President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

In fact, the whole Trumpnazi Party is acting like there's no conceivable way they could even possibly lose the election.

 

There is only so much ballyhoo that can be orchestrated to throw this election. Please, let's be sensible about this.

Aside from Abrams and scattered others, I believe the last string of elections, dating to mid-2017, have been fairly contested and fairly won.

 

Narrator's voice: It's not.

 

The complacency is remarkable. Almost like he knows how it's all going to unfold in November. Voter suppression. Undercounts of Biden's totals. Appeal to Beer Bong Brett and his klansmen in SCOTUS as last resort.

 

I don't buy that. Too much panic over things like the Mourning in America ad. Trump's seen internal polls that scare the hell out of him. Things are going to get worse.

 

Just gimme back my economy, Mr. Virus. I'll give you anything you want. 80,000 lives. 100,000. Whatever you want.

 

I don’t think that it is.

While not skilled at governing, Trump is very good at second guessing. He knows that the economy has been his best argument for re-election. And there is nothing that he (or anyone else in the job) can do to change the job loss numbers in the short term or the overall health of the economy.

So because he doesn’t have the patience or desire for a long term fix, and he is incapable of admitting that anything which he does or has done is less than the greatest ever, he needs to shift the blame elsewhere. So what he does is say that the economy should open, but it is up to the states to do it. This way, when states aren’t fully open, he can say that it isn’t his fault.

 

Convincing argument.

 

But if he’d just do what the scientists said - which the nation supports - wouldn’t he be in better electoral shape?

I mean, Joe Biden has disappeared. He’s said virtually nothing for months except to deny he sexually assaulted Tara Reade. I think that’s a tell; if Trump were better; Biden would have to find something to criticize. As it is Trump’s performance is criticism unto itself.

The guy is not as shrewd as he seems - or that calculated.

 

In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions of N95 masks in America

https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...6a821e-908a-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html


"It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.

Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.

“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”

But communications over several days with senior agency officials — including Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and emergency response — left Bowen with the clear impression that there was little immediate interest in his offer.

“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.

Bowen persisted.

“We are the last major domestic mask company,” he wrote on Jan. 23. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.”


In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.

 

I agree that he isn’t a shrewd as he thinks that he is. Trump has always relied on his instincts and he can credibly say that you shouldn’t second guess him because he won the election.

He has always been able bullshit his way out of problems — making promises to do things in the future or claiming that something has been accomplished when it hasn’t. And many people don’t hold him accountable because the tides of bullshit are relentless.

But here people are dying and losing their jobs and the instincts which have served him so well just don’t work. First he denied, then he blamed Obama, then he said the press and the Dems were making it up to hurt him. Each time that didn’t work, he has been more desperate to solve the issue himself. He has done the daily briefings because he thinks that he can turn the tide and he also can’t stand anyone getting any credit.

So his next step is to declare victory and hope no one notices.

 

I am happy to agree with Alma for once. And if today's story in the Post is to be believed, so do many Republican Senators.