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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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Putin's palace. History of world's largest bribe
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI
Navalny's outstanding film about Putin's kleptocracy & palace has been viewed more than 69 million times since 1/19!
Palace for Putin
https://palace.navalny.com/
There is one place where you can understand everything about Vladimir Putin. This is the most guarded place in Russia, in fact a state within a state, and this is Putin's biggest secret. Which is protected by hundreds, even thousands of people - from unknown guards, gardeners and builders to the richest and most famous people in Russia. One secret. One building. And we will visit it. Visiting Putin. Let us be convinced with our own eyes that this man, in his craving for wealth, is completely mad. We will find out by whose money and how this luxury is financed. And how right now and for the past 15 years, the biggest bribe in history is being given and the most expensive palace in the world is being built.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI
Navalny's outstanding film about Putin's kleptocracy & palace has been viewed more than 69 million times since 1/19!
Palace for Putin
https://palace.navalny.com/
There is one place where you can understand everything about Vladimir Putin. This is the most guarded place in Russia, in fact a state within a state, and this is Putin's biggest secret. Which is protected by hundreds, even thousands of people - from unknown guards, gardeners and builders to the richest and most famous people in Russia. One secret. One building. And we will visit it. Visiting Putin. Let us be convinced with our own eyes that this man, in his craving for wealth, is completely mad. We will find out by whose money and how this luxury is financed. And how right now and for the past 15 years, the biggest bribe in history is being given and the most expensive palace in the world is being built.
View: https://twitter.com/markoff/status/1352027831899865088?s=20
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
View: https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1352962308973223936?s=20
To the charge of naivete that night, I plead guilty: I didn’t consider then that Trump might have had his personal legal interests in mind. But it is impossible to escape the self-interested intent behind his question. From the earliest days of his administration, it became painfully apparent that in all matters — including affairs of state — Trump’s personal well-being took top priority. Four years and https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-is-impeached-again-with-the-country-even-more-at-war-over-his-presidency/2021/01/13/a3ab1526-55e2-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html (two impeachments) later, he has managed to avoid the full consequences of his conduct.
But now that run of legal good fortune may end. Trump departed the White House a possible — many would say probable, provable — criminal, one who has left a sordid trail of potential and actual misconduct that remains to be fully investigated.
As Trump himself well understands. Long-standing Justice Department opinions hold that presidents can’t be prosecuted while they are in office. Given that any such protection was temporary, some of Trump’s advisers believed that one reason he decided to seek reelection was to avoid criminal exposure. Indeed, in the weeks leading up to November’s election, Trump reportedly confessed to advisers that he was worried about being prosecuted.
Fear of indictment also seemed to animate Trump’s frenzied efforts to overturn the results of the election he so clearly lost. During a https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-election-video/2020/12/02/f6c8d63c-34e8-11eb-a997-1f4c53d2a747_story.html (46-minute Facebook video rant) in December, Trump complained that “these same people that failed to get me in Washington have sent every piece of information to New York so that they can try to get me there” — a reference to state prosecutors who apparently have ramped up https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-tax-returns-new-york-investigation/2020/12/29/11c43a38-43c8-11eb-b0e4-0f182923a025_story.html (their investigation) of his personal and corporate affairs.
A desperate fear of criminal indictment may even explain Trump’s willingness to break any number of laws to stay in office despite losing his reelection bid, democracy and the Constitution be damned. ...
