Trump 48: Nobody Likes Me

[WiseGirl]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Busy work:  Trump’s secret political weapon: Wasting his opponents’ time"

Spoiler

On the night of Aug. 6, President Trump was flying from Cleveland to New Jersey when he suddenly issued executive orders that would ban the social media video app TikTok and WeChat, China’s largest messaging platform, from doing business in the United States.

Corporate executives, lawyers and other officials found themselves scrambling to react to a policy that’s part geopolitical escalation, part abuse of power — and, given the administration’s track record, one that could be revoked at any time.

But the battle over TikTok and WeChat is part of a now-familiar story. The president or his loyalists threaten to upend some policy, institution or norm they know others will fight to defend. Issuing the challenge can be easy: a speech, a leak, a tweet or two, about immigration rules or education regulations or cutting taxes on the rich. In response, Trump’s opponents must invest substantial time, money and effort to resist the proposal — otherwise, Trump wins by default.

Essentially, the administration has weaponized wasting everyone else’s time.

It’s a struggle between firefighters and a spree arsonist. The firefighters must stamp out every blaze, while the arsonist enjoys pouring accelerant, igniting a spark and sauntering off to start anew with kindling elsewhere. And the gradual exhaustion of the firefighters makes it likelier that they will someday fail to contain the flames.

Over the past several years, Trump and his loyalists have frequently managed to weaken and wear out those they see as enemies by proposing moves that cost the administration little. In these cases, the president often wins either by getting the policy he wants or by making his adversaries — among activists, nonprofits, lawyers, legislators, even business executives — spend disproportionately more effort in response. This phenomenon, as much as the administration’s overt malevolence and incompetence, has helped make the Trump era feel like a never-ending cycle. If it seems as if we are fighting the same battles over and over instead of making progress, that’s because in many cases, we are.

Consider the recent fracas over visas for international students. Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that foreigners studying at U.S. colleges and universities would lose their visas if their schools suspended in-person instruction because of the pandemic. ICE’s announcement, just weeks before the coronavirus-accelerated start of the fall semester, upset the plans of hundreds of universities and hundreds of thousands of foreign students.

The response was immediate. Dozens of states and universities filed lawsuits to block the rule. Outraged professors pledged to find ways around it. And then, eight days later, the crisis was over; the administration suddenly said that it was dropping the proposal.

By the usual measures of policy effectiveness — whether any laws passed or regulations changed — nothing happened. Yet the costs of “nothing” were immense. For a single university, analyzing the ICE rule’s effects and determining a response could easily tie up tens of administrators for 10- or 12-hour days. Multiplied by the hundreds of universities affected, it’s reasonable to believe that higher education spent tens or hundreds of thousands of staff hours coping with the rule (while schools were already beset by a public health crisis).

Even that is an underestimate: It doesn’t count work done by others, like the state attorneys general or private lawyers representing universities, who labored to prepare lawsuits that required hundreds of pages of filings. And that’s completely overlooking the emotional harm inflicted on international students facing a choice between infection and deportation. If Trump officials had specifically sought to waste universities’ time, they could not have developed a more cost-effective strategy than dashing off a policy proposal that they later abandoned without a fight.

The administration has produced similar effects elsewhere, including in its immigration policy. Earlier this summer, a Supreme Court ruling preserved the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, despite the administration’s efforts to terminate it.

But the White House has been slow to comply with the court’s judgment, announcing new restrictions on the program and subjecting it to a “comprehensive review.” The groups that won the legal battle now face a choice: take the administration back to court to enforce the law, or give up on protecting DACA beneficiaries.

Once again, the administration has hit upon a low-cost way to make opponents spend time and energy. “If time is a political resource of value,” Syracuse University professor Elizabeth Cohen said, “then anything you can do to force people to spend their time on what you want them to do, not the work they would want to do, is effective.”

The executive orders Trump signed last weekend aimed at mitigating the economic effects of the pandemic are also likely to wind up wasting lots of people’s time. The move upset negotiations at the federal level and piled up work for governors with actual responsibilities at the state level. Even the extension of unemployment benefits, which requires states to provide matching funds, will take months to set up. If, that is, courts or Congress don’t block it first.

Trump’s haphazard policy shifts are so frequent that people often suggest there must be other motivations. Supposedly the administration announces wild new ideas out of nowhere — such as changing federal standards for shower heads, cutting capital gains taxes or staging the president’s GOP convention speech at the Gettysburg battlefield — to distract from scandals or simply to troll its adversaries.

But the real-life effects go much further. The force of the government is often employed to grind away at the president’s opponents and reshape society, even when his proposals end up going nowhere.

And those most affected are often those who are the most vulnerable. Sophisticates dismiss the administration’s strategy of raising issues that can’t go anywhere, like the president’s repeated musings about eliminating birthright citizenship, as scare tactics. But that underrates how frightening it is to be threatened by an immensely powerful government. The administration said in 2017 that it would add a question to the census asking whether a respondent was a citizen, which could lead to an undercount of certain groups by making them afraid to participate, thus skewing congressional apportionment in favor of Republicans. The Supreme Court turned back this effort in June 2019, but not before “civil servants in the census were forced to consider changing a survey instrument they had already spent years planning, reducing resources available for quality assurance and program integrity,” said Philip Rocco, an assistant professor of political science at Marquette University.

Even after his defeat in court, Trump now says he will prevent undocumented immigrants from being counted for congressional apportionment. The new memo means census officials will be forced to waste even more time and effort in planning to implement a policy that will probably be overturned — rather than working to get more responses to the survey.

It’s difficult to quantify these situations, but they seem ubiquitous. “I haven’t looked at a policy area in my research where you have not seen this dynamic,” Rocco says.

Unable to overturn the Affordable Care Act, for instance, the administration has used regulation and administrative slowdowns to weaken the law. So numerous are these attempts that the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities maintains a “Sabotage Watch” blog. Now Trump claims he’ll soon sign an executive order to bar health insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions — which is already the law under the Affordable Care Act — ensuring that the entire exercise will waste time even if there’s nothing otherwise objectionable in the order.

And the administration has consistently blocked congressional oversight of Cares Act funding for pandemic-related initiatives like the Paycheck Protection Program — forcing lawmakers to spend time establishing their right to investigate such programs rather than, well, investigating them.

All this has led to lawsuits, inquiries and mountains of effort expended to counter Trump’s behavior, with the president and his supporters claiming it’s evidence of “Trump derangement syndrome.” The constant high-stakes fights keep activists, journalists and social media at a boil throughout the cycle of discovering, explaining and processing each new administration initiative. In extreme cases, these cycles can make it seem like a final showdown is at hand.

Yet catharsis never arrives. Some new crisis always comes along to cheat us of even the illusion of finality. Inspector general after inspector general after U.S. attorney is fired, each dismissal somehow displacing the earlier outrages rather than compounding them. Impeachment segues into pandemic. Just cataloguing these battles is exhausting, which may explain why the Trump administration feels uniquely draining.

Of course, sometimes it can be good for a confrontation to end with a whimper, not a bang. No one should complain, for example, that the war scare earlier this year between the United States and Iran, sparked by the U.S. killing of Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, faded without escalating further. But even that apparent nonevent came with a human toll: the deaths of the 176 passengers and crew of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, shot down by Iranian air defenses at the height of the standoff.

If Trump loses in November, one of the hardest things will be figuring out how to calculate the cost — in time, energy and spirit — of all the disasters that never quite came to pass but still wasted our time. Someday, Americans who didn’t live through it all may wonder what the fuss was about. Why were you all so upset about Trump? There were elections, and he lost — it couldn’t have been that bad. And in that happiest world, we will be able to respond only that it took all our strength to make sure nothing big happened.

Nothing, in the end, was the best we could hope for.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Robert Trump, younger brother of President Trump who filed lawsuit against niece, dies at 71"

Spoiler

Robert Trump, the younger brother of President Trump, said in 2016 that he supported his sibling’s candidacy “one thousand percent.” The brothers were photographed embracing on election night.

But after that, Robert Trump was little heard or seen in public until he put his name on a lawsuit earlier this summer against his niece Mary Trump in a futile attempt to stop the publication of her book, which called Donald Trump “the world’s most dangerous man.”

The endorsement of his brother and the prolonged period of silence seemed emblematic of Mr. Trump, who died Aug. 15 at 71 in New York City. The death was announced by the White House. He had been hospitalized for several days after becoming seriously ill.

Robert Trump was the quiet one in comparison with his boisterous brother. He often did what his famous sibling asked him to do, absorbing the criticism that his brother reportedly lobbed at him and remaining loyal until the end of his life.

“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” President Trump said in a statement. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.”

Robert Stewart Trump was born in New York on Aug. 26, 1948, the youngest of five children of Fred Trump Sr. and his wife, the former Mary Anne MacLeod. The eldest son, Fred Jr., died of an alcoholism-related illness in 1981 at 42.

It was Fred Jr.’s daughter, Mary Trump, who this year published a scathing memoir of her time in the family, and her book provides the most vivid account of Robert Trump’s upbringing.

“Donald had discovered early on how easy it was to get under Robert’s pale skin and push him past his limits; it was a game he never tired of playing,” Mary Trump wrote. “Nobody else would have bothered — Robert was so skinny and quiet that there was no sport in tormenting him.”

He graduated from Boston University in 1970 and became an investment banker in real estate finance at Kidder, Peabody and then worked at Shearson Loeb Rhoades.

His life was altered when a tragedy affected his brother’s Atlantic City casino business in 1989.

That year, Steven Hyde, who oversaw Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal casino, was traveling on a helicopter with two other executives when the aircraft crashed in New Jersey, killing all onboard. Donald Trump had overextended himself in building the Taj Mahal casino and had relied heavily on Hyde. With Hyde’s death, Donald Trump asked Robert to oversee operations.

Because of mistakes for which Donald Trump bore at least some responsibility, including overestimating the demand for gambling, Robert Trump had difficulty stabilizing the finances of the Taj Mahal. In a meeting famously described by another former Trump casino executive, John O’Donnell, Donald Trump complained: “We’re going to lose a fortune.”

“Donald, you know there’s just no way to predict these things,” Robert Trump responded, according to O’Donnell’s memoir, “Trumped!”

Donald Trump blew up at his brother, saying: “I’m sure as hell not going to listen to you in this situation. I listened to you and you got me into this,” according to O’Donnell. Robert Trump said, “I’m getting out of here. I don’t need this,” O’Donnell wrote.

O’Donnell said in an interview that the fight between the brothers “changed forever” their relationship. Donald Trump told The Washington Post in a 2016 interview, however, that his brother “never quit” and did a “really good job.”

In 1991, Robert Trump joined his father’s business, Trump Management, where he was reportedly paid $500,000 a year, according to a 2018 New York Times story.

In 1999, when Fred Trump Sr. died, his children faced a decision about how to handle the inheritance. Mary Trump and her brother, Fred Trump III, sought an amount similar to what would have gone to their father, Fred Trump Jr., had he lived. Because one of Fred Trump III’s children had cerebral palsy, he cited the need to pay for his son’s care in seeking his share of the inheritance.

Instead, Robert Trump worked on behalf of Donald Trump and his other siblings to give a much smaller amount to Mary and Fred Trump III. Robert Trump said in an affidavit that the health care for Fred III’s son had been provided “out of the goodness of our hearts,” and he said that Fred Trump III had received $200,000 annually from the Trump family “without lifting a finger.”

Years later, Mary Trump said she learned that the family had given her and her brother a much smaller inheritance in part by concealing how much the estate was worth. That revelation was part of the motivation for her to write her best-selling book about Donald Trump, “Too Much and Never Enough.”

Robert Trump, just as he had in the inheritance lawsuit, acted on behalf of Donald and other siblings in filing an action seeking to prevent publication of his niece’s book earlier this summer. Robert, who had been out of the public eye since his brother’s election to the White House, issued a statement in which he said he was “deeply disappointed” by Mary’s decision to write the book.

“I and the rest of my entire family are so proud of my wonderful brother, the president, and feel that Mary’s actions are truly a disgrace,” Robert Trump said in the statement. He did not speak publicly about the matter, continuing the near silence he had maintained throughout the presidency. A court allowed the book to be published and let Mary give interviews about it.

Robert Trump’s marriage to the former Blaine Beard, a socialite and philanthropist, ended in divorce. He had adopted her son Christopher from an earlier marriage. At the time of his divorce in 2008, the New York Post estimated Robert Trump’s fortune at $200 million.

In recent years, he lived in Millbrook, N.Y. This year, he married Ann Marie Pallan, according to the New York Post.

In addition to his wife and President Trump, survivors include two sisters, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry and Elizabeth Trump Grau.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

We are in the midst of multiple crises and he is on again about his stupid boat supporters:

 

 

He's never too busy for golf.

 

[SPHASH]

59 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Robert Trump, younger brother of President Trump who filed lawsuit against niece, dies at 71"

  Reveal hidden contents

Robert Trump, the younger brother of President Trump, said in 2016 that he supported his sibling’s candidacy “one thousand percent.” The brothers were photographed embracing on election night.

But after that, Robert Trump was little heard or seen in public until he put his name on a lawsuit earlier this summer against his niece Mary Trump in a futile attempt to stop the publication of her book, which called Donald Trump “the world’s most dangerous man.”

The endorsement of his brother and the prolonged period of silence seemed emblematic of Mr. Trump, who died Aug. 15 at 71 in New York City. The death was announced by the White House. He had been hospitalized for several days after becoming seriously ill.

Robert Trump was the quiet one in comparison with his boisterous brother. He often did what his famous sibling asked him to do, absorbing the criticism that his brother reportedly lobbed at him and remaining loyal until the end of his life.

“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” President Trump said in a statement. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.”

Robert Stewart Trump was born in New York on Aug. 26, 1948, the youngest of five children of Fred Trump Sr. and his wife, the former Mary Anne MacLeod. The eldest son, Fred Jr., died of an alcoholism-related illness in 1981 at 42.

It was Fred Jr.’s daughter, Mary Trump, who this year published a scathing memoir of her time in the family, and her book provides the most vivid account of Robert Trump’s upbringing.

“Donald had discovered early on how easy it was to get under Robert’s pale skin and push him past his limits; it was a game he never tired of playing,” Mary Trump wrote. “Nobody else would have bothered — Robert was so skinny and quiet that there was no sport in tormenting him.”

He graduated from Boston University in 1970 and became an investment banker in real estate finance at Kidder, Peabody and then worked at Shearson Loeb Rhoades.

His life was altered when a tragedy affected his brother’s Atlantic City casino business in 1989.

That year, Steven Hyde, who oversaw Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal casino, was traveling on a helicopter with two other executives when the aircraft crashed in New Jersey, killing all onboard. Donald Trump had overextended himself in building the Taj Mahal casino and had relied heavily on Hyde. With Hyde’s death, Donald Trump asked Robert to oversee operations.

Because of mistakes for which Donald Trump bore at least some responsibility, including overestimating the demand for gambling, Robert Trump had difficulty stabilizing the finances of the Taj Mahal. In a meeting famously described by another former Trump casino executive, John O’Donnell, Donald Trump complained: “We’re going to lose a fortune.”

“Donald, you know there’s just no way to predict these things,” Robert Trump responded, according to O’Donnell’s memoir, “Trumped!”

Donald Trump blew up at his brother, saying: “I’m sure as hell not going to listen to you in this situation. I listened to you and you got me into this,” according to O’Donnell. Robert Trump said, “I’m getting out of here. I don’t need this,” O’Donnell wrote.

O’Donnell said in an interview that the fight between the brothers “changed forever” their relationship. Donald Trump told The Washington Post in a 2016 interview, however, that his brother “never quit” and did a “really good job.”

In 1991, Robert Trump joined his father’s business, Trump Management, where he was reportedly paid $500,000 a year, according to a 2018 New York Times story.

In 1999, when Fred Trump Sr. died, his children faced a decision about how to handle the inheritance. Mary Trump and her brother, Fred Trump III, sought an amount similar to what would have gone to their father, Fred Trump Jr., had he lived. Because one of Fred Trump III’s children had cerebral palsy, he cited the need to pay for his son’s care in seeking his share of the inheritance.

Instead, Robert Trump worked on behalf of Donald Trump and his other siblings to give a much smaller amount to Mary and Fred Trump III. Robert Trump said in an affidavit that the health care for Fred III’s son had been provided “out of the goodness of our hearts,” and he said that Fred Trump III had received $200,000 annually from the Trump family “without lifting a finger.”

Years later, Mary Trump said she learned that the family had given her and her brother a much smaller inheritance in part by concealing how much the estate was worth. That revelation was part of the motivation for her to write her best-selling book about Donald Trump, “Too Much and Never Enough.”

Robert Trump, just as he had in the inheritance lawsuit, acted on behalf of Donald and other siblings in filing an action seeking to prevent publication of his niece’s book earlier this summer. Robert, who had been out of the public eye since his brother’s election to the White House, issued a statement in which he said he was “deeply disappointed” by Mary’s decision to write the book.

“I and the rest of my entire family are so proud of my wonderful brother, the president, and feel that Mary’s actions are truly a disgrace,” Robert Trump said in the statement. He did not speak publicly about the matter, continuing the near silence he had maintained throughout the presidency. A court allowed the book to be published and let Mary give interviews about it.

Robert Trump’s marriage to the former Blaine Beard, a socialite and philanthropist, ended in divorce. He had adopted her son Christopher from an earlier marriage. At the time of his divorce in 2008, the New York Post estimated Robert Trump’s fortune at $200 million.

In recent years, he lived in Millbrook, N.Y. This year, he married Ann Marie Pallan, according to the New York Post.

In addition to his wife and President Trump, survivors include two sisters, retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry and Elizabeth Trump Grau.

 

Robert may not have been as evil as his brother the #bunkerbitch but he's still a dick.

Edited August 16, 2020 by SPHASH
ETA

[Smash!]

In the past days/weeks Heather Cox Richardson‘s Letters from an American have become more and more grim regarding America‘s future. Today she was unusually blunt which I take as a sign that things are dire. Since I‘m on vacation and on the mobile, I will just quite the most important parts.

America needs at least two healthy political parties, and right now, with Republicans attacking the legitimacy of the Democrats, we are in danger of having none.

Now, with Trump trying to steal a presidential election and Republican lawmakers looking the other way, we are on the verge of becoming a one-party state.

These days, it appears that some of the president’s supporters are comfortable with such an outcome. But the thrill of “owning the libs” will be brief.

Without a watchdog over ruling lawmakers, they invariably become more and more corrupt, and without an opposition that has a chance of regaining power, there will be no way to stop them. Right now, Republican leaders still need votes. But eliminate the Democrats, and they will no longer need loyal voters.

They will be able to act however they wish.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-15-2020-saturday

[JenniferJuniper]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

We are in the midst of multiple crises and he is on again about his stupid boat supporters:

"This is just generic."  Um, I think the word you were looking for is "organic", dipshit. 

Wonder if nasty little brother died from Covid.  

[GreyhoundFan]

I guess he is trying to schedule his performance review. Either that, or Putin needs a blow job.

 

[formergothardite]

Trump always looks terrified and broken around Putin. I'm guessing it is Putin who wants to meet with him before the election and not Trump wanting to meet with Putin. I bet he wants to make sure Trump fully understands what will happen to him if he loses this election. Trump is of no use to Putin as a former president and there is no way Russia doesn't have a hell of a lot of info on Trump that they will release. 

[GreyhoundFan]

7 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Trump always looks terrified and broken around Putin. I'm guessing it is Putin who wants to meet with him before the election and not Trump wanting to meet with Putin. I bet he wants to make sure Trump fully understands what will happen to him if he loses this election. Trump is of no use to Putin as a former president and there is no way Russia doesn't have a hell of a lot of info on Trump that they will release. 

I agree. It's interesting how different he appears when he is in the presence of his boss. We desperately need a president who looks like this when near Putin:

[fraurosena]

 

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

 

He really needs help with how to use quotes. Putting “fair and balanced” in quotes just shows how “smart” he is 

[church_of_dog]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I agree. It's interesting how different he appears when he is in the presence of his boss. We desperately need a president who looks like this when near Putin:

When was this photo taken?  Obama, Trump and Putin together?

 

And why do Putin and Obama look like they're staring each other down just before starting a round of "Rock, Paper, Scissors"?

Edited August 16, 2020 by church_of_dog

[K'Z'K]

35 minutes ago, church_of_dog said:

When was this photo taken?  Obama, Trump and Putin together?

Trump is not in the original photo. He was photoshopped in.

This is the original, taken at the 2016 G-20 summit in China by a Getty photographer:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, K'Z'K said:

Trump is not in the original photo. He was photoshopped in.

This is the original, taken at the 2016 G-20 summit in China by a Getty photographer:

 

Thank you, when I grabbed the image, I hadn’t noticed the photoshop. I just always thought Obama had the exact look required.

[Ozlsn]

Caught the end of the US news broadcast this morning which had Trump at a 27% chance of winning with Nate Silver's model and a 10% chance of winning the electoral college. Still too high, needs to be single digits, or preferably negative.

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

He really needs help with how to use quotes. Putting “fair and balanced” in quotes just shows how “smart” he is 

Nah, the quotes are exactly where they need to be. The quotation marks signify he means the opposite... just like you did with "smart". 

[fraurosena]

Consistent messaging is not one of his virtues.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

How sad that the commander in chief has no idea of American casualties. And, of course he goes on about his damned vanity wall.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Narcissist level 100:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Wait, you mean to tell me some people aren't happy with Twitler's wall? I'm shocked, I tell you.

 

[fraurosena]

This made me roll my eyes for more than one reason.

1. WTF? Seriously? You're spruiking CNN now? Because of a favourable poll? 

2. Take over from Fox News? But.. but... you said CNN was fake news!  

3. Uhm. I distinctly remember you said you didn't watch CNN...

 

[fraurosena]

Every time you think he can't possibly go any lower he has to go and prove you wrong.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope they have no snacks in the bunker. Let him waste away.

[GreyhoundFan]

You know, I would have loved another four years of Obama, but I believe in following the rules. If he had proposed staying in office for an extra term because of the multitudes of crap flung his way by repugs, I wouldn't have cheered. Of course, twitler believes no rules apply to him, so he gleefully proposes this shit. And his idiot followers cheer the idea of living in a lawless society.