US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[August]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I still do not understand that one.
Ok i get it a lot of people do not like her. Arrogant, striving for power, lying maybe. Corrupt. Incompetent. Unsympathetical alright.
Good that Trump is so different.

One major difference between the two are their places within the hierarchy of the hated political elite. She was the consummate insider whereas Trump is most definitely not.

So which do you prefer? Self serving arrogant corruption that can wield the enormous power of government most efficiently or the one that will spend all its time at odds with it?

To me the choice is clear. As I have said many times Trumps big appeal is that he pisses off all the right people. As long as he continues to frustrate their plans he'll keep my support.

[Dowly]

So, Trump said on Thursday that he wasn't aware of Michael Cohen paying Stormy Daniels $130k just prior to the elections.

Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti explains why it makes no sense:


In related news, Avenatti tweeted this:

Expect a major announcement in the coming days regarding our efforts to identify the thug who threatened Ms. Clifford in Las Vegas in 2011 to “leave Trump alone” while making reference to her little girl. You can run but you can’t hide.

Building up to be a real mess.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I still do not understand that one.
Ok i get it a lot of people do not like her. Arrogant, striving for power, lying maybe. Corrupt. Incompetent. Unsympathetical alright.
Good that Trump is so different.

Lying maybe? Does rigging her nomination count ? The DNC was so corrupt, it's amazing. And if the media wasn't so obviously biased, we would still be hearing about it.

So yeah, she was a horrible candidate, and I would rather have Trump, as classless and embarrassing as he is. At least he is unable to hide his nature.

[Rockstar]

[August]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Lying maybe? Does rigging her nomination count ? The DNC was so corrupt, it's amazing. And if the media wasn't so obviously biased, we would still be hearing about it.

I believe that if she had won we'd never have heard of any of it. We were never supposed to but Trumps win prevented them from covering their tracks.

I'm eagerly awaiting the DOJ AG report as well as what Huber finds out and I expect to see some indictments come out of it.

[Delgard]

I did not see a Syria thread, but it is important. Trump just slammed Obama about a Red Line in the sand and Trump has once before struck.

Is it something to be anticipated?

Just to throw that out there. If a Mod feels to create a new thread, that is fine.

An American Soldier and A British Soldier were recently killed.

Seems it is a Red Line question...

Thanks

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Building up to be a real mess.

how exactly? so Trump had sex with a porn star/prostitute 12 years ago who is obviously only interested in squeezing as much money as she can out of this. How is that any way relevant. Polls show his supporters do not care.

The rabid left wing media is trying to portray the 130k payment as a big deal. Is it an illegal campaign contribution? maybe, the legal arguments both ways are very gray.

but even if worst case scenario, it is ruled an illegal campaign contribution, the only sanction is a fine, so absolutely no effect on Trump.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

In fact I don't think the GOP will let Trump run in 2020.

you spend way too much time watching CNN.

69% of republicans and 79% of 2016 Trump voters want him to run again in 2020 and his job approval rating among Republicans is currently at 82%. It is certain he is running again in 2020.

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.ne...nTabReport.pdf

see question 62 and 74.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

you spend way too much time watching CNN.

69% of republicans and 79% of 2016 Trump voters want him to run again in 2020 and his job approval rating among Republicans is currently at 82%. It is certain he is running again in 2020.

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.ne...nTabReport.pdf

see question 62 and 74.

I disagree due to the other shoe has not dropped to the floor yet ...

Paul Ryan speaker of the house is the next causality to quit Trumps team work. I predict General Kelly will quit the WH team to run for POTUS in 2020.

The large field of GOP wannabe POTUS will have their stones ready you can bet on that ... Can he defend himself with funny tweets? I don't think so ...

It will be more up to the GOP that he runs against a as yet unnamed democrat candidate ... this circus will be bigger than the last one I guarantee you that

[August]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

Paul Ryan speaker of the house is the next causality to quit Trumps team work.

Speaker of the House is not a part of the Administration.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by August

Speaker of the House is not a part of the Administration.

True, but like Speaker Sam Rayburn for President Johnson ... Ryan was suppose to be the hammer

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Mr Quatro

True, but like Speaker Sam Rayburn for President Johnson ... Ryan was suppose to be the hammer

With a hammer like that it will take a lifetime

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

how exactly?

Well..

Trump attorney Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud, campaign finance violations

Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney of President Trump, is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, according to three people with knowledge of the case.

FBI agents on Monday raided Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen’s clients and personal finances. Among the records taken were those related to a 2016 payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to a fourth person familiar with the investigation.

[Catfish]

Why it is all a conspiracy, the paranoid style:

https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/...ican-politics/

"If, after our historically discontinuous examples of the paranoid style, we now take the long jump to the contemporary right wing, we find some rather important differences from the nineteenth-century movements. The spokesmen of those earlier movements felt that they stood for causes and personal types that were still in possession of their country—that they were fending off threats to a still established way of life. But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high."

It is not about right or left wing, it seems more to be some kind of religious folly.
If you get past the first few sentences it gets interesting, and explains a lot; also today.

The whole text is from november 1964..

[u crank]

Jimmy writes a book.

Former FBI director James Comey is about to release a book, his autobiography, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. Some of Comey's former associates don't think it's a great idea.

James Gagliano 25 year veteran of the FBI ....

“This current effort to meet the president in the public square, at his own game of slinging mud and punching and contributing smugness to the debate, it’s a bad look for him,” Gagliano says. “I think it’s going to diminish the FBI, and I think it’s going to diminish whatever’s left of Comey’s reputation.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/...yed-celebrity/

In separate interviews, German, Gagliano, and Savage all express similar concerns that Comey may be inadvertently giving Trump’s legal team some opportunities to discredit him as a witness, or perhaps even setting a perjury trap for himself, with his book and upcoming tour.

Gagliano says he wonders why no one around Comey could convince him to wait until Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation was complete before unveiling the book and agreeing to an extensive media tour.

German says that that the upcoming tour would infuriate anyone in Mueller’s position.

Trump called Comey a "showboat" and "grandstander" shortly after he fired him. It's looking like he may have got that right.

“[Comey] held the moral high ground,” Gagliano says. “He held it firmly, until he leaked to the New York Times through a surrogate. Then he lost a sizable piece of it. And when he joined the Twitter battle with Donald Trump, he ceded the sliver that was left. Now this self-serving, narcissistic, $850 [per ticket] in some venues, ‘Come hear me talk about the president during the ongoing special prosecutor probe’ — what are you thinking?”