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Author Topic: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2  (Read 290715 times)

Offline Paul May

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #24 on: July 14, 2020, 08:15:13 PM »
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1 of the 20,000 lies of the POTUS: he claims to have brought America the greatest economy in our history.

Let’s bury this (ex)urban legend once and for all, shall we? The numbers don’t lie, and they’re very consistent.

First, let’s talk about the market. Trump’s stock market record isn’t great. Charitably, it’s mediocre. By the standards of actual professional investors, it’s terrible. It certainly shows no sign of the attention the president lavishes on it, since this winter he initially diagnosed coronavirus as a threat to the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rather than the 137,000 Americans it has now killed.

Trump has had two years of solid gains (2017 and 2019), one year of losses (2018), and this year, where the S&P is little changed from 2019’s end. For 2017, he deserves little credit because he hadn’t made any policy yet. In 2018, a rally induced by his late-2017 tax cut petered out when Trump began threatening trade wars, spurring a 20 percent drop from October to Christmas Eve. This year saw a 27 percent drop between February and April Fool’s Day, still not completely recovered.

Together, the S&P has a compound annual growth rate (or CAGR) of about 10 percent since Trump’s inauguration — less than 4 percent since September 2018. For a comparable period in his first term, Barack Obama’s CAGR was 24 percent — while Biden was vice president. Bill Clinton’s two-term record was 15 percent yearly. Plus, Trump has delivered 20 percent declines in the S&P twice in the last 21 months.

Hilariously, the best way to make money under Trump is betting his policies won’t work. His ideas were supposed to help energy stocks, Ford and General Motors, and banks. Energy has tanked, GM and Ford have lost half their value (though GM has recovered some), and bank stocks haven’t moved in two years. Even defense stocks have trailed the market. Meanwhile, Amazon.com (led by bitter enemy Jeff Bezos) has nearly quadrupled.

So, Trump delivers lots of risks and mediocre rewards.

His wives could tell you that.

“The reason I put less weight on the [public] surveys is the relentlessness of the false claims of the ‘greatest economy ever,’” said hedge-fund manager Mark Dow, a former US Treasury Department official. “The repetition works.”

Next, let’s take a look at jobs.

According to the Labor Department, America gained 6.4 million private-sector jobs between Trump’s inauguration and the peak in March — and has lost 13.2 million since, even with big gains in May and June. Other than George W Bush, no president since Herbert Hoover presided over a net job loss.

Trump’s record was weak before this year, too. That erstwhile 6.4 million job gain compares to nearly 10 million in Obama’s (and Biden’s) second term, or 22 million in Clinton’s two.

Bottom line: Obama left behind 4.7 percent unemployment. The jobless rate kept falling, more slowly under Trump, then zoomed to 16 percent in April. It’s now 11.1 percent. Whatever happens by the election won’t be an improvement.

So what about growth?

Trump said he’d take an economy growing 1 percent a year (it actually averaged 2.4 percent in Obama’s last three years), and make it grow 4 percent. Sometimes he’d even promise 6 percent.

Eh, no. His best year was 2018, when 2.9 percent growth in gross domestic product matched 2014’s. His other two years have been 2.4 percent and 2.3 percent. Meh. Even that was the calm before the storm.

This year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta projects that GDP will shrink at an annual rate of 30 percent in the second quarter, after a 5 percent first-quarter drop. It may bounce back in the third quarter — everyone has expected that, until the renewed spike in Covid — but scraping back toward zero growth is no recommendation.

When a bad leader puts stocks (and jobs) under the gun, Wall Street calls that “political risk,’’ and Trump is political risk walking. He vacillates on policy, and ends up choosing unwisely. He believes fairytales about trade, public health, taxes and immigration. He talks too much, and too loosely. And he cannot think ahead.

There’s no guarantee your 401(k) will do better if Biden wins. But at least the main threat to our stock market with him at the helm won’t be the fragile ego of a leader who embodies the opposite of “large and in charge.”

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #24 on: July 14, 2020, 08:15:13 PM »


Offline Paul May

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #25 on: July 14, 2020, 08:42:15 PM »
Does leadership matter? Does vision matter? You decide.

1963, JFK to Khrushchev on nuclear weapon testing:

“We all inhabit this small planet”
“We all breathe the same air”
“We all cherish our children’s futures”
“And....we are all mortal”

2017, Trump to Kim Jong-un

“My red button is bigger than your red button”

YOU decide.

Online Royell Storing

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #26 on: July 14, 2020, 09:30:59 PM »

   That spot on the front of your pants tells the tale. Come Nov 3, that spot will be in the rear just like 4 years previous.
   Let's see how the SURVEYS do tonight in Alabama. Sessions by 12?

JFK Assassination Forum

Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #26 on: July 14, 2020, 09:30:59 PM »


Offline Paul May

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #27 on: July 14, 2020, 09:49:24 PM »
   That spot on the front of your pants tells the tale. Come Nov 3, that spot will be in the rear just like 4 years previous.
   Let's see how the SURVEYS do tonight in Alabama. Sessions by 12?

And yet you once again ignore the FACTS of the posting. As usual. It’s what you Trump lunatics do. IGNORE facts. 135,000 dead Americans and counting is a FACT. Deal with that.

Offline Tom Scully

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #28 on: July 14, 2020, 09:58:54 PM »
   That spot on the front of your pants tells the tale. Come Nov 3, that spot will be in the rear just like 4 years previous.
   Let's see how the SURVEYS do tonight in Alabama. Sessions by 12?

Seek help, at your community hospital! Do we have to beg you to look after your own health issues, likely untreated since your daze @ Covina?

Quote
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/nyregion/mary-trump-book.html
The Inside Story of Why Mary Trump Wrote a Tell-All Book
7 days ago - Ms. Trump, a clinical psychologist, calls her grandfather — the president's father, Fred Trump Sr. — a “sociopath” who damaged his children. His ...

Quote
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/why-christians-support-trump/613669/
Jeff Sessions Explains Why Christians Support Trump
The former attorney general compared the president to a Middle Eastern strongman.

JUNE 30, 2020
David A. Graham
Staff writer at The Atlantic
.....
Sessions, in effect, is saying he agrees with Gerson’s description—but thinks that what he identifies is a perfectly fine arrangement. “There’s a difference between freedom and democracy,” he told Plott. “You need to understand this.”

The yearning for a strongman doesn’t necessarily end with religious issues. Sessions also mused on his childhood in Camden, Alabama. “It was an idyllic period,” he said. “Sort of a window. End of an age.” His memory is that things were “ordered and disciplined,” Plott writes.....


...

....Or, post some links to facts supporting your posted opinion.... merely your feelings if you refuse to support your posted opinions.
Right now, your feelings seem to be hurt, .....
.............

« Last Edit: July 14, 2020, 10:07:54 PM by Tom Scully »

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #28 on: July 14, 2020, 09:58:54 PM »


Online Royell Storing

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #29 on: July 14, 2020, 10:08:47 PM »
  The posting here continues mirroring something outta "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".  Quoting people Nobody every heard of along with these squiggly Red lines. Most of you guys are Twitter worthy with the never ending lunacy that drives that joint.
  That Head Honcho Chickadee finally woke up over at the NY Times. People of All political persuasions are coming to realize the Fake News Media is just that. FAKE!
« Last Edit: July 14, 2020, 10:09:43 PM by Royell Storing »

Offline Paul May

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #30 on: July 14, 2020, 10:17:07 PM »
Propagandist rhetoric and once AGAIN ignoring FACTS. Is the media wrong about 135,000 dead Americans? Simple question, even for you. Yes or no will suffice.

JFK Assassination Forum

Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #30 on: July 14, 2020, 10:17:07 PM »


Offline Paul May

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #31 on: July 14, 2020, 10:21:12 PM »
WH and Fox going after Fauci as they did Mueller. It won’t work this time.

Trump has a strategy for discrediting Dr Fauci. And everyone in DC knows what will happen next
Andrew Feinberg

Five months into the global Covid-19 pandemic, and faced with a new spike in cases and deaths in states whose Republican governors heeded his demands to open their economies regardless of the risk to the public, the Trump White House is now taking aim at Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s foremost infectious disease expert.

Fauci is a singular figure in his field who began his rise to prominence during the Reagan administration, and who has since served under multiple presidents from both political parties.

While he has been a prominent spokesperson for the government’s public health efforts since the emergence of HIV in the 1980s, Fauci has risen to an unprecedented measure of celebrity during Trump’s presidency, in part because he, too, is perceived as a non-partisan truth-teller with unshakable efforts.

His face is on socks, face masks, and even an aptly-named “Fauc on the Couch” throw pillow. And of course, there is a Fauci bobblehead for sale as well.

According to a White House official, Fauci’s newfound celebrity has long irked Trump, who prefers to be the center of attention. Further infuriating the president, the official said, is Fauci’s status as a career civil servant. Trump has long viewed career government employees with suspicion and has frequently promoted baseless conspiracy theories suggesting there is a “deep state” made up of career officials who have been working to bring down his presidency since the beginning.

In many ways, Fauci can be compared to another long-time public servant and affable septuagenarian who provoked Trump’s ire: Robert Mueller, the man tasked with conducting that infamous report about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. But unlike Mueller, who did not speak publicly during the course of his investigation, Fauci has made and continues to make frequent media appearances, though the White House has blocked him from honoring requests to appear on prominent cable news and broadcast programs.

Several sources close to the president say Fauci has inflamed Trump’s anger by contradicting his claims about the alleged success the US has had in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic under his leadership.

And by the end of last week, it all boiled over. Over the weekend, White House officials began circulating a bullet-pointed list to reporters, detailing prior statements Fauci has made about the pandemic which had been proven incorrect by subsequent developments. Fauci had once doubted the need for wearing face masks during the pandemic, for instance — although the list failed to mention that he then publicly revised his strategy when more information about the virus came to light.

The list, which was nearly identical to the opposition research talking points that are frequently circulated by political campaigns, marked a break between the White House and the federal government’s most celebrated scientist.

And one of Trump’s closest confidantes, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Daniel Scavino, went even further. On Sunday, Scavino posted to his Facebook account a cartoon by alt-right cartoonist Ben Garrison, depicting the veteran physician as an anthropomorphic “Dr Faucet,” through whom cold water is poured onto a drowning economy.


Another prominent Italian-American who has found himself on the receiving end of White House opposition research, ex-White House Communications Director-turned-Trump critic Anthony Scaramucci, said the use of such methods against Fauci was a “completely Orwellian” tactic that was most likely born out of White House aides’ need to please their boss.

“Trump has willing sycophants who will kowtow to him… but there’s no way to please him,” he said.

Scaramucci said the White House’s attempt to target Fauci is “the exact same playbook” that was used against Mueller, but warned that it would fail because while the former FBI director’s role was one that existed on the playing field of rough-and-tumble Washington politics, Fauci is “not a politician in any way or form”.

“Going after Anthony Fauci… a truth-teller in the scientific community, is like punching people in the stands,” he said.

But Tim Miller, who served as Jeb(!) Bush’s communications director during the 2016 election, expressed doubts that the Trump administration’s push to discredit Fauci was deployed as part of a coherent plan, regardless of any similarities to Trumpworld’s anti-Mueller campaign.

“I think it’s more likely that they [White House press aides] are trying to keep the boss happy,” he explained.

“Trump is a child who is jealous that Fauci is more popular than him, so rather than trying to be an adult and try to figure out how to work together to get to the best result of the country, he's going to only playbook that he knows, which is attack him and try to muddy the waters to make him look bad,” Miller continued.

“But this is not about persuading any new supporters. It's not like there's this anti-Fauci sentiment out there that Trump is trying to tap into. He's embarrassed that he handled this so poorly, he's embarrassed that he's getting bad reviews for us, and he's embarrassed that Fauci is being praised, so he wants to bring Fauci down a peg,” he said.

Another ex-GOP communications consultant, Lincoln Project senior adviser Kurt Bardella, posited that the life-or-death stakes of the global coronavirus crisis make it a waste of time for the White House to target Fauci if the goal is to help the president’s public image.

“You could call the Mueller investigation fake news… and all the things that we heard Trump and his ilk repeat. You can't say that about the coronavirus when everyday people are seeing it in their own communities, their families, their social circles, and their emergency rooms,” said Bardella, a former spokesperson for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.

“Fauci is first and foremost a doctor and a medical professional, and that is how the American people view him,” he continued. “But they’re applying the Mueller playbook to Fauci because this White House and Trump don't have any other tools in their toolbox. They are literally a one hit wonder, they just go back and play the same thing over and over again, and we're seeing — not just with the coronavirus but in other areas — that it's just not working. People aren't buying what he's selling anymore.”

The similarities between Trumpian tactics being used against Fauci and Mueller run deep.

To say that Mueller had a sterling reputation prior to his appointment would be a massive understatement — and the same could easily be said about Fauci. Mueller was also the longest-serving FBI director since the infamous J Edgar Hoover, thanks to the Senate unanimously approving a request by then-President Barack Obama to extend by two years the ten-year term to which he’d been confirmed just over a month before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Fauci, in turn, served under multiple presidents and both parties and has been treated with respect and reverence by each one until this political moment.

Mueller and his ongoing investigation occupied a permanent spot in the public consciousness, kept there by a steady string of indictments, non-stop news coverage, and the hopes and dreams of the so-called “resistance” to Trump’s presidency. The taciturn Vietnam veteran, whose office did not leak and who did not speak to the media, nevertheless became somewhat of a pop culture figure. There were Mueller action figures, t-shirts, and even a bizarre children’s book which depicted him as a well-muscled, shirtless figure akin to a Chippendale dancer. Easy comparisons can be drawn with the “Fauc on the Couch” merchandise around today.

Unable to stop the negative headlines or the media speculation about what was happening behind Mueller’s leak-proof doors, the White House and many of Trump’s outside allies instead began hitting back against the investigation in 2018 with a concerted campaign to personally discredit the man who had come to his position with almost universal acclaim. Trumpian Republicans made a huge effort to turn the tight-lipped, respectful Mueller into a partisan figure in the public’s eyes.

And thanks to the former Special Counsel’s self-imposed silence during the entirety of his investigation, Trumpworld had the playing field all to itself. Aided by leaks about his personnel from House Republicans, and a steady stream of often-unhinged television appearances by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, it was an effort that was at least somewhat successful.

According to Morning Consult polling, only 27 percent of Republicans had an unfavorable impression of Mueller in July 2017, two months after his appointment as Special Counsel. Eleven months after that in June 2018, over half of Republicans — 53 percent — viewed him unfavorably.

Two years later, Donald Trump is faced with another crisis, and with another veteran public servant whose presence in the popular consciousness underscores the threat it poses to his presidency. The White House’s reaction has been the same. And anyone who works alongside Trump in the Oval Office is now terrified enough of that strategy that they’ll do the president’s bidding, whether or not it makes any sense.