American Politics Thread: Orange is the new POTUS

[Senator Clay Davis]

Matthew Dowd‏Verified account @matthewjdowd 10h10 hours ago
Not a single member of Trump's Evangelical Council has resigned. We have learned corporate America has a greater moral compass. So so sad.

https://twitter.com/matthewjdowd/sta...87853090410497

[photon]

I can't get over how Trump argues like a n00b. He's never had to defend a thought in his life. A high school debate club member could take him down.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by photon

I can't get over how Trump argues like a n00b. He's never had to defend a thought in his life. A high school debate club member could take him down.

[iggy_oi]

I wish I could travel 100 years into the future so I could see how this period in time is viewed by future generations.

[ToewsFan]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I wish I could travel 100 years into the future so I could see how this period in time is viewed by future generations.

Within 50 years, overpopulation and climate change will have caught up with us. In other words, this is just the beginning...

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by ToewsFan

Within 50 years, overpopulation and climate change will have caught up with us. In other words, this is just the beginning...

Those things have already caught up with us in a lot of ways. I was referring to how trump will be remembered.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Those things have already caught up with us in a lot of ways. I was referring to how trump will be remembered.

The past is often remembered in one of two ways, as a wonderful golden age which should be returned to, or an awful atrocity. There will be a variety of opinions I am sure.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

The past is often remembered in one of two ways, as a wonderful golden age which should be returned to, or an awful atrocity. There will be a variety of opinions I am sure.

As long as no one will be fighting over a statue of trump, society wins.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Bannon claims this was a private conversation, but I have a hard time believing a guy as media savvy as he is didn't know exactly what he was doing with this interview

You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss’s continuing indulgence of white supremacists. Allies of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief. Trump’s defense of Bannon, at his Tuesday press conference, was tepid.

But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. “They’re wetting themselves,” he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.

“In Kim, Trump has met his match,” I wrote. “The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962.” Maybe Bannon wanted to scream at me?

I told the assistant that I was on vacation, but I would be happy to speak by phone. Bannon promptly called.

Far from dressing me down for comparing Trump to Kim, he began, “It’s a great honor to finally track you down. I’ve followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it.”

“We’re at economic war with China,” he added. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”

Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote. Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.

Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” Bannon went on to describe his battle inside the administration to take a harder line on China trade, and not to fall into a trap of wishful thinking in which complaints against China’s trade practices now had to take a backseat to the hope that China, as honest broker, would help restrain Kim.

“To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover.”

But what about his internal adversaries, at the departments of State and Defense, who think the United States can enlist Beijing’s aid on the North Korean standoff, and at Treasury and the National Economic Council who don’t want to mess with the trading system?

“Oh, they’re wetting themselves,” he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has big plans to marginalize their influence.

“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State.”

The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the press. He’s probably the most media-savvy person in America.

I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump’s reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of using Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump’s base.

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “Ethno-nationalism—it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”

“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

From his lips to Trump’s ear.

“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant

[GordonBlue]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Bannon claims this was a private conversation, but I have a hard time believing a guy as media savvy as he is didn't know exactly what he was doing with this interview

http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant

I'm sure he did know. looks like Bannon is finally going on the offensive.
Bannon is a street fighter and I would never count him out.

He's a smart guy and much of what he said makes more sense than anything the trump family has ever said.

not sure how well he can balance his ties to the alt-right and still appear to keep at arms length away.

[dash_pinched]

Originally tweeted June 4, 2014...

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?

[Senator Clay Davis]

The good news for Trump is when his time as President of the United States is up, he can go be President of the Confederacy

[ernie]

Keep on digging Donnie, keep on digging.

Hell even Bannon is trying to help you get out of this by calling the very fringe he has catered too for years clowns. But you just can't let it go can you Donnie? You have this need to be told you are right 100% of the time. You can't even manage to be one thing in private and in underhanded ways (i.e. sneaky legislation) and another thing in public to keep it all from going to hell.

It's like you are an incompetent narcissistic buffoon.

If only this could have been predicted!

[transplant99]

It's pretty clear now there is a deliberate movement coming out of the WH with what Trump has been doing the last few days.

He is entirely (and successfully I might add) hammering a wedge into the country under the guise of playing identity politics. This latest debacle makes it clearer than ever. This is how he plans on getting things done. It doesnt matter if its good or bad or useless legislation/policy he is proposing, its all going to come down to an "us vs them" situation.

I highly doubt he gets what he wants out of it when all is said and done, but his strategy is clear. The Bannon interview "leak" is no coincidence. This has also taken the Russian investigation off the front pages/collective minds of all Senators and Representatives and focused them on something entirely different.

It's all so fascinating to observe.

[DFO]

Despite Trump's effort to deflect, it looks like the juicy stuff is coming to light

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017...ank-russia/amp

[dash_pinched]

Justin Miller ✔ @justinjm1
You can't make this stuff up: Trump commemorated at his Virginia golf course a Civil War battle that never happened

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/u...p-history.html

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by transplant99

This has also taken the Russian investigation off the front pages/collective minds of all Senators and Representatives and focused them on something entirely different.

Yeah... but this also will become old news and the Russia stuff is ongoing (besides which I'm not sure you want to shove 'Russia Investigation' aside in favor of 'Sympathizes with actual Nazis').

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

I'm sure he did know. looks like Bannon is finally going on the offensive.

Most of those quotes make him look relatively sane and strategically focused. He took the opportunity to try to distance himself from the white supremacists. I agree with you, it seems like an intentional "mistake" to make it seem like he must have been speaking honestly because he "didn't think he would be quoted".

Originally Posted by dash_pinched

Justin Miller ✔ @justinjm1
You can't make this stuff up: Trump commemorated at his Virginia golf course a Civil War battle that never happened

The best part of that is the exclamation point. EDIT: No, wait, this is.

Originally Posted by Trump

"How would they know that?" Mr. Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. "Were they there?"

[chemgear]

Nazi Flags in America

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-...over-nazi-flag

[troutman]