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Author Topic: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2  (Read 290648 times)

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #576 on: July 22, 2020, 11:54:47 PM »
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When people turn against a dictator-the dictator tries to turn people against themselves: Ex-FBI deputy director




President Donald Trump is using federal troops to help him create a B-roll for his campaign commercials by sending them into cities that he doesn’t like to supersede the police there.

Daily Beast editor Sam Stein explained that while Trump’s tactics may have worked in 2016, now that he’s president, he can’t blame anyone other than himself. All he can do is claim that somehow mayors are mismanaging the Black Lives Matter protests, most of which have been peaceful and quieted down since the month following George Floyd’s death. It was only after Trump sent the troops into the streets that things started to get worse. It first happened in Washington, D.C., in which Park Police cleared the streets so Trump could take a photo-op outside of a church with a Bible. Then mothers were attacked in Portland, with protesters thrown in unmarked vans like a scene out of “V for Vendetta.”

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace turned to former FBI counterintelligence expert Frank Figliuzzi, asking if Trump is “off” as he boasts about his dementia screening.

The president is without a doubt uninformed, but he’s also incredibly consistent with his constant arching and bending towards authoritarian practices. And sam stein is absolutely right to point us back towards the clearing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square. Trump learned no lesson. He simply learned to replace active-duty military with border patrol agents.”

“Since at least March that he wants to be a wartime president,” Figliuzzi said, recalling a White House press briefing in which Trump referred to himself as precisely that.

“He likes that theme,” Figliuzzi continued. “He’s going to go with it. He’s not going to divert from it. In fact, as you just noted, he’s going to announce that he’s going to bring this really bad Hollywood, terrible movie, set to cities near you. He’s going to make it happen because that is going to stoke the fear that he needs in people to think the only way that they can get law and order is from him. As Tom Friedman points out, this is really a page right out of the textbook for tyrants. Historically, what dictators and authoritarian regimes do when their people turn against them is to pit their own people against each other.”

He went on to say that he thinks that’s exactly what Trump wants to happen.

“I heard a report this morning on Fox News of a Trump surrogate claiming that the entire city of Portland has been decimated,” said Figliuzzi. “That’s not true. We heard similar things about Seattle, and that kind of autonomous zone that they had taken the whole city away when really it was five or six blocks. The facts matter.”

He then said that he wanted to deliver a special message to federal agents being deployed to cities.

The other thing that matters is I want to make an appeal to the federal agents that are on the street of Portland and about to deploy to other cities. I was a federal agent for 25 years years. When I led FBI offices, one of the things I had to make certain of that I wasn’t asking agents to do something that would put them in legal jeopardy and take them outside the scope of their employment. I’m here to appeal to those DHS agents today and say there will one day be a legal reckoning for what you are being asked to do. And you are compelled to stand by the rule of law and the Constitution. You are operating outside the scope of your employment when you take people off the street, nowhere near federal buildings when you don’t tell them they’re under arrest, when you don’t tell them your name and your agency, and when you release them because you know you have no probable cause to arrest them. There will be a reckoning. You need to get your professional liability insurance paid up.”

Watch the full discussion in link below:

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/when-people-turn-against-a-dictator-the-dictator-tries-to-turn-people-against-themselves-ex-fbi-deputy-director/



Trump may be showing sign of 'an immature president who refuses to leave the office’: political scientist




Much of the analysis of President Donald Trump’s use of federal Department of Homeland Security officers against protesters in Portland, Oregon has discussed Trump’s actions from a legal or constitutional standpoint. But Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University in Massachusetts, contemplates Trump’s possible political motivations in an op-ed published this week in the Washington Post.

“The official version is that federal officers from the Department of Homeland Security are protecting federal buildings that have been the focus of Black Lives Matter protests,” Drezner explains. “The more disturbing version is that unidentified U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel are wearing camouflage gear, assaulting protesters and driving around in unmarked vans picking up random people. These actions have raised questions about the legality of what is being done…. I’ll confine my response to a more concrete question: what is the political gain that Donald Trump and his administration perceive they will garner from these actions?”

Drezner is dismissive of Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf’s claim that Trump is merely using DHS to protect Portland from “violent anarchists.”

“This is not actually about anarchy in Portland because the city seems both ordered and copacetic with what’s happening,” Drezner argues. “This is about something else. What political gain does Trump see from escalating and nationalizing this situation?”

Drezner goes on to say that Trump is motivated by either “incompetence” or “malevolence,” although he isn’t sure which one and finds the latter to be the more frightening possibility.

If it’s “incompetence,” Drezner argues, Trump has made a political miscalculation because he fails to realize that that using DHS officers against protesters is only giving his detractors yet another reason to vote for former Vice President Joe Biden, this year’s presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

“It is possible that Trump mistakenly believes that this is a winning political move,” Drezner writes. “But there is another, darker possibility. As 2020 has progressed, two things have become increasingly clear: (1) Donald Trump is losing the presidential race to Joe Biden. (2) Trump is doing everything in his power to consolidate and expand his power over the executive branch. From loyalty tests to D-list appointments to his attraction to legally dubious executive orders, Trump has tried to surmount his fundamental weakness as a political leader and augment the awesome powers of the presidency.”

Drezner writes that although he isn’t sure, he is inclined to see “incompetence” as the president’s motivation with DHS and the Portland protesters — quickly adding that if he is wrong, that possibility “scares the bejeezus out of me.”

“With Trump, I tend to choose incompetence over malevolence in explaining his actions,” Drezner writes. “It is likely that he thinks this will be a winning political move, even if it is not. This is one of those instances, however, in which one should absolutely be prepared for malevolence. Democrats in Congress, the Biden campaign, the courts, the governors, civil society organizations, and even the U.S. military need to start preparing for the contingency of an immature president who refuses to leave the office. Because this is all too plausible an explanation for why Trump and his toadies are doing what they are doing right now.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/trump-may-be-showing-signs-of-an-immature-president-who-refuses-to-leave-the-office-political-scientist/



Conservative nails the hypocrisy of Trump and the right-wing trying to take down the Lincoln Project by calling them grifters




Instead of debating the allegations from the Republican-run Lincoln Project, President Donald Trump’s team is trying to take them down with attacks on them instead.

Conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot wrote in his Wednesday column that we should look no further for evidence that the Lincoln Project videos are working than the recent attacks.

“The most common charge is that, as Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel put it, the organization has a ‘record of grift’ and ‘profiting off attacking President Trump,’ Boot quoted. “This charge has been faithfully repeated with no evidence by the lapdog conservative press, e.g., the National Review and Ben Shapiro.”

It’s “pretty rich,” he said, coming from Trump’s team after watching Trump’s friends and top right-wing conservatives who have used the White House to benefit personally and for former employers.

"According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Trump campaign and affiliated committees have spent $22 million at Trump properties since he entered politics in 2015,” reported Boot. “Now we learn that Trump directed the U.S. ambassador to Britain to ask the British government to steer the British Open to his golf resort in Scotland.”

That, Boot said, is corruption, if McDaniel was confused. The Lincoln Project starting their group and hiring themselves to do the work is the everyday business of politics. The desperate attempt to attack them, however, shows the GOP’s hand.

“There is no reason to believe that the ‘Lincoln Project executives are simply pocketing the money that’s channeled through their political consulting firms,'” Boot quoted the Daily Beast. “If those working on the Lincoln Project are compensated, well, they deserve it. They’re turning out brilliant videos at a relentless pace that puts most political organizations to shame.”

They’re arguably also working hard to get their message out and do press and media around it. That’s how normal campaigns run. As far as we know, no one at the Lincoln Project has met with a Russian lawyer to discuss “dirt” on any candidate, they’re merely using the publicly available information from the president’s own mouth.

The war against the Lincoln Project is really a “thinly disguised attack on its tactics,” Boot said, noting the ways in which they pick apart Trump and the Republican Party from a moderate political position. The right-wing is furious, Boot described, for targeting vulnerable GOP senators. But the reality is that the Republican senators are only being held accountable for trusting that Trump would protect them or save them from being kicked out of office. As with Trump’s allies sitting in jail, it’s obvious that isn’t the way Trump works.

He went on to cite a book from Stuart Stevens, who has consulted with the Lincoln Project, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump. The book outlines the extent to which the GOP has been willing to turn its back on their longtime values to score votes with the far-right.

The book blasts today’s Republican Party as “a white grievance party,” claiming “there is an ugly history of code words and dog whistles in the party.”

Any other parts of the GOP platform are “convenient fiction,” Boot said.

“How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held.… It had always been about power. The rest? The principles? The values? It was all a lie,” Stevens’ book reads.

“The most distinguishing characteristic of the current national Republican Party is cowardice,” the book goes on. “The base price of admission is a willingness to accept that an unstable, pathological liar leads it and pretend otherwise.”

Like a farmer burning the fields, it appears the Lincoln Project thinks the only way to get the real GOP back to what it was is to burn the fields. Boot noted that you know things are bad when the GOP is going after conservatives like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and John Bolton.
“If we are ever again to have a sane and sober center-right party in America — something we desperately need — then the Trumpified GOP must first be demolished,” Boot closed. “That is what the Lincoln Project is trying to accomplish and more power to it. By leading the charge against the Republican Party, its founders have shown greater fealty to conservative principles than 99 percent of elected Republicans.”

Read the full column at the Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/22/lincoln-project-is-trying-save-republican-party-itself/

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #576 on: July 22, 2020, 11:54:47 PM »


Online Martin Weidmann

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #577 on: July 22, 2020, 11:57:27 PM »
    Bump regarding $1,000,000 offer

Mr Zero is adding on a zero after the decimal separator....  :D :D :D :D

Online Martin Weidmann

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #578 on: July 22, 2020, 11:59:51 PM »
Colossally ignorant Royell doesn't know that the comma is used as a decimal separator throughout Europe.   :D

Good catch. I didn't pick up on that one.....

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #578 on: July 22, 2020, 11:59:51 PM »


Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #579 on: July 23, 2020, 12:07:05 AM »
Another "WINNING, WINNING, WINNING" Issue for Trump. Trump = "Law & Order" wins in Nov. The Dem's are currently Melting Down as they see Trump pulling away from "Fuzzy" Joe currently curled up in a Ball inside his basement. Trump 2020 Rolls On!

So much "WINNING"  :D :D :D


Republicans are at each others' throats as they veer toward electoral self-sabotage

Every day, new polls come out that show Republicans in dire straits for the 2020 election. And it’s no surprise — the economy is collapsing and the country is ravaged by a devastating pandemic, events that President Donald Trump is in no small part to blame for.

But the stress of impending doom isn’t focusing GOP minds or encouraging them to band together. Instead, the pressure seems to be tearing them apart. And in their dysfunction, they may be ready to thwart the country’s best chances of muddling through the present devastation further undermining their own electoral standing heading into November.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has been the subject of much internal scrutiny and discord, as multiple reports and public comments have revealed. Though at times she has sought the president’s favor, she broken with him at key points recently — inspiring the wrath of his fierce congressional defenders.

CNN reported that she became a target at Tuesday’s Republican conference:

Several House Republicans attacked House GOP Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming during a conference meeting Tuesday morning for supporting Dr. Anthony Fauci and splitting with President Donald Trump on a variety of issues over the past few months, three sources who were in the room told CNN.

Members including Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Ralph Norman of South Carolina all chimed in to air grievances against Cheney.



During the conference meeting, Gaetz and Massie complained about Cheney supporting a primary challenge to Massie, the sources said. Jordan, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, listed areas where Cheney has publicly disagreed with the President, pointing to her resistance to Trump’s plan to pull back troops in Germany and Afghanistan.

Roy hit Cheney for supporting Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, and complained that his Democratic opponent has retweeted some of Cheney’s tweets.


Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), too, let loose on Cheney to the media.

“I mean she tries to sabotage everything he tries to do in foreign policy, so I don’t know whether she’s a good advocate for the President or not,” he told CNN.

He also said: “I don’t think she’s good for the country.”

Meanwhile, rifts are forming over what to do with the next coronavirus relief bill. On that matter, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) have found themselves on opposite sides.

The Washington Post’s James Hohmann reported that Cruz fumed at Cotton’s advocacy for more spending at a recent meeting, exclaiming: “What in the hell are we doing?”

According to Axios, the primary rift falls between Senate Republicans and the Trump White House.

“The Senate Republican lunch descended into chaos, several GOP lawmakers said, revealing that the White House and Republican senators remain far apart on key priorities in the next economic package,” reported Alayna Treene. “The White House officials did little talking, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters. Instead, senators used the time to air their disagreements. ‘There’s a robust difference of opinion,’ Hawley said.”

Once again, Paul aired his frustrations publicly:

Just came from Progressive Democrat, whoops, I’m mean Republican caucus: 
They’re going to spend $105b more on education, more than we spend every year on the Dept of Education. Anyone remember when Reagan conservatives were for eliminating the Federal Dept. of Education?

Democrats, on the other hand, remain united. The House passed a $3 trillion spending bill in May that the Senate and the White House have refused to move on.

“Republicans are in complete disarray,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), according to the Washington Post. “Totally incompetent. Totally in disarray. Totally at war with one another.”

CNBC reported Wednesday afternoon that the GOP is drifting toward potentially passing a bill that would extend the expanded unemployment insurance in the country after it is supposed to expire this week — but at a drastically reduced rate:

Republicans are considering extending the enhanced unemployment insurance benefit at a dramatically reduced level of $400 per month, or $100 a week, through the rest of the year, sources told CNBC.

Congress passed a $600 per week, or $2,400 a month, boost to jobless benefits in March to deal with a wave of unemployment unseen in decades as states shut down their economies to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The policy expires at the end of July as the U.S. unemployment rate stands above 11%.

The GOP, which has not made a final decision on how it will craft unemployment insurance in a bill set to be released this week, previously discussed extending the benefit at an additional $200 per week instead of $600. Democrats want to make the $600 per week sum available at least until next year.


This plan, it should be clear, would be disastrous. There are still many millions of people unemployed because of the initial downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Many are desperate and only scraping by as is. Slashing their benefits by $2,000 a month, with the virus resurgent and the economy at risk of getting worse, would be a brutal blow.

Even if Republicans were to eventually agree with Democrats and extend the $600 a week expanded unemployment (an unlikely scenario), observers expect the program will still lapse before it is renewed. This means recipients would face a gap in the payments they’ve been receiving, which could itself cause a major shock to the economy.

And all this rancor, dithering, and lack of urgency are likely to be electoral poison for the GOP. With a devastated economy and an out-of-control virus, the ruling party is likely to lose the White House and congressional seats no matter what it does. But guaranteeing economic distress and continued uncertainty for millions of families while the country is trying to recover from financial collapse would be a spectacular form of Republican self-sabotage.

Online Royell Storing

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #580 on: July 23, 2020, 12:25:31 AM »
    Instead of gambling which I do Not do, why don't you guys pool your shekels and make me an offer/$$$ to STOP EXPOSING: (1) Your indefensible positions on Numerous Political Issues and (2) Your supporting a Non Compos Mentis Presidential candidate? I would consider that offer/$$$.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2020, 12:26:18 AM by Royell Storing »

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #580 on: July 23, 2020, 12:25:31 AM »


Online Martin Weidmann

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #581 on: July 23, 2020, 12:27:51 AM »
    Instead of gambling which I do Not do, why don't you guys pool your shekels and make me an offer/$$$ to STOP EXPOSING: (1) Your indefensible positions on Numerous Political Issues and (2) Your supporting a Non Compos Mentis Presidential candidate? I would consider that offer/$$$.

So, no confidence whatsoever in a Trump win in November....  Got it   Thumb1:

Just another spineless coward;



Instead of gambling which I do Not do

Of course you do. Everyday that you support that maniac Trump, you gamble with your own future and those of your loved ones. You gamble alright, you're just not bright enough to understand it.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2020, 12:36:19 AM by Martin Weidmann »

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #582 on: July 23, 2020, 12:30:03 AM »
Donald Trump's Gestapo thugs beat a Navy vet. Is this what you want America to be? Donald Trump is doing this as a reality show because he thinks it will help him with his right wing base. Americans are outraged. Don't let fascism and authoritarian rule destroy our great country of liberty and democracy. Vote this wannabe authoritarian dictator thug out of office in a massive landslide on November 3rd.

Navy veteran beaten and pepper-sprayed by federal agents at protest in Portland
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/21/portland-protest-navy-vet-christopher-david-beaten-federal-agents-video/5477552002/






Experts: Trump's use of federal DHS officers in Portland is ‘bad and ineffective law enforcement’

President Donald Trump and Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, have been drawing a great deal of criticism for the way in which federal law enforcement officers have been conducting themselves during George Floyd protests in Portland, Oregon — where men in military-like camouflage have been emerging from unmarked vehicles and detaining protesters. Legal experts Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic, in a July 21 article for The Atlantic, analyze Trump’s use of federal law enforcement in Portland and explain why it is wildly inappropriate.

“Whether the Trump Administration has the technical legal authority to deploy this show of force in this particular matter does not answer the question of whether it should do so,” Wittes and Jurecic argue. “The use of federal officers in this manner is corrosive of democratic culture, it makes for bad and ineffective law enforcement, and it’s likely physically dangerous both for the law enforcement officers and for the protesters in question.”

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon has denounced the officers as “Trump’s secret police,” and other critics of the president have said that the images coming out of Portland recall Italy under Benito Mussolini or Chile under Gen. Augusto Pinochet.” Gov. Kate Brown, also a Democrat, told PBS that “Trump’s troops” were “pouring gasoline on a fire.”

Ron Wyden: peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police. Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.

Wittes and Jurecic write that although DHS is authorized to protect federal property — including the federal courthouse in Portland — DHS has been overreaching in Oregon’s largest city.

According to Wittes and Jurecic, “The existence of the department’s authority to protect federal property is uncontroversial. The federal government has the power to defend federal buildings and facilities from civil unrest, and a variety of federal laws protect federal property from attack and vandalism and federal officials from interference with their discharge of the government’s business. While this authority certainly extends to the power to investigate federal crimes and arrest those suspected of them, it is not some general authority to patrol the downtowns of major cities and pick up and detain protesters merely because a federal building may be in the neighborhood.”

The legal experts note that the “tactical divisions of the Homeland Security Department from which the officers in Portland appear to hail — Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — are not typically deployed at protests, but charged with enforcing immigration law and guarding the U.S. border…. Sending out officers untrained for demonstrations risks violence if the agents end up in situations they don’t know how to handle.”

Wittes and Jurecic conclude their article by saying that if Trump’s desire is to discourage the protesters in Portland, it “doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Last night in Portland, as happened last month in Washington, D.C., peaceful protests only grew in response to the federal show of force,” Wittes and Jurecic write. “If Trump follows through on his promise to export the federal muscle to other cities, the anonymous agents may be met with more large crowds defying Trump’s efforts at vilification and coercion.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/experts-trumps-use-of-federal-dhs-officers-in-portland-is-bad-and-ineffective-law-enforcement/
 

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #582 on: July 23, 2020, 12:30:03 AM »


Online Royell Storing

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Re: Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2
« Reply #583 on: July 23, 2020, 12:34:46 AM »
So, no confidence whatsoever in a Trump win in November....  Got it   Thumb1:
   
   If You do Not want "in" just say so. Just be prepared to endure continually being exposed/ridiculed. Notwithstanding your general math skills also needing serious work.