, Trump stopped short of making an explicit pledge.

“This question has been asked about me now for almost two years,” he said, at which point counselor Kellyanne Conway chimed in, “A thousand times.”

Trump continued: “And, in the meantime, he’s still there. He wouldn’t have to be, but he’s still there, so I have no intention of doing anything.”

The president declined to discuss on the record the Mueller team’s accusation Monday that Paul Manafort had breached his plea agreement by lying repeatedly to investigators, or whether he would use presidential powers to help his former campaign chairman.

“Let me go off the record because I don’t want to get in the middle of the whole thing,” he said. He added later: “At some point, I’ll talk on the record about it. But I’d rather not.”

Trump also floated the idea of removing U.S. troops from the Middle East, citing the lower price of oil as a reason to withdraw.

“Now, are we going to stay in that part of the world? One reason to is Israel,” Trump said. “Oil is becoming less and less of a reason because we’re producing more oil now than we’ve ever produced. So, you know, all of a sudden it gets to a point where you don’t have to stay there.”

Trump also called the killing of three U.S. troops in a roadside explosion in Afghanistan this week “very sad.” He said he was continuing the military presence in Afghanistan only because “experts” told him the United States needed to keep fighting there.

The president said he was considering visiting troops in the region soon, perhaps before Christmas. “At the right time I will,” he said of a war-zone visit, which would be his first as president.

During the interview, Trump’s sharpest criticism was reserved for his Fed chairman. Though Trump said several times in response to a question about emerging cracks in the economy that he wasn’t “blaming anybody,” he clearly assigned blame to Powell for leading the Fed through several interest rate increases this year.

In a series of Twitter posts Tuesday, issued shortly after his interview with The Post, Trump blamed GM chief executive Mary Barra for the company’s plant closures and layoffs and threatened to strip away any government subsidies for the auto giant.

Trump’s fury at GM and the Fed was similar to his outrage at Harley-Davidson this summer, after the Milwaukee-based motorcycle company announced it was moving some jobs overseas in part because it said it was caught in the midst of a trade war between the White House and foreign leaders.

The stock market has tumbled in recent weeks, unnerving Trump, who in turn has blamed Democrats, the Chinese government and the central bank for any perceived economic weakness.

Asked in the interview who should be held responsible — and reminded that one of his predecessors, Harry Truman, famously kept a sign at his desk that read, “The buck stops here” — Trump took no personal responsibility.

The Federal Reserve is the nation’s central bank and sets the direction for interest rates, or the cost of borrowing money. Higher rates make it more expensive for consumers and businesses to obtain credit, which can put downward pressure on the economy.

During the interview, Trump’s description of the economy was at odds with its actual performance. It has grown since he took office and the unemployment rate has fallen, but he suggested that as many jobs were returning to the United States from overseas as were being lost in layoffs.

In addition, Trump said the stock market was up 38 percent since he took office. In fact, the Dow Jones industrial average is up 25 percent since he was sworn in, less than the increase during President Barack Obama’s first two years in office.

The United States has had very low interest rates for more than a decade, and Fed officials are slowly trying to bring them back up. Many economists believe that higher interest rates are a way to combat inflation and prevent the economy from overheating.

Powell took over as chairman earlier this year. Since then, the Fed has raised interest rates three times and is expected to increase them another time next month.

“The Fed is doing exactly what it should be doing, which is to prevent overheating and boom- bust-type conditions in the future,” former Federal Reserve vice chairman Donald Kohn said.

Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the Fed was responding in part to economic conditions Trump had helped foster, such as last year’s tax cut, which led to what some had projected would be a short-term economic growth spurt.

“The Federal Reserve cannot be expected to do otherwise than raise interest rates,” DeLong said. “This is what Trump bought when he made his Fed appointments. So why is he surprised?”

Trump’s selection of Powell to lead the central bank was driven largely by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Powell’s appointment was very unusual, as he is not an economist. He had served in a past Republican White House but was first tapped to serve as a Fed governor by Obama. During his initial tenure at the Fed, Powell was seen as largely supportive of the slow-but-steady interest rate increase strategy used by then-Chair Janet L. Yellen.

Trump considered reappointing Yellen to the post, and she impressed him greatly during an interview, according to people briefed on their encounter. But advisers steered him away from renominating her, telling him that he should have his own person in the job.

The president also appeared hung up on Yellen’s height. He told aides on the National Economic Council on several occasions that the 5-foot-3-inch economist was not tall enough to lead the central bank, quizzing them on whether they agreed, current and former officials said.

Discussing his decision to tap Powell, Trump said Monday: “Look, I took recommendations. I’m not blaming anybody.”

If you are interested, here is the annotated full transcript of the interview.

[onekidanddone]

17 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

He's becoming more and more unhinged: "Trump slams Fed chair, questions climate change and threatens to cancel Putin meeting in wide-ranging interview with The Post"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump placed responsibility for recent stock market declines and this week’s General Motors plant closures and layoffs on the Federal Reserve during an interview Tuesday, shirking any personal blame for cracks in the economy and declaring that he is “not even a little bit happy” with his hand-selected central bank chairman.

In a wide-ranging and sometimes discordant 20-minute interview with The Washington Post, Trump complained at length about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. “Jay” Powell, whom he nominated last year. When asked about declines on Wall Street and GM’s announcement that it was laying off 15 percent of its workforce, Trump responded by criticizing higher interest rates and other Fed policies, though he insisted that he is not worried about a recession.

“I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” Trump said. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

He added: “So far, I’m not even a little bit happy with my selection of Jay. Not even a little bit. And I’m not blaming anybody, but I’m just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they’re doing.”

Sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Trump also threatened to cancel his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at a global summit this week in Argentina because of Russia’s maritime clash with Ukraine.

Asked whether he thought Putin was within his rights to capture three Ukrainian ships and their crews Sunday in the Black Sea, Trump said he was awaiting a “full report” from his national security team Tuesday evening about the incident. “That will be very determinative,” Trump said. “Maybe I won’t have the meeting. Maybe I won’t even have the meeting.”

When asked whether Russia’s aggression is a cause for concern for the American people, Trump responded with a more forceful critique of Putin’s actions than those he has delivered in the past.

“I don’t like that aggression,” he said. “I don’t want that aggression at all. Absolutely. And by the way, Europe shouldn’t like that aggression. And Germany shouldn’t like that aggression.”

Trump also dismissed the federal government’s landmark report released last week finding that damages from global warming are intensifying around the country. The president said that “I don’t see” climate change as man-made and that he does not believe the scientific consensus.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump said. “You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean.”

The president added of climate change, “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it.”

The comments were Trump’s most extensive yet on why he disagrees with the dire National Climate Assessment released by his own administration Friday, which found that climate change poses a severe threat to the health and financial security of Americans, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources.

Trump again questioned the CIA’s assessment that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a contributor to The Post, and said he considered Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s repeated denials in his decision to maintain a close alliance with the oil-rich desert kingdom.

“Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t,” Trump said. “But he denies it. And people around him deny it. And the CIA did not say affirmatively he did it, either, by the way. I’m not saying that they’re saying he didn’t do it, but they didn’t say it affirmatively.”

Trump said he could visit with Mohammed on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, though no formal meeting has been scheduled.

The CIA has assessed that Mohammed ordered Khashoggi’s killing and has shared its findings with lawmakers and the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. Intelligence assessments are rarely, if ever, ironclad, and Trump has repeatedly stressed that there is no evidence that would irrefutably lay the blame at Mohammed’s feet.

But the CIA based its overall assessment of Mohammed’s role on a number of pieces of compelling evidence, including intercepted communications; surveillance from inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed in October; and the agency’s analysis of Mohammed’s total control of the Saudi government.

Meanwhile, Trump said he had “no intention” of moving to stop special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“The Mueller investigation is what it is. It just goes on and on and on,” he said. When pressed on whether he would commit to letting the probe continue until its conclusion, Trump stopped short of making an explicit pledge.

“This question has been asked about me now for almost two years,” he said, at which point counselor Kellyanne Conway chimed in, “A thousand times.”

Trump continued: “And, in the meantime, he’s still there. He wouldn’t have to be, but he’s still there, so I have no intention of doing anything.”

The president declined to discuss on the record the Mueller team’s accusation Monday that Paul Manafort had breached his plea agreement by lying repeatedly to investigators, or whether he would use presidential powers to help his former campaign chairman.

“Let me go off the record because I don’t want to get in the middle of the whole thing,” he said. He added later: “At some point, I’ll talk on the record about it. But I’d rather not.”

Trump also floated the idea of removing U.S. troops from the Middle East, citing the lower price of oil as a reason to withdraw.

“Now, are we going to stay in that part of the world? One reason to is Israel,” Trump said. “Oil is becoming less and less of a reason because we’re producing more oil now than we’ve ever produced. So, you know, all of a sudden it gets to a point where you don’t have to stay there.”

Trump also called the killing of three U.S. troops in a roadside explosion in Afghanistan this week “very sad.” He said he was continuing the military presence in Afghanistan only because “experts” told him the United States needed to keep fighting there.

The president said he was considering visiting troops in the region soon, perhaps before Christmas. “At the right time I will,” he said of a war-zone visit, which would be his first as president.

During the interview, Trump’s sharpest criticism was reserved for his Fed chairman. Though Trump said several times in response to a question about emerging cracks in the economy that he wasn’t “blaming anybody,” he clearly assigned blame to Powell for leading the Fed through several interest rate increases this year.

In a series of Twitter posts Tuesday, issued shortly after his interview with The Post, Trump blamed GM chief executive Mary Barra for the company’s plant closures and layoffs and threatened to strip away any government subsidies for the auto giant.

Trump’s fury at GM and the Fed was similar to his outrage at Harley-Davidson this summer, after the Milwaukee-based motorcycle company announced it was moving some jobs overseas in part because it said it was caught in the midst of a trade war between the White House and foreign leaders.

The stock market has tumbled in recent weeks, unnerving Trump, who in turn has blamed Democrats, the Chinese government and the central bank for any perceived economic weakness.

Asked in the interview who should be held responsible — and reminded that one of his predecessors, Harry Truman, famously kept a sign at his desk that read, “The buck stops here” — Trump took no personal responsibility.

The Federal Reserve is the nation’s central bank and sets the direction for interest rates, or the cost of borrowing money. Higher rates make it more expensive for consumers and businesses to obtain credit, which can put downward pressure on the economy.

During the interview, Trump’s description of the economy was at odds with its actual performance. It has grown since he took office and the unemployment rate has fallen, but he suggested that as many jobs were returning to the United States from overseas as were being lost in layoffs.

In addition, Trump said the stock market was up 38 percent since he took office. In fact, the Dow Jones industrial average is up 25 percent since he was sworn in, less than the increase during President Barack Obama’s first two years in office.

The United States has had very low interest rates for more than a decade, and Fed officials are slowly trying to bring them back up. Many economists believe that higher interest rates are a way to combat inflation and prevent the economy from overheating.

Powell took over as chairman earlier this year. Since then, the Fed has raised interest rates three times and is expected to increase them another time next month.

“The Fed is doing exactly what it should be doing, which is to prevent overheating and boom- bust-type conditions in the future,” former Federal Reserve vice chairman Donald Kohn said.

Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the Fed was responding in part to economic conditions Trump had helped foster, such as last year’s tax cut, which led to what some had projected would be a short-term economic growth spurt.

“The Federal Reserve cannot be expected to do otherwise than raise interest rates,” DeLong said. “This is what Trump bought when he made his Fed appointments. So why is he surprised?”

Trump’s selection of Powell to lead the central bank was driven largely by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Powell’s appointment was very unusual, as he is not an economist. He had served in a past Republican White House but was first tapped to serve as a Fed governor by Obama. During his initial tenure at the Fed, Powell was seen as largely supportive of the slow-but-steady interest rate increase strategy used by then-Chair Janet L. Yellen.

Trump considered reappointing Yellen to the post, and she impressed him greatly during an interview, according to people briefed on their encounter. But advisers steered him away from renominating her, telling him that he should have his own person in the job.

The president also appeared hung up on Yellen’s height. He told aides on the National Economic Council on several occasions that the 5-foot-3-inch economist was not tall enough to lead the central bank, quizzing them on whether they agreed, current and former officials said.

Discussing his decision to tap Powell, Trump said Monday: “Look, I took recommendations. I’m not blaming anybody.”

If you are interested, here is the annotated full transcript of the interview.

Only a washed has been would sit for an interview with the failing Washington Post

[Howl]

14 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Hahahahaha... take away the subsidies, and it'll help America's workers? Uhm... GM is a business, and it will leave the US if it isn't profitable for them to stay, you moron. Nice try at deflecting from losing bigly in your precious Tariff War though. 

Another angle is that Michael Moore is pointing out that GM has played Trump and the public yet again.   They get tax abatements, inducements and whatnot, and then cut and run with the goods. 

[fraurosena]

His depends are full to bursting today. 

I wonder at the 3 major players he's alluding to. We have Manafort and Corsi in the news,  but who's number three?

[Alisamer]

Quote

I have a gut

FInally! A true statement from the president!

Somebody needs to get him a real, honest mental evaluation soon. I'm not sure if he's really that stupid, has rapidly progressing dementia, or is setting up a last-ditch insanity defense for once he gets indicted.

It could be all three, I suppose. 

[Howl]

17 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

He's becoming more and more unhinged

The Hoarse Whisperer lays it out on twitter:  Start here and keep a goin'!  It clarifies what's happening in Trump's current narcissist meltdown, step by step.  

 

If you aren't on twitter,  an unroll of the thread can be found HERE. 

[fraurosena]

Wow! I'm flabbergasted. The presidunce is tweeted four true things! 

1. Yes, much is happening in the investigation.

2. Yes, the fact that it's a witch hunt has been discredited, it's a Special Counsel Investigation.

3. Yes, calling it a witch hunt is a total hoax.

4. Yes, it will be studied for years.

[AnnaSofia]

I'm seeing red, and it ain't just ugly White House Christmas décor...

Quote

For weeks, student veterans across the country have raised an alarm about delayed or incorrect GI Bill benefit payments, which the Department of Veterans Affairs has blamed on computer issues.

But on Wednesday, the department told congressional staffers that it would not reimburse those veterans who were paid less than they were owed, two committee aides told NBC News.

The news conflicts with a promise VA officials made to a House committee earlier this month that it would reimburse those veterans who received less than the full amount they were due.

According to the aides, however, the VA said it could not make retroactive payments without auditing its previous education claims, which it said would delay future claims. The aides asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

 

[fraurosena]

Was it ever in doubt?

 

[fraurosena]

Third tweet is the most intriguing. Why didn't they ask the obvious follow up? 

Inquisitive minds need to know: WHAT FAVOR??

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Donald Trump appeals to men secretly insecure about their manhood"

Spoiler

From boasting about the size of his penis on national television to releasing records of his high testosterone levels, President Trump’s rhetoric and behavior exude machismo. His behavior also seems to have struck a chord with some male voters. See, for example, the “Donald Trump: Finally Someone With Balls” T-shirts common at Trump rallies.

But our research suggests that Trump is not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the president presents himself to be. Instead, Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood. We call this the “fragile masculinity hypothesis.” Here is some of our evidence.

What is ‘fragile masculinity’?

Research shows that many men feel pressure to look and behave in stereotypically masculine ways — or risk losing their status as “real men.” Masculine expectations are socialized from early childhood and can motivate men to embrace traditional male behaviors while avoiding even the hint of femininity. This unforgiving standard of maleness makes some men worry that they’re falling short. These men are said to experience “fragile masculinity.”

The political process provides a way that fragile men can reaffirm their masculinity. By supporting tough politicians and policies, men can reassure others (and themselves) of their own manliness. For example, sociologist Robb Willer has shown that men whose sense of masculinity was threatened increased their support for aggressive foreign policy.

We wanted to see whether fragile masculinity was associated with how Americans vote — and specifically whether it was associated with greater support for Trump in the 2016 general election and for Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections.

How we measured fragile masculinity

Measuring fragile masculinity poses a challenge. We could not simply do a poll of men, who might not honestly answer questions about their deepest insecurities. Instead we relied on Google Trends, which measures the popularity of Google search terms. As Seth Stephens-Davidowitz has argued, people are often at their least guarded when they seek answers from the Internet. Researchers have already used Google search patterns to estimate levels of racial prejudice in different parts of the country. We sought to do the same with fragile masculinity.

We began by selecting a set of search topics that we believed might be especially common among men concerned about living up to the ideals of manhood: “erectile dysfunction,” “hair loss,” “how to get girls,” “penis enlargement,” “penis size,” “steroids,” “testosterone” and “Viagra.” (With the exception of “how to get girls,” these are Google “topics” rather than individual search terms. For instance, the topic “erectile dysfunction” includes searches for “erectile dysfunction,” “ED” and “impotence.”)

To validate this list of topics, we asked a sample of 300 men on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform whether they ever had or ever would search for them online. We found that scoring high on a questionnaire measuring “masculine gender-role discrepancy stress” — concern that they aren’t as manly as their male friends — was strongly associated with interest in these search topics. Although these men were not a representative sample of American men, their responses suggest that these search terms are a valid way to capture fragile masculinity.

How fragile masculinity was related to voting behavior

We measured the popularity of these search topics in every media market in the country during the years preceding the past three presidential elections. In the map below, darker colors show where these searches were most prevalent in 2016.

We found that support for Trump in the 2016 election was higher in areas that had more searches for topics such as “erectile dysfunction.” Moreover, this relationship persisted after accounting for demographic attributes in media markets, such as education levels and racial composition, as well as searches for topics unrelated to fragile masculinity, such as “breast augmentation” and “menopause.”

In contrast, fragile masculinity was not associated with support for Mitt Romney in 2012 or support for John McCain in 2008 — suggesting that the correlation of fragile masculinity and voting in presidential elections was distinctively stronger in 2016.

The same finding emerged in 2018. We estimated levels of fragile masculinity in every U.S. congressional district based on levels in the media markets with which districts overlap. Before the election, we preregistered our expectations, including the other factors that we would account for.

In the more than 390 House elections pitting a Republican candidate against a Democratic candidate, support for the Republican candidate was higher in districts that, based on Google search data, had higher levels of fragile masculinity. However, there was no significant relationship between fragile masculinity and voting in the 2014 or 2016 congressional elections. This suggests that fragile masculinity has now become a stronger predictor of voting behavior.

Notably, fragile masculinity was unrelated to support for female candidates in the 2018 elections, once we accounted for the fact that female candidates are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. It therefore appears that fragile masculinity doesn’t reduce support for female candidates but rather increases support for Republican candidates of any gender.

Here’s the takeaway

Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.

First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.

Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics.

 

[47of74]

Get some more popcorn ready for when fuckhead finds out about this

Quote

Republican Sen. Tim Scott announced Thursday he would oppose President Donald Trump's nominee to be a US district judge in North Carolina, effectively ending the nomination that had been plagued with accusations that Thomas Farr supported measures that disenfranchised African-American voters.

"This week, a Department of Justice memo written under President George H.W. Bush was released that shed new light on Mr. Farr's activities. This, in turn, created more concerns. Weighing these important factors, this afternoon I concluded that I could not support Mr. Farr's nomination," Scott said in a statement.

Scott, who is the Senate's sole black Republican, told reporters Wednesday that he wanted to speak to the author of a 1991 memo obtained by the Washington Post, which outlines a controversial postcard campaign distributed by the 1990 campaign of Sen. Jesse Helms that the Justice Department said were used to intimidate black voters from going to the polls.

Scott's decision to oppose Farr prevented Farr from being confirmed by the Senate, where Republicans hold a 51-to-49 seat majority. Also opposing Farr was Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who has sworn off advancing Trump judicial nominees until the chamber votes on a bill to protect special counsels such as Robert Mueller. All 49 Democrats opposed the nomination.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Junior, did you get to hold daddy's phone for a couple of minutes there? Because this sure ain't daddy's vocabulary!

Oh, I get it! The whole family is shitting bricks right now, aren't they? 

[Rachel333]

"very legal & very cool"

"Lightly looked at doing a building"

Does he realize he's just encouraging people to keep making this joke?

Spoiler

 

[AmazonGrace]

If he wrote, "researching the options in the preliminary stages of a complex construction project" we'd know he was hacked but "looking at doing a building" seems simple and vague enough to be in Trump's vocabulary.

[fraurosena]

45 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

If he wrote, "researching the options in the preliminary stages of a complex construction project" we'd know he was hacked but "looking at doing a building" seems simple and vague enough to be in Trump's vocabulary.

Junior is only slightly less idiom-impaired, but he does manage to make 'real' sentences, unlike his sire. 

Oh, and that 'Lightly looking at doing a building' was already a thing way back in 2013, and still going strong three years later, with a signed letter of intent.

 

[fraurosena]

LOL, that thing is following him all around the world!

 

[Howl]

Quote

Look like @realDonaldTrump is going to follow Putin’s orders..
The Kremlin announced that the Putin-Trump meet is confirmed

 Gotta get Trump straightened out on his marching orders on Ukraine blockade and whatever else Vlad has in mind. 

[formergothardite]

13 minutes ago, Howl said:

 Gotta get Trump straightened out on his marching orders on Ukraine blockade and whatever else Vlad has in mind. 

Last I read Trump is still saying he is canceling the meeting. If he does, I wonder if it is because he is mad that Putin isn't protecting him. Trump makes terrible life choices, even more so when he is backed into a corner like he is now. He cannot allow himself to accept that he did anything wrong, he will place blame somewhere even if doing so costs him in the long run. I can see him telling himself that Putin was supposed to help protect him from all this. 

Putin, though, will destroy Trump in a second. It is pretty obvious that Trump isn't going to be an asset to Putin and if Trump refuses to meet with him after Putin announced he would, things will not go well for him. 

[mamallama]

Personally, I think they cancelled the meeting to show, "NO COLLUSION".  

[fraurosena]

What? I am sooooo surprised!

And no Journalists!