Trump 45

[GreyhoundFan]

We are a banana republic. I guess Democracy was nice while it lasted. "Post-impeachment, Trump declares himself the ‘chief law enforcement officer’ of America"

Spoiler

During his Senate impeachment trial, Democrats repeatedly asserted that President Trump is “not above the law.” But since his acquittal two weeks ago, analysts say, the president has taken a series of steps aimed at showing that, essentially, he is the law.

On Tuesday, Trump granted clemency to a clutch of political allies, circumventing the usual Justice Department process. The pardons and commutations followed Trump’s moves to punish witnesses in his impeachment trial, publicly intervene in a pending legal case to urge leniency for a friend, attack a federal judge, accuse a juror of bias and threaten to sue his own government for investigating him.

Trump defended his actions, saying he has the right to shape the country’s legal systems as he sees fit.

“I’m allowed to be totally involved,” he told reporters as he left Washington on Tuesday for a trip to California, Nevada and Arizona. “I’m actually, I guess, the chief law enforcement officer of the country. But I’ve chosen not to be involved.”

The president’s post-impeachment behavior has alarmed Attorney General William P. Barr, who has told people close to the president that he is willing to quit unless Trump stops publicly commenting on ongoing criminal matters, according to two administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. It also has appalled several legal experts and former officials, who have said his direct intervention in legal matters risks further politicizing law enforcement at a time of fraying confidence in the Justice Department.

More than 2,000 former Justice Department employees signed a public letter this week objecting to Trump’s public intervention in the case of his longtime friend Roger Stone, and urging Barr to resign. The head of the Federal Judges Association has called an emergency meeting to address growing concerns about political interference in the Stone case. And four prosecutors resigned from the case last week after Trump publicly decried their recommended prison sentence of seven to nine years for Stone and the Justice Department reversed course to lobby for a lower sentence.

A jury convicted Stone last year of lying to Congress and obstruction in a case that Trump has repeatedly condemned as unfair while leaving open the prospect of issuing a pardon for his friend and political ally.

Carmen Ortiz, the former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts under President Barack Obama, was among the signatories on the letter condemning Trump’s political interference in legal matters.

“I’ve worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations,” she said, “and I’ve just never seen behavior like what were seeing right now.”

Trump added to the sense of legal disarray Tuesday by granting executive clemency to a group of 11 people that included several political allies and others convicted of corruption, lying and fraud. Among the recipients of Trump’s largesse was Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who was convicted on corruption charges in 2011 related to trying to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat. His sentence was commuted. Financier Michael Milken, who was charged with insider trading in the 1980s, and Bernie Kerik, the former New York police commissioner jailed on eight felony charges, including tax fraud, were pardoned.

Trump said the pardons and commutations were based on “the recommendations of people that know them,” including Blagojevich’s wife, Patricia, who made a direct appeal to the president on Fox News.

Legal experts said that by relying on his personal connections rather than the Justice Department’s established review process for finding convicts deserving of clemency, Trump risked politicizing his pardon power.

“It’s a clemency process for the well-connected, and that’s it,” said Rachel Barkow, a professor and clemency expert at the New York University School of Law. “Trump is wielding the power the way you would expect the leader of a banana republic who wants to reward his friends and cronies.”

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s comments about the Stone case have caused the most concern. Trump has singled out the judge in the case, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for personal attacks, accusing her of bias and spreading a falsehood about her record. He has amplified Stone’s request for a new trial, accusing a member of the jury of being politically biased against him.

Though Barr has warned that the president’s unbridled commentary about ongoing criminal cases was making it “impossible for me to do my job,” Trump continued to express his views about legal matters Tuesday.

Trump told reporters that he partially agreed with Barr, acknowledging that his tweets do make the attorney general’s job more difficult. But he said he would continue tweeting nonetheless.

“Social media, for me, has been very important because it gives me a voice,” Trump said.

And he has made a direct connection between his own legal travails and those of Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress about his attempts to get details from Hillary Clinton’s private emails from the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.

Trump’s increasingly provocative comments raised the prospect that he might issue pardons for Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Since his impeachment acquittal, Trump has tried to portray the prosecutions of his allies as the illegitimate product of an illegitimate investigation by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 race.

Prosecutions stemming from the Mueller investigation are “badly tainted,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, and “should be thrown out.”

“If I wasn’t President, I’d be suing everyone all over the place,” Trump wrote. “BUT MAYBE I STILL WILL. WITCH HUNT!”

After learning that federal judges would be holding an emergency discussion about his intervention in legal cases, Trump tweeted that they should instead discuss the alleged shortcomings of the Mueller probe.

Trump’s constant commentary and increasing willingness to flout traditional legal processes signal that the president feels emboldened and unrestrained after Republicans voted almost unanimously to acquit him on impeachment charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, said Chris Whipple, author of “The Gatekeepers,” a history of White House chiefs of staff.

“It shows that Susan Collins was right — Trump has learned a lesson,” Whipple said, referring to a prediction by the Republican senator from Maine that Trump would be more cautious after impeachment. “The lesson he learned is that he’s unaccountable. He can do whatever he wants now with impunity.”

While some Republicans spoke out against Trump’s commutation for Blagojevich, the reaction from GOP lawmakers Tuesday was mostly muted. And there’s little to indicate that pardons for Stone or Flynn would lead to a significant Republican backlash.

Whipple said the president’s decision to pardon several of his political allies just before Stone is scheduled to be sentenced set the stage for an increasingly “dangerous” phase of Trump’s presidency.

“This is a president who thinks the law exists to be circumvented,” he said.

The next test of Trump’s willingness to intervene in the legal process could come as soon as Thursday, when Stone is set to be sentenced by Jackson. Asked Tuesday if he would issue a pardon for Stone, Trump demurred.

“I haven’t given it any thought. In the meantime, he’s going through a process,” Trump said. “But I think he’s been treated very unfairly.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I would have that the ratio would have been higher.

 

[fraurosena]

One thing about his belief that he is above the law and can get away with anything and everything: It shows him, and his cult exactly for what they are, and what they want and who benefits. Guess how that lands with the American public? Guess who they'll be voting for in the next elections? 

Pelosi was really strategic.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

More news from the "You get a pardon! And YOU get a pardon! Everybody gets a PARDON!!" department:

Assange Lawyer: Trump Offered Us a Deal

Quote

Um, what?

President Trump offered to pardon Julian Assange if he agreed to cover up the involvement of Russia in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee, which were later published by WikiLeaks, a London court was told on Wednesday….Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, said on Wednesday that a message had been passed on to Assange by former Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher…[It showed] “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange… said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”

Since this involves Trump and Dana Rohrabacher, I suppose it’s plausible no matter how crazy it seems. And apparently the judge in Assange’s extradition hearing agrees: she thought it plausible enough to rule it admissible.

Stay tuned, I guess. Though even if Assange somehow produced video evidence of Trump and Rohrabacher conspiring about this in the Oval Office, I have a feeling Republicans would just shrug and say that the president’s pardon power is absolute. So, you know, he did nothing wrong.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump keeps pardoning himself"

Spoiler

By this point, it’s no secret that President Trump’s pardons have been significantly more self-serving than those of other presidents. While his predecessors have lodged controversial pardons — no question — Trump is simply on another level. Not only has he pardoned his allies, but he has often pardoned people who cozy up to the powerful people around him, whether via Fox News or some other method.

But there’s another key aspect of Trump’s pardons that shouldn’t get lost: In many cases, there are significant similarities between the pardon recipient and Trump -- or at least Trump’s depiction of himself.

Back in August, as he was weighing the commutation of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s (D) sentence (which Trump granted Tuesday), Trump suggested that the phone call on which Blagojevich was caught talking about selling an appointment to the U.S. Senate wasn’t actually bad.

“He’s been in jail for seven years over a phone call where nothing happens — over a phone call which he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it was braggadocio, you would say,” Trump said in early August. “I would think that there have been many politicians — I’m not one of them, by the way — that have said a lot worse over the telephone.”

The irony of that comment wasn’t known at the time, but it practically slaps you in the face today. Just two weeks earlier, we now know, Trump had been on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky trying to get him to launch two investigations that carried political benefits for Trump. Even Trump’s Republican allies have said the whole thing was problematic, but Trump has steadily maintained that the call was “perfect.” Then on Tuesday, fresh off his acquittal in his impeachment trial, Trump has commuted the sentence of a politician whose most infamous crime is … talking about a corrupt exchange on a phone call. Is it any wonder that Trump would perhaps by uniquely sympathetic to Blagojevich’s supposed plight?

But Blagojevich isn’t the only recipient of clemency from Trump whose situation features some personal parallels.

Of the fewer than three dozen people who have received clemency from Trump, at least three of them are reportedly billionaires, like Trump claims to be. Trump previously pardoned the media-mogul author of a Trump hagiography, Conrad Black, and on Tuesday, Trump added former junk bond king Michael Milken and ex-San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr. There are an estimated 600 billionaires in the United States, and very few of them have gone to prison, but Trump has now pardoned three.

One of Trump’s earliest pardons was for conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza, like Trump, was a major proponent of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory about former president Barack Obama’s birthplace. He was also convicted of a campaign finance violation, which is the crime Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to and implicated Trump in.

Trump’s first pardon was for Joe Arpaio, who might be the most pronounced embodiment of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies in American politics. Arpaio’s crimes also involved disobeying a judge’s orders against racial profiling of suspected undocumented immigrants; Trump as a candidate in the months before the pardon advocated racial profiling and for a ban on Muslim immigration and, in one of his first acts as president, banned immigration from several majority-Muslim nations.

Several of Trump’s pardons also involve people who made false statements to investigators or obstructed justice, including I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Black and another man granted clemency Tuesday, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik. Trump has defended allies who lied to investigators and was personally the subject of extensive evidence of obstruction in the special counsel report. He has also repeatedly downplayed the severity of meddling in such investigations.

It’s perhaps understandable that a president would find cause to grant clemency to people whose situations carry certain parallels to his own. Trump’s sympathy for an immigration hard-liner and a conspiracy theorist, for example, would certainly be greater than that of your average politician. And if you think someone’s crimes aren’t as serious, it makes granting them a break much easier.

But the Blagojevich commutation and the dual billionaire pardons Tuesday drive home the idea that Trump may sometimes see himself in these pardons. That’s too much coincidence for one day. Trump has maintained before that he has the “absolute right” to pardon himself if need be. He kind of already has.

 

[SassyPants]

The US Senate gave Trump carte blanche.

[Ozlsn]

I have never really understood why the President has the power to grant pardons to be honest. It feels like a hold over from having a monarch. It's certainly something that can be and has been abused.

[Xan]

4 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

I have never really understood why the President has the power to grant pardons to be honest. It feels like a hold over from having a monarch. It's certainly something that can be and has been abused.

It isn't supposed to work this way.  In the past, the pardon has always been reviewed by the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the U. S. Department of Justice.  Donald, as usual, just doesn't care how things are supposed to go.

[Ozlsn]

25 minutes ago, Xan said:

It isn't supposed to work this way.  In the past, the pardon has always been reviewed by the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the U. S. Department of Justice.  Donald, as usual, just doesn't care how things are supposed to go.

It may not be supposed to work that way but I still find it odd. I would have thought it would need to go via the Supreme Court or a specialist court and be based on things like, I dunno, miscarriage of justice - not "oh this rich bloke got sprung but he's a good guy so we'll clear his record."

[GreyhoundFan]

Rick Wilson is good at the put-downs:

 

[Ozlsn]

So coming across from the JRod political discussion to ask a serious question. I joked in that thread that I was praying for Trump to drop dead (in the 'take a long walk off a short pier' sense) but what happens if he does in fact do that at this stage? What happens if (assuming he is the Republican candidate) he does it the morning of the election? I'm curious partly because I know in the 2000 election a person who had already died was elected  (this surprised us as if a candidate dies after the nomination period has closed but before the election - as has happened - the election for that position is postponed and a by-election held later once candidates have been declared etc. And yes, it has happened on the morning of the election). So does the election go ahead? Does whoever is VP get automatically elevated? What?

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

So coming across from the JRod political discussion to ask a serious question. I joked in that thread that I was praying for Trump to drop dead (in the 'take a long walk off a short pier' sense) but what happens if he does in fact do that at this stage? What happens if (assuming he is the Republican candidate) he does it the morning of the election? I'm curious partly because I know in the 2000 election a person who had already died was elected  (this surprised us as if a candidate dies after the nomination period has closed but before the election - as has happened - the election for that position is postponed and a by-election held later once candidates have been declared etc. And yes, it has happened on the morning of the election). So does the election go ahead? Does whoever is VP get automatically elevated? What?

Good question. We had that in happen in our country when one of our politicians was assassinated in 2002, a week before the elections. He got elected, overwhelmingly so (probably due to public sentiment and outrage at his murder). All of the votes went to his party, and they elected another candidate in his place. 

I don't know what the rules are in America, but I suspect they'd put the VP in his place. That's the purpose of a VP in the first place, to step in when the president is incapacitated.

A whole other question is what the public's reaction will be to his death -- especially on the morning of the elections. I'm quite sure the conspiracy theories that he was murdered by the deep state will take centre stage. No matter if it's patently obvious he died of natural causes or a suicide, arguments of foul play will surface the minute the news of his demise is made public. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

9 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

So coming across from the JRod political discussion to ask a serious question. I joked in that thread that I was praying for Trump to drop dead (in the 'take a long walk off a short pier' sense) but what happens if he does in fact do that at this stage? What happens if (assuming he is the Republican candidate) he does it the morning of the election? I'm curious partly because I know in the 2000 election a person who had already died was elected  (this surprised us as if a candidate dies after the nomination period has closed but before the election - as has happened - the election for that position is postponed and a by-election held later once candidates have been declared etc. And yes, it has happened on the morning of the election). So does the election go ahead? Does whoever is VP get automatically elevated? What?

The Washington Post actually addressed that question.  The answer is: it depends on when the person dies or withdraws.

Spoiler

As I was wrapping up a phone call with my mother recently, she mentioned she had just one more question for me: Exactly what happens if a U.S. presidential candidate decides to withdraw from the race after the nominating convention has passed?

After about 15 minutes of trying to go through the various scenarios, I realized that I needed some expert help. Fortunately, my colleague Richard Pildes, a New York University School of Law professor who is one of the nation’s leading authorities on election law and author of “Romanticizing Democracy, Political Fragmentation, and the Decline of American Government” was kind enough to answer my questions via email. What follows is a lightly edited version of our discussion.

Let’s work backward in time. What happens if the winner of the election either dies or withdraws after Congress has counted the votes from the electoral college in January, but before the president-elect assumes office?

The first part is easy, if a president-elect dies before assuming office. The 20th Amendment resolves this problem directly: The vice president-elect becomes president.

The 20th Amendment only specifically addresses the death of the president-elect, not the voluntary withdrawal of a president-elect. Presumably, a president-elect who wanted to withdraw could wait until Jan. 20 and do it then. At that point, Article 2 and the 25th Amendment make it clear the vice president would become president.

So what happens if this takes place instead after the electoral college has voted in December, but before Congress formally has received and counted those votes?

Now things start getting more unclear. If the person who wins the electoral-college vote is considered “the president-elect” even before Congress officially receives and counts the vote, then the answer is the same as in the previous circumstance.

But legally, it would not be clear whether someone is the president-elect before Congress formally receives and counts the votes of the electors in January. If the winner of the November election and in the December electoral-college tally is not considered the president-elect and dies before January, then no clear legal answer is provided by the Constitution or by statute.

I would think there would be tremendous popular pressure to treat the electoral-college winner as the president-elect — and that courts would not stand in the way of the system resolving the situation here the same way as before, with the vice president-elect becoming president.

So how about if the winner of the November election dies or withdraws before the electoral college meets in December?

Now things become even messier.

The issue is how an elector should or can cast their vote. Should the elector vote for the dead winner of the election, if the elector otherwise would be obligated to do so? Should he or she vote for the vice-presidential candidate of that party instead? How would these votes be tallied in Congress?

In addition, there are questions about what various state laws would permit. Do they permit, for example, an electoral-college representative to vote for the vice-presidential winner in this circumstance?

And beyond that, there are serious questions about whether it is even constitutional for state laws to purport to bind their state electors to vote in a certain way, which would also come into play at this point.

So that leaves the scenario people are talking about at the moment. What if a party’s nominee dies or voluntarily withdraws before the November election?

Three layers have to be unraveled on this question. First, and probably most important, is how a party goes about replacing its nominee. In the Democratic Party, the formal decision-making body is clear. The chair of the Democratic National Committee (currently Donna Brazile) would call a special meeting of the DNC, which is roughly a 447-person body. That body has the power to replace the party nominee, as far as the party is concerned. This is how the Democratic Party replaced Thomas Eagleton with Sargent Shriver as the VP candidate after the 1972 convention.

But how the DNC goes about making the choice — under what rules, through what process — is not spelled out further in the party rules.

On the Republican side, it would also be the Republican National Committee that would have the power to choose a replacement nominee (though the RNC is a smaller body, around 150 members, than the DNC).

Second, once the party comes up with a new nominee, the question becomes whether that candidate can now get on the ballot in various states to replace the convention’s nominee. This is an issue of state law, handled differently in different states. In some states, it is formally too late at this point to replace a party nominee for the presidential election. But the courts might well conclude that state laws that allow too short a time for replacement in the case of death or withdrawal, in a presidential election, are themselves unconstitutional.

Third, and finally, we are back to the question of how the electors vote. Suppose the convention’s nominee cannot be replaced on the ballot in time but has died or withdrawn. The party has chosen an alternative, through the process above, but that person can’t get on the ballot. And now voters who support the party — let’s say Democrats — vote for the Democratic candidate on the ballot, even though he or she has withdrawn, to express their support for the Democratic Party. What does the elector do?

We are now more or less back to the question and the scenario I described in the third case. Presumably the elector would like to vote for the person the Democratic Party has chosen to replace its nominee and does so. If state law prohibits that, is the state law unconstitutional? Is Congress obligated to accept this vote?

Any final thoughts or recommendations for where people can go to learn more about this topic?

There should not be this much uncertainty about such momentous questions, even if the events involved are low-probability events. The political parties need to clarify their rules after this election. Congress should consider legislation to resolve some of the remaining uncertainties.

For more information, see the article “Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Death: Closing the Constitution’s Succession Gap” by Akhil Reed Amar.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The D.W. Griffith version of "Birth of a Nation" is more his style: "Trump bemoans South Korean film’s historic Oscars win: ‘Can we get Gone With the Wind back?’"

Spoiler

Four Oscars. Two BAFTAs. A Golden Globe. A Palme d’Or.

By most accounts, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s critically acclaimed film “Parasite” — a provocative commentary on class warfare packaged into a dark comedic thriller — deserved all the awards it received.

President Trump disagrees, though he admitted that he doesn’t know whether the film is good.

On Thursday night, Trump took a quick break from attacking Democrats and Fox News during a campaign rally in Colorado Springs to bemoan the movie’s historic best picture win at the Academy Awards earlier this month. Set in modern-day South Korea, “Parasite” is the first foreign-language film to take home the award.

“And the winner is a movie from South Korea, what the hell was that all about?” Trump said, drawing laughter from the crowd. “We got enough problems with South Korea with trade. On top of it, they give them the best movie of the year? Was it good? I don’t know.”

“Can we get ‘Gone With the Wind’ back, please?” the president continued, fondly remembering the classic Civil War movie that has long weathered criticism for its depiction of African Americans. The film, set on a plantation in Georgia, garnered nine Academy Awards in 1940, including best picture.

Trump went on to name-check “Sunset Boulevard,” a 1950 film noir that did not win the best picture Oscar but received awards in other categories.

“So many great movies,” Trump said. “The winner is from South Korea. … Did this ever happen before?”

The reaction was swift as videos from the rally circulated on social media Thursday night.

Neon, the U.S. film production and distribution company backing “Parasite,” hit back at the president on Twitter.

“Understandable, he can’t read,” the company tweeted, referencing the movie’s English subtitles.

The Democratic National Committee had a similar response, tweeting, “Parasite is a foreign movie about how oblivious the ultrarich are about the struggles of the working class, and it requires two hours of reading subtitles. Of course Trump hates it.”

The film — a suspenseful dramedy that chronicles a working-class family’s attempts to con their way into the lives of a rich family — hit theaters nationwide in October and critics went crazy.

“Bong’s finest work to date,” wrote The Washington Post’s Hau Chu in a glowing review, adding, “a viewer can get lulled into luxuriating in the superficial details of the film. But it’s what’s lurking below the surface that will stay with you long after the movie is over.”

The hype continued into awards season as “Parasite” racked up accolade after accolade — achievements many felt were the latest hint of changing times in an industry long criticized for its lack of diversity.

But on Thursday, Trump used the film’s groundbreaking win at the Oscars to slam the awards, which has been a frequent target of his attacks over the years.

“By the way, how bad were the Academy Awards this year, did you see?” Trump asked his supporters, who responded with loud boos.

After criticizing “Parasite,” Trump pivoted to complaining about another moment from the Oscars that irked him: Brad Pitt’s acceptance speech for best supporting actor in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

“They told me I only have 45 seconds up here, which is 45 seconds more than the Senate gave [former national security adviser] John Bolton this week,” Pitt said, referring to the chief witness not called during Trump’s impeachment trial.

In return, Trump derided Pitt on Thursday, calling the actor “a little wiseguy.”

“I was never a big fan of his,” said Trump.

By early Friday, “Gone With the Wind” and “Sunset Boulevard” were trending on Twitter as critics mocked Trump’s taste in movies.

Several people weren’t surprised that Trump, who has repeatedly come under fire for offensive statements about minorities, would be a fan of “Gone With the Wind.”

“And of course he loves pro-Confederate ‘Gone With the Wind,’” tweeted Max Boot, a columnist for The Post. “Very telling.”

Another detractor wrote that Trump’s complaints were “totally on brand.”

The president’s apparent fondness for “Gone With the Wind” led to speculation about other movies he might enjoy, with some suggesting that “The Birth of a Nation” would make the list. The 1915 movie, which also started trending on Twitter Thursday night, has been described as “the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history.”

At least one person wondered how South Koreans would react to Trump’s opinions on the foreign movie, which has become “a recent source of national pride.”

Bong has not publicly responded to Trump. But in an interview Thursday with the Hollywood Reporter ahead of the president’s rally, Tom Quinn, co-founder of Neon, addressed questions about whether the foreign film deserved the best picture award.

“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “That sounds a lot like a Trump tweet. So it doesn’t make any sense.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I agree with this poster:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

Rest of the thread under spoiler:

Spoiler

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by GreyhoundFan

[GreyhoundFan]

So Twitler thinks that Lincoln was great because of his hat? Seriously?

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by GreyhoundFan

[GreyhoundFan]

The corruption is just mind-numbing:

 

[fraurosena]

33 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

So Twitler thinks that Lincoln was great because of his hat? Seriously?

 

He thinks nobody knows Abe Lincoln was a Republican. Uh-huh. Yup. People forget that. ?

He believes that he could be more presidential than anybody... ? "It's so easy to be presidential, it's so easy." 

"It's so much easier than doing what I have to do." OK, what is it exactly that you have to do? Actually BE president? Because Rufus knows you're not. Your agenda is filled with 'executive time', you golf and tweet and hold self-aggrandizing rallies. Oh, you think that is harder than being presidential? Ok then.

"But you know what, you know what I'd have? I'd have about three people in the front row." He says this directly after the previous sentence I quoted, almost in the same breath. I have no idea what he's trying to say. 

 

 

[Alisamer]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

I have no idea what he's trying to say. 

Neither does he.

And neither does his "base". Some of them are the one-issue voters, some of them are evil like him, some of them have just "always voted Republican", some of them are afraid of "socialism". But the most rabid ones? I think many of them have no earthly idea what he's going on about. But they won't admit it. Some of them are just not smart, and are used to pretending they understand exactly what's going on even when they don't. So they're not going to admit not understanding what Trump is saying. It makes no sense to them, either, but they're afraid it DOES make sense, and they just don't get it, which means they're not smart which makes them feel bad. So they pretend, so they look smart. And they LOVE it when other people, media and politicians and people they know are smart say they don't think Trump makes sense. Because they look even smarter if they pretend they do understand him.

They certainly don't understand things like the constitution, or due process, or the intricacies of how government works.

I think Trump is this way, himself. Geniuses don't proclaim themselves geniuses. He knows he's not as smart as he wants to be, and is angry about it.

And now we have the stupid leading the even stupider, and they're trying to stigmatize intelligence as "elitism". 

[GreyhoundFan]

The orange asshole is on tour: "A buoyant Trump out West, cheerful about his acquittal and eager to mock his Democratic opponents"

Spoiler

LAS VEGAS — Since the Republican-controlled Senate voted to acquit him on impeachment charges, President Trump has been on something of a perpetual victory lap.

He has tweeted, he has crowed, he has purged.

Then, this week, he took his triumphant show to the West Coast.

Trump’s post-impeachment, four-day swing through as many states — three of which Hillary Clinton won in 2016 — was the physical and geographic manifestation of Trump emboldened, as much a defiant flouting from an exultant president as a peripatetic hodgepodge of fundraising, rallies and official White House events out West.

Over stops in Arizona, California, Colorado and Nevada, Trump was buoyant almost to the point of giddiness, bounding over to greet supporters as he deplaned Air Force One and chatting off the record with his traveling press corps — including Wednesday night when Trump, playing the role of eager host, led a klatch of reporters to his personal cabin aboard the Boeing 747 to watch the Democratic debate, which he had TiVo’d.

Yes, he has been impeached — a historical humiliation and a forever asterisk on his presidency — but this week, Trump witnessed the Democrats attack one another for two hours on a debate stage here, basked in the adulation of his cheering rally crowds and presented as a man increasingly confident about his reelection prospects.

Addressing an arena of supporters Wednesday night in Phoenix, Trump relayed the line-by-line of his kinetic day — “I started off with a speech in Nevada at 7:30 in the morning; I then went to California, made two speeches; I then went someplace else” — and projected the image of someone weary but pressing forth, and siphoning vigor from his crowds.

“I said, ‘Am I finished?’ ‘No, you’ve got to go to Arizona tonight and speak in front of like 25,000 people,’ ” Trump continued. “I said, ‘That’s okay,’ because I love this unbelievable energy in this crowd.”

On Tuesday, Trump raised money in the liberal enclave of Beverly Hills, which he followed Wednesday morning with another fundraiser hosted by Oracle founder Larry Ellison at his verdant and exclusive Porcupine Creek golf club in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

As if to underscore Trump’s foray into Democratic country, Joe Grogan, the White House’s director of the Domestic Policy Counsel, tweeted, “Just landed in California. POTUS power swing through occupied territory.”

Trump also scheduled a trio of consecutive campaign rallies — Wednesday night in Phoenix, Thursday night in Colorado Springs and Friday afternoon in Las Vegas — before heading back home to Washington.

The Phoenix rally offered deliberate counterprogramming to the Democratic debate here — Trump took the stage exactly 30 minutes after the slate of 2020 hopefuls assembled behind their own lecterns one state away — and his Thursday rally was pointedly placed in Colorado, a state he lost by 5 percentage points to Clinton in 2016 but one that his campaign manager Brad Parscale is bullish he can win this November.

“With your help this November, we are going to defeat the radical Democrats and we are going to win Colorado in a landslide,” Trump said Thursday night at his rally in Colorado Springs.

By Thursday evening, the president’s cheerful disposition seemed to have faded slightly, with Trump offering a nearly 100-minute performance that was aggrieved and discursive at times.

He mocked former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for what he said were their weak debate performances. (They both “choked,” he said, mimicking a person clutching his chest and struggling to breathe). He complained that “Parasite,” a South Korean film with subtitles, had won the Oscar for best picture. (“We’ve got enough problems with South Korea,” he said, nostalgically calling for another winner like “Gone With the Wind”). And he offered praise for a slew of individuals — some familiar, some less so. (A “nice, slim, beautiful-looking man,” he said, describing Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.)

Trump is a reluctant traveler, partial to the comforts of his eponymously branded properties, and his proposed Western swings often have a way of crumbling under their own grandiosity, aides said. The president initially grumbled about this visit, as well, but was placated by being able to stay at his own Trump International hotel here every night, one official said.

Asked before leaving why he was returning to sleep at his own property each evening, Trump claimed he wasn’t aware of the nightly arrangement.

“Well, I don’t know exactly the schedule because I don’t set the schedule,” he said. “Largely, the schedule is set by the Secret Service. We do what they want us to.”

A White House official then came back to the press cabin of Air Force One, to explain that the president was overnighting in Las Vegas for security reasons, as well as to save money and create as small of an inconvenience as possible for multiple cities.

Ultimately, Trump embraced the nearly week-long trip, sharing news of the final Friday rally here during an Oval Office visit with the president of Ecuador last week, before his campaign had even announced the event.

For the most part, only his tweets — a buzzing current of angry energy, that often started early in the morning — belied his sanguine public demeanor. He mocked Bloomberg — “Mini Mike” or just “Mini,” in his microbursts — and continued to tweet about the Justice Department, despite Attorney General William P. Barr telling close associates he might have to resign if Trump kept on tweeting about Justice Department affairs.

“Mini Mike Bloomberg’s debate performance tonight was perhaps the worst in the history of debates, and there have been some really bad ones,” Trump wrote. “He was stumbling, bumbling and grossly incompetent. If this doesn’t knock him out of the race, nothing will. Not so easy to do what I did!”

On Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, the president weighed in again Thursday, quoting an ally and writing, “The decision not to prosecute Andy McCabe is utterly inexplicable.”

And, like so much of what he does, the president managed to imbue even ostensibly serious events with a certain Trumpian panache. Speaking in Bakersfield, Calif., on Wednesday at what was billed as a roundtable to discuss water accessibility issues with rural voters, Trump claimed — while offering no evidence — that Bloomberg “hates the farmer” and suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) could very well emerge as the Democratic nominee for president.

“We’ll have to start working on Crazy Bernie pretty soon,” he said.

As the president’s motorcade wound back to the airport there, en route to his next stop, a staffer enthused, “Now that’s how you do a rally-table!” — coining a phrase to describe the rallylike feel Trump brought to the purported roundtable.

On Thursday, Trump began his day addressing a graduation for prisoners here in Las Vegas. But after briefly extolling the virtues of redemption and second chances, Trump detoured to weigh in on the breaking news that Roger Stone, a longtime confidant, had been sentenced to three years and four months in prison for impeding a congressional investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“I want the process to play out,” the president said. “I think that’s the best thing to do because I’d love to see Roger exonerated, and I’d love to see it happen because I personally think he was treated very unfairly.”

Trump’s digression about Stone lasted several minutes, as he waxed poetic about how Stone is “definitely a character” who “everybody sort of knows” — “He’s a little different, but those are sometimes the most interesting,” he mused — and griped about the jury forewoman, who he claimed was a Never Trump activist.

“Now, you wouldn’t know about a bad jury?” Trump said, to appreciative laughter. “Anybody here know about bad? No? These people know about more bad juries than everybody here, including the sheriff and the mayor and everybody.”

Later, he again commiserated with the graduates — newly released from prison and preparing to reenter society — lamenting that everyone, even the president of the United States, has “those days.”

“I mean, I didn’t do anything wrong, and they impeached me a few weeks ago, right?” Trump asked, seeming bewildered. “They impeached and I said, ‘What happened? What did I do?’ ”

But he laughed, and then so did the crowd, because the president’s good mood was infectious.

And even Trump — who has long raged and fumed over the impeachment inquiry against him, which he has repeatedly dismissed as a “hoax” — managed to look on the bright side.

“The good news,” he said, “my numbers went through the roof.”

 

[WiseGirl]

[Xan]

3 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

Yeah.  He's furious that the Democrats know about this.  He was just going to keep it a secret and then lie about it.

I have days lately when I hope that our alien overlords will either just go ahead and attack us or at least take over the damn planet.  I'm kind of old and I never thought I'd have to live through the presidency of a total imbecile.