All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[Scot Dutchy]

Donald Trump's latest endeavour? Asking his supporters to pay his debts

The outgoing president has two ‘election defense funds’ – but the small print shows donations will go towards paying off debt

Donald Trump has set up a retirement GoFundMe. Well, not exactly – he doesn’t call it a retirement GoFundMe, but his “election defense fund”.

Those donating may believe that the money will be used towards challenging the election result, but may have missed that their contributions are earmarked for paying off Trump’s re-election debts. It seems to be the latest episode in the Trump team’s comedy of errors.

As Trump continues to refuse to acknowledge the election result by baselessly claiming that Biden’s victory was won through voter fraud, he is also calling on his base for help. Donations can be made to two different funds – Trump’s personal fund, and his joint fund with the RNC.

“President Trump needs YOU to step up to make sure we have the resources to protect the integrity of the election!” the wording on both funds says, which is featured in a huge pop-up on Trump’s re-election webpage. It continues: “Please contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to the Official Election Defense Fund and to increase your impact by 1,000%!”

It is unclear who matches the donations.

[L'Emmerdeur]

This is great. Straya!

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/ ... n=trending

[rainbow]

Satire: 50 Ways to Leave the White House
November 7, 2020 / 1 Comment

(Melody: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover)


Laurie Baron

By Laurie Baron

The problem is that you lost the vote, she said to him.
The networks are telling you the results are grim.
Your chances are none and no longer slim.
There must be fifty ways to leave the White House.
Fifty ways to leave the White House.

As first lady I try not to intrude.
However, the Penn state vote means that you are screwed.
But I’ll repeat myself at the risk of being sued.
There must be fifty ways to leave the White House.
Fifty ways to leave the White House.

Work on a new con, Don.
Get yourself gone, Don
You don’t need to concede, Don.
Just move yourself out.
Play golf with friends, Don
Because your term must end, Don.
Just drop off the key, Don
And make room for Joe.

The problem is that you always enjoyed strife.
To remove you they might need the jaws of life.
For once it’s time you listen to your wife.
There must be fifty ways to leave the White House.
Fifty ways to leave the White House.

Work on a new con, Don.
Get yourself gone, Don.
You don’t need to concede, Don.
Just move yourself out.
Play golf with friends, Don
Because this is the end, Don.
Just drop off the key, Don
And make room for Joe.

*

Laurie Baron, Ph.D, is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.

https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2020/11/0 ... ite-house/

[Tero]

President still getting free rides on AF1 on my dime without doing any work.

[Sean Hayden]

Less for Biden to undo.

[L'Emmerdeur]

He's doing enough. Loading the upper levels of the Defense Department with Nunes' former staff and other fruit loops.

[JimC]

Laurie Baron, Ph.D, is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.

Bet he gets a little ribbing from the Jewish community over his last name...

[Scot Dutchy]

'Downright dangerous': Democrat alarm as Trump stacks Pentagon with loyalists

Fears that appointment of extreme Republican partisans could endanger or politicise operation of defense department

Extreme Republican partisans have been installed in important roles in the Pentagon, following the summary dismissal of the defense secretary, Mark Esper, at a time Donald Trump is refusing to accept his election defeat.

Democrats immediately demanded explanations for the eleventh-hour personnel changes and warned that the US was entering dangerous “uncharted territory” with the reshuffling of key national security roles during a presidential transition.

However defence experts argued there was little the new Trump appointees could do to use their positions to the president’s advantage, given the firm refusal of the uniformed armed services to get involved in domestic politics.

Anthony Tata – a retired army brigadier general, novelist and Fox News commentator who called Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” – has taken control of the Pentagon’s policy department, following the resignation of the acting undersecretary of defence for policy, James Anderson.

[JimC]

Presumably they'll be given the boot right after the Biden inauguration...

[Svartalf]

I hear pompeo is using his experience at setting up coups in banana republic to prepare rump a smooth transition into permanet (and hopefully short) presidency... anybody know the meat of it?

[Seabass]

Kazuyoshi Akaba has Trump Derangement Syndrome!

Japanese minister tweets about Trump ‘dictatorship’, quickly deletes

In a rare moment of frankness, Kazuyoshi Akaba alluded to a “dictatorship” in the US as Mr Trump continued to refuse to concede to Democratic rival Joe Biden.

According to Kyodo News Agency, the cabinet minister tweeted on Monday: "A sitting president making accusations of election fraud and insisting he will 'never give up'.

“Am I the only one seeing this and thinking, what kind of dictatorship is this? Where has our role model for democracy gone?”

Mr Akaba quickly deleted the tweet, reportedly telling a press conference the following day he did so because he did not want to be “misinterpreted”.

He said he initially wrote the tweet because he viewed the US as a “frontrunner of democracy”, according to Kyodo, and was “saddened” by the division the election had caused in the country.

[Brian Peacock]

I hear pompeo is using his experience at setting up coups in banana republic to prepare rump a smooth transition into permanet (and hopefully short) presidency... anybody know the meat of it?

There's no meat. It's all offal.

[Brian Peacock]

Enough is enough: Republicans' fealty to Trump imperils America itself

...

This isn’t about letting the president have his temper tantrum or, as one GOP official put it, “humoring him for a bit”. This is about whether Americans can trust in our system, and whether Americans will trust in our system. America will, hopefully, outlast Donald Trump, and hopefully it will outlast every person alive today. But America is as much an idea as it is a land mass; our democracy is an agreed-upon set of rules and norms, many of them written, but many of them customary. Americans have always sought to make the rules fairer, and to extend more rights and privileges to a wider swath of people: that’s what the civil rights movement did, and the women’s movement, too. But the goal was to get in on the system, not to undermine its legitimacy.

What Trump and his Republican enablers are doing is a wholly different thing. They aren’t saying that the system is unfair because it excludes some people who deserve to be a part of it. They aren’t even saying that they lost because the rules were unfair. They are saying that one side cheated, that the system is rigged. Once that cat is out of the bag – once you sow widespread distrust in the entire concept of free and fair American elections – it’s awfully hard to put it back in.

When the president refuses to concede, it also has a real, tangible impact on the nation’s future. The incoming president needs to be fully briefed; he needs to be able to staff up and start to put his team in place so that he can hit the ground running. It’s bad for the country if we slow that process down. And it’s especially dangerous during an escalating pandemic: Joe Biden is facing a huge public health emergency that experts predict will worsen this winter, and he needs to be able to manage it as efficiently as possible.

It’s sad and stunning that it has even come to this: that the integrity of the American electoral process is at stake, and many of the most powerful and prominent members of Republican party still declare fealty to their Dear Leader, even at the expense of the nation. This isn’t just about one party acting unscrupulously because they’re sore losers. This is how democracy itself comes undone.

[Tero]

Fearless leader

makes appearance in dreary weather, wrong salute and spoke not a word.

[rainbow]

Laurie Baron, Ph.D, is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.

Bet he gets a little ribbing from the Jewish community over his last name...

Oy vey!