Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



The useful idiots are falling by the wayside. First came a few corporate big shots, and then some more, and then many, many more. Princes of Wall Street, richer and more important than any chief executive, also left, and then Julius Krein, a conservative intellectual and digital pamphleteer, retracted his support of President Trump in a New York Times op-ed and inevitably was hailed as a political Rip Van Winkle who had just woken up. He and the others slept too long.

They have done their damage. Trump is in the White House, fulminating on Twitter, messing up foreign policy, mistaking critics for enemies, refusing to immediately and unequivocally condemn neo-Nazis, racists and other assorted goons — and, in general, failing to provide the nation with a scintilla of moral leadership. This will last until it can’t any longer. There is only so much chaos a nation can stand.

...

Trump’s presidency will fail. Just don’t ask me how and when. It will collapse because at its center is a hollow man, lacking ballast, whose chaos cannot be contained. In the meantime, those who supported him then but have now recanted need to consider what steered them so wrong. What compelled them to support a man whose ignorance, selfishness, egomania and abysmal character were so clear? Was it their lust for deregulation, lower taxes and a Wagnerian end to the Obama era? They slept — but it was our nightmare.
 


In “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” published last week by Melville House, the historian Mark Bray presents the Battle of Cable Street as a potent symbol of how to stop Fascism: a strong, unified coalition outnumbered and humiliated Fascists to such an extent that their movement fizzled. For many members of contemporary anti-Fascist groups, the incident remains central to their mythology, a kind of North Star in the fight against Fascism and white supremacy across Europe and, increasingly, the United States. According to Bray, antifa (pronounced an-tee-fah) “can variously be described as a kind of ideology, an identity, a tendency or milieu, or an activity of self-defense.” It’s a leaderless, horizontal movement whose roots lie in various leftist causes—Communism, anarchism, Socialism, anti-racism.

The movement’s profile has surged since antifa activists engaged in a wave of property destruction during Donald Trump’s Inauguration—when one masked figure famously punched the white supremacist Richard Spencer in the face—and ahead of a planned appearance, in February, by Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, which was cancelled. At the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a number of antifa activists, carrying sticks, blocked entrances to Emancipation Park, where white supremacists planned to gather. Fights broke out; some antifa activists reportedly sprayed chemicals and threw paint-filled balloons. Multiple clergy members credited activists with saving their lives. Fox News reported that a White House petition urging that antifa be labelled a terrorist organization had received more than a hundred thousand signatures.
 


The relationship between President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has disintegrated to the point that they have not spoken to each other in weeks, and Mr. McConnell has privately expressed uncertainty that Mr. Trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises.

What was once an uneasy governing alliance has curdled into a feud of mutual resentment and sometimes outright hostility, complicated by the position of Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine L. Chao, in Mr. Trump’s cabinet, according to more than a dozen people briefed on their imperiled partnership. Angry phone calls and private badmouthing have devolved into open conflict, with the president threatening to oppose Republican senators who cross him, and Mr. McConnell mobilizing to their defense.

The rupture between Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell comes at a highly perilous moment for Republicans, who face a number of urgent deadlines when they return to Washington next month. Congress must approve new spending measures and raise the statutory limit on government borrowing within weeks of reconvening, and Republicans are hoping to push through an elaborate rewrite of the federal tax code. There is scant room for legislative error on any front.

A protracted government shutdown or a default on sovereign debt could be disastrous — for the economy and for the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.

Yet Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell are locked in a political cold war. Neither man would comment for this story. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, noted that the senator and the president had “shared goals,” and pointed to “tax reform, infrastructure, funding the government, not defaulting on the debt, passing the defense authorization bill.”

Still, the back-and-forth has been dramatic.

In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, then berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match.

During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue. He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.
 


In his televised speechlast night, the president flip-flopped his position on the war in Afghanistan. We know this because, to his credit, Trump explicitly copped to it:

My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts. But all my life, I have heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. In other words, when you are president of the United States. So I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle. After many meetings over many months, we held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David with my Cabinet and generals to complete our strategy.

There’s a lot to unpack in that paragraph. Watching it live, when he said “I studied Afghanistan in great detail and from every conceivable angle,” I literally laughed out loud. Let’s be blunt: The only printed material that Trump has studied in great detail from every conceivable angle are periodicals that contain glossy centerfolds.

That said, I do believe Trump’s claim that he preferred to pull out and subsequently changed his mind. The question is why. For all the myriad ways the president tried to claim that his strategy of “principled realism” was different from President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan strategy,https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/its-a-hard-problem-inside-trumps-decision-to-send-more-troops-to-afghanistan/2017/08/21/14dcb126-868b-11e7-a94f-3139abce39f5_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumpdecision-838pm-winner%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.4968708e1fef (it’s pretty much the same). The Trump administration cares a little less about democracy promotion and a lot less about civilian casualties than the Obama administration. The president suggested that India could play a stabilizing role, which is true only in the sense that such a move would guarantee that Pakistan would play an even more destabilizing role.
 


Cillizza: Finish this sentence: "Donald Trump will be president until __________." Now, explain.

Murphy:
Again, my crystal ball on Trump is 100% certified as badly cracked. But I'll try. "Donald Trump will be President until early 2019."

Here's why: First, he won't get better. There will be more Trump outrages, despite whatever staff shuffling occurs in the White House. Trump is the atomic clock of Trump craziness; he cannot change.

Second, I fear the GOP will have a very rough midterm election, particularly in the House. Although I want the GOP to win despite Trump, I'm pessimistic. I think (especially after Charlottesville and the next Trump Charlottesville-esque mess whatever that will be) that voting against Trump/the GOP will become a big social value for a lot of young, marginal voters in 2018. If these Democratic-leaning, presidential year voters show up to protest Trump in the midterms, we Republicans will face our worst turnout nightmare and we will lose the House.

If that happens, post-election Donald Trump will be alone, despised by his own party, a failure rebuked by the nation, and politically neutered even more than he is today. He'll channel-surf between reports of various D's and R's setting up to run against him for president in 2020. At that point I think President Trump will pine for the Tower. A resignation is far from impossible, if for no other reason than nothing is impossible with Trump. There is also the Mueller factor and whatever legal jeopardy his family could face. All unknown, but all potentially huge problems for him.

So, if anything, the timetable of trouble could speed up into a deal to leave office in 2018. But I think he'll want to fight out the midterms. If they go badly, I think he cuts his losses.

But this is all a wild guess and I've been wrong before.
 


Donald Trump's reaction to Charlottesville, including his tacit support of white supremacists and Nazis, is repugnant.

When Trump was elected, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I vowed to give our new president the benefit of the doubt on the few areas where I might narrowly agree with him.

But now, I have a message for Mr. Trump: The only thing necessary to "Make America Great Again" is ensuring you are a one-term president.
 
Just a question

I see they are trying to impeach Trump because of encouraging racist protestors violence or something like that

Is that because impeach Trump because of Russia collusion delusion confusion retribution involution attempt already fell of a cliff?
Haven't had much time to watch any news lately
 

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