PGT: President-Elect Donald J Trump

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by driveway

Question for the liberals, and I guess everyone else. Have you donated any money or time to any organizations as a result of Trump's win?

I bought subscriptions to NYT and WaPo. I think a well-funded press who can afford to investigate this administration will be a good thing to have going forwards. It's not a lot, but then I'm not an American and I live overseas.

I subscribed to the NYT too. I'm thinking about adding another paper or news magazine (I'm open to suggestions). We need to support real journalism now more than ever.

[FireGilbert]

A suggestion I heard was to donate to libraries as they support education and intellectualism.

[Clarkey]

Originally Posted by driveway

Question for the liberals, and I guess everyone else. Have you donated any money or time to any organizations as a result of Trump's win?

I bought subscriptions to NYT and WaPo. I think a well-funded press who can afford to investigate this administration will be a good thing to have going forwards. It's not a lot, but then I'm not an American and I live overseas.

Me too, and I got a Brita filter to save on disposable water bottles. I also liked some items on facebook and donated to my local NDP MLA Sandra Jansen. I'm also thinking about voluntarily mailing in an extra 10% carbon tax contribution to cover my footprint ! Too bad Hil's $1.3B grassroots campaign didn't beat the mean ol' capitalist Donald Trump!

[driveway]

Thanks for the excellent contribution. You bring a lot to the community; glad you're around.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by driveway

thanks for the excellent contribution. You bring a lot to the community; glad you're around.

fyp

[missdpuck]

Good idea. I have been procrastinating aboutsubscribing to the Times. Will also add the New Yorker , and likely New York and Vanity Fair as well.

The New Yorker has excellent short stories as well as the famous cartoons.

There is also The Atlantic. Harper's has been called "Jeffersonian liberal."

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[Senator Clay Davis]

Sounds like we might get a nice Giuliani meltdown if Romney (or someone else) gets the job.

Even Thanksgiving did not provide a reprieve from the extraordinary public efforts to cast doubt on Mr. Romney. Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said on Twitter that she had received “a deluge” of concern from people warning against picking Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor.

Those raising concerns about Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and an early and loyal supporter of Mr. Trump, have said they fear that his tangle of foreign business ties could lead to a damaging confirmation battle. They also worry that Mr. Giuliani lacks the vigor for the globe-trotting job.

Both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani have made their interest in the role known to Mr. Trump. But while Mr. Giuliani has been very public about his intentions — angering Mr. Trump at times with his statements — Mr. Romney has been more reserved.

The split over the two men has opened the door for another candidate altogether. One potential pick Mr. Trump and his team have entertained is Gen. John F. Kelly of the Marines, a former head of the United States Southern Command. Others are David H. Petraeus, the retired general and former C.I.A. director, and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, according to two people involved in the process.

Shortly after the election, Mr. Giuliani told associates that he believed the job was his. He had communicated to Mr. Trump’s top advisers that it was the only post he was interested in, according to the people briefed on the discussions.

But he began to run afoul of Mr. Trump when he told a Wall Street Journal forum that he would probably be a better candidate than John R. Bolton, who served as one of George W. Bush’s ambassadors to the United Nations.

And when reports surfaced about Mr. Giuliani’s foreign business entanglements and highly compensated speechmaking, Mr. Trump grew even warier. His firm, Giuliani Partners, has had contracts with the government of Qatar, and Mr. Giuliani has given paid speeches to a shadowy Iranian opposition group that until 2012 was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

As a backup plan, some of Mr. Trump’s aides encouraged him to meet with Mr. Romney. Though some in Mr. Trump’s inner circle, like Reince Priebus, his choice for chief of staff, thought that such a meeting would anger the president-elect’s supporters, Mr. Trump went ahead. In the meantime, he started sounding out Mr. Giuliani on a different post, director of national intelligence. Mr. Trump’s advisers have discussed the role for Mr. Giuliani, but there has been no indication he wants it.

What many people believed would be a perfunctory meeting with Mr. Romney last weekend at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., turned into something more substantial.

Mr. Trump liked Mr. Romney quite a bit, and was intrigued by the possibility of such a camera-ready option to represent the country around the globe, advisers to Mr. Trump said. The following day, Mr. Giuliani met with Mr. Trump and urged him to make a decision in one direction or the other.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/us....html?referer=

[missdpuck]

Underneath Ugly American it says "with the shortest fingers"
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[GirlySports]

that's just petty

[photon]

This emoluments clause thing isn't going to go away, why doesn't Trump just commit and do something specific? He may be above the law with respect to conflicts of interest, but he's not above the Constitution, though I guess if Congress decides it doesn't care then it doesn't matter.

Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a trust, on the chance that it would appear as a conflict of interest.

Trump also owns stocks in the companies involved in the Dakota Access pipeline...

Members of the Electoral College should not make Donald Trump the next president unless his sells his companies and puts the proceeds in a blind trust, according to the top ethics lawyers for the last two presidents.

Richard Painter, Chief Ethics Counsel for George W. Bush, and Norman Eisen, Chief Ethics Counsel for Barack Obama, believe that if Trump continues retain ownership over his sprawling business interests by the time the electors meet on December 19, they should reject Trump.

In an email to ThinkProgress, Eisen explained that “the founders did not want any foreign payments to the president. Period.” This principle is enshrined in Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which bars office holders from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

This provision was specifically created to prevent the President, most of all, from being corrupted by foreign influences.

Virginia Governor Edmund Jennings Randolph addressed the issue directly during a Constitutional debate in June 1788, noting that a violation of the provision by the President would be grounds for impeachment. (Randolph was also a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.)

...

Electors should insist that Trump set up a blind trust as a condition of their vote, Eisen said.

Another option, however unlikely, is for “Republicans in Congress [to] admit that they endorse Trump’s exploitation of public office for private gain and authorize his emoluments as the Constitution allows.”

Eisen’s conclusions are shared by Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe, one of the nation’s preeminent constitutional scholars. Tribe told ThinkProgress that, after extensive research, he concluded that “Trump’s ongoing business dealings around the world would make him the recipient of constitutionally prohibited ‘Emoluments’ from ‘any King, Prince, or foreign State’ — in the original sense of payments and not necessarily presents or gifts — from the very moment he takes the oath.”

The only solution would be to divest completely from his businesses.


https://thinkprogress.org/electoral-...s-8a8b6e0ca916

[missdpuck]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

that's just petty

Yes.


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[FlamesAddiction]

^^ I agree with all that, but wouldn't it have been better to bring that up before he was given the Republican nomination? Everyone knew that if he won, this would be an issue. I remember it being discussed in the media going back to the beginning of 2016.


I mean Trump companies owe China hundreds of millions of dollars. If anyone thinks for a minute that he isn't going to use his new position to work out deals, they need a CAT scan.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

that's just petty

Yeah but it is vanity fair. I'd be concerned if it was a real news publication that had any sort of respect.

Vanity Fair's biggest news nowadays is "10 secrets from the Season 7 Game of Thrones set too steamy to share! (but we're gonna tell you anyway)"

[GirlySports]

if an american publication had talked about Obama's ears i don't think it would go well.

[Senator Clay Davis]

The major difference is Obama's ears would go nowhere. If a foreign leader suggests Trump's tiny hands means he has a small penis, we could be looking at an international incident.

[photon]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

^^ I agree with all that, but wouldn't it have been better to bring that up before he was given the Republican nomination?

Isn't that kinda like blaming the deer for being hit because it can't move for the headlights?

"He won't run.. He'll drop out.. No one will vote for him.. He'll only win a few states.. They'll change the rules at the convention.. He won't win unless there's a polling error.."

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

if an american publication had talked about Obama's ears i don't think it would go well.

But Vanity Fair is a magazine geared towards women that uses sexual innuendo to sell. There are well known wive's tales about how body part sizes (especially hand size) relates to penis size. I think that was what they are getting at.

If they had commented about Obama's ears, it wouldn't have been as much of an insult as you think.

I just don't see it as a big deal. In Canada, we had a whole campaign that tried to undermine the current PM based on his "boyish" looks.

[AcGold]

What amazes me about all this is how fast Trump pulled the politician flipflop from extreme to moderate. He's not even in office yet and he's already doing this; that's got to be concerning for a lot of Americans how quickly he was willing to change his extreme stances. He's either a fraud or massively underestimated the power Washington will have over him, not sure which is worse.

Most politicians atleast give it a month or two before going back on their promises, he's already screwing over his voter base. It's like he's trolling everyone or profoundly naive.

[Senator Clay Davis]

I think his actions are showcasing what many people strongly suspected about him: He doesn't actually want to do the job. The actual nitty gritty of the job, the policy wonk stuff does not interest him, nor does he have the capacity to handle it (namely his toddler-level attention span). He wants to be President in name only, which is what he's almost certainly going to be. Pence is the man who will be running the policy given the early information we've seen.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

I think his actions are showcasing what many people strongly suspected about him: He doesn't actually want to do the job. The actual nitty gritty of the job, the policy wonk stuff does not interest him, nor does he have the capacity to handle it (namely his toddler-level attention span). He wants to be President in name only, which is what he's almost certainly going to be. Pence is the man who will be running the policy given the early information we've seen.

I wonder how he is going to handle having to live as anonymously as possible. This is a guy who loves the spot light, but even if he is president in title only, he will still be under constant security and scrutiny. The president loses a lot of personal autonomy. You can't just travel and do whatever you want.

Honestly, I can see why a lot of decent politicians never make a run for it. You are on the clock 24/7. And at least half the country is going to hate you.