Today in Trump

[Spicoli]

Can you imagine the bitter ex teeny tantrum he threw watching Putin and Kim chum it up driving down the road for the cameras today as they talked billions in arms sales. That shit needed its own theme music! He doesn't actually care that it's happening, only that he's not in the passenger seat getting sweaty palms.

I'm actually interested to see the VP pick. Tim Scott for the win baby!

[Kirkland Laing]

Can you imagine the bitter ex teeny tantrum he threw watching Putin and Kim chum it up driving down the road for the cameras today as they talked billions in arms sales. That shit needed its own theme music! He doesn't actually care that it's happening, only that he's not in the passenger seat getting sweaty palms.

I'm actually interested to see the VP pick. Tim Scott for the win baby!

I can see Putin inviting him to the Mayday Moscow military parade and Trump returning the favour.

Tim Scott has a fantastic chance. He's basically the black Mike Pence. If it isn't him it'll be some other black guy as Trump is breaking off some black voters according to the polls and it looks like Trump thinks he has an opening here.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Failure to see the forest for the trees

[TIC]

I'm actually interested to see the VP pick.

put me down for caitlyn jenner

[NoSavingByTheBell]

I'm actually interested to see the VP pick.

put me down for caitlyn jenner

He could pick Hillary Clinton since they're all on the same team

[TitoFan]

June 23, 2024 (Sunday)

On Thursday, Moody’s Analytics, which evaluates risk, performance, and financial modeling, compared the economic promises of President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Authors Mark Zandi, Brendan LaCerda, and Justin Begley concluded that while a second Biden presidency would see cooling inflation and continued economic growth of 2.1%, a Trump presidency would be an economic disaster.

Trump has promised to slash taxes on the wealthy, increase tariffs across the board, and deport at least 11 million immigrant workers. According to the analysts, these policies would trigger a recession by mid-2025. The economy would slow to an average growth of 1.3%. At the same time, tariffs and fewer immigrant workers would increase the costs of consumer goods. That inflation—reaching 3.6%—would result in 3.2 million fewer jobs and a higher unemployment rate.

Trump’s proposed tariffs would not fully offset his tax cuts, adding trillions to the national debt.

Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said that Trump’s tariff policy “would be bad for workers and bad for consumers.” Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics Mark Zandi said: “Biden’s policies are better for the economy.”

In the New York Times today, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management, debunked the notion that corporate leaders support Trump. Sonnenfeld notes that he works with about 1,000 chief executives a year and speaks with business leaders almost every day. Although 60 to 70 percent of them are registered Republicans, he wrote, Trump “continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party.”

Among Fortune 100 chief executives, who lead the top 100 public and private U.S. companies ranked by revenue, Sonnenfeld notes, not one has donated to Trump this year.

While they might not be enthusiastic Biden supporters, unhappy with his push to enforce antitrust laws and rein in corporate greed, the president has produced results they like: investment in infrastructure, repair of supply chains, investment in domestic manufacturing, achievement of record corporate profits, and transformation of the U.S. into the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world.

In contrast, they fear Trump. The populist plans that thrill supporters—like hiking tariffs and taking financial policy away from the independent Federal Reserve Board and putting it in his own hands—are red flags to business leaders. Such positions have more in common with the far left than with traditional Republican economic policies, Sonnenfeld says. Those policies reflect that Trump has surrounded himself with what Sonnenfeld calls “MAGA extremists and junior varsity opportunists,” while the more senior voices of his first term have been sidelined.

On Saturday, Trump spoke in Philadelphia with a message that The Guardian’s David Smith described as “light on facts, heavy on fear.” He appears to be trying to overwrite his own criminal conviction with the idea that Biden’s immigration policy has brought violent undocumented migrants to the United States, creating a surge of crime. He told rally attendees that murders in their city have reached their highest level in six decades, while in fact, violent crime in the city is the lowest it’s been in a decade.

In February, Trump pushed Republican lawmakers to reject a strong bipartisan border bill so he could use immigration as his primary issue in the election. That focus on immigration was key to the rise of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to power, and it is notable that Trump’s picture of the United States echoes the rhetoric of the authoritarians hoping to overturn democracy around the world.

On Friday, during a podcast hosted by venture capitalists, Trump blamed Biden for starting Russia’s war against Ukraine by calling for Ukraine’s admission to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that resists Russian aggression. This statement utterly rewrites the history of Trump’s support for Russia’s annexation of the same Ukrainian regions it has now occupied: as Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort testified, the Kremlin helped Trump’s 2016 campaign in exchange for the U.S. permitting Russian incursions there.

More significant in this moment, though, is that Trump, who is running to become the leader of the United States, is siding against the United States and parroting Russian propaganda. Mark Hertling, a retired lieutenant general of the United States Army who served for 37 years and commanded U.S. Army operations in Europe and Africa, wrote: “This statement is—to put it mildly—stunningly misinformed and dangerous.”

Trump told host Sean Spicer that the U.S. is a “failing nation,” claiming that airplane flights are being delayed for four days and people are “pitching tents” because their flight is never going to happen. In reality, as Bill Kristol pointed out, with 16.3 million U.S. flights, 2023 was the busiest year in U.S. history for air travel, and the cancellation rate was below 1.2%. This was the lowest rate in a decade.

Trump is insisting at his rallies that crime is skyrocketing under Biden. In reality, crime rose rapidly at the end of Trump’s term but is now dropping. From 2022 to 2023, according to the FBI, the only crime that went up was motor vehicle theft. Murders dropped by 13.2%, rape by 12.5%, robbery by 4.7%, burglary by 9.8%. The first quarter of 2024 showed even greater drops. Compared to the same quarter in 2023, violent crime is down 15.2%, murder down 26.4%, rape down 25.7%, robbery down 17.8%, burglary down 16.7%. Even vehicle theft is down 17.3%.

Trump’s negative picture might play well to his die-hard supporters, but portraying the U.S. as a hellscape has rarely been a recipe for winning a presidential election.

President Biden and Trump are scheduled to debate on Thursday, June 27, and Trump’s team is trying to lower expectations for his performance. He became so incoherent in Philadelphia that the Fox News Channel actually cut away while he was talking. The Biden-Harris team has taken simply to posting Trump’s comments, prompting Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo to note: “It’s pretty bad when one candidates rapid response account just posts the other guys quote verbatim with no explanation at all.”

After months of insisting that Biden is mentally unfit, now Trump and his surrogates are saying Biden will perform well in the debate because he will be on drugs. There is no evidence that Biden has ever used performance-enhancing drugs, but curiously, Trump’s former White House physician Ronny Jackson (whom Trump repeatedly misidentified as Ronny Johnson last week) gave Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo a very detailed list of drugs that could sharpen attention and clarity. One of the ones he mentioned, Provigil, was on the list of those widely and improperly distributed by the White House Medical Unit in the Trump White House.

Jackson said that he was “demanding” that Biden take drug tests before and after the debate. A White House spokesperson responded: “[A]fter losing every public and private negotiation with President Biden—and after seeing him succeed where they failed across the board, ranging from actually rebuilding America’s infrastructure to actually reducing violent crime to actually outcompeting China—it tracks that those same Republican officials mistake confidence for a drug.”

With the evaluation that Biden is better for the economy and Trump’s apocalyptic vision of the U.S. is not based in reality, it jumps out that on Thursday, a filing with the Federal Election Commission showed that the day after a jury convicted former president Donald Trump on 34 criminal counts, billionaire Tim Mellon made a $50 million donation to one of Trump’s superpacs. Since 2018, Mellon has contributed more than $200 million to Republicans, giving $110 million to Republican candidates and funding committees in the 2024 election alone. He has also given $25 million to independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr.

In a 2015 autobiography, Mellon embraced the old trope that “Black Studies, Women’s Studies, LGBT Studies, they have all cluttered Higher Education with a mishmash of meaningless tripe designed to brainwash gullible young adults into going along with the Dependency Syndrome,” saying that food assistance, affordable health care “and on, and on, and on” had made Americans on government assistance “slaves of a new Master, Uncle Sam.” “The largess is funded by the hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink into this morass,” he wrote.

It is this trope that the Biden administration has smashed, returning to the idea that the government should answer to the needs of all its people. The last three years have proved the superiority of this vision by creating a roaring economy; rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, supply chains, and manufacturing; cutting crime rates, and reinforcing international alliances.

As Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and chief executive officer of the energy company Canary, told Wall Street Journal reporter Tarini Parti about Mellon: “He’s clearly terrified of Biden remaining the president.”

[Kirkland Laing]

June 23, 2024 (Sunday) On Thursday, Moody’s Analytics, which evaluates risk, performance, and financial modeling, compared the economic promises of President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Authors Mark Zandi, Brendan LaCerda, and Justin Begley concluded that while a second Biden presidency would see cooling inflation and continued economic growth of 2.1%, a Trump presidency would be an economic disaster.

You would think with the blanket media control the liberals have the fact that Trump is likely to create a lot of inflation would be getting significant coverage all the way to the election. I'm pretty sure the inflation that happened under Biden was covered fairly extensively.

The only thing I'd take issue with in that article is Moodys coming up with three point six percent inflation. Three months of economic dislocation after things got back to normal in 2021 caused inflation to spike to ten percent. It would start slowly but taking hundreds of thousands or millions out of the workforce permanently would do a lot more damage. You can take the decimal point out of 3.6 and you'd be closer to it. Which is why Trump won't do it. As soon as inflation starts to spike and there are shortages in the shops and businesses reducing opening hours it will create the same kind of anger and backlash the 2021 inflation caused and Trump will turn on a dime and reverse it. He's already being told what to do by his donors. Here he is saying he's going to resurrect a 2016 Hillary Clinton plan to give green cards to every foreign graduate:

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/de...ege-graduates/

and here are the apparent three choices for vice president:

https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-has-narrowed-down-veepstakes-to-these-three-contenders-cnn-reports/



All of these three are donor friendly types. Even the billionaires currently backing him don't want him to be prez. They weren't backing him initially and have only come on board when he became inevitably the nominee. Now they're trying to control him and he's desperate for money so he's changing his tune somewhat. When he gets elected he won't need to listen to them anymore and can start an ongoing humiliation of his vp and turn him into a Pence-like hate figure with his base if he wants.

But he won't want to be in charge of an economic clusterfuck and that's why it's inevitable that he eventually scraps all the immigration nonsense. Then it'll get interesting. Most of the public will reverse course on blocking immigration when they see what these people are contributing to the economy and inflation takes off again. Then it'll just be the hard core people against Trump. They may not be so keen on him having the power to put the troops on the streets in a year or three.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

https://youtube.com/shorts/tp5V9KHQT...Q7E1cW08qFlVTU

[Spicoli]

The deflection and deck stacking pre debate is pretty silly. Apparently, Biden doing well and not gumming his own shirt tail now means he's on drugs. Both these fellas rattle on so who in a sane world doesn't favor time limits on the mic for a moderator. With no clattering flock of sheep to play to in an audience it will throw Trump off though. The man needs applause to fulfill the grift.

Rubio in serious contention for VP . Perfect apple polisher does not exist.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

The deflection and deck stacking pre debate is pretty silly. Apparently, Biden doing well and not gumming his own shirt tail now means he's on drugs. Both these fellas rattle on so who in a sane world doesn't favor time limits on the mic for a moderator. With no clattering flock of sheep to play to in an audience it will throw Trump off though. The man needs applause to fulfill the grift.

Rubio in serious contention for VP . Perfect apple polisher does not exist.

Oh come on now you know for a fact that with bated breath you will be turning into this spectacle right here. https://youtu.be/FkYdZSjqFkk?si=W96icO6VIwvsx8aK

[Kirkland Laing]

This is the branch of government that's the last line against the sea of corruption and collapse of the rule of law that an authoritarian government would bring to America:



Why do conservatives love government corruption?


TIL that there's a distinction between bribes and gratuities. A bribe is something given before the fact: Here's $13,000 if you'll buy our garbage trucks. A gratuity happens after the fact: Thanks for buying our garbage trucks! Here's $13,000.
I didn't choose that example lightly. It's the background in Snyder v. United States, a case decided today by the Supreme Court. The conservative majority ruled that since a garbage truck payoff had been made after the fact, it didn't constitute corruption under federal law.
Maybe so. As they say, the law is an ass. But the Court's reasoning doesn't fill me with confidence. Brett Kavanaugh argued that federal law was too vague about what exactly was allowed and what was prohibited:

“Could students take their college professor out to Chipotle for an end-of-term celebration?” he wrote. “And if so, would it somehow become criminal to take the professor for a steak dinner? Or to treat her to a Hoosiers game?”
While “American law generally treats bribes as inherently corrupt and unlawful,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote, gratuities are another matter. Some can be “problematic,” while others can be “commonplace and might be innocuous.”
He listed examples. A family tipping their mail carrier. Parents sending a gift basket to thank their child’s teacher at the end of the school year. A college dean giving a sweatshirt to a city council member who speaks at an event.

Hmmm. Let's review:

• Steak at Chipotle.
• A couple of sawbucks to your mail carrier.
• A gift basket.
• A sweatshirt.
• $13,000 in "consulting fees" to a mayor who bought garbage trucks worth $1.1 million.

One of these things is not like the other. Can you figure out which one?
Look, sometimes the law is weird and produces strange results. I get it. But surely the Court could draw some distinction about what's allowed that would be well north of sweatshirts and gift baskets. It's a matter of puzzlement to me that the Supreme Court's conservative wing keeps doing this, tightening the law over and over to make it all but impossible to convict politicians of corruption. Jokes aside, this isn't some partisan thing, after all. Republicans and Democrats both engage in plenty of corruption. So why are conservatives so eager to dismiss it?

https://jabberwocking.com/why-do-con...nt-corruption/

[Spicoli]

The deflection and deck stacking pre debate is pretty silly. Apparently, Biden doing well and not gumming his own shirt tail now means he's on drugs. Both these fellas rattle on so who in a sane world doesn't favor time limits on the mic for a moderator. With no clattering flock of sheep to play to in an audience it will throw Trump off though. The man needs applause to fulfill the grift.

Rubio in serious contention for VP . Perfect apple polisher does not exist.

Oh come on now you know for a fact that with bated breath you will be turning into this spectacle right here. https://youtu.be/FkYdZSjqFkk?si=W96icO6VIwvsx8aK

Ok now that's good . Fairly accurate but equally terrifying

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Surprised to see, and I definitely agree, that's 67.7% of CNN viewers actually think Trump won the first debate. Biden spoke more during this debate than he has in all three and a half years prior so I give him credit for that although he had a very bad stumbling up in the first question or two, accidentally saying that he had beaten Medicare. And Trump of course jumped right on that and said "you're right Joe you did beat It, you beat it to death".

I think Trump won the first debate and I can't picture Biden doing much better than he did, he actually did much better than I thought he would do, in all seriousness. But there are several times where he sort of just got lost in the sentence, and it was definitely a look of a feeble old man. Still he prepared well for the debate. I don't think he won it though.