Trump Scandal Thread (Past, Present, and Future)

[Birdjaguar]

There was a heated meeting in the Oval Office that devolved into a shouting match as Trump listened to Giuliani and Sydney Powell and floated the idea of declaring martial law in a bid to overturn the election. He's also considering an executive order which would give himself the power to seize Dominion Systems voting data, ostensibly to 'find the steal' but in reality to give them some legitimacy when they claim they 'found' it.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/19/poli...ney-powell-dominion-voting-systems/index.html

Trump is also pushing to install Sydney Powell as a special prosecutor to go after Biden if Trump does leave office, and has also asked Barr to appoint another special prosecutor to convert the tax investigation into Biden into a more wide-ranging harassment investigation. (basically he wants to unleash on Biden what he says the Mueller investigation was - a witch hunt)

yeah good luck with that Trump. Dominion is already suing the Trump Campaign.

But didn't Barr resign already? I'm afraid I get lost in following the politics of latter-day Rome...

His last day is the 24th I think.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The Dominion stuff I could care less about; it's the martial law stuff that is terrifying.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Dominion stuff I could care less about; it's the martial law stuff that is terrifying.

I don't think any general would go along.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't think any general would go along.

They don't have to for things to get ugly - see the other thread. I would also not rule out all generals. Flynn used to be one after all.

 

[Birdjaguar]

They don't have to for things to get ugly - see the other thread. I would also not rule out all generals. Flynn used to be one after all.

Flynn is the exception, not the rule.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

At one point, so was Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Then it became normal - as has so many Trump transgressions. I don't think a coup likely and I don't expect it to succeed but there is so much damage that could be done in just trying that we should all sit up and take it seriously when he is deliberated on it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It is one thing to declare martial law in a single city and send in the National Guard. It is quite another to declare it and try to enforce anything across a country a big as the US. What would such an order actually do? Keep everyone in their homes? But that would ruin the economy and help fight the virus! You think having the army trying to force new elections in the swing states would actually work? None of it makes any sense and all it would do is get Trump hauled out of the WH kicking.

 

[innonimatu]

At one point, so was Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Then it became normal - as has so many Trump transgressions. I don't think a coup likely and I don't expect it to succeed but there is so much damage that could be done in just trying that we should all sit up and take it seriously when he is deliberated on it.

Read up on this guy called Marius. And his sidekick turned enemy called Sila. Caesar didn't came out of nowhere

Don't stress about a coup. I joked about later-day Rome but it's not like the fall of the Republic. Talk about coups there is just empty talk for the ratings. Trump will leave the palace and whether or not he'll then go on to do the greatest troll act ever is still to be seen. But that's the limit of what he can do in the next coupe of years.

 

[IglooDame]

Read up on this guy called Marius. And his sidekick turned enemy called Sila. Caesar didn't came out of nowhere

Don't stress about a coup. I joked about later-day Rome but it's not like the fall of the Republic. Talk about coups there is just empty talk for the ratings. Trump will leave the palace and whether or not he'll then go on to do the greatest troll act ever is still to be seen. But that's the limit of what he can do in the next coupe of years.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither did it (Republic or Empire) fall in one. Sure, Hitler, Mussolini, and more recent autocrats have leveraged "legitimate" democratic political power into dictatorial power, but Trump seems not smart or disciplined or devious enough to manage it against a system that has really been built explicitly to prevent it. The problem is, he's eroding and weakening that system, and putting cracks in it, and demonstrating to others that are smarter and have far more dangerous motives than pure narcissism how to go about it and setting the stage for them.

 

[innonimatu]

I think you're confusing the symptom for the disease. Trump, as it has been, was a rather mild symptom. It can get much worse, especially if the space is left void.

 

[IglooDame]

I think you're confusing the symptom for the disease. Trump, as it has been, was a rather mild symptom. It can get much worse, especially if the space is left void.

Trump is incapable of leaving the space void while he still has breathe in his lungs and a working Twitter account.

That aside, if getting 25% of the population to circumstantially oppose democracy is a rather mild symptom, then I think you're too willing to wave off the effects or underestimating the poison he's injecting. Nixon was what I'd call a mild symptom.

 

[Patine]

The problem is, he's eroding and weakening that system, and putting cracks in it, and demonstrating to others that are smarter and have far more dangerous motives than pure narcissism how to go about it and setting the stage for them.

Well, he certainly start that process, did he? Teddy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, Bill Clinton, and, yes, even Barack Obama did their own pieces of damage to that edifice, each in their own special ways. Please, for the sake of any honest discourse of any sort in any way, shape, or form, do not state, by commission or intimation, that such, "eroding and weakening that system, and putting cracks in it," is even remotely a new or Trumpian innovation, or the work, alone, of only one of the two Duopoly Parties. That narrative is so transparently false, and a form of scapegoating so no one else feels the need to take any responsibility for that institutional deterioration, and thus, by that fact, nothing will realistically change, improve, or get better, or TRULY be addressed in that matter, only a disingenuous feeling of, "monster-slaying," and the accompanying, "haze of glory," - that's it, nothing productive toward this problem.

I think you're confusing the symptom for the disease. Trump, as it has been, was a rather mild symptom. It can get much worse, especially if the space is left void.

I've brought up the fact that Trump and his election in 2016 are a mere symptom of a greater socio-political disease, and one with infection vectors from both sides of the American socio-political divide aplenty. Most people seem to insist, however, that Trump and his cronies are THE cause of all that's bad and wrong in the U.S. of late, to the exclusion of any responsibility or blame by ANYONE else in ANYTHING.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I've brought up the fact that Trump and his election in 2016 are a mere symptom of a greater socio-political disease, and one with infection vectors from both sides of the American socio-political divide aplenty. Most people seem to insist, however, that Trump and his cronies are THE cause of all that's bad and wrong in the U.S. of late, to the exclusion of any responsibility or blame by ANYONE else in ANYTHING.

500K dead by Apr 2021
For all the many faults of the Democrats and there are many many problems with the dems, the cause of the disastrous government is placed at the feet of the Republicans
How you can imagine this is the fault of Democrats is beyond me.

 

[Patine]

500K dead by Apr 2021
For all the many faults of the Democrats and there are many many problems with the dems, the cause of the disastrous government is placed at the feet of the Republicans
How you can imagine this is the fault of Democrats is beyond me.

I detest arguments that measure negative qualities of government SOLELY in body count - especially with highly dubious and generalized "blame," for each and every death on the toll stated. The "body count only," argument is HIGHLY disingenuous, manipulative, out-of-touch, as well as distasteful and disgusting. Please present more comprehensive and rational arguments with a real set of comparative criteria, not this morbid, ghoulish, and highly sensationalist form argument in the future if you wish to have such arguments come across as credible. This applies to arguments on ANY government, past or present, not just the Trump Administration, as a note.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I detest arguments that measure negative qualities of government SOLELY in body count - especially with highly dubious and generalized "blame," for each and every death on the toll stated. The "body count only," argument is HIGHLY disingenuous, manipulative, out-of-touch, as well as distasteful and disgusting. Please present more comprehensive and rational arguments with a real set of comparative criteria, not this morbid, ghoulish, and highly sensationalist form argument in the future if you wish to have such arguments come across as credible. This applies to arguments on ANY government, past or present, not just the Trump Administration, as a note.

What other metrics do you want to use to judge the successful management of cornavirus ? Maybe we should just use the stockmarket instead ?
How can one talk about cornavirus without mentioning the number of deaths ?

You talk about sensationalism, manipulation and disgusting like Trump and the GOP havent been reveling in this for the last 4 years.
Its just getting worse, and you are in denial that Republicans arent to carry the blame. How many botched invasions, crashed economies, looting of the government and deaths is it going to take ?

 

[Patine]

What other metrics do you want to use to judge the successful management of cornavirus ? Maybe we should just use the stockmarket instead ?
How can one talk about cornavirus without mentioning the number of deaths ?

You talk about sensationalism, manipulation and disgusting like Trump and the GOP havent been reveling in this for the last 4 years.
Its just getting worse, and you are in denial that Republicans arent to carry the blame. How many botched invasions, crashed economies, looting of the government and deaths is it going to take ?

Alright, let's look at it this way. You, and every other poster on this forum, personally blame Trump for EVERY SINGLE COVID-19 death in the United States through negligence. While he certainly deserves his share of the blame, the fact is, an unprecented viral pandemic out of nowhere is going to kill SOME people - likely MANY, regardless of realistic response or leadership, wouldn't you say? There's only so much response the U.S. Government could realistically have made, and only so many of those lives that could have realistically been saved. Plus, some people in the United States did stupid things that endangered themselves and others of their own volition that had nothing to do with Trump's response. Some State responses, like Cuomo's infamous geriatric home mistakes, and the idiocy of the Iowa and Mississippi Governors, for instance, led to deaths from State, not Federal Government. And then, there's the unspoken, but tantamount to said, assumption, that the response would have been guaranteed to be a LOT better, and only minimal deaths would have been suffered, if Clinton had won in 2016. I'm not in denial of the evils of the Republican Party of the United States - a lot of people seem in denial of just how much of the evil of the U.S. Government as a whole the Democratic Party of the United States is complicent and participant with them on. Regardless of what you, and many others, believe, and what is considered "socially acceptable," to believe, that, while the two Duopoly Parties do viciously disagree on social issues and many budgetary ones, but they agree on more policy issues than they disagree on, all-in-all, including among the worst state criminal offenses domestically and abroad and the most shameless kowtowing to big corporate corruption that the U.S. Government, as a whole, is guilty of.

 

[Zardnaar]

Alright, let's look at it this way. You, and every other poster on this forum, personally blame Trump for EVERY SINGLE COVID-19 death in the United States through negligence. While he certainly deserves his share of the blame, the fact is, an unprecented viral pandemic out of nowhere is going to kill SOME people - likely MANY, regardless of realistic response or leadership, wouldn't you say? There's only so much response the U.S. Government could realistically have made, and only so many of those lives that could have realistically been saved. Plus, some people in the United States did stupid things that endangered themselves and others of their own volition that had nothing to do with Trump's response. Some State responses, like Cuomo's infamous geriatric home mistakes, and the idiocy of the Iowa and Mississippi Governors, for instance, led to deaths from State, not Federal Government. And then, there's the unspoken, but tantamount to said, assumption, that the response would have been guaranteed to be a LOT better, and only minimal deaths would have been suffered, if Clinton had won in 2016. I'm not in denial of the evils of the Republican Party of the United States - a lot of people seem in denial of just how much of the evil of the U.S. Government as a whole the Democratic Party of the United States is complicent and participant with them on. Regardless of what you, and many others, believe, and what is considered "socially acceptable," to believe, that, while the two Duopoly Parties do viciously disagree on social issues and many budgetary ones, but they agree on more policy issues than they disagree on, all-in-all, including among the worst state criminal offenses domestically and abroad and the most shameless kowtowing to big corporate corruption that the U.S. Government, as a whole, is guilty of.

They didn't try that hard ergo Trump gets alot of the blame.

 

[Patine]

They didn't try that hard ergo Trump gets alot of the blame.

But EVERY SINGLE COVID-19 death in the United States, like a bunch of posters here are claiming? I'm not a Trump supporters, AT ALL, and he certainly shoulders the lion's share of the blame, but I have just given several examples of why EVERY SINGLE COVID-19 death in the United States is highly distorted and unrealistic, and I worry about the pattern of this kind of "Arthurian kingship," absolute and complete responsibility and blame or accolade and praise for absolutely everything that happens under the serving head-of-state thinking going forward may lead to - it's not personally about Trump (who everyone hyperbolically blows up into far more than he really is, anyways).

 

[Zardnaar]

But EVERY SINGLE COVID-19 death in the United States, like a bunch of posters here are claiming? I'm not a Trump supporters, AT ALL, and he certainly shoulders the lion's share of the blame, but I have just given several examples of why EVERY SINGLE COVID-19 death in the United States is highly distorted and unrealistic, and I worry about the pattern of this kind of "Arthurian kingship," absolute and complete responsibility and blame or accolade and praise for absolutely everything that happens under the serving head-of-state thinking going forward may lead to - it's not personally about Trump (who everyone hyperbolically blows up into far more than he really is, anyways).

Hyperbole I've never claimed Trumps responsible for all of them.

 

[Patine]

Hyperbole I've never claimed Trumps responsible for all of them.

Perhaps not you, specifically, I will admit.. But a notable number of posters here have - including @FriendlyFire just now, whom I was just responding to, and whose post you seem to be, at least partially, defending. The statement I made was not hyperbole, but an unspecified target statement of actual posters' publicly-stated views, of which I didn't specifically list you among.