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Donald John Trump: 2016 President-Elect

Notwisconsin

By Notwisconsin
in Current Events & Politics

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backformore
backformore

To be fair, Clinton doesn't actually advocate abortion, that makes it sound like she recommends terminating pregnancies.    Nobody is in favor of abortion.   She does advocate for the choice to be mad

Menrva
Menrva

There is nothing Trump supporters can say that will ever make me be okay with their vote. Nothing. And I do not want to take the high road here. I want blood. I will call that repulsive liar every ins

Darian
Darian

Yeah, I called Mitt Romney a bigot to his face (ok, I just chanted it at his anti-marriage equality rally in Boston) and I could still understand why people I liked and even loved supported him, could

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Kromm

Kromm

(edited)
29 minutes ago, backgroundnoise said:

In past elections, there have been friendly rivalries going on where I work.  People would freely talk about who they are voting for and why.  But this year, it's as if the whole subject is too provocative to even bring up.

I know for myself, that I can't come out and say what I believe:  Any one voting for Trump should be ashamed of themselves.  At least I can say it here.

See, I actually don't agree.

I know the power of denial. How strong it can be. The Trump supporters actually believe the Hillary supporters are in denial as well about Benghazi and Clinton ordering people assassinated, and her helping Bill cover up rapes galore, and all kinds of other stuff. Most of it is not logical, but lets be honest here. Half of humanity (it's not a gender thing, but it's still at least half) don't fall into that logical thinking space on personality tests (stuff like Meyers-Briggs personality indexes). A lot of people just live in an emotional driven world, quite literally, and it has nothing to do with IQ in the least (which can be just as high or higher). That's not even to say that all of the "feeling" people on those tests are Trumpeteers and all of the "thinking" people are Clinton voters. That's probably not true either. All I'm saying is that a lot of people could be dug in, on EITHER side, based on pure emotionalism. And shame, while it's an emotion, takes consideration, a bit of intellectualism, to process the fact that you have anything to be ashamed OF. IMO it takes people who are more balanced between those feeling and thinking scales (it's not an all or nothing on those tests but a spectrum). 

But back to denial. I think we have the bizarre situation here where the denial is focused around admitting they are compromising other parts of their belief system to support the parts which require backing the guy who (theoretically) is going to push back on "baby killing" (aka abortion), "rewarding sodomy" (aka "gay marriage"), and who will protect their guns (pretty much an extension of religion to many people in the US now). What do YOU see as the bigger sin? One based on denying the Golden Rule, or one based on denying absolute belief in the Bible overall (ironic since the Golden Rule is also FROM the Bible... Matthew 7:12)?

Your answer may be different than people supporting Trump.

And while I myself am not religious, I've met plenty of people who have that strange kind of doublethink a lot of people have to have to be true believers these days. They think they are the good guys, rest assured. 

It's bad enough when we are talking about the difference between the two Americas when they are supporting someone like John McCain. A man who SEEMS to have some principles... but then you hear him go right along with slimy stuff like blocking Supreme Court appointments ad infinitum, or about how much NRA money he takes to keep gun reform squashed, etc. THEN you have to lay the extra level of perceived denial to accept an outright evil man like Donald Trump on top of that? Ouch.

Not that denial is totally absent from Hillary Clinton supporters either. Most people of that bent seem to accept that she's a flawed candidate, and maybe even somewhat slimy/corrupt. But there's also a kickback against that which almost functions like denial, because admitting that almost seems like buying into misogyny and the whole (true) "would we even be having these conversations if she was a man who did the same things" (answer: probably not). So increasingly I've seen people in the Clinton camp have to operate in denial mode too, even if the reasons they got to that place are a bit different than why a lot of Trump fans are in denial.

Edited by Kromm
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Padma

Padma

10 minutes ago, Landsnark said:

Interesting statement.   Trump IS actually very similar to Hitler in the way he divides and uses propaganda.  Actual facts, phrasing, philosophies, tactics, patterns between the two can be observed and correlated.  Trump promotes himself as a totalitarian strongman.  Comparing Trump to Hitler or garden variety totalitarian strongmen is a supportable position to hold, to a degree. 
Satan isn't real... so we'll say that Hillary is entirely corrupt and bent on... I dunno.. "bad things."  That's actually not true.  She used a private email server.  Satanic?  Corrupt?  She doesn't trust the press, so she can be reserved and circumspect with her energy.  Satanic?  Corrupt?  She was Secretary of State when there was a terrorist attack.  Satanic?  Corrupt?  Her husband, former President of the United States, helps manage one of the best global charities ever.  Satanic?  Corrupt?  Her efforts made her wealthy.  Satanic?  Corrupt?
They hate her because she's a woman.  She's an attorney.  She's Ivy League educated.  She's ambitious.  She's "elite."  She's worked in government and is a traditional politician.  They've been told she rigged the game and is out for herself.  She's not like them; their provincial lives are unfulfilling.  They HATE her for those reasons. 
The sentence quoted could be better written, "They're stupid, and Trump is dangerous."

I'm sorry to say but many Trumpkins would disagree with you. For many of Satan IS real, and they take the comparison literally. (Same with Alex Jones' InfoWars saying that Obama and Clinton are "demons". It's not a metaphor. He means it literally and people believe it, literally.)

Here's Farrakhan at Breitbart: "Don't Fall for 'Satan' Hillary"

On the other side, no one actually believes Trump is Hitler....yet. But the authoritarianism is there, and some other things.

I actually don't like to think of even the most deplorable of Trump's supporters as stupid, although they may be. I think of them as educationally deficient in critical thinking, brainwashed by conservative media and raised to conform and put faith in a strong leader.  They tend to be either strong authoritarians or strongly "burn it down" types. They are low information and misinformation voters and don't know it.

Is that elitist thinking? Yes. But I don't think of the difference as necessarily smart v. stupid. 

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Kromm

Kromm

5 minutes ago, Padma said:

On the other side, no one actually believes Trump is Hitler....yet. But the authoritarianism is there, and some other things.

He's literally using The Big Lie technique, constantly, which is straight from Mein Kampf. A book which he himself admitting to having read and appreciated (and this is a man who in interviews typically changes the subject really quickly when the subject of books and what he's read comes up). 

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NextIteration

NextIteration

1 minute ago, Kromm said:

which is straight from Mein Kampf. A book which he himself admitting to having read and appreciated 

It was My New Order, not Mein Kampf.

Quote

Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, “Heil Hitler,” possibly as a family joke.

Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.

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Landsnark

Landsnark

There is a path towards authoritarianism.  You can't tread it without the comparisons.  Is he Hitler?  Nope.  But he's a fucking maniac who evinces the same traits, to a degree.   Every non-partisan 3rd party evaluator of political speechifying claims he's the biggest liar to have been measured in American politics.
His stupid supporters are free to believe Hillary Clinton caused the men to die in Benghazi.  They're wrong.  EVERY observable fact concludes this.  Their position is indefensible.  Anyone who truly believes otherwise is intentionally deluded.  Willful ignorance is a definition of stupid.

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backgroundnoise

backgroundnoise

Quote

She's worked in government and is a traditional politician.  They've been told she rigged the game and is out for herself. 

The irony is that Trump's the one whose been chasing the almighty dollar his entire life.  Hillary and Bill are both Yale educated lawyers.  They could have been pulling down million dollar salaries for decades in the private sector, rather than dedicating themselves to public server.

What I find scariest about Trump (among many, many scary things) is the total lack of respect he has for the Presidency itself.  It may sound corny, but our peaceful transition of power has always been our greatest statement of who we are to the rest of the world.  How in the future can we advocate for other governments to embrace democracy with Trump tearing the whole fabric down?  He's making a mockery of that to gratify his own ego.

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GHScorpiosRule

GHScorpiosRule

I don't want to be that person, but I watched that interview with Chris Matthews and Nosferatu, and though I could see the 'are you kidding me?' On his face, he didn't manage to shut him up or catch him in a lie.

I actually liked Jake Tapper's "You can't defend him because you can't defend the indefensible!" Interview with that ghoul.

Why didn't Chris counter with how Powell, Rice and George W. also had private servers?  Or that George W. had deleted 22 million emails? Does Nosferatu consider them criminals? Did they commit felonies?

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NextIteration

NextIteration

(edited)
20 minutes ago, Landsnark said:

There is a path towards authoritarianism.  You can't tread it without the comparisons.  Is he Hitler?  Nope.  But he's a fucking maniac who evinces the same traits, to a degree.   Every non-partisan 3rd party evaluator of political speechifying claims he's the biggest liar to have been measured in American politics.

A lot of people forget President Eisenhower's second most important warning.

The GOP has increasingly been moving towards authoritarianism, it's closely tied to the rise of the religious right (oddly enough since Hitler was supposedly an atheist).

Edited by NextIteration
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Kromm

Kromm

8 minutes ago, starri said:

Add "college-educated" because they're about the only people who wouldn't find themselves in a world of hurt.

Being college educated doesn't ensure much success these days. It may help critical thinking, and the name of certain schools will always help, but a standard undergrad degree isn't doing much now. 

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starri

starri

Just now, Kromm said:

Being college educated doesn't ensure much success these days. It may help critical thinking, and the name of certain schools will always help, but a standard undergrad degree isn't doing much now. 

True, but they would likely feel the least impact of a bunch of regressive social and fiscal policies.

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Padma

Padma

10 minutes ago, BoogieBurns said:

Maybe if you are a straight white male. 

Straight white right-wing male.

As the media's exploded all week over women...Latinos...African Americans on the one hand and "working class middle aged white men for Trump" on the other, I keep wanting to hear from the many, many white men, including many blue collar men, who are steadfastly for Hillary. There are so many of them, but the media seems to ignore them. We will win--if we win--in large part because they saw through Trump's appeal to that group as his supposed base. (How he became the identified as the "champion of the working class" baffles me--it's a tremendous failure of his opponents and the media is all I've got because nothing could be more preposterous. Still, LOTS of men in that demographic are voting for Hillary and I am thankful!)

Quote

A lot of people forget President Eisenhower's second most important warning

That was a good letter which I'd never read before. I especially liked this part: “Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life.”

Not enough attention has been given to the way Trump talks about unity. "We're divided but after I'm elected we will be united.... One people, worshipping one God, under one flag."  I wish someone had asked him about dissent and about differences of opinion and how he feels about it. Because I remember a rally where he described the protesters as "the worst people, so hateful and un-American".   He routinely describes reporters who don't write what he likes as "liars" and has threatened to "strengthen libel laws".

 How would he bring this complete "unity" when half the country disagrees with him? 

Obviously, real Americans respect our Constitution, esp. the Bill of Rights, and understand the role of debate and freedom of expression in a democracy. Trump doesn't do any of that.  One of my greatest disappointments from this election is that he was never seriously asked about his ideas for reconciling "unity" and "dissent"

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random chance

random chance

1 hour ago, Padma said:

We seem like two Americas still.  The conservative, less educated white Christian Trump supporters who appreciate an authoritarian leader and want to return the country to the 1950s.

And the ethnically & religiouisly diverse, better educated, less church-centered, less authoritarian-inclined, Hillary supporters, which also includes more young people. 

I have always thought that one of the best things we've got going for ourselves is the system of checks and  balances. If those groups broke off and formed their own country, the first group's wouldn't be much different from any of the religion-ruled countries that they themselves hate so much, and the second group would probably go broke in a few years because they'd be giving out free tuition and health care and so on.

48 minutes ago, backgroundnoise said:

What I find scariest about Trump (among many, many scary things) is the total lack of respect he has for the Presidency itself. 

I'm sure he has plenty of respect for a dictatorship.

11 minutes ago, abstractstuff said:

Him winning would ALMOST be worth it. If only to read the boards and watch people completely lose their minds.  That would be pure gold. 

That is the thing I tell myself in case he does win, so that I have some shred of something to keep me from sinking into a pool of despair. It will be Chinese-curse-type interesting times. I will laugh a hollow laugh as his supporters discover, one by one, that they've been had.

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magdalene

magdalene

(edited)

"Orange Hitler" seems perfectly apt to me.  Like Hitler Trump has had the uncanny ability to bamboozle and brain wash a lot of people.  Like Hitler Trump is a racist and xenophobe who is playing to the worst in people.  And he already seems to have part of the FBI ready to do his bidding. It's not that big a step from a Trump presidency to how the Nazis rose to power in Germany.

Edited by magdalene
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needschocolate

needschocolate

2 hours ago, Padma said:

Two Americas with very little in common. What brings us together after an election that has only highlighted our differences and made it so difficult to accept losing and find common ground with the other side?

But there are some very fundamentally things they have in common.  We want to be able to afford a place to live and to put food on our tables, we want our children to be well educated, we want our crime rates to be low and to feel safe in our own neighborhoods, we want others to not go to bed hungry, we want our drinking water and our air to be clean, we want our cars to be able to protect us, we want medical care that is affordable, the list goes on and on.  

We differ on how to best get what we want and we differ on which want is more important when there is a conflict between them.  And therein lies the problem.  We need to be able to compromise and we are not doing a good job of it.

I blame congress for this divide.  They stopped compromising and instead vote against things that may be good for everyone because it was the other side's idea.  They stress the minuses of anything the other side created and treat the other side as though it was the enemy trying to destroy the country.

Case in point - the ACA.  Before the ACA was a possibility, you could ask any member of congress if they think everyone should have affordable and good health care, and they all would have said yes.  Some may have added that they didn't think it was possible without being a financial drain on the nation, but they would still want their constituents to to have good medical care. At the other end of the spectrum, some may have added that they thought all medical care should be free. But they would all think that quality, affordable medical care was a good idea.  Well, the ACA managed to get through, and even those who "invented" it know that there are problems, but any attempt to fix it is lost because one side doesn't want the other to get credit for instituting something good.  Instead of fixing something that is close, they would rather scrap the whole thing and some up with something else - so that their idea, not the idea from the other side, wins. 

Each party paints the other party as evil.  In an attempt to distance themselves from the other side, they become more extreme.  And this carries down to the people - at least the ones whose views are the extreme.  However, there are still a lot of people who understand that it is possible to compromise and find a balance (for example, most people would be fine with some gun control while still allowing people to own guns).  But these people are not members of congress. 

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BoogieBurns

BoogieBurns

1 hour ago, Moose135 said:

I'm a college educated, straight, white male, and I'm horrified at the thought of Trump winning.

Oh, I totally get why. The people who will be directly affected the least are folks like you. As in, no one is going to punish you for walking into a planned parenthood, or tell you to go back to [country where brown people are from], or assume you are an unemployed welfare queen in the inner city.

The only ones who could possibly sit back and laugh (which was the topic of my original response) are the one group Cheesus hasn't yet offended. 

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GHScorpiosRule

GHScorpiosRule

(edited)

Damn.

I just saw the headline on my yahoo home page that Jane Doe (woman who was said she was raped when she was 13 by Drumpf) has dropped her case. Her lawyer issued a statement it was due to repeated threats. I can't link it because Yahoo! is giving me fits and won't open the article for me to read.

That asshole will use this as "proof" she was a liar and that's why she dropped the case.

ETA: Here it is: Jane Doe Drops Case Against Drumpf.

Not much information other than that she's dropping it due to her receiving threats.

Edited by GHScorpiosRule
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caracas1914

caracas1914

Mark Twain is attributed with saying: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."  

So any prior despots, demagogues, populist rabble rousers, dictators and xenophobic gaiters have a rhyming partner in place.

The real danger is thinking that there are enough checks and balances to keep such a genuinely deranged person from inflicting real damage to the country.  That's the delusion that some of the Trump backers are swallowing, just like there were people who thought they could control (take your pick) Hitler, Juan Peron, Mussolini, etc, etc when they took the reins of power.

Has he released his taxes yet?   It's such a "fuck you" to the populace that the people  who vote for him almost deserved to all be shipped off to Antarctica where he can rule over them with unfettered power.

However they would accelerate climate change so we can't do that.

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Padma

Padma

I don't understand all the connections but it seems a lot of money is being paid by Mercer behind the scenes, not only to Giuliani, but this is a BUNDLE!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/05/donald-trump-s-billionaire-backed-super-pac-also-paying-rudy-giuliani-s-law-firms.html 

Hogan Gidley was just on MSNBC a few minutes ago as a commentator. I didn't see the intro so not sure if his current participation in a Trump PAC was mentioned. He is usually identified as a firm former supporter/organizer/fundraiser for Huckabee and Santorum.

I think if all Mercer's ties to Trump were known it would be very shady and alarming. (Self funding my eye!)

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random chance

random chance

21 minutes ago, caracas1914 said:

The real danger is thinking that there are enough checks and balances to keep such a genuinely deranged person from inflicting real damage to the country. 

In case you were referring to my post I don't think that. Checks and balances are useless against the likes of Trump.

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MulletorHater

MulletorHater

39 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Damn.

I just saw the headline on my yahoo home page that Jane Doe (woman who was said she was raped when she was 13 by Drumpf) has dropped her case. Her lawyer issued a statement it was due to repeated threats. I can't link it because Yahoo! is giving me fits and won't open the article for me to read.

That asshole will use this as "proof" she was a liar and that's why she dropped the case.

ETA: Here it is: Jane Doe Drops Case Against Drumpf.

Not much information other than that she's dropping it due to her receiving threats.

I saw that on Huffington Post and my heart just sank.  It's amazing what that motherfucker gets away with.

There was also some wild story out there on FB claiming that Gloria Allred paid this young lady and others (referred to as "fake rape victim") $300,000 to accuse Drumpf.  

He is proof positive that evil walks this earth in all forms.

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33kaitykaity

33kaitykaity

5 minutes ago, random chance said:

In case you were referring to my post I don't think that. Checks and balances are useless against the likes of Trump.

I'm on the other side of the fence.  I might be in tinfoil hat territory here, I have been reading that trillions of dollars will be lost in the markets the moment Drumpf is inaugurated.  The owners as George Carlin called them will never let that happen.  

Around 6m mark.  

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Kromm

Kromm

(edited)
22 minutes ago, gatopretoNYC said:

Drumpf removed from stage after fight breaks out at his rally, about 20 minutes ago:

https://mobile.twitter.com/sluggahjells/status/795070402754125824/video/1

This is really bad news. Because apparently he was dragged off because someone had a gun.

I am going to make a prediction now. Someone, maybe not Trump himself, but likely some drummed up lackey away from the core, will start hard spinning this as Hillary sending an assassin.  The mainsteam media won't play that POV, but it will leak in through the sides a bit.

We are going to see this mainly played out as Brave Donald Trump almost being mowed down by the Evil Status Quo, desperate to defeat him. Short of him making some horrible mistake in the spinning, this will give him a bump. The question of why someone might want to kill Trump (if that's even what it was rather than some lone yahoo flashing a gun because he was drunk) will be ignored in favor of people lionizing Trump and saying he's a hero now.

Edited by Kromm
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Pixel

Pixel

I was wondering if she would drop the case. After hearing about the threats that conservative writer got after coming out against Trump (threats that included pictures of Trump holding the button on his 6 year old daughter in a gas chamber and threats of raping his daughter) I figured Jane Doe was probably really getting the full court press from the crazies. 

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NewDigs

NewDigs

4 minutes ago, starri said:

From what Twitter says, someone claimed to have seen a gun, but if there had actually been one, there's no way the Secret Service would have let the rally continue.

Unfortunately all the Trump people will believe there was a gun.

This shit's gotten so surreal I imagined Trump staging the whole thing.

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Kromm

Kromm

7 minutes ago, starri said:

From what Twitter says, someone claimed to have seen a gun, but if there had actually been one, there's no way the Secret Service would have let the rally continue.

I am SO suspicious of everything Trump and his supporters do, I'm now automatically inclined to run a "what if" through my head where I wonder if they set up the incident so they could spin it as Trump being a kind of martyr, without the inconvenience of you know... having to die.

We shall see what's revealed about this and how the Trump people spin it. Given that they've ALREADY leaned on the whole thing about the Democrats supposedly sending violent agitators to their rallies, already implied the Dems led those actions against those local Campaign HQs in North Carolina and Arizona, is anyone going to be all that surprised if tomorrow (the last real Sunday news push before the election) is wall to wall Trump surrogates making broad accusations about this?

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caracas1914

caracas1914

(edited)
37 minutes ago, random chance said:

In case you were referring to my post I don't think that. Checks and balances are useless against the likes of Trump.

No, I was referring to Republicans who think he's a joke and know he's incompetent but are willing to vote for him anyways in order to regain executive power.

My own spec is to some of the populace, he represents the "American Dream", in that they wish they could be as coarse, vulgar and self serving as he is, protected by billions of dollars of wealth.  They could turn in their wives after  X number of years with the current and younger mistress, they could own beauty pageants, spraying everything in faux gold and chandeliers, with huge letters spelling out their name to prove how successful they are.  It's like winning the powerball lottery.

Now the reality may be far from that, but he's that "fantasy" to them, so the more vulgar, coarser and cruder he gets, it just reinforces the vicarious thrill they get imagining if they could get away with it.

Edited by caracas1914
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Kromm

Kromm

1 minute ago, PatsyandEddie said:

IA. It wouldn't surprise me in the least, trying to make him look heroic some how. 

 

1 minute ago, 33kaitykaity said:

He just won the election.  The media is going to play that evacuation scene on a loop from now until the 8th.  

This really finally has me shitting my pants (metaphorically). It's like a plotline from a bad political thriller. Demagogue candidate secretly arranges man with gun at his final big rally and for the last big news cycle to make himself into the hero/"man they need to stop". If we're talking Big Lies... this one would be timed perfectly.

I wish I was rich enough to be able to afford an exit plan. Lord. I never even considered it until now--I wasn't THAT pessimistic until this. 

  • Love 5
MulletorHater

MulletorHater

19 minutes ago, starri said:

From what Twitter says, someone claimed to have seen a gun, but if there had actually been one, there's no way the Secret Service would have let the rally continue.

Interesting...I heard it was a bald-headed white guy in a hoodie and that Drumpf and the Secret Service were pretty slow in moving.  And, yes, there are quite a few people who believe the whole thing was staged to make him look sympathetic.  The other theory is that he was being rushed offstage to change his underwear.

Le sighhhh...I just don't know what to think!

  • Love 4
Kromm

Kromm

1 minute ago, MulletorHater said:

Interesting...I heard it was a bald-headed white guy in a hoodie and that Drumpf and the Secret Service were pretty slow in moving.  And, yes, there are quite a few people who believe the whole thing was staged to make him look sympathetic.  The other theory is that he was being rushed offstage to change his underwear.

Le sighhhh...I just don't know what to think!

Was it too obvious you think to use a Mexican or black guy?

  • Love 4
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