All Things Trump: Is it over yet?

[rainbow]

ethanol is stupid, but this was no the time to mess with it. The farmers need to shift more slowly away from this ethanol production.

You touch ma likker steel, and I'll pepper yer ass with buckshot, boooy!

[Scot Dutchy]

America's new law enforcement agency:

Vigilante, volunteer, terrorist: how the US media covers Kyle Rittenhouse

The teen has been charged with shooting and killing two protesters in Kenosha, but it hasn’t stopped some pundits from trying to humanize him

There is perhaps no greater example of the polarization of American media than the coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who allegedly shot and killed two protesters and injured another at Kenosha this week.

On one side of the divide, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson defended Rittenhouse on Wednesday, due to the violence and property damage in Kenosha. “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” asked Carlson.

Ridiculing Carlson’s statement on Thursday, the Daily Show host Trevor Noah replied: “No one drives to a city with guns because they love someone else’s business so much.” He continued: “They do it because they are hoping to shoot someone. That’s the only reason people like him join these gangs in the first place – yes, I said it, a gang – because this is not the battle of Yorktown, it’s a bunch of dudes threatening people with guns.”

[Tero]

It's been 4 years since Obama! The Trump team will need to consult Biden and Obama, then do the opposite:
CNN
"But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we'd have a very, very solid, we would continue what we're doing, we'd solidify what we've done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done," Trump told The New York Times' Peter Baker.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/28/politics ... index.html

[Joe]

trump suspects doping in Biden
https://twitter.com/jilevin/status/1298993008184946691
Biden was doped up for Bernie debate!

Doesn't he usually accuse others of what he does?

[Tero]

OK

Meanwhile: Whaaat? Kate sang for Trump?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_McKinnon

[NineBerry]

No, she made a performance four years ago after the election. The article says Trump using this song now might be a reaction to that.

[Tero]

OK

[Seabass]

For those who are unfamiliar with Jim Gaffigan, this would be like Mister Rogers or Bob Ross or Big Bird going apeshit over Trump.

Famously Apolitical Jim Gaffigan Finally Loses It Over Trump

Jim Gaffigan—the wholesome standup comedian known for his clean act that he has purposefully steered away from politics—has finally been forced into dropping some f-bombs by President Donald Trump. In an outpouring on Twitter that lasted for over an hour as Trump delivered his Republican National Committee speech at the White House, Gaffigan offloaded what seemed to be four years of pent-up criticism of the president.

“Look Trumpers I get it,” he wrote. “As a kid I was a Cubs fan and I know you stick by your team no matter what but he’s a traitor and a con man who doesn’t care about you. Deep down you know it. I’m sure you enjoy pissing people off but you know Trump is a liar and a criminal.”

After getting pushback from Trump supporters, Gaffigan wrote: “I don’t give a fuck if anyone thinks this is virtue signaling or whatever. We need to wake up. We need to call trump the con man and thief that he is.” People were shocked, but not necessarily disappointed, by Gaffigan’s outburst. Writer Roxane Gay wrote: “Wow. The president made Jim Gaffigan, the chilliest dude, snap completely.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jim-gaffi ... over-trump
https://twitter.com/JimGaffigan/status/ ... 6076575744

[Tero]

Trump makes things happen?
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/08/28/poli ... index.html
It's the same situation as with Obama. Both could only rule with EO after passing a single law.

[Tero]

Can't wait for the nepotism to end.

58D0D1C0-055E-4F9C-A495-3397F903B63D.jpeg (71.81 KiB) Viewed 953 times

[L'Emmerdeur]

Peter Navarro, Trump's director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy apparently doesn't think much of Canada as an ally of the US.

'Top Trump adviser Peter Navarro disparages Canada's military efforts in Afghanistan'

"Every time that a Canadian shows up in a uniform, it's doing us a favour? How's that work?" That was a comment by Peter Navarro, an economist serving as director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy for U.S. President Donald Trump, published in a new book called "The Madman Theory: Trump Takes On the World."

Navarro’s comments were aimed at Canadian soldiers who served in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. More than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces participated in the NATO mission after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. During the 12-year operation, 158 Canadian soldiers died, while thousands more returned with mental and physical injuries.

"Were they doing us a favour, or were they brought into the idea they needed to do that as part of the global effort against terrorists?” Navarro is quoted in the book as saying.

"I mean, if they were just doing us a favour, maybe their government should have been thrown out of office."

Author Jim Sciutto was shocked by Navarro’s comments.

"It was mind blowing to me, here. You have arguably America's closest ally in many respects … and the dismissiveness,” he said.

"And it shouldn't be men and women in uniform and those who served in Afghanistan, every Canadian should be insulted by comments like that … to put it all in that view is ignorant, and ignorance is perhaps more frightening than being insulted," he said.

...

In the book, Navarro also expressed disdain for Canada's Liberal government, saying, "I mean, what's good about Canada? They're much more kind of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.”

Critics say Trump has courted dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and Russia’s Vladamir Putin, while sidelining long-time allies like Germany, South Korea and Canada - a friend since the Second World War.

"I saw Canada basically join us in the foxhole … They too cared about the principles we were fighting for," said Leon Panetta, former secretary of defense under then-President Barack Obama.

"It sends a signal to the rest of the world they cannot trust the United States."

[Seabass]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1299 ... 77190.html
https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1299393438522077190

For those of us who study autocracies, including elections in autocracies, there were a lot of familiar messages, symbols, and methods on display this week at the #RNCConvention. THREAD
1. Cult of the Personality. This show was all about Trump. ( 3 years after the death of Stalin, Khrushchev's gave his secret speech in 1956, titled "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences." I wonder if a future GOP leader will give a similar speech someday?)
2. Administrative resources. Autocrats and semi-autocrats frequently use government resources for personal electoral gain. We have #HatchAct to prevent such behavior in the U.S. It's obviously not working.
3. Blatant disregard for the law. That Trump's team dared anyone to charge them with violating the #HatchAct is exactly what Putin and others autocrats do all the time. Laws don't apply to the king & his court, only to the subjects.
4. Blatant disregard for facts. As U.S. ambassador to Russia, I found this Putin regime trait most frustrating. We - the U.S. government- were constrained by facts. They were not. Trump obviously was not constrained by facts last night. He usually isn't: amazon.com/gp/product/B08…
5. Us versus Them populism. "Elites" versus "the people" nationalism. Autocratic populists use polarizing identity politics to divide societies all the time. Many populist leaders actually have little in common with the "masses." (Putin is very rich.)
6. The opposition is the "enemy of the people." Putin & other autocratic populists cast their opponents as radicals & revolutionaries. They don't focus on their own records - often there is little to celebrate - but the horrors that will happen if they lose power. Sound familiar?
6b. There is one difference between Putin and Trump so far. Putin also claims falsely that his political opponents are supported by foreign enemies, the U.S. & the West. Trump has not gone there full-throated yet. But my guess it's coming. "Beijing Biden" is a hint.
7. Law and Order. Autocratic populists all shout about it, even when the opposite is happening on their watch.
8. The good tsar versus the bad boyars. Kings and tsars always blamed bad provincial leaders for national ills. Putin blames the governors all the time... just like Trump.
9. Individual acts of royal kindness. Putin, like the tsars he emulates, does this all the time. Trump offering a pardon or "granting" citizenship (which of course he didnt & doesn't have the power to do) are typical, faux gestures of royal kindness toward his subjects.
10. Homage and fealty. Vassals must signal their complete loyalty and absolute devotion to kings and autocrats. Those that don't are banished from the royal court or the party. (Where were the Bushes last night?)
11. The royal family. In this dimension, Trump acts more like a monarch than even Putin. (but watch Lukashenko and his gun-toting teenage son in Belarus)The many Trump family members who performed this week - even a girlfriend got a slot - went beyond even what Putin does.
12. There's still one big difference. We still don't know who will win the November election. That uncertainty is a crucial difference between electoral democracies & electoral autocracies. Its also a difference that has no guarantee of lasting, depending on the outcome this year
For further reading on populists in comparative perspective, see this report by @AnnaGBusse @FukuyamaFrancis @didikuo1 and me:
For further reading on electoral autocracies, see this review article: jstor.org/stable/4142837… END THREAD.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Trump has never hidden his authoritarian proclivities (see 2015), and yet a significant portion of the populace of the US voted for him anyway. So it goes.

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Don't mention the war!!

'Trump Advisers: He Was "Triggered" by Talk of White Supremacy'

Two former top Homeland Security officials in the Trump administration have told The Daily Beast that there was an unwritten policy to not utter phrases like “domestic terrorism” and “white supremacy” around the president, for fear that he would take such conversations as implicit criticism of him.

The directives, said Elizabeth Neumann, previously assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security for counterterrorism and threat prevention, were never formalized. But both she and Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at DHS, say that they were explicitly told by White House brass not to use such phrases or terms around Trump.

“Following the El Paso mass-shooting last year, the White House was looking to find a way to show that they were handling the situation,” Neumann, who worked on countering extremism and domestic terror, recalled. “I was advised by senior officials in the White House at the time that I should couch this in terms of countering violence, rather than countering domestic terrorism or white supremacy, when discussing it at the White House or in front of the president… The subtext was clear, that by using those words, we would be distracting the president from the core issue.”

[Tero]

Trump is going to wing it 2nd term, like the 1st. The 40%, aka basket of deplorables is fine with it.

[Tero]

Trump speech lies annotated.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/27/90138139 ... -annotated