President Trump 2.0: The NEW one and only politics thread

[garrow]

 

[Woody Long]

Um, shirt forking take dude. Some of us make our living in this "sport."

Also, any talk of his handicap is all bullshirt. He's listed as a 2.5 and hasn't posted a score to GHIN since 2021.

It's been long past time for the Winged Foot handicapping committee to revise him upward severely, but Ted Virtue (the guy Trump "played" for a "club championship" after he already won the CC because Trump wasn't there) has a lot of influence both with Trump and at WFGC. He's also the guy that hosted/sponsored the dinner for him during the first term at WFGC that was relatively heavily protested.

It's a shame, because WFGC claims to be all about the good of the game. It's not, at least not anymore. It's just another old boys club for the kind of rich assholes who want more for themselves and thus support Trump that happens to have hosted five U.S. Opens.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

The former, if true. But nothing concrete. And denied by other former staffers.

The Biden aide, who did not respond to requests for comment, would frequently make mention of what "the boss" wanted, the source said, but compatriots would have "no idea" if it was true because the internal culture was to not ask questions.

"I feared no one as much as I feared that [staffer]. To me, [the staffer] basically was the president," the person said. "No one ever questioned [the staffer]. Period."

"Everyone" was suspicious of this individual exceeding their authority when claiming to speak for the president, the source said. "But no one would actually say it."

"I think [the aide] was using the autopen as standard and past protocol," The Post's informant said.

"There is no clarity on who actually approved what — POTUS or [the aide]."

A second Biden White House source agreed that the person was suspected of assuming the then-president's positions and handing down orders without it being clear if they actually had communicated with the commander-in-chief.

Several other former staffers, including those who in the past have offered unvarnished assessments of what they view as the shortcomings of the ex-president and his core staff, described the allegation as absurd and said they never saw the person abuse their authority.

"Biden made statements regarding these pardons, so it would be hard to show that they weren't a decision of the President."

Can Trump Void Biden’s Presidential Pardons?

President Donald Trump announced Monday he wanted to void the presidential pardons issued by Biden

time.com

 

[HanSenSE]

Any club championship match involving Trump is as legit as Washington Generals vs the Globetrotters.

 

[Starman]

Um, shirt forking take dude. Some of us make our living in this "sport."

Also, any talk of his handicap is all bullshirt. He's listed as a 2.5 and hasn't posted a score to GHIN since 2021.

I guarantee you Fatfork hasn't played a round of legitimate golf, on a legitimate course, under conditions providing for even extremely lenient enforcement of the rules, in 20 years.

 

[garrow]

Sure, dingus

Trump slams reporter who didn’t know he won the presidency ‘three times’

Although Trump didn’t win the presidency three times, the journalist he bashed has won three Pulitzer prizes

www.yahoo.com

 

[WriteThinking]

A well-written opinion piece on Medicaid contending that it's on the chopping block, whether Republicans will admit it, or not.

Trump's Silence on Medicaid Speaks Volumes | Opinion

President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, March 4, for 100 minutes. He gave an estimated 9,934-word speech, spending 25 minutes on culture war issues, nine minutes on tariffs that will raise prices by 20 percent on everyday items, and just two minutes on reducing prices, but one word of enormous concern for millions of Americans was left out of his speech altogether—Medicaid.

For years, President Trump has promised on and off the campaign trail to "love and cherish" Medicaid. He has gone so far as to say that people's Medicaid benefits wouldn't be affected by his budget cuts. In reality, if the Republicans' proposed budget plan goes through, we will see draconian cuts to Medicaid, with some published reports estimating cuts as high as $2 trillion over time.

Republicans have repeated the party line that the budget resolution "doesn't even mention Medicaid in the bill." While literally true, this assertion obscures the disturbing reality that though the text of the Republican budget resolution does not directly refer to Medicaid, the plan directs Energy and Commerce, the congressional committee that oversees Medicaid, to find $880 billion in spending cuts that can only be found by gutting Medicaid. This reality has been further confirmed by a letter from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which suggests that Republicans can't meet their own budget target necessary to pass President Donald Trump's legislative agenda without making significant cuts to Medicare or Medicaid. The Republican budget would cut Medicaid even if its supporters refuse to admit it...

 

[Brooklyn Bridge]

Thoughts and prayers. Don't politicize the issue at this time.

Teslas set on fire with Molotov cocktails and shot with gun in Las Vegas attack

“This was a targeted attack against a Tesla facility," said LVMPD Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren. “We do believe that it is isolated at this time."

www.nbcnews.com

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Any club championship match involving Trump is as legit as Washington Generals vs the Globetrotters.

I've told this on here before. But I saw a Globetrotters show where the Generals made a last minute comeback by hitting a couple of shots from the four-point spot on the floor (yes, shots counted as four points) and went ahead by one with a few seconds left. The Trotters hustled down the floor; the Generals didn't exactly play 1990s Knicks vs. Heat defense; one of the Trotters dunked with a second or two remaining and the clock ran out.

I just kept imagining what would have happened if the Globetrotter had blown the dunk.

 

[WriteThinking]

Trump has found another way to please Russia -- the shutdown of The Voice of America.

They're Cheering for Trump in Moscow—Again

"This is an awesome decision by Trump."

What did Donald Trump just do, and who is this happy about it? Is this a Republican politician supporting the president's plans for a tax cut, or perhaps a MAGA cheerleader applauding deportations? Perhaps it's some right-wing pundit foot-stomping his approval for an executive order about trans athletes?

No. The "awesome decision" was to shut down the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the umbrella organization that provides support not only to Voice of America but also to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Marti, and Radio Free Asia, among other groups. And the clapping is coming not from Washington, but from Moscow. The pleased Trump fan is Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT and the media group that owns Russian-propaganda outlets such as Sputnik, and one of Russia's most venomously anti-Western television commentators. (She once suggested that Russia should detonate a nuclear weapon over its own territory as a warning to the West about supporting Ukraine.)...

Turning off these sources was not some slapdash DOGE move. Trump personally signed an executive order on Friday, shutting down what a White House statement absurdly called "the Voice of Radical America." And if the order stands—USAGM is chartered by Congress as an independent agency, and Trump likely does not have the authority to close it down by fiat—he will have succeeded in gutting crucial sources of information relied on by millions of people living under repressive governments. As Max Boot wrote in The Washington Post on Sunday, "All of this amounts to a stunning and self-defeating repudiation of America's legacy as a beacon of freedom around the world."...

Trump, who regards any media he cannot control as a political enemy, is anxious to shut down these vessels of news and information. Once closed, they will no longer annoy him, and he will get a pat on the back from people such as Simonyan. But the new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, seems eager to see it all burn as well. Indeed, she's so enthused that yesterday, she shared an X post from Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysia-based right-wing podcaster and journalist manqué. (He has written for RT and is still listed on its website.) His post claimed that these organizations "produced and disseminated far-left propaganda" and "perpetuated a pro-war narratives against Russia."

It's one thing for the DNI to say that she supports the president's decision; it's another to see her reposting material from an online provocateur who came to prominence fighting on Reddit over "Gamergate" a decade ago. (I contacted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to ask if Gabbard agrees with Cheong and believes he is a reliable source of information. ODNI has not responded.)

No one should really be surprised that Gabbard is amplifying such nonsense. As I wrote last November, her views are so pro-Russian that allowing her to serve as DNI constitutes a national-security threat. But you don't have to take my word for it: The journalist Julia Davis, who monitors Russian media, has kept track of the affection with which Gabbard is regarded in Russia. In December, the Russian state-television host Evgeny Popov surveyed Trump's prospective Cabinet nominees and declared that none of them were "friends of Russia, except for Tulsi Gabbard." And Vladimir Solovyov, a talk-show host whose rants are depraved even by the low standards of Russian television, referred to Gabbard as "our girlfriend Tulsi." ("Is she some sort of a Russian agent?" another guest asked. "Yes," Solovyov snapped.)

Oh, this administration is just so wonderful...

 

[garrow]

Of course

‘It’s a Heist’: Real Federal Auditors Are Horrified by DOGE

WIRED talked to actual federal auditors about how government auditing works—and how DOGE is doing the opposite.

www.wired.com

 

[micropolitan guy]

Thoughts and prayers. Don't politicize the issue at this time.

Teslas set on fire with Molotov cocktails and shot with gun in Las Vegas attack

“This was a targeted attack against a Tesla facility," said LVMPD Assistant Sheriff Dori Koren. “We do believe that it is isolated at this time."

www.nbcnews.com

Lots of tourists in Vegas. Must have been some of them.