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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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As a result, the next two years threaten to be one of the most perilous periods for the United States since the end of World War II. The rising and resurgent great powers—China and Russia—see in Donald Trump a transactional president, detached from the guiding principles and steadfast alliances that have fostered and protected freedom for 75 years. For the moment, China is paying the price in an escalating and potentially quite damaging trade war, but if it is able to negotiate a grand transaction with Trump, it may also clear a path to more rapid dominance in Asia. Trump talks a big game about putting America first, but for him, it’s really all about money, not even power and certainly not global leadership in defense of enduring values.
As the government shutdown staggers on and the Mueller investigation enters its final phase, unthinkable scenarios become imaginable: a declaration of national emergency, impeachment, a constitutional showdown. Quite possibly, we are headed into a stress test for American democracy that will equal or exceed Watergate. But much more than in the Nixon era (which confronted its own serious dangers internationally), a domestic constitutional crisis would unfold in a global context of profound turbulence, with two great power rivals ready to exploit any sign of fracture in America’s alliances or equivocation in our readiness to defend them.
As both a constitutional and practical matter, the President has wide latitude to make and unmake foreign affairs. Now, as his recklessness and impulsiveness are more sharply revealed, and as the constraints from within his own administration melt away, Republicans in Congress must rally to the defense of our vital national interests. Above all else, that requires a veto-proof majority for legislation tying the president’s hands in any effort to withdraw from NATO. To borrow the terms of the President’s own National Security Strategy, failure to do so could have grave and long-lasting consequences for our security, our prosperity, and our way of life.
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A blockbuster New York Times investigation on Tuesday reported that President Trump’s wealth was largely inherited through fraudulent schemes, that he became a millionaire while still a child, and that his fortune persists in spite of his fumbling entrepreneurship, not because of it. The stories are not unconnected. The president and his advisers have sought to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense; they have attempted to corrupt federal law-enforcement agencies to protect themselves and their cohorts, and they have exploited the nation’s darkest impulses in the pursuit of profit. But their ability to get away with this fraud is tied to cruelty.
Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.
Trump’s not going to be indicted by Mueller — at least not before he leaves office via election defeat or impeachment. So Mueller’s focus needs to be on the crimes of those he can charge, like Don Jr. That doesn’t rule out that the evidence he’s looking at show that Trump oversaw a series of coordinated false statements. He did! With Mike Flynn’s lies, Don McGahn’s clean up of Flynn and Jim Comey’s firings, the response to the June 9 meeting, and yes, this Trump Tower deal, nothing explains the coordinated story-telling of multiple Trump flunkies other than Trump’s approval of those lies.
It is, frankly, journalistic malpractice that the press hasn’t noted that, especially on the June 9 meeting, the evidence that Trump lied and ordered others to has already been made public. Trump’s tacit (and explicit, with the June 9 statement) approval of serial false statements, to Congress, to the FBI Director, to FBI Agents, and to Mueller, is an impeachable offense. Multiple outlets have gotten solid proof of that, they just haven’t stated the obvious like Buzzfeed did, perhaps in part because they’re relying on White House sources for their reporting.
But Mueller won’t need to allege that for his case in chief, at least not on the issue of the Trump Tower deal. Because the events that matter to Mueller’s case in chief — the events to which Cohen might have to serve as a witness — happened in 2016, not 2017 or 2018. And the guilt that Mueller would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt if he does indict this conspiracy is not Trump’s guilt — except as an unindicted co-conspirator. It is Don Jr’s guilt.
So https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2019/01/18/b9c40d34-1b85-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html (outlets) that are suggesting that Mueller’s pushback backs off any evidence that Trump committed a crime make no more sense than the original Buzzfeed report (and ignore the actual evidence of how Cohen’s lies evolved, an evolution in which these outlets https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-business-sought-deal-on-a-trump-tower-in-moscow-while-he-ran-for-president/2017/08/27/d6e95114-8b65-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html (were active participants)). The only thing that explains Carr issuing such an unprecedented order is if Cohen’s ability to testify on the stand must be preserved.
Robert Mueller has the unenviable task of needing to sustain as much credibility for a bunch of serial liars as possible, starting with Michael Cohen. Buzzfeed’s story — whether generally true or erroneous on details about Trump Organization witnesses or totally wrong — threatened that effort.
And that’s why, I strongly suspect, Peter Carr finally publicly spoke.
San Antonio ...
hunterbro
New Member
Spin what? be specific. There's no conspiracy theory here dude. What exactly are you talking about? I gave specific examples. This blind hatred I could at least sympathize with if there was any kind of substance to it...
resident Trump is planning to make a new offer Saturday to Democrats aimed at ending the 29-day partial government shutdown that would extend deportation protections for some immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in border wall funding, according to Republican officials.
But before the 4 p.m. announcement at the White House, some Democrats already rejected Trump’s offer as unacceptable, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calling it a “non-starter” and imploring Trump to take action to open the government.
The president’s proposal is designed to ramp up pressure on Democrats by offering a reprieve on his attempts to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants from some Latin American and African nations.
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Trump had indicated for weeks that he would not entertain an extension of DACA, which began in 2012 under President Obama and has offered renewable work permits to immigrants, known as “Dreamers,” who entered the country illegally as children. Trump had said he was hoping the Supreme Court would hear an appeal to a lower court’s injunction on his attempt to end DACA and, if the high court ruled in his favor, that ending the program would give him more leverage in talks with Democrats over the future of the Dreamers.
But the Supreme Court signaled Friday that it might not take the case. That would mean that Trump would remain unable to end DACA, which covers about 700,000 immigrants, and some Dreamer groups have called on Democrats not to cut a deal for the wall.
The Democratic aide said the proposal Trump will make on DACA Saturday does not fully protect “dreamers” and is not a permanent solution to the issue.
On TPS, Trump has declared an end to a program that has offered hundreds of thousands of immigrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan the right to remain in the United States after they were uprooted from their home countries during national disasters and other emergencies. But Trump’s move also has been enjoined by federal courts.
