And his voter base believes him
Agreed. But his "base" will support him whatever he does - its a complete waste of time and effort trying to engage with them, and it's pinning the level of discourse to the floor. This thread is a great example of a tiny minority of one or two individuals disproportionately influencing the debate.
Fortunately, I don't think his base is big enough in itself to win re-election - he needs sufficient support from republican/independent voters, and/or democrat voters to stay away.
The question is whether he will be able to get sufficient votes outside of his base, and whether the democrats will field a candidate that 100% of democrats (and enough moderate republicans/undecideds) can get behind.
I'm predicting a pre-election mega-flounce, which will result in Pence running as the republican candidate. He's keeping his powder dry for something....
The question is whether he will be able to get sufficient votes outside of his base, and whether the democrats will field a candidate that 100% of democrats (and enough moderate republicans/undecideds) can get behind.
Completely agree with this. I thought the nomination of Clinton at the time to be spectacularly ill advised.
The mid-terms will certainly be interesting, should give a good idea of how big his deluded supporter base actually is. Can't see the GOP doing anything, they'd still rather be in power with Trump as President than not be in power.
Fingers-crossed most Americans come to their senses and give him a kicking in the mid-terms and that's enough for the GOP to start turning against him. Sadly I think it's unlikely though.
Regarding the whole "infallible POTUS" thing: does anyone know how that compares to the UK?
It seems that an American president (as in "any", not specifically Trump) could be clearly guilty of a crime but be untouchable while in office.
What would we do in the UK if our PM was found to be acting illegally? I expect they'd resign or face a vote of no confidence, but do we have the same assumed protection from prosecution?
What would we do in the UK if our PM was found to be acting illegally? I
It’s not really a like for like comparison. The pm isn’t directly elected and doesn’t perform the same role as president.
A president is more of a directly elected short term monarch- all be it with a few more executive powers than our monarch now has (the power to have ships, hospitals and by-passes named after you and eat swans)
in fairly recent history a monarch has been strongly encouraged to abdicate - but they did the abdicating. I don’t know if we can depose a monarch against their will
I don’t know if you can depose a monarch against their will
I believe it's been done... 🙂
Basically Nixon or Clinton
Nixon was backed so far into a corner the only way out was resign but with the sweetener of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon
Full pardon
They took Clinton down the impeachment route but the numbers didn't go for them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Bill_Clinton#Senate_votes
IMHO there’s no way Trumps going to be a two term president under the amount of pressure that’s building up on him.
Unless he can make it all go away he’s going to be broken by it.
Well tactics seem to be short lived
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45285585
<p class="story-body__introduction">US President Donald Trump has responded to speculation that he might be impeached by warning that any such move would damage the economy.</p>
"If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash," he said in an interview with Fox & Friends.
It might crash but recovery would also happen if it's done right, many will see it as a relief.
But sack me and I'll take you all down with me is certainly heading into a corner from a strategy point of view.
Meanwhile this is how you have a real battle for the top job
<div class="bbp-reply-author">BoardinBob
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the POTUS is an almost pope/deity like position for the Americans. The sanctity of that role is huge to them.
Except for all everyone that hated Black Obama, denied he was american, believed he was a muslim atheist and want to undo everything he ever touched.
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Another of trump's (ex) chums has flipped on him.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/23/david-pecker-donald-trump-michael-cohen-immunity
We've not even got to the Russia stuff yet & everyone's already turned on him
and one of the incumbent republicans just got spending his campaign funds on himself - apparently the quote from the wife is
"If you buy golf shorts from there we can claim it's golf balls for injured veterans"
Classy
Good job Law Enforcement is draining the swamp
If I may, briefly...
I don’t know if you can depose a monarch against their will
I believe it’s been done…
The actual stroke delivered by a ‘same surname’ member of the family tree - an ancestor of mine, or so I read.
Today, ‘Mr Whackit’, perhaps. 😲🤠
As you were...
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, has given a series of cable-news interviews intimating that Cohen has valuable and damaging information on Trump to share with Mueller—including the claim that Trump had foreknowledge of Russia’s hacking of Clinton’s e-mails.
One source close to Cohen told me Cohen wants to tell Mueller that Trump discussed the release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails during the weekend when the Access Hollywood "grab ’em by the pussy” tape dominated the news cycle.
But no collusion.
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and one of the incumbent republicans just got spending his campaign funds on himself – apparently the quote from the wife is
“If you buy golf shorts from there we can claim it’s golf balls for injured veterans”"
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Hah, and just as an aside- every time you hear Trump talking about US defence spending, remember what that actually includes and doesn't- so much of it is about accounting. Usually I use the example of the VA students we have learning how to make beer, which I think is a great use of $100000 military funds really, But now we can use golf balls for Duncan Hunter too.
And another long term Trump associate has flipped
https://www.ft.com/content/2c23062c-a7ba-11e8-926a-7342fe5e173f
Trump's past was always going to bite him in the arse, no wonder he kept his tax return secret
Paywalled link, but Found it here , oooh that’s gonna feel like a kick in the nuts to trump - Let’s hope he spills his guts about the trump organisation and it’s funding, perhaps we’ll see the orange ****er spending the rest of his life in a grey cell rather than his golden shower palace
Starting to sound like ‘Don’ Trump sounds right.
There’s an interview on Fox when he bangs on about flippers and it’s not fair.
Hes starting to sound a bit gangsta as opposed to a president.
If your innocent they can’t flip it’s pretty simple.
Jonathan Pie nails it again: (swear warning)
Paywalled link,
For the FT and NYT if you create an account you get 10 articles/month for free
But yes, plenty of people trying to get their immunity in quick, who is going to be the last one holding the smoking gun?
Just use Chrome incognito and keep logging in.
Aides have been trying new ways to keep Donny engaged and off Twitter until naptime.
Look at the concentration on his face as he tries to keep it between the lines, that’s a very taxing test for him
Well.he has a bigger test today trying to not make John Mcain passing away about him and delivering a fitting statement about somebody way more qualified for his job than he is.
The Resistable Rise Of Arturo Ui.
<span class="skimlinks-unlinked">Well.he</span> has a bigger test today trying to not make John Mcain passing away about him and delivering a fitting statement about somebody way more qualified for his job than he is.
Sadly, he's already failed that test.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1033515425336885248
Here's how another of McCain's political opponents dealt with it.
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1033521851312623616
Re martinhutch’s pic, there’s more to that photo than first appears. Seems Agent Orange is showing his true colours, as he doesn’t appear to know what colours the country of which he’s president actually has.
It’s worth reading the comments following the actual article, proper lol stuff going on.
https://boingboing.net/2018/08/25/president-trump-colors-in-u-s.html
Question is how drawn out will it be? democrats don't want to speak about impeachment as it galvanises the republican/trump voters, and even if the polls show the republicans losing Congress , nothings certain.
Meuller won't indict a sitting presidpre, so Trump's only choice is to win a 2nd term, (Pence has the charisma of a corpse, so it's the only option for the reps)
Will Cohen have enough to bring him down? This article thinks so over Russia https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/trumpworld-is-spinning-out-of-control/
He's got decades of dodgy dealings tho so there's plenty of other options, + Papadopoulos, Flynn etc could still have given Meuller enough already.
I also think impeachment would be a mistake (assuming that we don't see something so truly shocking in terms of collusion) - I think it will feed the "washington swamp" conspiracy narrative that Donald's been pushing, and preparing for by seeking to undermine anyone that could possibly harm him (FBI, DOJ, the press etc). Also - I wonder from a practical perspective how long it will take.
Personally, I'd just like to see the volume and nature of the charges/allegations/investigations get to the point that NOBODY other than his base will support him (including the GOP). I feel like with every new one that comes to light, he loses a demographic of voters. An abortion scandal (extramarital?) would absolutely bury him, and isn't outside the realms of possibility now that his "fixer" is singing like a canary - but I think there's enough low hanging fruit have a big enough cumulative impact at this point. The democrats just need to coordinate so that it all lands according to a schedule designed to absolutely knock him sideways.
But as I said all of this counts for naught unless you give people somebody else they can vote for - otherwise they are just going to vote for Pence.
I feel like the only candidate that could unite the nation is Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson 🙂
I feel like the only candidate that could unite the nation is Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson
Slamming trump into a cell as he takes over.
I do hope it takes down the whole family there, loyalty and all that.
Interestingly you can pick a replacement for McCain his wife is in with a chance, given how disparaging Trump was about John don't think she will vote with him.
I still find myself amazed at his complete inability to string words together into a coherent sentence. Look at this from his rally speech in Ohio last night when he was talking about Ohio <span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">congressman Jim Jordan, whose bid to replace House speaker Paul Ryan has been damaged by allegations that he ignored reports of sexual abuse while working as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University.</span>
"Don't ever wrestle him. Even if you're bigger than him don't arrest him. You know people don't know this about Jim. He was one of the best wrestlers ever in college wrestler.
"And when you see the way he fights every time I watch I said in my wife I said, look at that guy. That is tough. He lost one match in three years of college. One match you lost and you had to see what happened to the guy that beat him. He was not in good shape that night."
My kids were talking more coherently than that when they were 4 years old.
Yep, I always think he sounds like there is a complete conversational narrative going on in his head, but he only remembers to speak parts of it out loud.
It's like overhearing fragments of someone else's phone call when they are in bad reception.
Don't think he'll be impeached, the sensible thing would be to stand down next election- so that can be ruled out. I wonder who'll stand against him?
The whole thing will probably depend on how bad the muller findings are, if there is illegal activity it will be hard work for him. They can easily not select him as you would expect everything to be dropped then.
Has he gone yet? No? Ok, wake me up when the nightmare is over.
trump has been googling himself and not liking the results 🙂
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1034456273306243076
He’d better not try googling ‘trump is a’
Ironically now if you google trump news it's got a lot of reports about that tweet...
Has he gone yet? No? Ok, wake me up when the nightmare is over.
This is is my primary reason for checking back to this thread.
I’m waiting for the firings, it can’t be long before something triggers Trump and he’ll try and fire everyone involved with the Mueller investigation.
I reckon there’ll be a mad moment in this when something strange will happen maybe people will refuse to stand down after being fired and there’s an FBI versus president stand off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre
Step 1.
Fire Rod Rosenstein or Jess Sessions and make his successor fire Muller
Step 2 When that doesn't work fire them all till you get somebody who will
What worries me the most these days is the fact that Trump likes a good distraction when times are troubling for him.......What's he got in mind this time?
How are we doing on the Little Rocket Man? Rockets gone yet?
Oh yeah that one went well
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/28/17790546/north-korea-trump-pompeo-letter-trip
I reckon the investigation will show some collusion but that it won't be deemed illegal (I thought I read somewhere it was only illegal if deemed a contribution to the campaign and it's not been tested yet whether provision of information on an opposing candidate falls under that). So he'll survive and carry on ****ing things up whilst his deluded supporters keep turning a blind eye.
