Trump 51: The Lame Duck a l‘Orange

[Becky]

4 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

 

Also a middle finger to Mitch McConnell, and a way to get back in the headlines on his way to irrelevancy.

[Xan]

11 minutes ago, Becky said:

Also a middle finger to Mitch McConnell, and a way to get back in the headlines on his way to irrelevancy.

This is in the same vein as him wanting his signature to be on the previous checks.  He wants Americans to be grateful to him.  He thinks if people get bigger checks then they might riot in the streets if he is ousted from the presidency.  It's all about his ego.

[AmazonGrace]

Just pardoned: Stone, Manafort and Charles Kushner.

Because of course he did.

[fraurosena]

Trump isn’t done with his pardons.

Jinx @AmazonGrace!

Edited December 24, 2020 by fraurosena

[clueliss]

I’m enjoying this take on the pardons 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

Because of course.

[Ozlsn]

So Trump vetoed a military spending bill, then took his military helicopter to Florida... can they put that last on the list to be refuelled? "Sorry Mr President, we ran out of money to fly you from Florida last week. We can get you on a domestic flight, or possibly the train..."

[Dandruff]

26 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

So Trump vetoed a military spending bill, then took his military helicopter to Florida... can they put that last on the list to be refuelled? "Sorry Mr President, we ran out of money to fly you from Florida last week. We can get you on a domestic flight, or possibly the train..."

Cattle transport trailer.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Ozlsn]

4 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Wasn't supposed to be drain the swamp, not pardon it?

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[WiseGirl]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I didn't realize that golfing and watching TV fell into the "work tirelessly" category.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm guessing those spirits will have to visit him in the bathroom while he's tweeting crap.

[Howl]

Although people who have been pardoned can be called to testify before various entities,  the 5th amendment right against self incrimination still stands. 

[AmazonGrace]

Biden sent out cute videos of his dogs and Trump raises the stakes celebrates the holidays with a warm hearted Christmas message that will bring comfort and joy to the hearts of Americans, even those who don't like dogs.. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[fraurosena]

Oh Rufus, please let this happen!

 

[fraurosena]

Trump is really feeling that Christmas spirit, isn't he? 

More under de spoiler. 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by fraurosena

[GreyhoundFan]

When I was a teenager upset over being dumped by my first boyfriend, I was plotting ways to get back together with him. A trusted adult told me that nothing stinks worse than desperation. Too bad the tangerine toddler is incapable of understanding that concept. 
 

[clueliss]

Not only is trump rage tweeting, so is a pro trump lawyer 

[Xan]

Good article by Fintan O'Toole in  The Irish Times:

Spoiler

(Ithttps://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trump-has-unfinished-business-a-republic-he-wants-to-destroy-still-stands-1.4435655)

(This is only part of the article.)

It is useful to go back to the period in 2016 when Trump was where his successor is now: the victor in the election but still not president. For it was in this interregnum that Trump took a single action that was scarcely noticed at the time but that, more than any other, defined his presidency.

That action had both the political destructiveness and the personal brutality that would become familiar as the primary weapons in Trump’s armoury. It consisted merely in ordering a load of ring-binders full of carefully compiled documents to be dumped. 

It was the day after Trump’s victory party, held of course in the garish Trump Tower in Manhattan. Chris Christie, who was still governor of New Jersey, a successful Republican in a heavily Democratic state, was the man with the 30 bulging binders.

In them was the transition plan, the crucial details of how a Trump administration was going to work, including shortlists of pre-vetted candidates for all the top jobs in the administration, as well as timetables for action on key policies and the drafts of the necessary executive orders.

It had taken a team of 140 people assembled under Christie’s chairmanship nearly six months to create the plan. 

When Christie arrived at Trump Tower, he was met by Trump’s then consigliere, Steve Bannon. Bannon told Christie that he was being fired with immediate effect “and we do not want you to be in the building anymore”. His painstaking work was literally trashed: “All thirty binders”, as Christie recalled in a self-pitying memoir, “were tossed in a Trump Tower dumpster, never to be seen again”.

With Trump, the personal and political could never be separated and both were equally at work here. The personal was silverback gorilla stuff, humiliating Christie was a sadistic pleasure and a declaration to established Republicans that Trump was the boss of them all now.

The political message was one that took longer to sink in. A transition plan implied some kind of basic institutional continuity, some respect for the norms of governance.

At the beginning, as at the end, the idea of an orderly transition of power was anathema to Trump.

Why? Because a timetable for action and a commitment to appoint, to the thousands of positions filled by the incoming president, people with expertise and experience, would constrain him. He was not going to be constrained.

The ending is excellent:

This is his legacy: he has successfully led a vast number of voters along the path from hatred of government to contempt for rational deliberation to the inevitable endpoint: disdain for the electoral process itself.

In this end is his new beginning. Stripped of direct power, he will face enormous legal and financial jeopardy. He will have every reason to keep drawing on his greatest asset: his ability to unleash the demons that have always haunted the American experiment – racism, nativism, fear of “the government”.

Trump has unfinished business. A republic he wants to destroy still stands. It is, for him, not goodbye but hasta la vista. Instead of waving him off, those who want to rebuild American democracy will have to put a stake through his heart.

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by Xan

[Dandruff]

Rage has been brought closer to the surface and the court system is being bottlenecked with political crap.  I've had the unpleasant thought that when people are finally vaccinated to a reasonable extent, and certainly during the interim, we shouldn't expect everyone to be approaching their fellow man with warmth and love.  I believe we'll have a population that is suffering from an unusual degree of disorientation and PTSD.  How much might it take from a relative few "troublemakers" to trigger chaos...and how well can the justice system hold up?