Oh. This is news to me. Please do tell. I had assumed after a decade of the entire legal system in the US being weaponised to find anything on Trump they didn't need to literally invent, they would have found it by now.Mr. Dazzle wrote: ↑Fri Oct 11, 2024 4:51 pm
This^
BTW if Trump has a field I suppose it'd be real estate development based on mega complex debt of shady provenance. He's OK at that
Plus multiple passports/drivers licenses in various names & the quickest route to Mexico in the nav system... Looks a bit sus.
Wow.. how is it possible that one CAN’T see that Trump is mentally unstable and incapable of being in charge of anything…esp after hearing about his behavior in his most recent rally.
Heather Cox Richardson
October 14, 2024 (Monday)
As the two presidential campaigns position themselves for the final sprint to the election on November 5, the difference between them is dramatic.
Trump is hunkering down behind what has always appeared to be a plan not to attract voters but instead to create chaos on Election Day. Creating confusion around the election could enable his loyalists to put in place the plan the Trump team concocted in 2020 to throw the election into the House of Representatives or get it before the Supreme Court, stacked as it is with Trump loyalists.
A central piece of that plan appears to be to rile up his supporters to violence, and a few of them have been delivering. News broke yesterday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had advised federal emergency workers to evacuate Rutherford County, North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, because of concerns about their safety after Trump and MAGA Republicans spread the false rumor that federal agents are forcing people off their land to start lithium mining projects. The alert came after the U.S. Forest Service sent an email to federal responders saying that National Guard troops had encountered armed militia saying they were “hunting FEMA.” FEMA officials will no longer go door-to-door with disaster assistance, but instead will stay in fixed locations.
A man has been arrested and charged with threatening FEMA workers with an assault rifle. He was released on a $10,000 bond.
To the extent Trump or his running mate Ohio senator J.D. Vance talks about them, their policies are promises to repair what they insist is the damage caused by President Joe Biden (although the stock market hit record highs again today), or threats that reinforce an authoritarian Christian nationalist worldview. Today, Bill Barrow of the Associated Press explored the extensive overlap of Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups and the plans that Trump and Vance have set out.
Both promise to cut taxes for the wealthy, but Project 2025 has more detail about how. Both plan to cut off immigration and to fire federal workers, replacing them with loyalists. Both say the president can decide not to use the money Congress has appropriated (in 2019, Trump refused to disburse the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine until Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to smear Trump’s chief Democratic rival for the presidency, Joe Biden). Both call for slashing government regulations and getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as well as protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and programs addressing climate change.
But perhaps most revealing of both Trump’s ideology and his plan for the election was his statement to Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that he would like to use the military against what he called “the enemy from within…radical left lunatics" to guard the election. While this is a threat to use the power of the government against his political opponents if he is elected—he mentioned California representative and Senate candidate Adam Schiff by name—it also seems likely his loyalists will hear this as a call for violence at election sites.
Trump’s statement has not gone unnoticed.
Tonight, CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper posted a dictionary definition of the word “fascism”: “A populist political philosophy, movement…that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”
On the show, Tapper pressed Republican Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin to comment on Trump’s statement that as commander-in-chief, he would use the military against political opposition. When Youngkin denied that Trump had said any such thing, Tapper replied: “I’m literally reading his quotes to you.” Youngkin’s willingness to deny what was right in front of him did not exactly quell talk of fascism, since in his dystopian novel 1984 about authoritarianism, George Orwell famously wrote: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
If Trump is hunkering down, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz are still pushing ahead, pressing Trump on both his personal weakness and his now open embrace of fascism. Harris’s advisor Ian Sams went on the Fox News Channel today to note that it’s been a month since Trump “did a mainstream media interview, and we got to wonder why. We called this weekend for him to release his medical records…. Donald Trump’s team, I heard him on your air last hour insisting that everything is okay and that…there’s nothing to see here. And your anchor rightly asked, ‘Well, if that’s true, why not just put them out?’”
At 1:12 this morning, Trump posted on his social media site: “I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility. Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her.” Sams hit that as well, noting that in the middle of the night, Trump felt obliged to write about Harris and a cognitive test “[a]s he refuses to release his medical records, sit with 60 Minutes, or debate her again—instead retreating solely to rambling rallies where he’s increasingly making no sense[.] Is he okay?”
In Erie, Pennsylvania, today, Harris outlined how her proposals for an “opportunity economy” will help Black men, calling for business loans for entrepreneurs, more apprenticeships, rules for cryptocurrency exchanges, and study of diseases that disproportionately affect Black men.
She also continues her outreach to Republicans. Today, former Trump friend and talk show host Geraldo Rivera endorsed her. So did former Wisconsin Republican state senate majority leader Dale Schultz. “I tell people, ‘Look, I didn’t leave the party. The party left me,’” he said. “This is a critically important race, and…Donald Trump should never be allowed in the Oval Office again.”
Today Harris’s campaign announced she will be sitting down with Fox News Channel reporter Bret Baier for an interview on Wednesday from the battleground state of Pennsylvania. The Fox News Channel is scheduled to tape a town hall with Trump in front of an audience of women on Tuesday. It is supposed to air on Wednesday morning, while the Harris interview will air Wednesday night.
At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, tonight, Harris reiterated Trump’s refusal to talk to any but the right-wing media and recalled his promise to terminate the Constitution. And then she used Trump’s own words against him, playing a video montage of Trump’s calls for violence, his threats against “the enemy within,” and his call for using the military against his political opponents.
“You heard his words, coming from him,” she told the audience. “[H]e considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country…. He’s saying that he would use the military to go after them…. And we know who he would target because he has attacked them before. Journalists whose stories he doesn’t like. Election officials who refuse to cheat by…finding extra votes for him. Judges who insist on following the law instead of bending to his will. This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous…. Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged. And he is out for unchecked power, that’s what he’s looking for.”
In Oaks, Pennsylvania, tonight, Trump was supposed to take questions from preselected attendees at a town hall with South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. He did, at first, although his answers were all over the place and he urged people to vote on January 5. But then, in the hot and crowded space, two people needed medical attention. Slurring, Trump then said: "Let's not do any more questions. Let's just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?" And then he stood on stage and swayed for 39 minutes of songs from his personal playlist before seeming to recall that he was supposed to be talking about the election, which he suddenly told the confused crowd was “the most important election in the history of our country” before turning back to the music.
Rob Crilly of the U.K.’s The Daily Mail wrote: “I was at Trump's golden escalator launch, flew out of Washington with him in 2020 and have probably been to 100 rallies, give or take. Have never seen anything like tonight.” The headline over Marianne LeVine’s Washington Post story about the event read: “Trump sways and bops to music for 39 minutes in bizarre town-hall episode.
"The scene comes as Vice President Kamala Harris has called Trump, 78, unstable and called into question his mental acuity.”
Is that the same person who spent three and a half years telling us that Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack and in full control of his mental faculties?
Maybe go back and have a read. You might have missed something.
Looks like she has full blown TDS. Schiff should have been jailed years ago. A loan to black people that doesn't have to be paid back is a bribe & looks suspiciously like reparations.Noggin wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 8:34 am An American friend posted this the other day - I don't know much about either but the fact that a seemingly unstable OAP is thought to be a better option than a younger person with slightly better faculties still just strikes me as odd. Seriously, a how does a county that size not have better candidates??!!
If she does win, then we'll see some Loser Derangement Syndrome rather than TDS. I've asked how much she has to win by in order to stuff the 'stolen election' lot. Answer came there none. Probably have to get a Putin sized vote%.
Probably try to start a civil war. Again.Count Steer wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 3:59 pm
If she does win, then we'll see some Loser Derangement Syndrome rather than TDS. I've asked how much she has to win by in order to stuff the 'stolen election' lot. Answer came there none. Probably have to get a Putin sized vote%.
I asked the same, twice. No answers, no surprise.Count Steer wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 3:59 pm I've asked how much she has to win by in order to stuff the 'stolen election' lot. Answer came there none. Probably have to get a Putin sized vote%.
Ooh...about 0.00000001%. Which will be closely followed by a presidential pardon for one of his favoured election 'adjusters'.Horse wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 4:12 pmI asked the same, twice. No answers, no surprise.Count Steer wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 3:59 pm I've asked how much she has to win by in order to stuff the 'stolen election' lot. Answer came there none. Probably have to get a Putin sized vote%.
Of course, it probably works both ways. What % before she can't claim it was stolen from her?
Well first off most if not all of that opinion piece is lies and anti Trump propaganda.Noggin wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 8:34 am An American friend posted this the other day - I don't know much about either but the fact that a seemingly unstable OAP is thought to be a better option than a younger person with slightly better faculties still just strikes me as odd. Seriously, a how does a county that size not have better candidates??!!
