Trump 44: Finally on Trial

[mamallama]

OMG, @GreyhoundFanI just got rid of a bad case of hiccups and you made me laugh so hard they're back.

 

[fraurosena]

The only thing Trump is good at is bullying people. And even that never exceeds the level of a not very bright five year old.

Although it is fitting that draft-dodging Cadet Bone-spurs is so obviously afraid of Purple Heart recipient Lieutenant Colonel Vindman.

[Smash!]

He cares about the evangelicals not being registered but makes it as hard as possible to vote for everyone else and especially those who won't vote in his favour. Fuck fuck you 45!!!

Alexandra Chalupa's answer is worth mentioning. This woman sees right through it. No wonder she gets death threats.

[Smash!]

[Smash!]

This is a very important thread and I've been guilty as well for spreading alarmism here.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

He's the bigliest: "President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days"

Spoiler

In 2017, President Trump made nearly 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added another 5,689, for a total of 7,688.

Now, with a few weeks still left in 2019, the president already has more than doubled the total number of false or misleading claims in just a single year.

As of Dec. 10, his 1,055th day in office, Trump had made 15,413 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That’s an average of more than 32 claims a day since our last update 62 days ago.

In fact, October and November of this year rank as the second- and third-biggest months for Trumpian claims. They are exceeded only by October 2018, when Trump barnstormed the country in a desperate — and unsuccessful — effort to thwart a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives. Both Octobers had more than 1,100 claims, with an average of nearly 40 claims a day.

A key reason for this year’s jump: The uproar over Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25 — in which he urged an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival — and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. Nearly 600 of the false or misleading claims made by the president in the past two months relate just to the Ukraine investigation.

The president apparently believes he can weather an impeachment trial through sheer repetition of easily disproven falsehoods.

For instance, more than 60 times he has claimed that the whistleblower complaint about the call was inaccurate. The report accurately captured the content of Trump’s call and many other details have been confirmed. Eighty times, Trump has claimed his phone call with the Ukrainian president was “perfect,” even though it so alarmed other White House officials that several immediately raised private objections. This is a talking point that even Trump’s Republican defenders have trouble repeating.

Three claims about the Ukraine investigation have now made it on our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. (It takes 20 repeats of a Three or Four Pinocchio claim to merit a Bottomless Pinocchio, and there are now 30 entries.) Besides the claim about the whistleblower, the two other claims on the Bottomless Pinocchio list are that Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating his son Hunter and that Hunter Biden scored $1.5 billion in China after hitching a ride on Air Force Two with his father.

Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged nearly 15 such claims a day.

About one in five of these claims are about the economy or jobs.

As he approaches a tough reelection campaign, Trump’s most repeated claim — 242 times — is that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Trump’s trade wars, with the manufacturing sector in an apparent recession.

About one in six of Trump’s claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that increased earlier in the year when the government was partially shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his second-most repeated claim — 235 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and mostly repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.” He tried to redirect funds from other projects but run into trouble with the courts. The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump’s claims that it is impossible to get past. As of October, the Trump administration had acquired just 16 percent of the private land in Texas it needs to build the president’s border barrier, with less than four miles completed.

Trump has falsely said 181 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history — bigger than Ronald Reagan’s in 1981. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line at the president’s rallies.

On 175 occasions, Trump has claimed the United States has “lost” money on trade deficits. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of economics. Countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates.

The president frequently offers inflated estimates for trade deficits with various countries and insists they are being reduced on his watch, even though they are climbing.

The president’s constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals. Nearly 20 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from his itchy Twitter finger.

Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded nearly 400 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times.

Even as Trump’s fact-free statements proliferate, there is evidence that his approach is failing.

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans believe many of his most-common false statements, according to a Washington Post Fact Checker poll published in 2018. Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers — about 1 in 6 adults in the survey — did large majorities accept several, although not all, of his falsehoods as true.

The award-winning database website, created by graphics reporter Leslie Shapiro, has an extremely fast search engine that will quickly locate suspect statements the president has made. We encourage readers to explore it in detail. We recently added a new feature that provides a URL for every claim that is fact-checked, allowing readers to post the link on social media.

We intend to publish our next update of our count on Jan. 20, the third anniversary of Trump’s inauguration.

 

[candygirl200413]

It's sooo annoying how they(media) say false/misleading, they are all just LIES!!!

[GreyhoundFan]

Maybe he'll have the stroke or heart attack that have seemed almost inevitable:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

You couldn't make this up:

 

[fraurosena]

49 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You couldn't make this up:

 

Yeah, I saw that article. I thought it was vaguely familiar. Then I noticed the date, and It's from 2017. 

It still shows his inability to admit a loss though, and the lengths he will go to in order to make believe he didn't. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

29 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Yeah, I saw that article. I thought it was vaguely familiar. Then I noticed the date, and It's from 2017. 

He likes to repeat his lies...so I wouldn't be surprised if he says it again this year.

[fraurosena]

Because I know a lot of you can't stand to listen to the mango moron's voice, I've transcribed what he says so you can take on the challenge and make sense of his rant.

Quote

 

Woman: You did it till you got it done, and you won. And by turn we get to win. Because we're gonna get to keep our family farms and we're gonna keep South Dakota wonderful, so I appreciate that.

Trump: It's a great place, and you're also going to have a very exciting Fourth of July...

Woman: We are! We're going to have fireworks, and, and I'm hoping you will...

Trump (interrupting): For many years, for many years...

[unintelligible crosstalk]

Trump: We're gonna think about it, Mount Rushmore. They ended the fireworks - how many years ago? Long time.

Woman: Well it was at least ten years ago... umm... ehh...

Trump: Nobody knows why. But you just couldn't have it, and now you're gonna have fireworks and the governor called and she said 'You gotta do me a favour', right? And we worked it out and we got it done and you're gonna have fireworks and I appreciate what you said on the trade deals earlier. They're incredible deals.

Woman: They are.

Trump: And they're big. And they're big, and every once in a while you'll hear a critic, uhh.. there's never been deals like this big, but you have some globalists, you know, they want us to lose money. Sometimes you have a globalist get on our watchit (?).. uhhh, who cares about the United States, let us lose money-- I'm the opposite. When I have deficits, I don't like deficits, you have some people who don't mind deficits but deficits-- I don't like factories closing and plants closing in this country going to another country taking our jobs.. so, uhh, I've never been really one to uh, one to wanna put up with it even, I've been watching it, it's probably one of the reasons I'm president. I've watched that for so many years where [Trump abruptly turns  to someone on the other side of the table]  your factories or your plants all over whether it's Indiana or any other state, even you Asa, right? Every once in a while they close one over there but it was, the fact is, uh, I would watch as they close plants, everybody gets fired. They move to Mexico or some other place, including CHINA, and in China they don't move, they just buy the product, and ehhh, some people are happy but, no, not me. We keep our jobs, they're moving back, the agreements very tough, the USMCA is very, very tough it's very hard to move economically, it makes it really prohibitive [whoah, big word!] to get out. That was very important to me. But no, I'm not a globalist.

 

 

[Dandruff]

Plants close and people lose jobs but we have Mt. Rushmore and fireworks?

[laPapessaGiovanna]

1 hour ago, Dandruff said:

Plants close and people lose jobs but we have Mt. Rushmore and fireworks?

But he's not a globalist!

[fraurosena]

Pence’s face though. I thought only fundie women were supposed to have that adoring attentive helpmeet look for their husband... but that is exactly how Pence looks at Trump. It’s rather disconcerting to see, actually.

[fraurosena]

When even Russia is making fun of you...

Will they also take McConnell, Collins, Nunes, Jordan, Stefanik, Graham, Pence, Mulvaney, Barr, Pompeo, and all their other agents too?

[fraurosena]

Oh, snap!

 

[fraurosena]

We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated

Quote

Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics. As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character.

That’s why we are announcing the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country’s story and values, and its people’s sacrifices and obligations. This effort transcends partisanship and is dedicated to nothing less than preservation of the principles that so many have fought for, on battlefields far from home and within their own communities.

This effort asks all Americans of all places, creeds and ways of life to join in the seminal task of our generation: restoring to this nation leadership and governance that respects the rule of law, recognizes the dignity of all people and defends the Constitution and American values at home and abroad.

Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line. We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort.

The 2020 general election, by every indication, will be about persuasion, with turnout expected to be at record highs. Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House.

The American presidency transcends the individuals who occupy the Oval Office. Their personality becomes part of our national character. Their actions become our actions, for which we all share responsibility. Their willingness to act in accordance with the law and our tradition dictate how current and future leaders will act. Their commitment to order, civility and decency are reflected in American society.

Mr. Trump fails to meet the bar for this commitment. He has neither the moral compass nor the temperament to serve. His vision is limited to what immediately faces him — the problems and risks he chronically brings upon himself and for which others, from countless contractors and companies to the American people, ultimately bear the heaviest burden.

But this president’s actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities. 

Indeed, national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.

Congressional Republicans have embraced and copied Mr. Trump’s cruelty and defended and even adopted his corruption. Mr. Trump and his enablers have abandoned conservatism and longstanding Republican principles and replaced it with Trumpism, an empty faith led by a bogus prophet. In a recent survey, a majority of Republican voters reported that they consider Mr. Trump a better president than Lincoln.

Mr. Trump and his fellow travelers daily undermine the proposition we as a people have a responsibility and an obligation to continually bend the arc of history toward justice. They mock our belief in America as something more meaningful than lines on a map.

Our peril far outstrips any past differences: It has arrived at our collective doorstep, and we believe there is no other choice. We sincerely hope, but are not optimistic, that some of those Republicans charged with sitting as jurors in a likely Senate impeachment trial will do likewise.

American men and women stand ready around the globe to defend us and our way of life. We must do right by them and ensure that the country for which they daily don their uniform deserves their protection and their sacrifice.

We are reminded of Dan Sickles, an incompetent 19th-century New York politician. On July 2, 1863, his blundering nearly ended the United States. 

(Sickles’s greatest previous achievement had been fatally shooting his wife’s lover across the street from the White House and getting himself elected to Congress. Even his most fervent admirers could not have imagined that one day, far in the future, another incompetent New York politician, a president, would lay claim to that legacy by saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.)

On that day in Pennsylvania, Sickles was a major general commanding the Union Army’s III Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg, and his incompetence wrought chaos and danger. The Confederate Army took advantage, and turned the Union line. Had the rebel soldiers broken through, the continent might have been divided: free and slave, democratic and authoritarian.

Another Union general, Winfield Scott Hancock, had only minutes to reinforce the line. America, the nation, the ideal, hung in the balance. Amid the fury of battle, he found the First Minnesota Volunteers. 

They charged, and many of them fell, suffering a staggeringly high casualty rate. They held the line. They saved the Union. Four months later, Lincoln stood on that field of slaughter and said, “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration. He understood the necessity of not just saving the Union, but also of knitting the nation back together spiritually as well as politically. But those wounds can be bound up only once the threat has been defeated. So, too, will our country have to knit itself back together after the scourge of Trumpism has been overcome.

 

[Howl]

The Rick Wilson nails it. 

 

[fraurosena]

Speaking of Rick Wilson... (and George Conway and others)

Trump's conservative critics launch PAC to fight re-election

Quote

A small group of President Donald Trump's fiercest conservative critics, including the husband of the president's own chief adviser, is launching a super PAC designed to fight Trump's re-election and punish congressional Republicans deemed his “enablers."

The new organization, known as the Lincoln Project, represents a formal step forward for the so-called Never Trump movement, which has been limited largely to social media commentary and cable news attacks through the first three years of Trump's presidency. Organizers report fundraising commitments exceeding $1 million to begin, although they hope to raise and spend much more to fund a months-long advertising campaign in a handful of 2020 battleground states to persuade disaffected Republican voters to break from Trump's GOP.

The mission, as outlined in a website that launched Tuesday coinciding with a New York Times opinion piece, is simple: “Defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.”

The group is led by a seven-person advisory council that features some of the GOP's most vocal Trump critics. Most, but not all, have already left the Republican Party to protest Trump's rise.

The principals include former John McCain adviser Steve Schmidt, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich adviser John Weaver, former New Hampshire GOP chair Jennifer Horn, veteran Republican operative Rick Wilson and George Conway, a conservative attorney and husband of Trump's chief counselor Kellyanne Conway.

In an interview, George Conway said that he encouraged the new super PAC to involve Anonymous, an unnamed Trump administration official who authored a recent book warning the public against Trump's reelection. The rest of the group ultimately decided not to take Conway's suggestion.

“I think the more the merrier,” George Conway told The Associated Press. “And I hope maybe he — he or she, I don’t know who Anonymous is — will come out someday and join the effort. Because everyone who believes as we do that Donald Trump is a cancer on the presidency and on the Constitution needs to help and join this effort.”

The inception of the Lincoln Project is significant, but to say it represents a minority of Trump's Republican Party would be an understatement. Roughly 9 in 10 Republican voters approved of the president's job performance and have all year, according to Gallup. And with very few exceptions, Trump has the public backing of virtually every Republican member of Congress.

Yet recent elections suggest that Trump's party is losing ground with educated voters and women, particularly in America's suburbs, which have traditionally leaned Republican. This new group hopes to push those voters further toward the Democrats.

It is very much a work in progress, despite Tuesday's official launch. While the core players don't yet have titles, day-to-day operations will be led by Horn and Reed Galen, a veteran Republican operative who worked for McCain but left the GOP after Trump's nomination in 2016.

The group begins as a super PAC, which means it can raise and spend unlimited sums of money and must disclose its donors.

“You’re seeing a shift from talk into action,” said Galen, describing the launch as “a big turning point for the political season and for the president’s re-election.”

Specifically, the group plans to focus on blocking Trump's re-election and defeating Trump-allied Senate candidates in a handful of key 2020 battlegrounds. To do so, it's targeting a narrow but important slice of the electorate: disaffected Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

While there is no concrete road map, Weaver said the organizers plan to fight the president's re-election in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin along with Arizona and North Carolina. Their Senate efforts likely would focus on Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Maine and possibly Kansas and Kentucky.

Weaver said the group is already reviewing scripts for new ads, which are expected to begin running early next year.

“This is organic, and we’re going to be flexible,” he said. “We have to go out and prove ourselves and prove that we can be efficient and effective.”

Meanwhile, George Conway, who formally left the GOP last year, said he likely would serve in a “cheerleader” capacity for the new organization because of his limited political experience.

“I'm not a fundraiser or political consultant, but if I could help in that way and learn how to do that — even to raise a nickel or two — I'll do it because it’s important,” he said. “For this, I think I can make an exception.”

He suggested the Lincoln Project would pay particular attention to Congress' impeachment proceedings.

“If he’s not removed by the Senate, he needs to be removed at the ballot box,” he said of Trump. “The people in Congress who are enabling him, either actively or passively, they, too, are violating their oaths of office. ... And they need to be removed, too.”

Ok. This paragraph from the article confirms it for me. Anonymous really is Kellyanne.

In an interview, George Conway said that he encouraged the new super PAC to involve Anonymous, an unnamed Trump administration official who authored a recent book warning the public against Trump's reelection. The rest of the group ultimately decided not to take Conway's suggestion.

[Howl]

Kellyanne is still making public appearances spouting Trump talking points and lies. She's there for a reason -- she's still an effective spokeswoman because she has (seemingly) a lot of conviction and the just right touch of arrogance to her Not Fox talking head hosts.  I think she's still a believer. 

[fraurosena]

8 minutes ago, Howl said:

I think she's still a believer. 

I beg to differ. I think she and George are playing both sides. That way their position in society is guaranteed, no matter who ends up in the Oval Office. If Trump is removed, or if he loses the election, then hey presto, Kellyanne is suddenly revealed to be Anonymous. If Trump wins next year, and the trumplicans keep hold of the Senate, Anonymous will slink into the background, never to be heard from again.

[Dandruff]

Does the Lincoln Project have enough fortitude and teeth to survive the inevitable pushback? 

I hope it really catches on.

[Smash!]

16 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I beg to differ. I think she and George are playing both sides. That way their position in society is guaranteed, no matter who ends up in the Oval Office. If Trump is removed, or if he loses the election, then hey presto, Kellyanne is suddenly revealed to be Anonymous. If Trump wins next year, and the trumplicans keep hold of the Senate, Anonymous will slink into the background, never to be heard from again.

I'm still on the verge if George Conway is sincere. We can use every Republican (he didn't suddenly turn Democrat) we can get on our side but we don't need someone who is playing someone he isn't. The reason why I doubt him is how can you stay married to someone who actively supports a President and a party who are destroying the very fundament of our freedom if you don't?

[fraurosena]

Just now, Smash! said:

I'm still on the verge if George Conway is sincere. We can use every Republican (he didn't suddenly turn Democrat) we can get on our side but we don't need someone who is playing someone he isn't. The reason why I doubt him is how can you stay married to someone who actively supports a President and a party who are destroying the very fundament of our freedom if you don't?

Neither one is sincere. Like I said, they are both playing both sides. They are looking out for themselves, no one and nothing else matters, and they don't really care which side wins in the end.