Trump 56: He Still Loves Rallies Almost As Much As He Adores Putin

[onekidanddone]

25 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

Maybe a different brand of orange?

If he's doing a 180 on a committee then somebody probably pissed him off.  I imagine his relationship with socialites isn't quite what it used to be.

Got what down to 18%?

[GreyhoundFan]

[Xan]

Donny's back on Truth Social this morning:

Quote

I'm not sure why he keeps describing the phone calls as "perfect".  That doesn't mean what he thinks it means.  

I figure he'll announce his next run for the presidency within the week.  He's losing support, Fox isn't even carrying his speeches, and he's worried about being indicted.  I don't see any other options for him.

The speech yesterday (what I heard of it) was usual Donald junk.  He did float the idea of making giant tent cities for the homeless.  He thinks that will clean up the cities and that the homeless could be given really, really good tents.  I'm just surprised that he didn't add that he thought those tent cities should be surrounded by great big beautiful walls.

[onekidanddone]

33 minutes ago, Xan said:

Donny's back on Truth Social this morning:

I'm not sure why he keeps describing the phone calls as "perfect".  That doesn't mean what he thinks it means.  

I figure he'll announce his next run for the presidency within the week.  He's losing support, Fox isn't even carrying his speeches, and he's worried about being indicted.  I don't see any other options for him.

The speech yesterday (what I heard of it) was usual Donald junk.  He did float the idea of making giant tent cities for the homeless.  He thinks that will clean up the cities and that the homeless could be given really, really good tents.  I'm just surprised that he didn't add that he thought those tent cities should be surrounded by great big beautiful walls.

I see his new business venture. Trump Tents

[Alisamer]

24 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I see his new business venture. Trump Tents

They'll be tacky, fluorescent orange, have a giant Trump logo on them, and be completely unsuitable for the purpose. And cost 100 times what they are worth.

[libgirl2]

11 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

They'll be tacky, fluorescent orange, have a giant Trump logo on them, and be completely unsuitable for the purpose. And cost 100 times what they are worth.

And made in China. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s 2022 pitch on crime sounds just like his 2015 one"

Quote

To hear former president Donald Trump talk about crime during his speech in Washington on Tuesday, you’d think he’d never been to the capital city before.

Trump’s address to the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) — his officially sanctioned repository for think-tank-like activity — was predicated on presenting a series of policy proposals aimed at addressing crime and violence in the U.S. The speech meandered pretty significantly, as might have been predicted, with an extended riff on trans athletes after the crowd expressed its robust approval. But he came there to make a pitch on crime, and he made it.

It just happens to be the same pitch he made when he was first running for president in 2015. That Trump repeatedly elevated the same issues and the same solutions might leave an uninformed observer wondering who, exactly, had been president for much of the intervening period without fixing the purported problems.

“Our country is now a cesspool of crime,” Trump said in his AFPI speech, an obvious preview of a likely 2024 campaign. “We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout America.”

This echoed his speech at the Republican convention in 2016. Then, he declared that “Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims.”

He made a promise: “the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon — and I mean very soon — come to an end. Beginning on January 20th, 2017” — that is, upon his inauguration — “safety will be restored.”

Violent crime did drop for a bit during his presidency, but not to the point seen in 2014. In 2020, it was higher than it had been in 2016. Even as president at the time, he blamed the rise on Democrats.

His framing of the increase in crime as being a function of Democratic attacks on law enforcement (who, he said, were only attacked and never supported) is itself not a recent addition, though the thrust has shifted. In 2016, he blamed the left for fostering a “dangerous anti-police atmosphere” in the country — the so-called “Ferguson effect.”

In his last two presidential campaigns, though, he more often simply blamed Democrats because they were the leaders of the cities where most of the crime occurs. (It’s true that there are more criminal acts in places with more people, but rural areas, less commonly led by Democrats, have seen surges in crime as well.)

“Many of our once great cities, from New York to Chicago to L.A., where the middle class used to flock to live the American Dream, are now war zones, literal war zones,” he said on Tuesday. Just as they have been since September 2016, when he said that “in many cases, you have cities, inner cities that are worse than war zones and more dangerous than some war zones.”

Among the solutions he offered was to bring back “stop-and-frisk,” a New York City policy shown to have been disproportionately applied to Black and Hispanic residents. On Tuesday, he declared that “we need to return to stop-and-frisk policies and cities and not shy away from it” — just as in the first presidential debate in 2016, he said that “you have to have stop-and-frisk.”

Another was to impose the death penalty for drug dealers, something he first floated back in 2018. Then, though, he asserted without evidence that “if you ever did an average, a drug dealer will kill thousands of people” by distributing drugs. (This came from a presidential speech on “tax reform.”) On Tuesday, he scaled that average downward to 50 deaths, though he provided the exact same evidence: none.

He also, predictably, spent a large chunk of his speech railing against immigration.

“Our open borders are a gaping wound, allowing drugs, gangs, child traffickers, human smugglers and tens of thousands of dangerous criminals to pour into our country,” he said on Tuesday. Just as, in August 2016, he declared that “our open border has allowed drugs and crime and gangs to pour into our country and our communities.” It was a consistent complaint in a speech in which Trump touted the miles of border wall constructed during his administration.

Foreign countries, Trump said on Tuesday, were “emptying their jails into the United States. We’re like a dumping ground. We’re not going to allow that to happen.” This, of course, was the specific claim that Trump infamously made in announcing his campaign in 2015: that “they are sending people that they don’t want. The United States is becoming a dumping ground for the world.”

He also claimed that local police know who the immigrant criminals in their communities are but are hamstrung in arresting them.

“The police officers know their names,” Trump said on Tuesday. “The problem is they’re not allowed to do anything about it.” Just as he said in August 2016 that “police and law enforcement, they know who these people are. They live with these people. They get mocked by these people. They can’t do anything about these people, and they want to. They know who these people are.”

“Day one, my first hour in office,” he promised — “those people are gone.”

It’s not as though there were no updates to Trump’s shtick since his last two campaigns for president. His speech on Tuesday followed a very familiar pattern — vague, sweeping claims based on dubious statistics buttressed with gruesome anecdotes about individual crimes — but also included some new points.

For example, he declared that the federal government should have the ability to unilaterally send the National Guard into states to deal with perceived dangers, a lesson he adopted in the wake of protests in Minnesota. That’s explicitly not how the National Guard works, with governors having joint authority on their deployment in case a president wants to make a political statement by sending armed forces into the streets. A president, say, who’d used lines like “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

In his new speech, Trump integrated a lesson he learned in 2020: that his perceived toughness could be boosted by posturing about things he’d learned as president. He now has a better sense of the ways in which he can talk about that to boost the image he seeks to project.

This is not to diminish Trump’s very real interest in being able to use the military as national police. Trump is now running explicitly on the idea that he be able to deploy military power in that way. Which is the point: Yes, the rhetoric was the same as in 2016 and the problems the same despite four years of President Donald Trump. But now he’s also running explicitly on setting aside the safeguards he only learned about once he was in office.

“We need an all-out effort to defeat violent crime in America,” Trump said on Tuesday. “And strongly defeat it. And be tough and be nasty and be mean if we have to.”

The crowd cheered loudly.

 

[libgirl2]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s 2022 pitch on crime sounds just like his 2015 one"

 

He has nothing to offer but lies and deceit, yet his minions lap it up. 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

@Xan’s post (somehow I can’t quote it all) says it all. He really is running scared and freaking out. He’s throwing out distractions like tent cities for the homeless with no actual plans all while throwing fits behind the scenes. It’s just a matter of time and I fervently wish, hope, and pray none of them Belchers are perfect………,. So they can make fun of me. You 

[Xan]

Trump has filed a lawsuit in the U. S. Court of Appeals in DC to be granted "absolute immunity" from civil suits regarding January 6.  The legal reasoning is that his statements "were of public concern" and that exceptions should never have been carved out earlier.  He's also threatening to sue CNN if they don't stop referring to the Big Lie as "the Big Lie".  He says it's defamatory and that they haven't proved that he's lying.  He's already sent them a cease and desist letter to get them to stop calling him a liar.  I do hope this goes to court eventually.  CNN would have a blast on discovery.

So -- Donny's starting his tried-and-true fallback position.  He's going to clog up the courts.

Edited July 28, 2022 by Xan

[Anne Of Gray Gables]

23 hours ago, Xan said:

I'm not sure why he keeps describing the phone calls as "perfect".  That doesn't mean what he thinks it means.  

I think it's because the word "appropriate" has too many syllables for him.

He must feel like things are beginning to close in on him. He must be prosecuted. There is no other option.

[formergothardite]

7 hours ago, Xan said:

Trump has filed a lawsuit in the U. S. Court of Appeals in DC to be granted "absolute immunity" from civil suits regarding January 6.  The legal reasoning is that his statements "were of public concern" and that exceptions should never have been carved out earlier.  He's also threatening to sue CNN if they don't stop referring to the Big Lie as "the Big Lie".  He says it's defamatory and that they haven't proved that he's lying.  He's already sent them a cease and desist letter to get them to stop calling him a liar.  I do hope this goes to court eventually.  CNN would have a blast on discovery.

So -- Donny's starting his tried-and-true fallback position.  He's going to clog up the courts.

Suing CNN for calling him a liar seems like a remarkable stupid thing to do. I guess he hasn't realized that threatening lawsuits doesn't work anymore. They can drag him in for a deposition and it wouldn't go well for him. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump picks cash and revenge over the politics of 9/11"

Quote

When he first ran for president in 2016, Donald Trump invoked the 9/11 terrorist attacks regularly. The destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 offered a lot of points of political utility for Trump, from his claims about having helped clear rubble at Ground Zero (which appears to be false) to repeatedly using it as an example of the dangers of terrorism. At times, he cast himself as something of a victim, saying he saw people jumping from the building or describing the “hundreds” of friends he lost that day. At others, he touted his generosity in response.

The attacks also offered him another useful political tool. Facing former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Trump repeatedly disparaged the war in Iraq, launched in response to 9/11 by Bush’s brother President George W. Bush. To that end, he highlighted the role of Saudi Arabian actors in the attack, drawing the (accurate) distinction between the involvement of Saudis with the lack of connections to Iraq.

During an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in May 2016, Trump was asked if he would advocate for the release of material from the official report on the terrorist attacks that was believed to implicate Saudi officials in the attack.

“The answer is yes,” Trump replied. “ … And, you know, we got into a war in Iraq that I was totally opposed to. But Iraq did not knock down the World Trade Center, Sean.”

Hannity had also asked if the families of victims should have the right to sue Saudi Arabia. Trump said they should.

“We have to get to the bottom of it,” he said. “And everybody wants to keep it quiet. Everybody wants to keep it secret. I don’t — I think most people know pretty much what’s on those papers, but people do have the right to sue and they should have the right to sue. They lost their loved ones.”

Trump won — and his relationship with and rhetoric around Saudi Arabia quickly changed. The country was the focus of his first foreign trip; he enjoyed a fawning, over-the-top reception. Saudi officials understood that Trump responded positively to lavish praise and excessive spending, something they demonstrated wherever possible. It worked.

By the time killers believed to have been working on behalf of the Saudi crown prince dismembered Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Trump’s willingness to wave away concerns about the kingdom was well established. He couldn’t take a heavy hand in response to Khashoggi’s killing, he said, because the country bought so many weapons and armaments from the United States. (The dollar figure he commonly offered was wildly overstated.) The Saudis were customers, and businessman Trump knew the customer was always right.

For a while, the Khashoggi killing made Saudi Arabia’s government a global pariah. Apparently as part of an effort to reintroduce themselves into polite society, the Saudis backed an upstart golf league, LIV, that would compete with the U.S.-based PGA. In short order, they found a club willing to buck public opprobrium and host a tournament in the United States: Trump’s facility in Bedminster, N.J.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump discussed his willingness to host LIV. Part of it, obviously, is money, the grease that’s allowed the LIV to rapidly build a stable of competitors and advocates. Trump figured the LIV and PGA would merge at some point, with those who had agreed to work with LIV being no different from those who hadn’t, except that they would “have $200 million in their pocket.”

But there’s also an element of revenge. The PGA of America had scheduled the PGA Championship with PGA Tour players at Bedminster this year, pulling the tournament in the days after the Capitol riot. PGA of America is not enthusiastic about LIV with its CEO earlier this year describing it as being not “good for the game.” Welcoming the LIV allowed Trump not only to generate lost revenue for his club, it allowed him to stick a finger in the eye of one of his perceived enemies. To Trump, that’s as much of a win-win as you’ll get.

Not everyone viewed the decision with such enthusiasm. A group of people who had lost family members in the 9/11 attacks were outraged at Trump’s willingness to play along with the Saudi government so explicitly. They petitioned Trump not to host the tournament, even releasing an ad targeting him (and his base of support).

“I’m never going to forget, never going to forgive the golfers for taking this blood money,” one man says. Another woman asks, “how much money to turn your back on your own country?”

Through an aide, Trump reached out to the families, Politico reported this week. A family member recalled that the aide said that “9/11 is really near and dear to [Trump] and it’s so important to him he is going to remember everyone who signed the letter and he personally told this individual to reach out.”

This did not smooth things over.

To the Journal, Trump expressed somewhat less robust sympathy to the families of those killed.

“I don’t know much about the 9/11 families,” he told the paper. “I don’t know what is the relationship to this, and their very strong feelings, and I can understand their feelings. I can’t really comment on that because I don’t know exactly what they’re saying, and what they’re saying who did what.”

(He also marveled at a question about Khashoggi, saying that the controversy “really seems to have totally died down” and that “nobody has asked me that question in months.”)

Waving away the concerns of families of those killed on 9/11 — including first responders whom Trump has often invoked at political events — in favor of taking money from a regime he once criticized would seem fraught for a normal politician considering a potential presidential run. Trump, though, is unlikely to pay any political price.

Consider: On Thursday, Trump will participate in the LIV tournament’s pro-am (that is, foursomes made up of professionals and amateurs), alongside two professional golfers who had joined the upstart league. During a brief segment on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday morning, a show Trump had blasted only days prior, the hosts marveled not at his flip on Saudi Arabia’s culpability but, instead, at his prowess with the sport and his athleticism.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is great. I bet there were some hamberders thrown at the wall in Bedminster when TFG heard this:

 

[thoughtful]

On 7/27/2022 at 10:12 AM, Alisamer said:

They'll be tacky, fluorescent orange, have a giant Trump logo on them, and be completely unsuitable for the purpose. And cost 100 times what they are worth.

Spoiler

 

[onekidanddone]

14 hours ago, Xan said:

Trump has filed a lawsuit in the U. S. Court of Appeals in DC to be granted "absolute immunity" from civil suits regarding January 6.  The legal reasoning is that his statements "were of public concern" and that exceptions should never have been carved out earlier.  He's also threatening to sue CNN if they don't stop referring to the Big Lie as "the Big Lie".  He says it's defamatory and that they haven't proved that he's lying.  He's already sent them a cease and desist letter to get them to stop calling him a liar.  I do hope this goes to court eventually.  CNN would have a blast on discovery.

So -- Donny's starting his tried-and-true fallback position.  He's going to clog up the courts.

Le sigh. And he calls us snowflakes. Someone get him a bucket for his orange MAGA tears. 

[Xan]

Donny is looking pretty rough lately.  

Here he is at his golf tournament.  That cap with what looks like enlarged type isn't helping.

I heard someone talking about how we couldn't send him to jail for his crimes and part of the reason is that his Secret Service detail would have to be imprisoned too.  Isn't there some mechanism to remove the perks from a former president who is a felon?

[Alisamer]

11 minutes ago, Xan said:

I heard someone talking about how we couldn't send him to jail for his crimes and part of the reason is that his Secret Service detail would have to be imprisoned too.  Isn't there some mechanism to remove the perks from a former president who is a felon?

I would think that they'd just stick him in solitary and that would be sufficient. No need for the Secret Service to be imprisoned with him, at worst they'd have a pair of them stand outside his cell and accompany him any time he left it. But solitary would solve that problem entirely. Honestly it'd be fairly easy to keep him, I'd think. Stick him in a cell with a TV showing reruns of the news during his administration, give him a phone that he thinks posts tweets (but really goes nowhere and is followed and answered entirely by bots), and toss him a hamberder a couple times a day. He'd barely notice he was imprisoned. 

It is ironic that he gets lifelong Secret Service to protect him from others, when it's really the rest of the world that needs to be protected from HIM. 

[WiseGirl]

Hold the presses. 45 used the presidential seal at his tournament. 

What a fucker. Choosing money every time. Off to write complaints to the pro golfers now who also went for the money instead of PGA tournament.  45's club was originally supposed to host the PGA until they dumped him due to his Jan 6th shenanigans. 

.

From Rollling Stone, "The cash-rich LIV has been soaked in controversy since its inception, with many raising concerns that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is using the golf circuit as “sports-washing” to rehabilitate its public image. In 2018, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, allegedly under orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, prompting international condemnation. Two of LIV’s 14 events are slated to take place at Trump owned properties."

"Trump defends hosting Saudi-backed golf tournament by falsely claiming 'nobody's gotten to the bottom of 9/11'" from CNN. Spoiler alert he blamed them in 2018.

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by WiseGirl
Add text

[CTRLZero]

1 hour ago, WiseGirl said:

Off to write complaints to the pro golfers now who also went for the money instead of PGA tournament.  45's club was originally supposed to host the PGA until they dumped him due to his Jan 6th shenanigans

I wouldn’t bother giving them even the attention of a complaint letter.  My husband and I talked about this league when they first started, but can’t summon the interest to follow it at all.  It can’t be too much of a money maker, except for the golf course it’s held at (looking at you, Trump).  It’s not televised except for streaming at this point (that I’m aware of).  The format of the tournament (and we don’t even like to call it a tournament, prefer “exhibition”), won’t allow it to mesh with PGA standards.  Stand firm, PGA!

Anyway, the Saudis need to launder their money somehow.  The players can laugh all the way to the bank, but hopefully their top level competitive days are over.

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

9 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

Hold the presses. 45 used the presidential seal at his tournament. 

What a fucker. Choosing money every time. Off to write complaints to the pro golfers now who also went for the money instead of PGA tournament.  45's club was originally supposed to host the PGA until they dumped him due to his Jan 6th shenanigans. 

.

From Rollling Stone, "The cash-rich LIV has been soaked in controversy since its inception, with many raising concerns that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is using the golf circuit as “sports-washing” to rehabilitate its public image. In 2018, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, allegedly under orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, prompting international condemnation. Two of LIV’s 14 events are slated to take place at Trump owned properties."

"Trump defends hosting Saudi-backed golf tournament by falsely claiming 'nobody's gotten to the bottom of 9/11'" from CNN. Spoiler alert he blamed them in 2018.

 

So he’s using the POTUS seal during events sponsored/run by the ONLY country that has been shown to have a proven link to 9/11. The MAGAts should be outraged at him but they will find a way to not only excuse their Dear Leader but praise him for his vile and disgusting choices that show a complete disloyalty to the country he took an oath to serve. I plan on sending this information to everyone who bitched about Colin Kapernick with a note that Trump isn’t just disrespecting the troops, he is spitting on them. 

[Ozlsn]

You know of all the shitty things Trump has done burying his ex-wife on his golf course for tax purposes has to be up there. I can't even totally blame him though, her executors presumably had to agree to this, and if not one of her children objected then they are even more venial and disgusting than their father.

Honestly, I am just gobsmacked that this is even allowable, let alone that her family apparently agreed to it. 

[Xan]

10 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

You know of all the shitty things Trump has done burying his ex-wife on his golf course for tax purposes has to be up there. I can't even totally blame him though, her executors presumably had to agree to this, and if not one of her children objected then they are even more venial and disgusting than their father.

Honestly, I am just gobsmacked that this is even allowable, let alone that her family apparently agreed to it. 

The word is that he charged Ivana's estate for the funeral and burial.  Also, he's charging the estate for membership fees.  He's terrible but the kids must be equally terrible to agree to all this.  Now, he doesn't have to pay income, sales, use, business, or estate taxes on the golf course.  Also, cemeteries are exempt from any collection of judgments.  Anyone that sues Donald, now can't get at his beloved Bedminster.

[Xan]

This is Donny's latest from Truth Social:

 Here's a hint, Donny -- if you think Biden has dementia and is "recovering well" then he doesn't have dementia.  Good lord, can someone just make him shut up??

[Anne Of Gray Gables]

I'm not sure I've ever wished someone dead before, but the lyrics to this Bob Dylan song are in my head after reading the last post.

And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
On a pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
Til I'm sure that you're dead