President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Tillerson now saying he "would have no way to know" if the Russians bugged the Oval Office. He was asked if the Russians may have done so because it's unusual to have a full transcript of conversations such as the one between the President and the Russian delegation. More often, notes are taken, but not full transcripts, according to CNN.

 

This is a very good Twitter thread, I would be interested in what the board's thoughts would be.

 

Hillary was bad news.

The people here who keep telling "Trumpists" they need to apologize should realize this. They are to blame for not selecting a better candidate.

 

Putin seems like he'd have a good chance to win the Democratic nomination.

 

What's wrong with Iran?

 

Yeah, that's not a revelation to me. I would agree that I empathize more with Trump voters than I do with people like Erick Erickson, Glenn Beck and the various virtue-signalers on the right who harrumph about Trump but often gladly - triumphantly! - stood behind Reagan and W.

Ted Cruz is a Serious Person? He's a disingenuous asswipe whom the Speaker of the House referred to as Lucifer in the Flesh: "I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

Cruz, incidentally, was a "big, big fan of Sarah Palin" even as she endorsed Trump - after spending a good chunk of time the Ted Cruz train. Ted Cruz is a big, big fan of someone who more or less became exactly what Trump was, and, what's more, Cruz was there lining up behind Trump when it counted.

Now, Trump is absolutely different. No question. Here's how: He's manifestly inept at being president.

It is offensive to my sensibility, and perhaps yours, and perhaps most people's at this point, and our offended sensibilities tend to matter to us more than they should, more than moral rights and wrongs do, which is why Trump eating a steak the wrong way is some kind of character flaw instead of being just a way to eat a steak.

It's impossible to know how good of a country he might craft - my sense is, not a good one, a pretty bad one - but it's actually hard to tell because he and many parts of his team aren't skilled at basic parts of politics. His gaffes are notable. He ended up firing Comey, for example - and I am glad he did - but did it in a way that made him look worse than Clinton would have if she'd done it, which she wouldn't have, because she's always worried about what the right people think and the right people wouldn't have thought well of it. I think Comey's a few bends down the river from Richard Clarke, honestly - and I know what conservatives thought of him - but Trump fucked up how he did it, because Trump is a bull in a china shop.

Cruz would have been much more adept at being president - as far as appearances of competence go - but I'll submit he would have hurt whole swaths of America in terrible ways, packaging liquid shit and selling it as buttercream. He's a magnificent liar - Paul Ryan aspires to Cruz's levels - and very smart. But, still, I shudder to think of the America Ted Cruz had in mind.

Because that's not better. Just because it doesn't look like a shitshow doesn't mean it's better. We overrate the appearance of competency, the appearance of wisdom, when in fact it often does little more than shuffle deck chairs on the Titanic.

Just because Obama was medium cool, at all times, doesn't mean he was any better at being president than Jeff Fisher was at being a head coach most years. Fisher projected the idea of competency and leadership - he just, you know, didn't win a fuckin playoff game in his last 12 seasons. Obama's 8 years in office left his party behind in Congress, behind in statehouses, behind in the governor's house. While that's the recent norm, Obama was supposed to usher in a new era of Democrat power. He instead helped suppress it. The rollout of the health care Web site was a boondoggle and, with providers pulling out of states, his health care initiative, however well-intentioned, is a failure along the lines of No Child Left Behind. (Perhaps more!)

The kernel of empathy I have for some - not all - of Trump voters is that at least some of them voted out of something close to pure, blind anger. I've written before: Some of Trump's voters hate America, because they perceive America either hates them or wants to discard them while it triple-pats the fannies of the financial and cultural elite. It's of course ironic that those folks would pick a real estate mogul turned TV star, but, then, remember so many of his "midnight in America" speeches where, either by happenstance or calculation, Trump articulated, for them, how their nation felt to them. Trump said crazy things that actually struck a nerve because it was out of range with the relentless bullshit peddled, over many years, by people exactly like Ted Cruz.

 

Good post.

 

What this nation needs is a fertilizer truck in the basement of the Faux Fascist Noise parking garage.

 

Alma, for whatever it's worth, if there were a poster here I could choose to meet in real life, it would be you. I think we'd agree on some things, disagree on some things, but it would be a smart, good conversation and I'd learn a lot.

 

Trump has turned the USCG graduation speech into an airing of grievances against the media.

 

See, @Dick Whitman, this is the kind of thing the mods enjoy. They get a good chuckle out of it.