The Never-President Trump

[Barbe bleu 824]

53 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Utter tosh! 

 

What part is utter tosh? 

I suggested that what Biden should do now is try to heal the divide not stick the knife in or kick them while they are down. Do you disagree with this bit, perhaps he should. Stoke up his core support to provide 'balance'?

Is it the bit about Trump being  an irrelevance? If he is ignored he will be.  If Biden goes looking for a fight he will find one and that won't be good for anyone. However, Biden won't look for a fight and he'll not engage in destructive hyperbole that invites a counter  and so we'll see Trumps administration slowly fizzle away.   

Is it the bit about what politics worldwide needing is respect?  Are you seriously saying that a lack of respect os what we need?

I read your bit about standing up to dictators.   I have dealt with that elsewhere. But as a summary I dont think soft interventions in the Russian sohere have worked out (ossetia and Ukraine spring to mind) and I dont think they way we stood up to caddafi, assad, the taliban or hussein were unqualified successes  either. So whilst I agree that democracy is a human right I think that the US would be wrong to be 'imperial' in its assertions.

Happy to discuss the above, or else feel free to resort to the classic fvckwit reply if this is the wrong place for a debate.

 

[king canary 7,605]

21 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Is it the bit about Trump being  an irrelevance? If he is ignored he will be.  If Biden goes looking for a fight he will find one and that won't be good for anyone. However, Biden won't look for a fight and he'll not engage in destructive hyperbole that invites a counter  and so we'll see Trumps administration slowly fizzle away.   

 

This part.

He demonstrably isn't an irrelevance and for politics to move forward he either needs to accept the defeat or be roundly condemned by those on his own side for his failure to do so.

Respectful politics takes two to tango- Obama spoke about the importance of unity, reaching across the aisle, working together back in 2008. The Republican reaction was to feed into the idea that he was some form of dangerous radical and to block his every effort to try and govern.

So you're right that Biden is doing the right thing and striking the right tone- but it can't be on him alone and right now Trump and his fans within the Republican party are standing in his way.

[Barbe bleu 824]

1 minute ago, king canary said:

This part.

He demonstrably isn't an irrelevance and for politics to move forward he either needs to accept the defeat or be roundly condemned by those on his own side for his failure to do so

This is where i disagree.   I have been told for the last four or five  years that Trump is a narcissist and a petulant child and I think that there is a meadure of truth in that. The last thing you want to do with either is make it all about them. 

You don't have to agree with me here. Instead just watch Biden over the next few weeks.  He'll continue to strike a conciliatory note and won't engage with anything Trump may wish to say. Without the oxygen of of controversy the  Trump fire will slowly fizzle away on a golf course in florida.  Im happy for this prediction to be reviewed in late December 

I fully get the desire to gloat but it doesn't actually help to achieve what America needs right now which is less division and less aggression.

What I also think is that a man like Biden is what the US needs right now.  Genial and grey. 

What he means to the UK is a whole different question...

[Herman 9,759]

"A measure of truth in that"!?? 

Have you been paying any attention to what has been going on these last few years? 

[Barbe bleu 824]

17 minutes ago, Herman said:

"A measure of truth in that"!?? 

Have you been paying any attention to what has been going on these last few years? 

Yes thank you.  Like I said I am all for a bit more respect in the debate. 

If a child is having a tantrum you ignore it and then have a sensible discussion once the shouting has stopped.  You don't try to argue with it unless you want to make things worse.

Do you think that four years of name calling  have helped?  Its been very tranquil over there recently after all...

 

Thjng is you actually agree with me but you want to get that last kick in on trump and dont want to be seen to agree with me.   Thats pride you are feeling.  Pride can do terrible things to a person, you shouldn't prod a proud person when they are down.

Edited November 8, 2020 by Barbe bleu

[Barbe bleu 824]

I think I've made my point now.  I think everyone needs to draw a line under Trump and move on to a a more adult approach, but that's only my thoughts.

[horsefly 4,298]

50 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

What part is utter tosh? 

I suggested that what Biden should do now is try to heal the divide not stick the knife in or kick them while they are down. Do you disagree with this bit, perhaps he should. Stoke up his core support to provide 'balance'?

Is it the bit about Trump being  an irrelevance? If he is ignored he will be.  If Biden goes looking for a fight he will find one and that won't be good for anyone. However, Biden won't look for a fight and he'll not engage in destructive hyperbole that invites a counter  and so we'll see Trumps administration slowly fizzle away.   

Is it the bit about what politics worldwide needing is respect?  Are you seriously saying that a lack of respect os what we need?

I read your bit about standing up to dictators.   I have dealt with that elsewhere. But as a summary I dont think soft interventions in the Russian sohere have worked out (ossetia and Ukraine spring to mind) and I dont think they way we stood up to caddafi, assad, the taliban or hussein were unqualified successes  either. So whilst I agree that democracy is a human right I think that the US would be wrong to be 'imperial' in its assertions.

Happy to discuss the above, or else feel free to resort to the classic fvckwit reply if this is the wrong place for a debate.

 

Yet more tosh! Find me one single serious political commentator who agrees with your view that Trump is now an irrelevance. He got 70 million votes for God's sake. That 70 million adherents to his creed are not going to fade away as an irrelevance. They remain a potentially explosive source of disruption and division, and they will continue to hang on every word that Donald cares to throw into into the political arena. This defeat will enrage Trump to the core, and the idea that he will simply disappear into the ether rather than seek revenge is naive and frankly crazy.

Your claims are utterly ridiculous

[horsefly 4,298]

3 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

I think I've made my point now.  I think everyone needs to draw a line under Trump and move on to a a more adult approach, but that's only my thoughts.

Acting like a patronising git doesn't get you out of your absurd position

[Barbe bleu 824]

4 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Acting like a patronising git doesn't get you out of your absurd position

As i cannot see anyone else taking up a "left" (yes I know) leadership role just watch Biden over the next few weeks and watch as Trump fizzles away without the oxygen of controvery.  

 

I'm not discussing it anymore,  we'll see for ourselves  soon enough.

Edited November 8, 2020 by Barbe bleu

[king canary 7,605]

26 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

This is where i disagree.   I have been told for the last four or five  years that Trump is a narcissist and a petulant child and I think that there is a meadure of truth in that. The last thing you want to do with either is make it all about them. 

You don't have to agree with me here. Instead just watch Biden over the next few weeks.  He'll continue to strike a conciliatory note and won't engage with anything Trump may wish to say. Without the oxygen of of controversy the  Trump fire will slowly fizzle away on a golf course in florida.  Im happy for this prediction to be reviewed in late December 

I fully get the desire to gloat but it doesn't actually help to achieve what America needs right now which is less division and less aggression.

What I also think is that a man like Biden is what the US needs right now.  Genial and grey. 

What he means to the UK is a whole different question...

I think what you're missing is it isnt Biden or Biden voters ignoring him that would make him go away. There has already been some talk of him running as the Republican nominee for 2024. The idea he'll just fizzle out if people who don't support him ignore him doesnt hold up to much scrutiny in my opinion. There is a whole ecosystem for him to happily exist in on the American right.

We're also talking about an election that was only called 24 hours ago- I think its a bit soon to saying people should be drawing a line under it!

[yellowrider120 762]

2 hours ago, Tetteys Jig said:

naah...

On yer bike ya fascist sympathising fool, I'm gonna enjoy this one 😉 come out of your cave when you're ready to behave!

Wow - what an absolute classic! Thank you for proving my point so completely. Even in the hour of victory you can only resort to the cesspit of personal insult. It must be particularly irritating for yourself that the great British Public steadfastly refuse to elect to power a Government that would reflect your own peculiar beliefs. Incidentally, on the subject of fascism, might I respectfully suggest you watch a documentary such as 'The World at War''? Never know, you might actually begin to understand the true practical meaning of the word.    

[PurpleCanary 5,558]

Since I started this for your pleasure and enlightenment I feel justified in sharing a few post-election thoughts.🤓

As already said Trump is a crook who ran the country just as a crook would. He didn’t just flout established norms of behaviour but connived at law-breaking, allowing members of his family and his administration to get away with multiple breaches of the Hatch Act. He also kept in office members of the administration whose tenure had been ruled illegal by federal judges.

This matters even though Trump is on his way out, because it has shown that the supposed safety checks and balances in the US Constitution, written by reasonable men on the assumption  those who came after them would be reasonable and law-abiding, are totally inadequate in the face of a tinpot mobster.

Biden has already said he will form a commission to look at possible reform of the Supreme Court, but Trump has done the US one favour, by demonstrating that there needs to be a much broader examination of the whole constitutional system, which was devised in the 18^th century and is very badly showing its age.

Not least whether there should still be an electoral college (which was a compromise afterthought in the first place) and if so whether it should now more closely reflect the population realities of the 21^st century. Those who understand the complexities say it now means an electoral college vote from  Wyoming is worth four of those from California.

Another question is reform of the voting system, to get rid as much as possible of the absurd gerrymandering that goes on (by both parties although I think the Republicans overall win the prize) and the blatant voter-suppression by individual states where there is not even a pretence that this is anything but a Republican attempt to reduce the ability of black people to cast a ballot.

Biden and Harris will be way too busy with much more immediate problems to spend time on this, but eventually some president will have to.

As to Trump’s record, two specific points will do. The claim that he has brought peace to the Middle East is nonsense. The Iran nuclear deal was not perfect but by common consent had been working reasonably well. The US withdrawal has made the Middle East more dangerous, not less. And Trump’s various pro-Israeli moves, such as recognising Jerusalem as its capital, will do nothing to reduce the continued and potentially increasing repression of the Palestinian people, which is the original sin of that region.

And then there is the pandemic, with Trump being responsible for making the death toll much worse than it might have been. To explain, all one has to do is quote Jared Kushner from a background interview he did with Bob Woodward way back in April, published recently in The Intelligencer, with a few of its explanatory comments. This will be lengthy, but worth it, because it shows how Trump cared more about re-election than people’s lives.

On April 18, Kushner told Woodward that the White House’s guidance for states to reopen amid the surging COVID-19 outbreak was “almost like Trump getting the country back from the doctors. Right? In the sense that what he now did was, you know, he’s going to own the open-up.

“That doesn’t mean there’s not still a lot of pain and there won’t be pain for a while,” he told Woodward, suggesting that it was time for the country to move onto the “comeback phase” out of concern for the economy, prioritizing Trump’s re-election prospects over the advice of public-health experts. “We’ve now put out rules to get back to work. Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.

“The president also is very smart politically with the way he did that fight with the governors, to basically say, ‘No, no, no, no, I own the opening,’” Kushner explained in his April 18 interview. “Because again, the opening is going to be very popular. People want this country open. But if it opens in the wrong way, the question will be, did the governors follow the guidelines we set out or not?”

While Kushner said Trump would own the economic message of the opening, individual states would bear the public-health burden and have to “own the testing. The federal government should not own the testing. And the federal government should not own kind of the rules.’’

Yes, well. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings and idiots promoted by nepotism way beyond their abilities.  That has to be taken in conjunction with Trump’s own admission in a separate interview with Woodward back in March that he knew perfectly well just how deadly the virus. And that he did indeed blame the state governors. He knew but publicly downplayed it as a hoax that would just go away very quickly.

Not just a crook but an unspeakable human being, who sacrificed who knows how many tens of thousands of American lives on the altar of his pathetically narcissistic ego.

Anyone else would be better, so Biden and Harris start with that advantage. How hard their job is may depend on whether the Republicans, assuming they still control the Senate, co-operate at least a bit. This may come down to individual senators, especially if the Democrats need only one or two Republican votes. Susan Collins of Maine, for one, might be willing to side with the good guys sometimes, particularly if this will be her last term, so she doesn't have to worry about being re-elected in six years' time.

PS. There is a debate about whether Trumpism will go away even when Trump does, if he and the rest of his family do quit the political stage.

For what it is worth, I think you cannot separate Trumpism from Trump and his particular personality and image. He is like a carnival barker or a charlatan revivalist preacher and only someone like that can inspire the blind devotion that he did, because the presentation is everything. The political message cannot have the required impact without the medium by which it is presented.

You cannot imagine Nikki Haley, for example, or Tom Cotton, performing in that way. The words might be the same and the political policies almost certainly would be the same, but without the gut impact Trump managed, frighteningly, to instill in many millions of people.

Edited November 8, 2020 by PurpleCanary

[How I Wrote Elastic Man 1,187]

Trump tweeting that he has written evidence of voter fraud

says also there is an authentication problem in entire system which affects the entire election

If the second part is true, they would have to have a re-run

I can´t access twitter from my laptop, for unknown reason, this is best I´ve got

[How I Wrote Elastic Man 1,187]

Trump tweeting "best pollster in britain wrote this morning that this clearly was a stolen election"

Anyone know who this is? Ivé had a quick google, but no name shows up atm

[Surfer 1,547]

17 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

Biden is already being very magnanimous. The onus is on Trump and by extension his supporters to be graceful in defeat. So far its not looking hopeful.

Like a parent dealing with a child Biden has indeed offered "the other side" an olive branch. We know Trump will not accept it, it's up to the Republican Party leadership to do so and so far only Senator Romney has done that. 

The future of the republic is quite literally in their hands. If Republicans reject the peace offer then so be it, it will be political civil war and I honestly can't tell you which way that will pan out. But the more unreasonable they act now, the weaker their position will be come Jan 21. 

On the international front the President has a very free hand, so you will see "normalcy" restored very quickly, it's on the domestic front that the right will either decide to dig in to fight a war of attrition for two years in the hope of winning the House back in November 2022, or accept most of their wins of the last four years and help solve some problems. A big week coming up then for Mitch McConnell and Rupert Murdoch ... 

 

p.s. good post Purple, I agree with most of that. I hope that the more passionate and irrational support for xenophobic ideas dies out with Trump leaving the stage, but the political poison has many more injection points than his Twitter account. Scum like Bannon, Beck, Jones, Levin, Hannity, Carlson,  all originate and amplify the same ideas via radio shows and cable tv broadcast everywhere in the US and it's often the dominant media when you get outside the major cities, so we have to find a way to reform the media eco-system as well as the political one. 

Edited November 8, 2020 by Surfer

[Tetteys Jig 830]

1 hour ago, yellowrider120 said:

Wow - what an absolute classic! Thank you for proving my point so completely. Even in the hour of victory you can only resort to the cesspit of personal insult. It must be particularly irritating for yourself that the great British Public steadfastly refuse to elect to power a Government that would reflect your own peculiar beliefs. Incidentally, on the subject of fascism, might I respectfully suggest you watch a documentary such as 'The World at War''? Never know, you might actually begin to understand the true practical meaning of the word.    

😉 cool story bro... maybe I should be more sympathetic to racists in future... lesson learned 👍

[Icecream Snow 761]

3 hours ago, Herman said:

And yes, most want a different type of politics.

I'm not sure how you achieve it though. The story of the last twenty years has been moving labour to cheaper countries, the graph shows how China alone has increased its exports tenfold, some of which has come at the expense of Western jobs. Part of Trump's success four years ago was promising to go after China and adopt a more protectionist outlook, instead of the free trade approach.

Problem is that in the current climate you're bound to have the Trumps and Farages attracting the disenfranchised workers with no real solution against globalisation

[A Load of Squit 5,162]

1 hour ago, How I Wrote Elastic Man said:

Trump tweeting "best pollster in britain wrote this morning that this clearly was a stolen election"

Anyone know who this is? Ivé had a quick google, but no name shows up atm

It looks like Trump is referencing someone called Patrick Basham (could be Barsham) of the Cato Institute (who are based in the USA), he's written something in the Express.

A mistake of SwindonCanary proportions.

Basham/Barsham is not a top pollster.

 

 

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

2 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

Since I started this for your pleasure and enlightenment I feel justified in sharing a few post-election thoughts.🤓

As already said Trump is a crook who ran the country just as a crook would. He didn’t just flout established norms of behaviour but connived at law-breaking, allowing members of his family and his administration to get away with multiple breaches of the Hatch Act. He also kept in office members of the administration whose tenure had been ruled illegal by federal judges.

This matters even though Trump is on his way out, because it has shown that the supposed safety checks and balances in the US Constitution, written by reasonable men on the assumption  those who came after them would be reasonable and law-abiding, are totally inadequate in the face of a tinpot mobster.

Biden has already said he will form a commission to look at possible reform of the Supreme Court, but Trump has done the US one favour, by demonstrating that there needs to be a much broader examination of the whole constitutional system, which was devised in the 18^th century and is very badly showing its age.

Not least whether there should still be an electoral college (which was a compromise afterthought in the first place) and if so whether it should now more closely reflect the population realities of the 21^st century. Those who understand the complexities say it now means an electoral college vote from  Wyoming is worth four of those from California.

Another question is reform of the voting system, to get rid as much as possible of the absurd gerrymandering that goes on (by both parties although I think the Republicans overall win the prize) and the blatant voter-suppression by individual states where there is not even a pretence that this is anything but a Republican attempt to reduce the ability of black people to cast a ballot.

Biden and Harris will be way too busy with much more immediate problems to spend time on this, but eventually some president will have to.

As to Trump’s record, two specific points will do. The claim that he has brought peace to the Middle East is nonsense. The Iran nuclear deal was not perfect but by common consent had been working reasonably well. The US withdrawal has made the Middle East more dangerous, not less. And Trump’s various pro-Israeli moves, such as recognising Jerusalem as its capital, will do nothing to reduce the continued and potentially increasing repression of the Palestinian people, which is the original sin of that region.

And then there is the pandemic, with Trump being responsible for making the death toll much worse than it might have been. To explain, all one has to do is quote Jared Kushner from a background interview he did with Bob Woodward way back in April, published recently in The Intelligencer, with a few of its explanatory comments. This will be lengthy, but worth it, because it shows how Trump cared more about re-election than people’s lives.

On April 18, Kushner told Woodward that the White House’s guidance for states to reopen amid the surging COVID-19 outbreak was “almost like Trump getting the country back from the doctors. Right? In the sense that what he now did was, you know, he’s going to own the open-up.

“That doesn’t mean there’s not still a lot of pain and there won’t be pain for a while,” he told Woodward, suggesting that it was time for the country to move onto the “comeback phase” out of concern for the economy, prioritizing Trump’s re-election prospects over the advice of public-health experts. “We’ve now put out rules to get back to work. Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.

“The president also is very smart politically with the way he did that fight with the governors, to basically say, ‘No, no, no, no, I own the opening,’” Kushner explained in his April 18 interview. “Because again, the opening is going to be very popular. People want this country open. But if it opens in the wrong way, the question will be, did the governors follow the guidelines we set out or not?”

While Kushner said Trump would own the economic message of the opening, individual states would bear the public-health burden and have to “own the testing. The federal government should not own the testing. And the federal government should not own kind of the rules.’’

Yes, well. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings and idiots promoted by nepotism way beyond their abilities.  That has to be taken in conjunction with Trump’s own admission in a separate interview with Woodward back in March that he knew perfectly well just how deadly the virus. And that he did indeed blame the state governors. He knew but publicly downplayed it as a hoax that would just go away very quickly.

Not just a crook but an unspeakable human being, who sacrificed who knows how many tens of thousands of American lives on the altar of his pathetically narcissistic ego.

Anyone else would be better, so Biden and Harris start with that advantage. How hard their job is may depend on whether the Republicans, assuming they still control the Senate, co-operate at least a bit. This may come down to individual senators, especially if the Democrats need only one or two Republican votes. Susan Collins of Maine, for one, might be willing to side with the good guys sometimes, particularly if this will be her last term, so she doesn't have to worry about being re-elected in six years' time.

PS. There is a debate about whether Trumpism will go away even when Trump does, if he and the rest of his family do quit the political stage.

For what it is worth, I think you cannot separate Trumpism from Trump and his particular personality and image. He is like a carnival barker or a charlatan revivalist preacher and only someone like that can inspire the blind devotion that he did, because the presentation is everything. The political message cannot have the required impact without the medium by which it is presented.

You cannot imagine Nikki Haley, for example, or Tom Cotton, performing in that way. The words might be the same and the political policies almost certainly would be the same, but without the gut impact Trump managed, frighteningly, to instill in many millions of people.

They need to ditch their voting model and replace it with something more proportional in representation. At the moment it's one side, then the other - and by definition this means working together is often rather difficult if not downright impossible.

[How I Wrote Elastic Man 1,187]

20 minutes ago, A Load of Squit said:

It looks like Trump is referencing someone called Patrick Basham (could be Barsham) of the Cato Institute (who are based in the USA), he's written something in the Express.

A mistake of SwindonCanary proportions.

Basham/Barsham is not a top pollster.

 

 

Thanks 

Here is a copy of the article 

[Surfer 1,547]

Cato Institute is well know to be right leaning, but that’s not the main point - right here is a summary of American democracy’s biggest issue - why do people not vote - is it because they see no point in doing so, or they are prevented from doing so? 

Both worthy of bi-partisan efforts to resolve....

They relied upon surveys of registered voters that skew Democratic because a third of the respondents don’t vote. We survey only “likely” voters who’ll actually cast a ballot. That’s why we gave the Democrats a two-point turnout advantage, rather than the double-digit advantage often found in media polls.

[Well b back 3,203]

6 minutes ago, Surfer said:

Cato Institute is well know to be right leaning, but that’s not the main point - right here is a summary of American democracy’s biggest issue - why do people not vote - is it because they see no point in doing so, or they are prevented from doing so? 

Both worthy of bi-partisan efforts to resolve....

They relied upon surveys of registered voters that skew Democratic because a third of the respondents don’t vote. We survey only “likely” voters who’ll actually cast a ballot. That’s why we gave the Democrats a two-point turnout advantage, rather than the double-digit advantage often found in media polls.

Do people in the US vote for x party come what May Surfer ? Certainly the odd Republican voter seem relieved that he lost.

[Yellow Fever 3,782]

Trump can either accept defeat gracefully and keep some of his legacy intact and respected.

The alternative is to continue to act in a discredited and ultimately anti-democratic manner trying in some manner to 'steal' the election back (he will fail).  The silver-lining to this route is that it will ensure Trumpism in all its forms is totally discredited and binned.

[Creative Midfielder 1,996]

3 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Trump can either accept defeat gracefully and keep some of his legacy intact and respected.

The alternative is to continue to act in a discredited and ultimately anti-democratic manner trying in some manner to 'steal' the election back (he will fail).  The silver-lining to this route is that it will ensure Trumpism in all its forms is totally discredited and binned.

He has a legacy........??

That 15 miles of wall that he actually built (and paid for 😂)?

[SHRIMPER 328]

25 minutes ago, Rock The Boat said:

Patronising fvckwit

Slither back into the sewer you crawled out of you altright slimeball.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

27 minutes ago, Rock The Boat said:

Patronising fvckwit

 

🐷🐷🐷🐷🐷

[Jools 584]

23 hours ago, Hairy Canary said:

Of course I can’t you berk. You’re a wife beater. Why are you struggling to admit you can’t prove that you’re not. Jeez!

please remove that quote you put under my name saying I want Trump shot. It’s not acceptable to falsely quote something under someone else’s name.

I removed accidental quote and now I'd like you to remove your head from your @rse 👍

You are clearly unable to prove that no voter fraud took place, whereas proof that voter fraud took place keeps rolling in, despite the fake media:

 

 

 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

Jools, the typical Proud Boy, guilty until proven innocent.

Prove to Hairy that there was fraud. You cannot. Fraud has to be intentional. Mistakes are not. Ask the 70M who did by voting for your wnak fantasy.

[Hairy Canary 702]

8 minutes ago, Jools said:

I removed accidental quote and now I'd like you to remove your head from your @rse 👍

Thank you. It needed three prompts but at least you did it in the end. 
 

Not very gracious are you. No wonder you support that obnoxious loser.

 

Why can’t Trump get into the White House? Because it’s for Biden. 🙃 x

[horsefly 4,298]

10 minutes ago, Jools said:

I removed accidental quote and now I'd like you to remove your head from your @rse 👍

You are clearly unable to prove that no voter fraud took place, whereas proof that voter fraud took place keeps rolling in, despite the fake media:

 

 

 

ffs you still don't understand HCs very simple example. Go on, prove to us all that you're not a wife beater. You can't can you, and that's the point you dimwit.