President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

If Trump really wants to put Americans to work, he should outlaw computer scientists!

Our Automated Future

 

Hillary was a terrible candidate, but boy did her her bloated, overfunded campaign make a lot of mistakes.

So much of what was conventional wisdom turned out not to be true. Thanks to the RNC's efforts, Trump had a better ground game than Clinton.

They didn't work Michigan, because they didn't want Trump to know it was close, and compete there, so they wasted money and resources in Iowa.

They were so cocky, they were talking about Senate majorities, and running up the vote in urban areas, in states that weren't competitive, to ensure she won the popular vote.

All of it is so stupid.

This while Politico article is great. I can't wait for more of this stuff to come out.

Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa. So when, a week-and-a-half out, the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers, giving a desperate team on the ground around Detroit some hope.

They started prepping meals and organizing hotel rooms.

SEIU — which had wanted to go to Michigan from the beginning, but been ordered not to — dialed Clinton’s top campaign aides to tell them about the new plan. According to several people familiar with the call, Brooklyn was furious.

Turn that bus around, the Clinton team ordered SEIU. Those volunteers needed to stay in Iowa to fool Donald Trump into competing there, not drive to Michigan, where the Democrat’s models projected a 5-point win through the morning of Election Day.
...
Michigan operatives relay stories like one about an older woman in Flint who showed up at a Clinton campaign office, asking for a lawn sign and offering to canvass, being told these were not “scientifically” significant ways of increasing the vote, and leaving, never to return. A crew of building trade workers showed up at another office looking to canvass, but, confused after being told there was no literature to hand out like in most campaigns, also left and never looked back.

“There’s this illusion that the Clinton campaign had a ground game. The deal is that the Clinton campaign could have had a ground game,” said a former Obama operative in Michigan. “They had people in the states who were willing to do stuff. But they didn’t provide people anything to do until GOTV.”
...
Michigan was the only presidential battleground that didn’t have an active Senate race, and that cost the state money from Brooklyn. Waving off complaints during a visit to Michigan a few weeks out, Marshall explained to the room that Clinton was going to clobber Trump in the final debate and they were talking about moving money into Senate seats. And by the time they arrived in Las Vegas for that third debate, Clinton’s top aides were boasting about how they were about to expand the lead and pull marginal Senate candidates over the line to give her a governing majority.
...
But there also were millions approved for transfer from Clinton’s campaign for use by the DNC — which, under a plan devised by Brazile to drum up urban turnout out of fear that Trump would win the popular vote while losing the electoral vote, got dumped into Chicago and New Orleans, far from anywhere that would have made a difference in the election.

How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election

 

Make Mishandling Classified Information Great Again!

Trump’s national security adviser shared secrets without permission, files show

 

LOL. Yeah, he shared intel with members two members of the "five eyes" intelligence alliance -- while on the battlefield to to protect US coalition troops.

I can't imagine why he didn't get in trouble for this at the time. But, surely, it will hurt him as he transitions into his new job, which doesn't require Senate confirmation:

A secret U.S. military investigation in 2010 determined that Michael T. Flynn, the retired Army general tapped to serve as national security adviser in the Trump White House, “inappropriately shared” classified information with foreign military officers in Afghanistan, newly released documents show.

Although Flynn lacked authorization to share the classified material, he was not disciplined or reprimanded after the investigation concluded that he did not act “knowingly” and that “there was no actual or potential damage to national security as a result,” according to Army records obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

Flynn has previously acknowledged that he was investigated while serving as the U.S. military intelligence chief in Afghanistan for sharing secrets with British and Australian allies there. But he has dismissed the case as insignificant and has given few details.

 

So General Flynn was in a foxhole with British and Australian military officers dodging machine gun fire and mortar rounds and showed them the classified information in case he didn't make it out alive or something?

 

Pundits are speculating that allies might be reluctant to share info with us because Flynn "can't be trusted with it" or some other such nonsense.

Yeah, I'm sure our allies will hold it against Flynn that he shared battlefield intel with them, to help protect their troops -- intel that he surely could have received permission to share, given the circumstances, if he had taken the time to go through proper channels, which would have just cost time and lives:

A second former U.S. official said Flynn failed to secure permission to reveal those secrets. “This was a question of whether or not information was put through proper channels before it was shared,” the second official said.

 

So he's a rogue agent but a good kind. Kind of like Han Solo?

 

When does Alex Jones and the rest of the whackadoo brigade begin worrying about Trump seizing control of the government and declaring martial law? He's loading his Cabinet with former military guys and people who want to dismantle the agencies they are assigned to run.

 

So, because Flynn wasn't personally in a foxhole, he shouldn't have shared intel to help those that were?

This is insane.

I'd love to see the reaction if Flynn chose to not share intel, because he didn't have time to go through proper channels, and it cost lives. I'm sure he wouldn't be second guessed for that.

Flynn was investigated for this, and didn't get in trouble.

PRIEST: The criticism was that you were not good at the execution of that. This is a quote: “Stonewalled, undercut and marginalized.” And what about the investigation [into inappropriately sharing intelligence]?

FLYNN: The investigation on me was for sharing intelligence with the Brits and Australians in combat, and I’m proud of that one. That was substantiated because actually I did it. But I did it with the right permissions when you dig into the investigation. I’m proud of that one. Accuse me of sharing intelligence in combat with our closest allies, please.

PRIEST: So why was there an investigation?

FLYNN: Because that’s what the government does.

Trump adviser Michael T. Flynn on his dinner with Putin and why Russia Today is just like CNN

 

She should have just lobbed Twitter bombs at citizens for 18 months.

 

Trump has the same number of generals/admirals in top jobs that Obama had -- three.

Yet when President Obama assembled his Cabinet in 2009, he also ended up with three retired four-stars in his inner circle: Jones as his national security adviser, retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki as veterans affairs secretary, and retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. That's 12 stars to Trump's 11.

Too many generals? Trump's newest nomination causing jitters

 

He shared intel with our closest allies in a battlefield situation. He was investigated, and didn't get in trouble.

This is not being sloppy with intel. It's not like he was forwarding it to his maid to print out at home.