Trump 42: Racist In Chief

[47of74]

That about sums it up.

Well I was going to say that Fuck Face is needed about as much as a colonoscopy but a colonoscopy serves a useful purpose and can save lives. Unlike Fuck Face.

[Ozlsn]

14 hours ago, fraurosena said:

 

I'm assuming this is in reference to Hong Kong? Hadn't heard about money going to the US but Singapore is certainly getting a lot of transfers apparently.

[fraurosena]

Da faq? Trump wants to buy Greenland? Like the whole country?

I hope the Danes say “Nuuk, not having it!”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is what we get with a petulant toddler in the WH: "Governing by grievance, Trump wields official powers against political enemies"

Spoiler

By pressuring the Israeli government to bar entry by two members of Congress, President Trump once again used the power and platform of his office to punish his political rivals.

It’s a pattern that has intensified during the first two and a half years of Trump’s presidency, as he has increasingly governed to the tune of his grievances.

The president has grounded a military jet set for use by the Democratic House speaker, yanked a security clearance from a former CIA director critical of him, threatened to withhold disaster aid from states led by Democrats, pushed to reopen a criminal investigation targeting Hillary Clinton and publicly called for federal action to punish technology and media companies he views as biased against him.

Taken as a whole, Trump’s use of political power to pursue personal vendettas is unprecedented in modern history, said Matthew Dallek, a political historian who teaches at George Washington University.

“It’s both a sign of deep insecurity on his part and also just a litany of abuse of power,” he said. “I don’t think anyone really has done it as consistently or as viciously as Trump has. No one has used the power of the bully pulpit in such a public way.”

After Trump publicly and privately campaigned for the Israeli government to block Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) from visiting Israel this weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed himself on Thursday and announced the blockade due to the lawmakers’ support for a movement that calls for boycotting Israeli goods and services to protest Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

“It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit,” Trump tweeted before Netanyahu’s announcement. “They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a disgrace!”

The president’s unusual intervention encouraging a foreign ally to bar American lawmakers from visiting — and his unfounded claim that the two congresswomen hate Jews — underscore the scorched-earth approach he is taking toward his 2020 reelection bid.

“Representatives Omar and Tlaib are the face of the Democrat Party, and they HATE Israel!” Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

As Trump has become more attuned to the powers of the presidency over time, he has shown a greater willingness to wield them against his perceived enemies. A wave of midterm victories last year by Democrats, who gained control of the House, also coincided with Trump’s increasing vindictiveness in office.

In January, during a partial government shutdown that ultimately stretched for five weeks, Trump denied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a military plane she had been planning to use to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative,” Trump in a letter to Pelosi just hours before she was set to take off.

As commander in chief, Trump has the ability to ground military aircraft — a power that has not been used by previous presidents to target members of Congress seeking to visit U.S. troops abroad.

Trump’s letter to Pelosi came one day after she used her new authority as speaker to postpone Trump’s scheduled State of the Union address. She cited the ongoing government shutdown in announcing the delay.

“He’s willing to break any norm and abuse any power to cater to his most hard-right supporters,” said Dallek.

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented several instances in which Trump sought to pressure the Department of Justice to pursue a criminal investigation into his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, for her use of a private email server. In his report, Mueller found that Trump encouraged then-attorney general Jeff Sessions in 2017 to reverse his recusal from any Clinton-related matters to pursue new charges.

The FBI closed its investigation into Clinton’s email practices in 2016 without charges, a decision Trump pledged as a candidate to reverse. Sessions did not reverse his recusal but did assign the U.S. attorney in Utah, John Huber, to examine the Clinton investigation. Trump fired Sessions in November.

Democrats, some of whom have called for Trump’s impeachment, have said his attempts to have Clinton prosecuted represent a clear example of abuse of power.

Trump has also wielded his authority over the federal budget to intervene in spending decisions related to various natural disasters. He has publicly shown disdain toward disaster-stricken states where Democrats outnumber Republicans, and in some cases threatened to withhold disaster funding from them.

As historic wildfires ravaged California earlier this year, Trump lamented the amount of money the federal government was spending to provide relief.

“Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen,” Trump tweeted in January. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!”

FEMA did not ultimately end its disaster funding for California, but the threat alone sparked outrage among Democrats.

After hurricanes crushed the island of Puerto Rico in 2017, Trump also personally intervened to block aid funding. For weeks, as Congress debated a disaster aid package earlier this year, Trump told his advisers that he did not want any additional funds going to Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory where the government estimates about 3,000 people died after Hurricane Maria.

The mayor of San Juan had been publicly critical of Trump’s response to the hurricane, leading the president to call her out on Twitter.

The Mueller investigation into Russian election interference has also led Trump to test the bounds of presidential power.

Last year, Trump moved to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, who had become a leading critic of the president. The White House also released a list of other former officials whose security clearances were under review. All were public critics of Trump, who as president has sole authority to deny security clearances from current and former officials.

Trump, who also has exclusive authority to declassify government records, used his power last year to give Republicans access to secret documents related to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The president also voiced support for ousting Justice Department officials who were involved in the Russia investigation.

Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department last week alleging that Trump used his position to force out Justice Department officials not seen as loyal to the president. McCabe was fired shortly before he was set to retire with a full pension.

“It was Trump’s unconstitutional plan and scheme to discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him,” the lawsuit alleged.

Trump and his allies have accused Democrats of using their political power to target him in unprecedented ways. He has regularly complained of “presidential harassment” and branded the Mueller investigation as an effort by Democrats and bureaucrats to frustrate his nascent administration.

“Every day, they sue me for something,” Trump said Tuesday during a speech to construction workers at a petrochemicals plant in Pennsylvania. “I got sued on a thing called ‘emoluments.’ Emoluments. You ever hear the word? Nobody ever heard of it before.”

Trump has also targeted companies, including Google, Twitter, Amazon, CNN and Facebook — calling for investigations or signing executive orders that all but explicitly single out the firms. He has threatened to use antitrust laws and other executive authority to go after the companies — which he has accused of political bias. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

Trump’s intervention in Israel’s decision about whether to let Tlaib and Omar visit — and to take a position against the U.S. lawmakers — was an especially aggressive move, said Dallek.

It comes as Trump has increasingly been accused of racism, with polls showing a majority of Americans view him as a racist.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump called for a ban of all Muslims seeking to enter the United States. His push to ban the only two Muslim women in Congress from traveling to Israel comes just weeks after he suggested Omar, Tlaib and two other progressive minority lawmakers to “go back” to other countries.

Michael McFaul, a U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, said the decision could ultimately backfire on Israel.

“Trump will not be president forever,” he said on Twitter. “The people of Israel who care about preserving US-Israeli ties might want to remind their prime minister of that obvious fact.”

 

[fraurosena]

Guess who’s to blame for the tanking economy? Nah, not Trump! Never him!

Last week he blamed the Fed, and now he’s pointing to his old arch enemy: the press. Won’t be long before we hear that Clinton, Obama, AOC, China, Europe, Mexico, the Democrats and last, but certainly not least, brown immigrants are to blame. But never Trump.

[GreyhoundFan]

Good grief: "'You have no choice but to vote for me,' Trump tells N.H. rally"

Spoiler

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Even as markets show signs of a coming recession, President Donald Trump told New Hampshire voters Thursday that they had to support his re-election campaign or suffer the economic consequences.

“I won the election, the markets went up thousands of points, things started happening,” Trump said at a rally here. “If, for some reason, I were not to have won the election, these markets would have crashed. That will happen even more so in 2020. You have no choice but to vote for me, because your 401(k), everything is going to be down the tubes.”

“Whether you love me or hate me, you have got to vote for me,” he added.

Trump, appearing at his first campaign stop in New Hampshire this year, delivered a wide-ranging speech lasting more than 90 minutes that addressed Hillary Clinton’s emails, eradicating the AIDS epidemic and the prospects of the nearly two dozen Democrats running for president against him.

“You’ve got Pocahontas is rising. You’ve got Kamala, Kamala is falling. You’ve got Beto, Beto is like, gone. We’ll see what happens. Whoever it is, I don’t know that it matters,” Trump said, referring to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, before turning to former Vice President Joe Biden: “I think Sleepy Joe might be able to limp across the finish line, maybe. … I sort of hope it’s him.”

The president received his largest applause of the night when he pledged his support for gun ownership, even though he has repeatedly said he is seriously considering several changes to tighten gun restrictions following a police shooting in Pennsylvania, and two deadly mass shootings in Ohio and Texas in recent weeks.

“It’s not the gun that pulls the trigger. It’s the person holding the gun,” Trump said, receiving a standing ovation from the crowd of about 10,000 in the SNHU Arena when he called gun violence a mental health problem. “We can’t make it hard for good, solid, law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.”

Trump repeated his vows to use new scientific breakthroughs to end AIDS within the next decade, though some say his administration’s policies will make that goal more difficult.

“We will achieve new breakthroughs in science and medicine, ending in the AIDS epidemic in America, and finding new cures for childhood cancer,” he said. “And something I never thought I’d be able to say: Within one decade, the AIDS epidemic in the United States will be gone. In 10 years, the AIDS epidemic will be eradicated. So great. Who thought that was going to be happening? Who thought I would be able to get to say that?”

When Trump briefly mentioned Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), several members of the crowd began a chant of “send her back,” but it did not catch on. He has repeatedly clashed with Omar and a group of progressive, first-year lawmakers in recent weeks, after making racist statements about them. Earlier Thursday, Israeli leaders barred Omar from the country after Trump lobbied them to deny her entry.

A chant that did catch on with the crowd was “lock her up,” when Trump mentioned Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, and her emails, and took the crowd through the wins and losses on his 2016 electoral map.

As Trump was laying out his electoral map, he shared a story about Michigan, a state he narrowly won in 2016. Trump’s own polling has shown him falling behind in the battleground state.

“Five or six years before I even thought about running, for whatever reason, they named me man of the year in Michigan. I said how come? I didn't even understand it myself,” Trump said. The president has previously used this anecdote in speeches, though it is unclear whether Trump ever received that award.

“I wasn't even political,” Trump added. “But I was always complaining that our car business was being stolen. I mean it's sort of obvious right? Mexico now has 32 percent of our car business. It all left. We are bringing it back at a level that nobody's ever seen before.”

The Trump campaign views New Hampshire as another battleground state in the 2020 general election. Clinton won New Hampshire in 2016, and the president is making a play to turn it red in the next election.

“New Hampshire, you have a reputation. Very, very elegant state. You’re not acting it tonight, and that’s a good thing,” Trump said to the enthusiastic crowd. “New Hampshire was taken away from us [in 2016] but we did great in New Hampshire. We should’ve won in New Hampshire.”

The president also mentioned another race shaping up in New Hampshire. Corey Lewandowski, who was fired as Trump’s campaign manager but remains close to the president, may run for Senate in the Granite State. The two spoke about the race on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

As he stood before the crowd, Trump lavished praise on Lewandowski, but he stopped short of outright endorsing him.

“I think he’d be tough to beat. I’ll tell you one thing: He’s gonna go into Washington and he’s gonna have you in mind,” Trump said, adding that Lewandowski would be “fantastic.”

But in the next breath, the president conveyed that he wasn’t yet making a declaration of support.

“People ask if I’ll support him and I say, ‘I don’t know if he’s running,’” the president said, before turning to his former aide. “Corey, let us know, please.”

Lewandowski greeted the president upon his arrival at the Manchester airport. He and his family briefly joined Trump on Air Force One. The president departed the airport with Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican. Sununu, who faces a potentially competitive 2020 reelection bid, has relayed concerns about Lewandowski to party leadership.

During the rally, the president also gave a shout-out to Republican New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, who has previously called for Clinton to face a firing squad.

Early on in his speech, the president briefly stopped his remarks when a protester interrupted him. “Go home, start exercising,” Trump taunted as police escorted the man out of the crowd. “That guy’s got a serious weight problem,” he said, though the protesters appeared to be thin.

In the next breath, the president said his campaign was part a movement “built on love.”

Even the thought of listening to his crap for 90 minutes makes my ears bleed.

 

A little more on the NH klan/pep rally:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

More cheating by the orange menace:

 

[AmericanRose]

I think a lot of his base would be okay with Trump cheating on his taxes, since they think they shouldn't have to pay any anyway. They would just view him as 'smart'.

[front hugs > duggs]

26 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

More cheating by the orange menace:

 

I may or may not live all too close to the golf course... Suddenly I feel an urge to go steal a few sheep 

[mamallama]

I'm so pissed.  I can't get farm assessed and I have 5 horses.

[fraurosena]

39 minutes ago, mamallama said:

I'm so pissed.  I can't get farm assessed and I have 5 horses.

Yeah, well, maybe you should start lying and cheating, embezzling and tantrum-tweeting. Then, run for office by race-baiting, paying lip service to evangelicals, taking money from the NRA, and working for Russia. That would do the trick nicely, I think.

Oh, and change your name to papallama. None of that weak, wishy-washy wimmin stuff.

[fraurosena]

Next he’ll say this is Germany. 1939.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump has a dream team for mismanaging a recession"

Spoiler

President Trump inherited a good economy, and for roughly 2½ years managed (mostly) not to mess it up. As with his business empire, he also somehow convinced much of the public that this windfall was due to his personal talents rather than luck.

But right now his luck — and ours — might be running out.

Bond markets are flashing warning signs. Stock prices are whipsawing. Some troubling economic data are rolling in, both here and abroad. All this suggests that the risk of a U.S. recession is rising.

Trump seems to be worried about getting blamed for what is coming. For months, he has been setting up the Federal Reserve as a scapegoat — including for market swings caused by his own foolish trade wars. When stocks go up, Trump claims full credit; when they go down, it’s the Fed’s fault. Personal responsibility and all that.

My view on what he (and the rest of us) should be fixed on is slightly different. If indeed we have a downturn, Trump might or might not be the cause; the exact triggers of recession are often hard to pinpoint. But you know what would unequivocally be his fault, rather than fickle fortune?

A badly mismanaged recession. Which seems inevitable if, indeed, recession strikes.

If things go south, this administration doesn’t have a plan. It never had a plan. And it doesn’t have competent personnel in place to come up with a plan.

Trump’s economic brain trust consists of a guy who plays an economist on TV, a crank  who has been disowned by the (real) economics profession and the producer of “The Lego Batman Movie.”

For those unfamiliar with this particular dream team, the first person on that list is National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, an affable former CNBC personality. Kudlow has one skill that actually could be useful in a crisis: being able to communicate clearly to financial markets. That skill has been rendered moot, however, by Trump’s inability to settle on any consistent message worthy of communicating.

Next is senior White House aide and trade adviser Peter Navarro. When profiled in the New Yorker in 2016, Navarro could not name a single other economist who agreed with his views on trade. More recently, he suggested the Wall Street Journal editorial page sounded communist.

That’s a first, for sure.

And finally, there’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Bankrolling “Suicide Squad” and other movies — whatever their artistic merits — and earning the coveted title of greatest sycophant in Cabinet history bear little relevance to rescuing the world from economic crisis.

Moreover, Mnuchin’s Treasury Department is rife with vacancies. Many senior jobs lack even a nominee. There is likewise no nominee for the Senate-confirmed job of chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. The acting chair is a health expert.

Not that we should expect Trump, who reportedly disregards briefings that don’t feature his name in every paragraph, to take the wise counsel of aides even if it were on offer. Indeed, the scary question is not whether there are any smart people in meetings with Trump, but if there’s one he would even listen to.

The only competent economic policymakers we have right now are over at the Fed, an institution that Trump is spending all his energy trying to discredit. He has done this by questioning Fed officials’ abilities (a theme of his blow-by-blow tweetstorm of Wednesday’s market rout, which referred to Trump’s own hand-picked Fed chair as “clueless”); and he’s done it by compromising the central bank’s perceived political independence.

Whenever the Fed has refused to bend to Trump’s will, he (alongside other members of his team) has taken to the airwaves to complain, in violation of a multi-decade-long norm for the White House to never comment on monetary policy. This means that even if Fed officials cut interest rates further next month solely because they believe that would be best for the economy — which in my view, would be the only reason this group of professionals would ever cut rates — at least some Fed-watchers will instead interpret the action as a response to the president’s bullying.

In other words, regardless of what the Fed does, Trump is eroding its credibility just when we need it most.

Additionally, with interest rates already low and some powers taken away by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Fed also has fewer tools at its disposal than in recessions past. Fiscal policy, too, is somewhat limited. Trump already spent nearly $2 trillion on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, leaving relatively little powder left in the keg when we’ll actually need it.

Trump — like the rest of us — had better hope and pray that we don’t have a recession anytime soon. Because if we do, it’s gonna be bad.

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Next he’ll say this is Germany. 1939.

Hold on a minute! Quoting myself here because I've just had an epiphany about this.

If Trump says he's from Germany, in other words, born there... Well, then he is exactly what he claimed Obama to be: not a US born citizen. Therefore he's not eligible to be POTUS. Ergo, he must be removed from office worthwith.

[Ozlsn]

21 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Da faq? Trump wants to buy Greenland? Like the whole country?

I hope the Danes say “Nuuk, not having it!”

 

Well it's pretty far north, likely to end up with a better climate and still able to grow food as climate change progresses, is an island and more easily defendable... I don't think it's being bought for the US so much as for the 1% who are looking ahead and seeing pitchfork wielding hungry mobs.

I do like the Berkowitz satire article though: Denmark offers to buy US.

[GreyhoundFan]

I love these two takes on Dumpy's Greenland dream:

 

 

[fraurosena]

People have to be blackmailed into attending Trump's hate speeches.

Trump's large union crowd at Shell was given the option of not showing up — and not getting paid

Quote

The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.

“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.

“NO SCAN, NO PAY,” a supervisor for that contractor wrote.

That company and scores of other contractors on site and their labor employees all have their own contracts with Shell. Several said the contracts stipulate that to get paid, workers must be onsite.

Those who decided not to come to the site for the event would have an excused but non-paid absence, the company said, and would not qualify for overtime pay on Friday.

Shell spokesman Ray Fisher explained that the workers onsite have a 56-hour workweek, with 16 hours of overtime built in. That means those workers who attended Mr. Trump’s speech and showed up for work Friday, meeting the overtime threshold, were being paid at a rate of time and a half, while those who didn’t go to hear the president were being paid the regular rate, despite the fact that both groups did not do work on the site Tuesday.

“This is just what Shell wanted to do and we went along with it,” said Ken Broadbent, business manager for Steamfitters local 449.

The local has 2,400 workers on the site and Mr. Broadbent said he would not “bad rap about it one way or another.”

“We’re glad to have the jobs. We’re glad to have the project built,” he said. “The president is the president whether we like him or dislike him. We respect him for the title.”

Mr. Broadbent said anyone who did not want to show up to work that day was free to do so. “This is America,” he said.

One union leader reached Friday who asked not to be named because he did not want to make trouble for his workers said one day of work might amount to about $700 in pay, benefits and a per diem payment that out-of-town workers receive.

Mr. Fisher said Friday that “this was treated as a paid training day with a guest speaker who happened to be the president.”

He said workers engaged in “safety training and other activities” in the morning.

“It’s not uncommon for us to shut down the site for quarterly visits from VIPs — popular sports figures like Rocky Bleier and Franco Harris have visited the site to engage with workers and to share inspirational messages. Shell/Penske NASCAR driver Joey Logano was another guest at the site,” Mr. Fisher said.

Several union leaders said they were not consulted about the arrangement before it was sent out.

The contractor's talking points, preparing his workers for the event read:

“No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event. An underlying theme of the event is to promote good will from the unions. Your building trades leaders and jobs stewards have agreed to this.”

Mr. Trump received a generally warm and at times cheerful welcome at Shell, where he praised natural gas extraction in Appalachia and talked about his political grievances and name-called some opponents.

Shell will process natural gas into plastic pellets when the plant is operational.

The president also called out union leadership, which Shell had requested to be in attendance.

“I’m going to speak to some of your union leaders to say, ‘I hope you’re going to support Trump.’ OK?” he said. “And if they don’t, vote them the hell out of office because they’re not doing their job.”

More than a dozen unions work at the Shell site, the largest construction project in the state.

 

 

[fraurosena]

Fake it until you make it doesn't seem to be working for Trump. 

 

[Howl]

Just came across this.  Apparently, there was frantic and very bad photoshopping going on to show a full arena at Trump's latest "rally."  The reason there was not a massive crowd was due to this guy, and it's a brilliant strategy: 

 

[Ozlsn]

9 hours ago, Howl said:

Just came across this.  Apparently, there was frantic and very bad photoshopping going on to show a full arena at Trump's latest "rally."  The reason there was not a massive crowd was due to this guy, and it's a brilliant strategy: 

 

I take it the seats are free? They're either going to start making them first come to the door, first served or charging more. 

But yeah not bad as a strategy. If they do make them first come etc you could try and get people to show, go to the rally... and not react how they want. Stay silent. Boo. Turn their backs. Sit with arms crossed, glaring.

[formergothardite]

12 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

But yeah not bad as a strategy. If they do make them first come etc you could try and get people to show, go to the rally... and not react how they want. Stay silent. Boo. Turn their backs. Sit with arms crossed, glaring.

Ruining his rallies would be a good way to get to him. He counts on those to pump himself up and feed his need for adoration. If there are empty stadiums or people who silently glare back it would send him into a spiral of insane(more than his normal insane) behavior. 

I think silence would get to him more than booing. A stadium with bunches of people staring in silence would really get under his skin. 

[thoughtful]

34 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

 bunches of people staring in silence would really get under his skin. 

Spoiler

 

[Ozlsn]

4 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Ruining his rallies would be a good way to get to him. He counts on those to pump himself up and feed his need for adoration. If there are empty stadiums or people who silently glare back it would send him into a spiral of insane(more than his normal insane) behavior. 

I think silence would get to him more than booing. A stadium with bunches of people staring in silence would really get under his skin. 

I really, really, really want this to happen now. The meltdown would be epic. The tweets - can you imagine? The frantic photoshopping of cheering crowds. The MAGA few who got in trying to boost it and getting less traction than a cheer squad at an away game. 

[fraurosena]

The only people cheering and attempting to chant would be his own plants in the audience. A single person here, another there. They’ll stick out like a sore thumb.

Oh, the meltdown would be epic. The only thing Trump is actually terminably good at is whipping up a crowd. That’s why he loves it so much. It strokes his fragile ego. Finally, something that he doesn’t fail at...

[BernRul]

I think it's safe to say that there will be a recession. Aside from the Dow dropping, it's been predicted as coming soon for years; we've had over ten years of growth, if I recall correctly, which can't last forever. Add to that economic uncertainty like the trade war with China and UK's likely no-deal Brexit coming soon (not entirely sure how much UK's economy would impact the larger world, just that when large nations have recessions they usually pull other countries with them), there's no reason to think that we won't get one.

Now, obviously I don't want to see people get financially hurt by this/lose their jobs. But for a long time, I've had to listen to countless people go, "Oh the economy is good so Trump will definitely be re-elected don't delude yourself otherwise." So there is a part of me, that is happy to see that the economy may no longer be a point in Trump's favor. Even if the recession doesn't hit until after the 2020 election (anyone notice the pattern of Republican presidents causing a recession with a Dem prez to clean it up?) the recession narrative/fears of one coming might be enough to take the economy away as a point in Trump's favor. 

Without the economy, he has nothing. Good luck winning back independents and "never-Clinton" voters. And good luck getting PA to stay red.

Edited August 18, 2019 by BernRul