Post-match: The Post Presidency :: Trump Faces The Music Thread

I wonder what he'll do when some enterprising assassin decides to rig up a Ukraine-like drone and drop a pipe bomb on his head.

 

That term -- IIRC -- was coined by the national security dilettante/speech writer for Obama, Ben Rhodes.

 

Anyone who is saying the Left needs to tone down the rhetoric should watch this:

 

It's possible, but I don't think it's likely. First, while it's easy to make homemade explosives, it's hard to make a homemade explosive that is reliable and that doesn't have a decent chance of taking you out while making it. Going this route means lots of planning and preparation and testing and is likely to get you on the FBI's radar after a couple Google searches, but it also isn't the behavior displayed by the two shooters we've had. These guys had short term thinking and a very direct action plan. I think that's how most people would visualize the scenario.

 

I'm sure it's perfectly natural for the advisor on computer security for a financial service to dress in a bandana and sunglasses in an broadcast interview. Like the guy who is the advisor to Trump's World Liberty Financial.

Laura Shin interviewed @cryptogle, advisor to WLFI

Pretty wild that despite @worldlibertyfi boasting about his cybersecurity background, he admitted he has not actually reviewed the code of the project. https://t.co/R7a5TzmmGz pic.twitter.com/QmM9FLc70W

— Pledditor (@Pledditor) September 17, 2024

Oh, and he's saying he hasn't reviewed the code for the project yet. At this point I don't know if World Liberty Financial is a scam or a performance art piece by one of those not-funny comedians.

 

So you're saying Andy Kaufman lives and he's trolling Crypto bros?

 

I think you are so focused on your favorite narrative that you have failed to grasp that it was not "a casual dismissal" but an expression of dismay at the normalization of the behavior.

If we all would just start from the point of view that there are very few actual evil people posting here, and seek to interpret posts by asking ourselves what each poster is actually trying to convey, we'll get a lot more out of the process and cut back on the outrage a whole lot...

 

This is about a Trump, and music.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20..._page&pm_source=top_news_slot_3&pm_medium=web

The interesting part is that the reason Eddy Grant won his lawsuit about Electric Avenue is because Trump didn’t just play the song at a rally. They used the music and put their own images to it.

Because artists sign over the collection of payments for their music to BMI or ASCAP, they can’t sue if Trump plays their music at a rally. But if they take that artist’s work and add to it, that isn’t covered by those agreements.

So now you know

 

Just watching a channel 4 documentary about the last election...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/sep/17/trump-january-6-stopping-steal-documentary

Watching the first part, (of two), the thing that's noticeable was the personal bravery of many REPUBLICAN election officials who refused to buckle under enormous pressure from Trump and his acolytes.

The other thing is that, frankly, it's difficult to know what will happen this time and whether the people in those positions now will be as brave.

 

I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately there are a few people here who enjoy the outrage high.

 

Wondering how many are still around to resist or who have rebuffed the bribes/threats to sing a different tune.

 

DJT down to 15.6. Matt Gaetz no longer interested.

 

I'm not sure about that last bit. I think if we just applied the rules we've already got in a way that made any damn sense, we'd get further.

The 2nd part of the HBO/C4 'Trump Heist' documentary dropped last night...



There's a part in there where Trump has been told by the AG that HE appointed, William Barr, that there was zero evidence that there was voter fraud and yet he still went on TV and said that Raffensperger was corrupt. That night dozens of men, many armed with AR15's and similar weaponry, turned up at Raffensperger's house and yet, apparently nobody has done anything wrong. At the very least Trump clearly slandered Raffensperger and yet, nothing happens AFAIK.

I suppose people will say well, DTH didn't actually say they should go and shoot the guy but, as I pointed out before, even in cases where people HAVE said they should go around killing people, those individuals still seem to get away with it on occasion.

It's like we said before, with this level of utter ineffectiveness in the legal system, REGARDLESS of the reason, (whether it be the law being poorly written or poorly implemented), it's hard to see why Trump, or any of these other people, WOULDN'T do the same thing again.

 

And with the assassination attempts on the orange fascist, I think his followers will feel "justified" in actually pulling the trigger this time.

 

That might be correct but the point about these incidents with DTH is, they're generally from people people who supported him at one point.

 

We talk a lot here comparing 2 party systems with multi party systems.

An advantage of a 2 party system is that it’s a lot harder for a party to get captured by anti-democratic forces.

A disadvantage is that if it happens, there’s no chance of a temporary political coalition to save democracy, as has happened in France a couple of times. In a 2 party system, if one party is taken over by fascists, the only practical solution is for the side in favor of democracy to never lose an election.

 

I don’t know if I never knew this or just didn’t notice it, but Kushner’s company is called Affinity Partners. Here’s why that’s funny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud

 

Ironic, given that the two so far were more or less Republicans.

 

As if such nuance will matter to them.

 

Only 12 lies. Come on. He lies in his sleep.


Fact check: 12 completely fictional stories Trump has told in the last month
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 12:01 PM EDT, Thu September 19, 2024

04:57 - Source: CNN
Watch Daniel Dale fact-check Trump's false debate claims

WashingtonCNN —

Former President Donald Trump is littering his public remarks with fictional stories.

This isn’t run-of-the-mill political spin, the kind of statistic-twisting and accomplishment-exaggerating that political candidates of all stripes engage in. Rather, the Republican presidential nominee is telling colorful lies that are completely untethered to reality.

Trump’s inflammatory assertion about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, whom he baselessly accused at the September presidential debate of eating people’s dogs and cats, has received the most attention. But Trump’s lower-profile recent public appearances, like rallies and interviews, have also featured wholly imaginary tales.


Here are 11 additional examples from the past month alone.

Harris and the military draft
At a rally in Las Vegas last week, Trump claimed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is talking about forcing Americans to serve in the military: “She’s already talking about bringing back the draft. She wants to bring back the draft, and draft your child, and put them in a war that should never have happened.”

That’s absolute bunk. Harris is not talking at all about bringing back the draft.

Harris’ CNN interview
Trump claimed during a Fox News event in Pennsylvania in early September that Harris “had notes” to assist her during the television interview she did with CNN in late August. He even performed an impression in which he portrayed Harris supposedly looking down at these notes.

She didn’t actually have any notes.

Transgender children and schools
At an event held by a conservative group in late August, Trump claimed that schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ knowledge. He said, “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

Trump’s campaign subsequently made clear to CNN that it could not find a single example of such a thing having happened anywhere in the United States. Parental consent is required for gender-affirming operations; schools have not performed or approved these surgeries for minors behind their parents’ backs.

Even after Trump’s campaign demonstrated that it couldn’t substantiate the story, he repeated it days later at a Wisconsin rally in early September.

Harris and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Trump told a vivid story on Fox News in late August about how President Joe Biden supposedly sent Harris to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 in an effort to prevent an invasion of Ukraine. Trump claimed Harris was sent “to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went. She said – she gave her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.” Trump also told a version of the story at the September debate.

But this story, too, is wholly false.


Biden never sent Harris to negotiate with Putin – in fact, the Kremlin said in July that Harris and Putin have never spoken – and Harris did not travel to Russia just prior to the invasion. Rather, Harris traveled to a conference in Germany to meet with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky.

Harris’ identity
Trump claimed at a convention of Black journalists in late July that Harris used to “only” promote her Indian heritage, then “all of a sudden” made a “turn” and “became a Black person.” Defending the claim, Trump reiterated at the September debate that Harris had “put out” at some point that “she was not Black.”

None of that is true.

Harris – who was raised in a Black community and graduated from a historically Black university – has embraced her Black identity since her youth. While she has also fondly discussed her South Asian heritage, she never “put out” that she wasn’t Black.

Harris’ 2020 primary performance
Trump has repeatedly claimed during the last month that Harris was so unpopular when she previously ran for the presidency, in 2019, that she was the very first candidate to drop out of the crowded Democratic primary. “She was one of 22 people that ran. She was the first one to quit,” he said at a Pennsylvania rally in late August.

Not even close.

In fact, 13 other Democratic candidates dropped out of the race before Harris did – including the sitting or former governors of Washington, Montana and Colorado; the sitting mayor of New York City; and sitting or former members of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Opinions of Roe v. Wade
Facing heavy criticism from Harris and others for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision in 2022, Trump concocted a tale that this unpopular decision fulfilled the wishes of “everybody” – including “every Democrat.”

“Every Democrat, every Republican, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated and brought back to the states,” Trump said on Fox News in late August.

This is not even remotely accurate.


Roe was consistently supported by a majority of the American public, and it was overwhelmingly popular among Democrats – with 80% support or better among Democrats in many polls.

Elections in California
At a September press conference in California, Trump claimed that “if I ran with an honest vote counter in California I would win California, but the votes are not counted honestly.” He had delivered an even more colorful version of the claim in an interview in late August, saying, “If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay?”

More rubbish.

The votes are counted honestly in California, as they are in every other state; Trump loses California because it is an overwhelmingly Democratic state that has not chosen a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He lost the state in 2020, fair and square, by more five million votes and more than 29 percentage points.

A ‘Man of the Year’ award in Michigan
Since 2016, Trump has told a lie that he was named “Man of the Year” in Michigan before he entered politics. Media outlets including CNN have repeatedly noted that Trump never got such an award and that the award doesn’t even appear to exist. But Trump claimed at a Michigan event on Tuesday that he has now been vindicated.

“The press said, ‘Oh, it never happened.’ Well, then it did happen. They found out where it was,” Trump said. “But it was like 15 years ago, a beautiful area, but nobody remembered it; nobody remembered it all. All of a sudden, like through a miracle, they found out it did exist.”

That’s a lie on top of a lie. The media has not discovered proof that Trump got a Michigan Man of the Year award.

His campaign didn’t respond Wednesday to a request to explain what he was talking about.

Migrants, prisons and ‘the Congo’
For months, Trump has told a story about how “the Congo” has deliberately emptied prisons to somehow get its criminals to come to the United States as migrants. “Many prisoners let go from the Congo in Africa, rough prisoners,” he said at an August event in Arizona. At an August rally in Pennsylvania the week after, he said, “In the Congo, in Africa: 22 people deposited into our country. ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘The Congo.’ ‘Where in the Congo?’ ‘Jail.’”

But Trump has presented zero evidence that “the Congo” has actually emptied any prisons for migration purposes. Representatives for the governments of both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN on the record that the claim is fiction, experts on the two countries say they have seen no evidence it is true, and Trump’s campaign has ignored requests to offer any substantiation.

The jobs revision
After the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics announced in August that its annual revision of jobs data found that the economy added about 818,000 fewer jobs than initially reported for the 12 months ending in March, Trump told a story about how the government had been planning to announce this downward revision “after November 5th,” Election Day, but was forced to do so before the election because of “a whistleblower” – “a patriot leaker.”

Another fabrication. The Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly releases the preliminary revised data in August, and it had disclosed the precise date of this particular data release – August 21 – weeks in advance.

William Beach, a conservative economist who was appointed by Trump to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote on social media: “For those who think the big revision to the BLS jobs numbers ‘leaked’ and was meant to come out after the election, remember that BLS always announces its draft revisions in August and announced this year’s date, August 21, many months ago. It is important to check your facts.”