All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[Cunt]

If that gets out, people won't want to move to the US anymore!

Another Trump conspiracy to reduce illegal immigration. He really does play 5d chess.

[Tero]

6F456162-3F2E-4A05-87D9-50B629F05D4E.jpeg (72.61 KiB) Viewed 1939 times

[Animavore]

Dangerous, psychopathic, scumbag, inciting piece of shit.

[Tero]

Not able to attack congress, much, Trump attacks Dem governors

[Tero]

https://mobile.twitter.com/P_Lepinkaine ... 1412441088

[Animavore]

April 17, 2020 (Friday)

Today’s main story was Trump’s morning tweets:

“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”

“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

The media has been on fire ever since. A president advocating a violent overthrow of three states with Democratic governors is unprecedented, and quite possibly illegal—Mary McCord, acting US assistant attorney general for national security from 2016-2017 pointed out that “advocating overthrow of government” is a federal crime. It is also a state crime in Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia.

What is behind these tweets? After all, just last evening, Trump announced that it was not yet time to open state businesses, and that state governors should make their own decisions about when to restart their economies during the novel coronavirus pandemic. So why is he now telling people to overthrow those governments?

It is, in part, diversion. The response of the Trump administration to the pandemic crisis has been bumbling, inadequate, and quite possibly corrupt—the apparently political distribution of crucial medical supplies and now the Payroll Protection Program loans designed to help small businesses is drawing scrutiny. The economy, on which Trump pinned his hopes for reelection, is in free fall. As his approval rating drops, Trump wants to energize voters to focus not on his handling of the coronavirus, but instead on blaming Democratic leaders for the economic crisis.

But there is a larger story behind Trump’s incendiary tweets. Since the 1980s, the Republican Party has retained power by insisting that its leaders were defending America from dangerous “liberals,” who wanted to redistribute wealth from hardworking, religious, usually white, taxpayers, to “special interests.” In the years since President Ronald Reagan, there has been less and less nuance in that narrative and, by the time of President Barack Obama, no room to compromise. The division of the nation into “us” versus “them” has come to override any attempt at actual problem solving; Republican lawmakers simply address national problems with what their ideological narrative requires: cuts to taxes, regulation, and social welfare programs.

The coronavirus pandemic requires us to unite for our own safety, but members of the Republican Party can only see the world in partisan terms. Boston College political scientist David Hopkins notes that “The contemporary Republican Party has been built to wage ideological and partisan conflict more than to manage the government or solve specific social problems.” Republicans remain so consumed by their war on Democrats and liberals they cannot fathom working together to fight the pandemic.

Instead, they have continued to prioritize “owning the libs” over public safety. After first calling concern about the virus a Democratic hoax, then refusing to shut down states, Republicans are now calling Democratic governors trying to limit social contact authoritarians. Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, the man who oversees our entire intelligence community-- the community that repeatedly tried to get Trump to take the novel coronavirus seriously in January and February-- tweeted a picture of the US Constitution with the heading: “SIGNED PERMISSION SLIP TO LEAVE YOUR HOUSE.”

Trump’s tweets are part of this larger political narrative, one that the Fox News Channel is instrumental in driving. The protest this week against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan was not organic; it was organized by a political group, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, and it garnered attention far beyond its small numbers thanks to right-wing media. FNC personality Jeanine Pirro said of the Michigan protesters: “God bless them, it’s going to happen all over the country.” FNC personality Laura Ingraham tweeted a video of it, saying: “Time to get your freedom back.” FNC personality Tucker Carlson interviewed a representative of the MCC on his show; the person got another interview on “Fox & Friends” the next day. Indeed, Trump’s “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” tweet came just after a program on the Fox News Channel ran a story on protests at the Minnesota governor’s office by a group called “Liberate Minnesota.”

The goal of this enterprise is to keep Republicans in office in 2020. The latest filing for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) leadership committee shows that four of the top five donors are executives for the Fox News Channel. Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Viet Dinh, FNC’s Legal Adviser and Policy Director, and the president of 21st Century Fox all gave $20,600.

Like Republican policies in general right now, though, the attack on physical distancing is not popular. Polls show that at least two-thirds of Americans are worried that states will lift restrictions on physical distancing too quickly, while only 32% worry they will reopen too slowly. While no one wants the economy to crash, we are generally in agreement that lives should come first, and that to reopen the economy we need widespread testing, low case numbers, and sufficient hospital capacity, just as Trump himself said yesterday.

Without those conditions, getting people to reengage in the public sphere is going to be a hard sell. But we don’t have the tests we need, and the federal government has abdicated its role in obtaining them. (A call on Friday with Vice President Mike Pence about the lack of testing left Senate Democrats “livid.” And even-keeled Independent Maine Senator Angus King reportedly said “I have never been so mad about a phone call in my life.”)

And so we are back to Trump’s central political problem: the pandemic requires a party and a president that can unite with Democrats and can implement policies to solve a deadly crisis. That is not today’s Republican Party or its current leader.

Stirring up violence against Democratic governors would address the problem by feeding the culture wars that stoke base Republican voters. The nation would appear bitterly divided, and the need for a strong leader to restore order would seem apparent to those who might otherwise be sliding away from the erratic president. As any powerful person does, Trump wields influence over certain of his supporters, and his words are terribly dangerous. When he repeatedly called CNN “the enemy of the people,” for example, someone sent bombs to CNN’s studios.

Former Republican governor of New Jersey Christine Todd Whitman tweeted: “This [president] is now truly getting out of control. In talking about “liberating” the states, he is using language that could well lead to rioting. No one has done more to undermine our constitution and destroy our country’s values than [Trump].”

But while Trump’s supporters are trying to hold on to power by sparking a dramatic struggle with Democratic leaders, it may be that the coronavirus has the last word. While cases are leveling off in states that shut down, new hotspots are emerging in states that do not have stay-at-home orders. In the past week, cases in Oklahoma rose 53%. Arkansas cases went up 60%, Nebraska’s 74%, and Iowa’s 82%. South Dakota’s cases went up by 205%.

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Time to give Trump the bullet.

[Cunt]

Time to give Trump the bullet.

Yes. How very DARE he leave this decision to state-level government, and use advocacy rather than military force.

[Tero]

Time to give Trump the bullet.

Yes. How very DARE he leave this decision to state-level government, and use advocacy rather than military force.

The Republican party has been known to hang on to power by whatever means. They are losing people as the country becomes more a group of more multicultural, tolerant people. So we do not know where their judges will take us as far as state and federal rules go. They will resist forever approving marijuana on a nation wide scale. But you have to go case by case,

Suppose the courts overrule Roe vs Wade. By the constitution that would then fall to states to decide. We would have abortion states and non-abortion states. States would try to block travel for abortion. But they could then come back and pass a new law. "In this case" the federal government can decide what to do. They will pass laws to ban abortion at say 3 weeks initially, then all abortions.

The politicians and judges will then have a track record of backing states on some issues, controlling them on others.

[Brian Peacock]

The far-right are Capitalism's anti-bodies.

[Tero]

Now that Trump hates Michigan except the holigans protesting....

[Cunt]

Time to give Trump the bullet.

Yes. How very DARE he leave this decision to state-level government, and use advocacy rather than military force.

The Republican party has been known to hang on to power by whatever means. They are losing people as the country becomes more a group of more multicultural, tolerant people. So we do not know where their judges will take us as far as state and federal rules go. They will resist forever approving marijuana on a nation wide scale. But you have to go case by case,

Suppose the courts overrule Roe vs Wade. By the constitution that would then fall to states to decide. We would have abortion states and non-abortion states. States would try to block travel for abortion. But they could then come back and pass a new law. "In this case" the federal government can decide what to do. They will pass laws to ban abortion at say 3 weeks initially, then all abortions.

The politicians and judges will then have a track record of backing states on some issues, controlling them on others.

It looks like RvW will indeed be overturned.

Is this the sort of thing you want feds to dictate? Or allow states to decide? (remember, sometimes the Federal government doesn't go your way)

I think it should be an individual choice, and the people debating the choice should probably be armed for the discussion.

[Animavore]

April 19, 2020 (Sunday)

The big news for two days has been the “protests” of state governors’ stay-at-home orders and mandatory business closings to try to contain the novel coronavirus which, as of today, has taken more than 40,000 American lives. The protests started last week in Lansing, Michigan, on Wednesday, April 15, when demonstrators descended on the state Capitol to protest the “statists” they say are destroying the economy and taking away their liberties. On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that people needed to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, all states with Democratic governors. Then, Saturday, the Fox News Channel advertised “emerging rallies/protests to reopen economy” and, lo and behold, there they were on television tonight: protests in Colorado, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington.

These protests are a classic example of trying to control politics by controlling the national narrative.

The protests are backed by the same conservative groups that are working for Trump’s reelection. The Michigan Conservative Council, one of the organizers of the Michigan protest, was founded by a pro-Trump couple active in state Republican politics. Another organizer was the Michigan Freedom Fund, whose leader, Greg McNeilly is a Republican political operative who worked for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s family.

Protests in Wisconsin were organized by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, founded by Republican pro-Trump economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, and by FreedomWorks, a training group for conservative activists that grew out of a political organization founded by David and Charles Koch. FreedomWorks is most famous for its organization of the Tea Party movement in 2009. Its president, Adam Brandon, told Vox reporter Jane Coaston that “this has the same DNA [as] the Tea Party movement.” It “just so happened a lot of our activists were organizers.”

The Fox News Channel personalities cheered on the events, with Jeanine Pirro saying of the Michigan protesters: “God bless them, it’s going to happen all over the country;” Laura Ingraham tweeting a video of it, saying: “Time to get your freedom back;” and Tucker Carlson interviewing a representative of the Michigan Conservative Council on his show before the person did another interview on “Fox & Friends” the next day. On Saturday, FNC ran graphics showing where protests were planned across the country from April 18 to May 2.

These are not spontaneous, grassroots protests. They are political operations designed to divert attention from the Trump administration’s poor response to the pandemic. Even more, though, they are designed to keep the American public divided so that we do not protest the extraordinary economic inequality the pandemic has highlighted.

These protests have diverted the national conversation by turning a national crisis into partisan division along the lines the Republican Party has developed since the 1980s. But in reality there are few actual protesters: two-thirds of Americans are worried that lockdowns will end too early, not too late. People began to separate physically even before governors required it, and say they will not stop distancing until they are certain they are safe, no matter the official government stance.

Still, the focus on partisan division is slowing down talk of the administration’s failure to provide the testing we need before it is safe to reopen businesses and stop the stay-at-home orders. Testing enables public health officials to identify and shut down hot spots; we need hundreds of thousands more tests a day. Trump says the states have enough tests to reopen. "They don't want to use all of the capacity that we've created. We have tremendous capacity," Trump said during a White House briefing. "They know that. The governors know that. The Democrat governors know that. They're the ones that are complaining." But Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, the chair of the National Governors Association and a Republican, says this is “absolutely false.” Hogan told CNN today “It’s not accurate to say there’s plenty of testing out there and the governors should just get it done. That’s just not being straightforward.”

The change of subject protects not just Trump but also the ideology at the heart of his Republican Party. Since 1981, Republicans have argued that the economy depends on wealthy businessmen who know best how to arrange the economy—the makers-- and that it is vital to protect their interests. Under their policies, wealth in America has moved upward. The pandemic has highlighted how these policies have removed economic security for ordinary people. They cannot pay their bills, and they might well turn against an ideology that uses our tax dollars to bail out corporations while they must risk their lives to pay their rent.

The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package highlighted the protection of big business at the expense of ordinary Americans. It expanded unemployment benefits with an additional $600 per week for up to four months and provided a one-time $1200 payment per person for those who make less than $70,000. It also provided for $350 billion in loans for small businesses to cover expenses. But those benefits are meager compared to the policies of other developed countries, which are covering 75-90% of the wages of workers affected by shutdowns. Unemployment benefits are hard to get in general as systems are overwhelmed, but in Florida, where the $275 cap for unemployment is among the lowest in the country, former Republican Governor Rick Scott deliberately made the unemployment application process difficult to keep the unemployment numbers low. “The system was designed to fail,” an advisor to current Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters. Now, “it’s a sh— sandwich.”

The $350 billion in loans for small businesses, known as the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP), is already gone. Its distribution raised eyebrows. Handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, the loans often went to big businesses rather than small ones. Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses, for example, which has more than 5000 employees and had $468 million in revenue last year, got $20 million (the limit was supposed to be $10 million, but it applied from two divisions). The allocation of the money was also uneven, leading to accusations of political favoritism, although there is still too little public information about the loans to verify what really happened.

The benefits for big businesses and the wealthy from the bill are clearer. Democrats had to battle to get oversight for the $500 billion allocated for big businesses, but when Trump signed the bill he issued a statement saying he would not honor the oversight provisions. He said the administration “would not treat spending decisions as dependent on prior consultation with or the approval of congressional committees.” Then we learned that Senate Republicans had inserted into the bill a tax loophole that will deliver a $70.3 billion tax cut in 2020 to just 43,000 individuals, 82% of whom make more than $1 million a year. The argument for the cut was to free up financial liquidity during the pandemic, but Republicans have wanted the change since the 2017 tax cut passed. The tax break “is so generous that its total cost is more than total new funding for all hospitals in America and more than the total provided to all state and local governments,” Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) said.

For people eager to retain our current government and its policies, ginning up a media frenzy over alleged partisan divisions is a welcome diversion. It helps distract us from the growing sense that our government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” has lost its way.

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Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

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[Brian Peacock]

This isn't about the pandemic, this is about November. On Thursday he said that governors should only reopen states when they're sure they've passed their peaks, and on Friday he was inciting armed protest in states he's going to need to win in November. This is the usual weaponisation of #OUTRAGE and control of the national narrative that the Birthermeister General specialises in. The question is, why do people continue to fall for these distractions?

[Scot Dutchy]

Of course the 'pandemic' is not being politicised? It has long gone past that station. The numbers are not living up to expectation. Only 160,000 world wide not the millions forecasted. The bubble is burst but getting back to any form of normality would mean a big climbdown and the political world is not ready as their instruments of power are not in place.
We have no evidence that lockdown has achieved anything but paranoia. Not a single country went any other way (?). Only Sweden moved slightly off track and severely criticised for it. Now masks, the symbol of control, are being advised after being in the beginning deemed not necessary. Our masters in this country have declared they add nothing and fact can be a source of infection.

[pErvinalia]

Of course the 'pandemic' is not being politicised? It has long gone past that station. The numbers are not living up to expectation. Only 160,000 world wide not the millions forecasted.

That's because of the restrictions you oppose, dipshit.