President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I've mostly successfully avoided this thread for months because, for me, it was a time-suck that also caused incurable agita. Now I get name-checked as part of a feud and I've been pulled back in like an over-the-hill Michael Corleone. You're all bastards!

FWIW, I happen to agree with both lcj...etc. and Ragu on what I think are their respective main points, or one of their main points anyway, and feel like in large part they're arguing past each other. I don't think it's mutually exclusive to say: 1) A goodly number of the career officials in the Antitrust office (or as the Trumpies call them, the "Obama holdovers") had genuine concerns with this merger; 2) The driving impetus behind the Antitrust office suing to stop the merger was Trump's animus for CNN. I believe both of those to be true.

Ragu has laid out pretty much all the reasons that I believe 2) to be true, with the key piece of evidence being that the Antitrust chief had said before the election that he didn't think this merger would be a problem—and vertical mergers have almost never been fought—and the only thing that changed was Trump winning. Trump didn't need to give some direct order; he made it abundantly, repeatedly, and publicly clear that he wanted this merger stopped, and it was always pretty obvious that was because of CNN. Just like he's tried to order the Postal Service to raise Amazon's rates because of Bezos owning the WashPo, one of the under-reported egregious abuses of power of this admin. (The Postmaster General had to explain that the rates had been agreed to under an ongoing long-term contract that she couldn't just tear up, and Trump reportedly simply refused to believe her when she kept explaining that the Post Office makes money on the Amazon deal, no matter how many times he Tweeted the opposite.)

I do agree (or at least I've seen no reason to doubt) that a number of career Antitrust officials had concerns about this merger, and they may well have had buyer's remorse over allowing Comcast/NBCUniversal without a fight. But given that this administration has almost universally ignored "Obama holdovers," if not done the opposite just out of spite, I'm simply not inclined to believe them arguing in this one instance, "Hey, this has nothing to do with Trump wanting to screw Time Warner because of CNN, we just think it's vital to listen to our experienced and knowledgeable career officials."

I don't buy that any more than the 24-36 hours when the Trumpies told the world with a seemingly straight face that Trump fired Comey because Rod Rosenstein told him to (remember that?), until Trump himself blew that up. Then Tweeted at Comey that there might be tapes of their convos. Which led Comey to leak his memos specifically in the hopes a special counsel would be formed to subpoena those tapes, since he didn't trust Sessions/Rosenstein (who had just shivved him) to get them and/or make them public if indeed they existed. Which led to Robert Mueller. Which led to... we shall see.

And now I'm...out!

 

Is there something like a Champions Tour division of this board, where all the old posters go?

 

Baked chicken for dinner?

 

Yes, it's called Facebook.

But, sadly, I've forgotten which board name goes with which real name in many cases. Or, maybe, fortunately.

 

Congrats!

Now get offline and go clean the toilets. Or since you're Canadian, the outhouse.

 

Nugget of purely personal interest: the lead DOJ lawyer who resigned (Joel McElvain) is a college classmate who also, because our surnames are very close alphabetically, had the mailbox next to mine in the student union, sat next to me at graduation, etc. Good guy.

Also, as Deskgrunt alluded to earlier, the Dems would be very smart to make this (i.e. healthcare, and the Trumpies trying to get rid of mandatory coverage of pre-existing conditions) a major issue in the midterms. And it should be. The support for coverage of pre-existing conditions is wide-spread, not just among Dems. Forget running against Trump; run against the GOP on issues like this that matter to people in your district.

 

Cohen ran out of money. That's why the lawyers left. So he is most likely giving up on defending himself, which is not the same as cooperating, if he cannot find somebody to help out.

 

Hey man, I'm agreeing with you!

(I think you know that, but just want to make sure. And get a cheap laugh, if possible.)