Trump Presidency X-like American History X, but without the laughs

Minnman · Aug 2, 2020

SamScouse said: ↑

it cannot unless you copy the Great Firewall of China.

only thing would be to revoke a licence or something (??) but I don't know if that makes sense either.

this is just more crap from President Batshit, to deflect from the real harm he's doing behind the scenes.
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To me (for about the 1000th time in this presidency) I remain appalled at the media's inability to ask the ********ing obvious question whenever Trump says he can do X or Y: Can he really do that?

So often the answer is, of course not. Which makes me wonder why the hell titles always run: "Trump to Ban TikTok" instead of the far more accurate "Trump Lies About Ability to ban TikTok" (or words to that effect).

If you search "Can Trump Ban TikTok", you obviously get a lot of hits. But few seem to actually look at the substance of what he's said. Ironically, one that did was Variety:

But it’s not clear how a Trump order to “ban” TikTok would work — or if it would stand up in court. The Trump administration might try to threaten to punish Apple and Google if they carry TikTok in their U.S. app stores, by adding TikTok to the Commerce Department’s list of foreign entities that “present a greater risk of diversion to weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, terrorism, or other activities contrary to U.S. national security and/or foreign policy interests.”

The U.S. government last year added Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer Huawei to the “entity list,” prompting Google and others to cut off their business with Huawei. But putting TikTok on that list would be unusual and legally dubious, James Lewis, director of technology policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), recently told The Verge. There’s no evidence TikTok has engaged in criminal activity threatening U.S. national security, although TikTok was fined for alleged violations of the U.S.’s child data-privacy law (which the FTC is reinvestigating).

The Trump administration also could try to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose economic sanctions that would block Apple and Google from publishing the TikTok app. This, however, also has a high legal threshold: The law requires that the president first declare a national emergency (which can be nullified by Congress) in the event of an “unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.” For Trump to enact a ban via the IEEPA, he would need to explain to Congress why TikTok represents an “unusual and extraordinary” danger, according to the law.

The ACLU slammed Trump’s threat to ban TikTok as harmful to free expression and pointed out that it’s technically “impractical.”

“Banning an app like TikTok, which millions of Americans use to communicate with each other, is a danger to free expression and technologically impractical,” the ACLU tweeted.

With any internet platform, “we should be concerned about the risk that sensitive private data will be funneled to abusive governments, including our own,” Jennifer Granick, the ACLU’s surveillance and cybersecurity counsel, said in a statement Saturday. “But shutting one platform down, even if it were legally possible to do so, harms freedom of speech online and does nothing to resolve the broader problem of unjustified government surveillance.”

The U.S. does not have a nationwide, network-level ability to block internet content or apps, which is how China’s Great Firewall enforces censorship. Like China, India has a national-scale blocking capability, under which it banned TikTok along with dozens of other apps from Chinese companies in late June.
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usscouse · Aug 2, 2020

JohnR said: ↑

He'll skate if there are recordings, too. He has done worse before and will do worse again. And of course it's true.
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I want you to do me a favor tho.
So what do we do, impeach?

charlie15 · Aug 2, 2020

Stuff like that infuriates me to no end. Corruption, grift, that is the hallmark of those ********ers.

Eastman Kodak Executive Got Trump Deal Windfall

“Eastman Kodak on Monday granted its executive chairman options for 1.75 million shares as the result of what a person familiar with the arrangement described as an ‘understanding’ with its board that had previously neither been listed in his employment contract nor made public,” CNBC reports.
“One day later, the administration of President Trump announced a $765 million financing deal with Eastman Kodak, and in the days that followed the stock soared, making those additional options now held by executive chairman Jim Continenza worth tens of millions.”

usscouse · Aug 2, 2020

SamScouse said: ↑

Mitch is realizing his own job could be in danger ...
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Jeez I really wish and hope. How does this geek wield so much power.

I have to put captions on when he mumbles though a speech.

JohnR · Aug 2, 2020

charlie15 said: ↑

“Eastman Kodak on Monday granted its executive chairman options for 1.75 million shares as the result of what a person familiar with the arrangement described as an ‘understanding’ with its board that had previously neither been listed in his employment contract nor made public,” CNBC reports."
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Oh, Bernie Sanders should become President. Or Elizabeth Warren. These people are far too comfortable with their assumption that the working public will put up with their behavior.

Q*bert Jones III · Aug 2, 2020

Minnman said: ↑

To me (for about the 1000th time in this presidency) I remain appalled at the media's inability to ask the ********ing obvious question whenever Trump says he can do X or Y: Can he really do that?

So often the answer is, of course not. Which makes me wonder why the hell titles always run: "Trump to Ban TikTok" instead of the far more accurate "Trump Lies About Ability to ban TikTok" (or words to that effect).

If you search "Can Trump Ban TikTok", you obviously get a lot of hits. But few seem to actually look at the substance of what he's said. Ironically, one that did was Variety:
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I've not heard one shred of evidence that banning Tik Tok would be legal in any way whatsoever.

Furthermore, I'm not even sure how it's technically possible.

I also don't think they realize how hugely popular Tik Tok is. There aren't a lot of things that would get cultmembers to question Dear Leader, but banning videos of dogs on skateboards might be one of them.

It strikes me that this is more of an implicit threat to Twitter and Facebook than it is an action against Tik Tok. Like a, "Nice social media platform you got there, it would be a shame if it burnt down" kind of vibe.

SamScouse · Aug 2, 2020

Minnman said: ↑

why the hell titles always run: "Trump to Ban TikTok" instead of the far more accurate "Trump Lies About Ability to ban TikTok" (or words to that effect).
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x 100.

SamScouse · Aug 2, 2020

charlie15 said: ↑

“Eastman Kodak on Monday granted its executive chairman options for 1.75 million shares as the result of what a person familiar with the arrangement described as an ‘understanding’ with its board that had previously neither been listed in his employment contract nor made public,” CNBC reports..”
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how can that be remotely legal, for a publicly traded company??

superdave · Aug 2, 2020

charlie15 said: ↑

Stuff like that infuriates me to no end. Corruption, grift, that is the hallmark of those ********ers.
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We need a truth and reconciliation commission. And I'm not sold on the reconciliation part.

SamScouse · Aug 2, 2020

quotes from people who have worked in the WH under Batshit -- a bit long and not much is new, but seeing it all in one place ....
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/us/politics/trump-books.html

As different as the authors are, the books share a number of common observations about the president. And so, with the Republican Party set to renominate him this month, here is a reminder of what sort of leader Trump has turned out to be, according to his growing band of disgruntled former employees.

Trump vs his employees

Trump is universally presented in the memoirs as a flamboyantly mean and intemperately indiscreet boss, wrong-footing and humiliating Cabinet members and aides with constant criticism, sometimes to their faces, sometimes behind their backs.
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superdave · Aug 2, 2020

shot

SamScouse said: ↑

And if his colleagues hate working for the Trump administration, John Kelly, the president's second chief of staff, apparently hates it the most.

"This is the worst" (insert expletive here) "job I've ever had," Kelly tells Sims.

"You can't imagine how desperate I am to get out of here," he tells Bolton. "This is a very bad place to work."

"Has there ever been a presidency like this?" Kelly asks Bolton, mentioning that the president has just said, apropos of nothing, that it would be "cool" to invade Venezuela. ("I assured him there had not," Bolton responds.)
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chaser

Sims: Submitted his resignation after being told by Kelly: "In the past 40 years, I don't think I've ever had a subordinate whose reputation is worse than yours."
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Kelly can eat a bag of dicks.

dapip · Aug 2, 2020

SamScouse said: ↑

quotes from people who have worked in the WH under Batshit -- a bit long and not much is new, but seeing it all in one place ....

As different as the authors are, the books share a number of common observations about the president. And so, with the Republican Party set to renominate him this month, here is a reminder of what sort of leader Trump has turned out to be, according to his growing band of disgruntled former employees.

Trump vs his employees

Trump is universally presented in the memoirs as a flamboyantly mean and intemperately indiscreet boss, wrong-footing and humiliating Cabinet members and aides with constant criticism, sometimes to their faces, sometimes behind their backs.

The president dismisses Jim Mattis, his first secretary of defense as "a liberal Democrat," yells at him in meetings and notes that "I never really liked him." ("I felt sorry for Mattis, not to mention the country as a whole," Bolton writes.)

He derides Kirstjen Nielsen, his second secretary of Homeland Security as ineffectual and "not mentally able" to handle her job and then, in a fit of pique, futilely attempts to reassign her responsibilities first to Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and then to Bolton.

He muses aloud on multiple occasions about dumping Vice-President Mike Pence from the ticket in 2020 and replacing him with Nikki Haley, the UN ambassador. "Did we make a mistake with Gina?" he asks, referring to his decision to make Gina Haspel director of the CIA.

"Rex was terrible," he says about Rex Tillerson, his original secretary of state. "What good is he?" he asks rhetorically about Steven Mnuchin, his Treasury secretary. "I thought we had the right guy at Treasury. But now I don't know."

He yells at his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, when Navarro attempts to show him a complicated chart outlining a policy point. ("I have no idea what I'm even looking at," the president snaps.)

He tells Kushner in meetings: "Jared, you don't know what you're talking about." He mocks his original chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, as a "globalist," elongating the "O" in a sneering tone, as if the word were akin to "antifa member."

Just as the president uses derisive nicknames for his political enemies, so he does for his own subordinates. He mocks Jeff Sessions his first attorney general, as "Benjamin Button." He calls Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, "Ditzy DeVos." "This place is really taking a toll on Kellyanne," he says of Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, implying that she looks tired and worn out.

The president and the truth

The Trump administration surged into life with a whomping great Trumpian untruth: that Trump's inauguration crowd was the largest in history. Even Spicer did not believe it, though he had to pretend otherwise.

"It was hard to keep a straight face as Sean proceeded to lie to the American people," Manigault Newman writes.

All the memoirists present Trump as supremely untrustworthy.

He is "a deliberate liar, someone who will say whatever he pleased to get whatever he wishes," McCabe writes. "People who've known him for years accept it as common knowledge," Anonymous writes.

Sometimes Trump asserts one thing and then, a few minutes later, just the opposite.

On other occasions, he conjures pieces of misinformation designed to bolster his thesis, as when he insisted that "3 to 5 million people" voted illegally in the 2016 election. He has a habit of plucking figures from thin air " first $20 billion, for instance, then $38 billion, to drive home his point about trade deficits in a meeting with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea " regardless of the numbers' relationship to fact.

The memoirists have different ways of dealing with all this presidential slipperiness. Comey and McCabe start keeping detailed logs of their encounters with the president, the way you would if you had an unstable spouse and wanted to catalog his erratic behaviour for use in future divorce proceedings.

Too bad, is the apparent view of Reince Priebus, the original chief of staff.

"The directive came down from Reince," Manigault Newman writes, "that our default position was to back up whatever the president said or tweeted, regardless of its accuracy."

How to describe the experience

Striving for new ways to characterise the head-spinning unreality of the Trump White House, the authors of the memoirs turn to a variety of vivid figures of speech.

Spicer: "I sometimes felt like a scuba diver, abandoned in the middle of the ocean, treading water."

Comey: "The demand was like Sammy the Bull's Cosa Nostra induction ceremony " with Trump, in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a 'made man.'"

Manigault Newman: "The selection process for his cabinet was like an episode of 'The Bachelor.'"

Bolton: "It was like making and executing policy inside a pinball machine."

Anonymous: Working for Trump was like "showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food."

Trump as instigator

To read these books is to read of a chaotic, paranoiac workplace, where the boss delights in fomenting discord and instability among the employees.

He encourages them to keep tabs on one another. "Give me their names," he tells Sims, wielding a Sharpie and a White House note card, vowing to rid the White House of non-loyalists.

He praises their rivals. "Keith Kellogg knows all about NATO," the president says airily to Bolton, speaking with ominous intent of Pence's national security adviser. "He never offers his opinions unless I ask."

"As Pompeo and I reflected later, this statement told us exactly who my likely replacement would be if I resigned soon," Bolton writes. "I said, 'Of course, if you resign, maybe Keith would be Secretary of State.'" To which Pompeo responds: "Or, if we both resign, Keith could become Henry Kissinger and have both jobs.'")

The president's verbal style

Trump likes to talk, the memoirists agree, and he does not like to listen.

He meanders from topic to topic, loops back around, adds new topics, repeats himself, boasts, mixes facts with fake facts, throws in his latest obsession, continuing on and on according to some labyrinthine stream-of-consciousness impulse in which whatever is on his mind is worthy of public utterance. He does this in rallies and at campaign events; he also does it in briefings, in one-on-one conversations and at policy meetings.

"I don't use the word 'conversation' because the term doesn't apply when one person speaks nearly the entire time," Comey writes of the experience.

The presidential attention span

It is true that Trump successfully repeated the words "person, woman, man, camera, TV" on television in an effort to demonstrate the superiority of his mental acuity, but it is also true, the books argue, that he rarely reads, gets bored easily, is irritable and distracted, has trouble remembering complicated things, has no intellectual curiosity and is ignorant not just about his job but about things generally considered common knowledge.

With his short attention span, he is averse to learning anything at briefings if he finds the information difficult to follow, boring, or in contravention of what he already thinks. Staff members are told to stick to a single point and repeat it often, and to boil complex proposals down to a single page " or, better, a single paragraph. They are told not to present Trump with too-long briefing papers, lest he shout at them, or with too many slides, lest his eyes glaze over.

"Any time somebody new came in to brief him, he'd get angry and say, "Who's that guy? What's he want?" Manigault Newman writes.

The presidential schedule

The president keeps unconventional office hours, is often late to meetings and events and watches a lot of TV.

"At 9:35 I called Trump, who was as usual still in the residence," Bolton writes.

"He often doesn't start the day in the Oval Office until 10 or 11 am," Anonymous writes. He is "channel-surfing his way through the presidency."

"His official schedule was more of a loose outline than a strict regimen," Sims writes.

The presidential ego

In "Too Much and Never Enough," Mary Trump describes her uncle as "a savant of self-promotion" with a "delusional belief in his own brilliance and superiority" stemming from a bottomless insecurity that needs to be assuaged with a constant stream of ego-boosting compliments.

That is why the president often asserts that he is the best at everything.

"It was the most presidential act in decades," he says, after he directs the Pentagon to bomb Iran and then calls it off at the last minute. (Bolton has a different take: "In my government experience, this was the most irrational thing I ever witnessed any president do." )

"They say I might be the world's greatest brander," he says to Sims, before unveiling his marketing idea for his tax-cut plan: calling the legislation the "Cutting Cutting Cutting Bill" (it ended up being called something else).

Several memoirists describe how Trump, to soothe a wounded psyche bruised by his failure to win the popular vote in 2016, continually invited visitors to admire posters illustrating how he had won the election anyway.

"Trump kept big charts in his private dining room, in his den, in his study, that showed the electoral map color coded in red and blue," Manigault Newman writes. "When anyone walked in, he'd point to the chart and talk about the election results."

Anonymous was familiar with the maps, as well. "Trump carried around maps outlining his electoral victory, which he would pull out at odd times," he writes. "He would beckon guests, as well as aides, advisers and incoming cabinet officers, to gaze at the sea of red on the map."

Does Trump use a tanning bed?

"His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles," Comey writes.

Manigault Newman mentions the tanning-adjacent chatter around the abrupt firing of Angella Reid, chief usher of the White House, several months into Trump's administration.

"Allegedly, Trump didn't approve of her handling of his tanning bed," she says. "I'd heard he was unhappy with her efforts to procure the bed, to bring it into the East Wing securely, to find a discreet place for it, and to set it up properly."

Aides on the president's conduct

The memoirs paint a picture of the West Wing as a place of baroque workplace dysfunction, where workers gather to trade "Guess what he did now" stories about their boss and to save him (and themselves, and the country) from his worst impulses.

And so, in "A Warning," Anonymous writes that Cabinet-level administration officials contemplated "a midnight self-massacre," which would entail "resigning en masse to call attention to Trump's misconduct and erratic leadership."

Many staffers are perpetually on the brink of quitting, keeping resignation letters on hand should the time come. And if his colleagues hate working for the Trump administration, John Kelly, the president's second chief of staff, apparently hates it the most.

"This is the worst" (insert expletive here) "job I've ever had," Kelly tells Sims.

"You can't imagine how desperate I am to get out of here," he tells Bolton. "This is a very bad place to work."

Things Bolton claims people said to him

A striking aspect of "The Room Where it Happened" is how frequently Cabinet-level officials confide incredulously in Bolton about the president's irrationality and narcissism, as if they and the former national security adviser formed a gang of rebellious high school students, quietly plotting resistance against the incompetent autocrats running the school.

"As McGahn often whispered to me," Bolton writes, speaking of Donald McGahn, who served for a while as White House counsel, "This is not the Bush Administration."

"Has there ever been a presidency like this?" Kelly asks Bolton, mentioning that the president has just said, apropos of nothing, that it would be "cool" to invade Venezuela. ("I assured him there had not," Bolton responds.)

"This is getting pretty silly," Mattis says to Bolton as the men listen to Trump rail at Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of NATO, about how America's allies mock it behind its back because it pays too much in annual dues.

As for Pompeo, Bolton describes how the secretary of state passed him a snarky anti-Trump note in the middle of the president's summit with Kim Jong-un of North Korea in 2018. And he describes how, after listening to the president yell at Nielsen about border security in a particularly fruitless meeting, Pompeo whispers to Bolton: "Why are we still here?"

Leaving Trump's orbit

"What Donald can do in order to offset the powerlessness and rage he feels is punish the rest of us," Mary Trump writes.

This is clear by the way he behaves when he has fired someone or they have quit, frequent occurrences in an administration with such a high turnover. After he fires Comey, the FBI director, while he is in California, for instance, Trump is incensed to learn that Comey has returned to Washington on the same government plane that he traveled out on.

"That's not right! I didn't approve of that!" he rants to McCabe. Then he decrees that Comey should never be allowed to enter the FBI headquarters again, not even to clean out his desk. "I'm banning him from the building," the president says.

After Mattis resigns as defense secretary, Anonymous writes, the wounded president throws "a temper tantrum," insists that Mattis leave the job immediately, before his successor has been named, and then falsely claims that in fact he fired Mattis, rather than the other way around.

How the Trump administration said 'you're fired'

Comey: Saw the news reported on TV in the back of the auditorium while he was in the middle of making a speech in California.

McCabe: Saw the news on TV, followed by a presidential tweet: "Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI."

Manigault Newman: Called into the Situation Room before the 2017 White House Christmas Party, was informed by Kelly that "there are significant integrity violations related to you," and was not allowed to leave until the stress of the encounter triggered an asthma attack and she went home.

Sims: Submitted his resignation after being told by Kelly: "In the past 40 years, I don't think I've ever had a subordinate whose reputation is worse than yours."

Priebus: Idling in the presidential motorcade after a trip to New York on the day after he had submitted his resignation, learned that his removal was effective immediately when he read on Twitter that Kelly was replacing him. The motorcade went on to the White House; his car peeled away and drove off into oblivion.

Trump on the authors

Comey: "A weak and untruthful slime ball"

McCabe: "A major sleazebag."

Manigault Newman: "Vicious, but not smart."

Mary Trump: "A seldom seen niece who knows little about me, says untruthful things about my wonderful parents (who couldn't stand her!) and me, and violated her NDA. ... She's a mess!"

Sims: "A low level staffer that I hardly knew. ... He is a mess!"

Bolton: A "sick puppy."
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Do you have a link?

usscouse · Aug 2, 2020

SamScouse said: ↑

how can that be remotely legal, for a publicly traded company??
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So when has anything trump done been legal. Yet he continues to pull illegal shit while people clutch their pearls and handbags.
Or he threatens to do shit causing the 3 day media storm that hides what he’s really up to.

SamScouse · Aug 2, 2020

dapip said: ↑

Do you have a link?
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Not at hand but I think it was on Daily Beast

Dr. Wankler · Aug 2, 2020

SamScouse said: ↑

Not at hand but I think it was on Daily Beast
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Dapip's point is that cutting and pasting without a link violates bigsoccer's terms of service. It's been awhile, but the board ran into problems a few years ago (okay maybe decades) with people posting things without attribution.

Long story short: Some sites get irked when someone jacks their content in a way that denies them the traffic. That's why links are required in BS's Terms of Service. Also, the rule is to not quote very extensively (one I regularly violate, but only if the website sucks), but to give some indication as to why the link is worth reading.

I'm not trying to be a dick: you're relatively new and might not know that background.

Yoshou · Aug 2, 2020

charlie15 said: ↑

From a technology standpoint, not sure how it can be shut down though.
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Pretty darn easy, actually. Just tell Apple and Google to remove it from their stores and that’ll remove it from about 99% of IOS phones and about 90% of DroidOS phones.. That’s how India banned it from there..

The only question is whether it can be legally done and, tbh, Google and Apple are more likely to remove it and make TikTok sue to get back on.

HerthaBerwyn · Aug 3, 2020

Have we ever heard Trumps Secret Service name? I picture a guy talking into his lapel "Batshit is on the move"

SamScouse · Aug 3, 2020

Dr. Wankler said: ↑

Dapip's point is that cutting and pasting without a link violates bigsoccer's terms of service. It's been awhile, but the board ran into problems a few years ago (okay maybe decades) with people posting things without attribution.

Long story short: Some sites get irked when someone jacks their content in a way that denies them the traffic. That's why links are required in BS's Terms of Service. Also, the rule is to not quote very extensively (one I regularly violate, but only if the website sucks), but to give some indication as to why the link is worth reading.

I'm not trying to be a dick: you're relatively new and might not know that background.
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I've been on BS for a few years (just not this area) so I did know, I just forgot and couldn't retrace the link (couldn't remember where I saw it). fair criticism.

Funkfoot · Aug 3, 2020

Yoshou said: ↑

Pretty darn easy, actually. Just tell Apple and Google to remove it from their stores and that’ll remove it from about 99% of IOS phones and about 90% of DroidOS phones.. That’s how India banned it from there..

The only question is whether it can be legally done and, tbh, Google and Apple are more likely to remove it and make TikTok sue to get back on.
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Looks like Microsoft is going to buy TikTok, with Mango Mussolini's blessing. Problem solved.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/02/microsoft-says-it-intends-continue-discussions-with-tiktok-acquisition-after-conversation-with-trump/

SamScouse said: ↑

how can that be remotely legal, for a publicly traded company??
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What should happen is the shareholders will fire his ass. But he did secure a new line of business for the company, which makes shares worth more, so all will be forgiven.

SamScouse · Aug 3, 2020

I caught a short comment in a CNN report saying that Trump is 100% uninvolved in the negotiations over a renewed financial support bill -- except he is still obsessed with including $$$$ to rebuild the FBI building near his Washington hotel. can't have eyesores near any of his properties !

every day is worse than the last isn't it ....

SamScouse · Aug 3, 2020

Funkfoot said: ↑

What should happen is the shareholders will fire his ass. But he did secure a new line of business for the company, which makes shares worth more, so all will be forgiven.
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agreed, but is there not an SEC-type violation in there somewhere? how can a company say "Oh, we decided not to tell you guys (shareholders, regulators) that we agreed a while ago to give our CEO a bonus equal to 10x our average annual earnings, provided he keeps shaving each day. It's due to payout now. This payout will probably affect our earnings and the value of your investment, but y'know, he's such a great guy! Have a nice day."

usscouse · Aug 3, 2020

SamScouse said: ↑

I caught a short comment in a CNN report saying that Trump is 100% uninvolved in the negotiations over a renewed financial support bill -- except he is still obsessed with including $$$$ to rebuild the FBI building near his Washington hotel. can't have eyesores near any of his properties !

every day is worse than the last isn't it ....
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Then he wants several million to redecorate the West Wing..... For Joe.

HerthaBerwyn · Aug 3, 2020

Republicans are the Colin Kaepernicks of white collar law enforcement.

charlie15 · Aug 3, 2020

Not sure if that has been posted somewhere else.....News of the day.

A headline that would have been instantly the biggest news of year in any other era: Manhattan DA investigating President of United States for fraud. @BenWeiserNYT/@WRashbaum: https://t.co/c9egFqUUFb
— Jesse McKinley (@jessemckinley) August 3, 2020

The Jitty Slitter · Aug 3, 2020

So Trump demanded that some of the purchase monies Microsoft pay for Tik Tok go to the USG for facilitating the extortion

LMAO

What? "Mr. Trump said that TikTok would shut down on Sept. 15 unless Microsoft or another company purchased it. He added that the U.S. Treasury Department would need to receive a lot of money in return for the deal, without explaining how that would work.” https://t.co/wi13cnj78j
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) August 3, 2020