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Donald Trump 2018


TheFlyingBoat

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https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-elections-trump-red-wave-predictions-republicans-9a192d1e-547d-4fe9-827f-08e24c55cc70.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

 

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The president's contempt for mainstream polling and the media may come back to haunt him in November. Several top Republican operatives working on the midterm elections told me Trump's fanciful "red wave" predictions could depress Republican turnout and, ironically, serve to make any blue wave even bigger.

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One of those strategists told me he's detecting something interesting — and concerning — from focus groups of Trump voters. "You have Trump-MAGA loyalists, and their friends on Fox, who have reached a point of not believing polls and media people telling them things are going wrong, that I believe is actually causing the Republicans problems," the strategist told me, granted anonymity in order to be candid.

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"We've seen it in focus groups, with Republican base voters, where you'll come up with a hypothetical that the Democrats win, and people are like, 'That's not going to happen, that's stupid.' ... They're like, 'Oh, to hell with this crap, we were told Trump wasn't going to win. It's bullshit.'"

"I would rather Sean Hannity get on TV every night and go, 'Oh my God, Nancy Pelosi could be Speaker and they're going to impeach Trump. You better get out to vote.'"

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Questionable outlier polls like Rasmussen that favor the president have lulled and reassured Trump’s base. The president tweets out the polls, his media mouthpieces echo them, and his voters feel pacified — and, several top strategists I've interviewed fear, less motivated to show up in November.

Trump isn't helping. The president is flatly denying what most polls indicate — saying he sees not a blue wave in November, but a giant "red wave."

Republican strategists want the base to panic so they'll show up to vote. But instead, Trump is breeding complacency.

Another of the country's top House operatives told me:

"It's worrisome. The President's tweeting 'red wave,' and they watch Fox News," the source said. "These [Trump voters] will say, 'The same Fake News, Deep State people told me Hillary was going to win and Hillary lost. We've won all these elections.'"

 

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4 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Just watched the Dirty Money episode about him on Netflix.  Holy shit.  I genuinely do not understand how he has not been removed from office yet.  Brisket should definitely not watch.  it might actually send him all the way over the edge.

Literally just finished watching it and holy shit indeed, Trump is probably the biggest conman in the history of the country. His whole life has been about maintaining this image of him being bigger than he actually is. 

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2 hours ago, Slade said:

Literally just finished watching it and holy shit indeed, Trump is probably the biggest conman in the history of the country. His whole life has been about maintaining this image of him being bigger than he actually is. 

from the movie, when Trump says he finds the questions false...interviewer: "Questions by themselves can't be inaccurate." Donald quits the interview.  

 

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9 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

from the movie, when Trump says he finds the questions false...interviewer: "Questions by themselves can't be inaccurate." Donald quits the interview.  

 

 

The recording of him posing as a PR guy was legit funny....

 

“I’m sort of new here,” and “I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes” and even “I’m going to do this a little, part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.”

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23 minutes ago, Tom said:

His tweets have become boring and tiresome to read.  Literally same shit, different day over and over.

 

This to me is the scariest thing. Everything he does now is the new normal. There is no outrage about things that before would have been headlines. We've just come to accept it, which means he can just become more outrageous and we'll take it in stride.  I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, but this is how things like Nazi Germany happened. 

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27 minutes ago, Tom said:

His tweets have become boring and tiresome to read.  Literally same shit, different day over and over.

 

 

26 minutes ago, retread said:

It's sundowners, except he has it all day long.

Also, the first rule of psychological warfare is repetition.

It’s easy to write it off as sundowning but there is a method to this.

Keep repeating the same lie over and over until it becomes accepted truth.

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25 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

This to me is the scariest thing. Everything he does now is the new normal. There is no outrage about things that before would have been headlines. We've just come to accept it, which means he can just become more outrageous and we'll take it in stride.  I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, but this is how things like Nazi Germany happened. 

 

23 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

Also, the first rule of psychological warfare is repetition.

It’s easy to write it off as sundowning but there is a method to this.

Keep repeating the same lie over and over until it becomes accepted truth.

 

All true and that crossed my mind as I was typing it out.  It's just gotten to the point I know exactly what he's going to tweet before he even writes it.  I'll never believe him or support him, but tweets that used to outrage me are just now an eyeroll, a shrug, and then scrolling on.

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12 hours ago, Slade said:

Literally just finished watching it and holy shit indeed, Trump is probably the biggest conman in the history of the country. His whole life has been about maintaining this image of him being bigger than he actually is. 

But wait there's more:

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The press, MSM had been very reluctant to put forth some of the more seedy stuff that Trump has done over the years.

Take a look at the work of David Cay Johnson, an investigative reporter/author that first encountered trump back in the late 80's when his work drew him to Atlantic City to write about the emerging casino gaming industry.  Johnson has written at least two books on Trump and others that indirectly cover some of Trump's favorite issues, and he has tons of YouTube videos pimping his various books.  I'll post a book tour lecture and q & a session here but any search for "David Cay Johnson Trump" will yield results.

Once you get past the crazy Trump stuff, go and look at his work on  taxation and policy.

 

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32 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

This to me is the scariest thing. Everything he does now is the new normal. There is no outrage about things that before would have been headlines. We've just come to accept it, which means he can just become more outrageous and we'll take it in stride.  I'm not trying to be overly dramatic, but this is how things like Nazi Germany happened. 

I don't think so.  I think he is trapped and has nothing else he can say without incriminating himself.  I agree with Tom that he is putting this out there for it to be accepted as truth, but in the mainstream the bulk of Americans are growing weary of it and are just waiting for someone or something to bring this all to an end.   Nazi Germany is still fresh in enough minds for us to recognize both the social aspects that drove Germany towards Nazism, and the way Hitler and his henchmen pulled it off. 

Yes there are a lot of his base that are not going to be changed, but there is a significant groundswell of people who are waking up and starting to take their country back.  We just don't see as much of that because the Trump administration is always on the news, and there is little news out there for these small pockets of resistance that are growing.   Case in point was the alt right rally last week or so.  What, 30 participants and 300 protestors?    And we have those protestors camped right across from the white house, whose numbers grow every day. 

It will take more time for this to gain steam and become organized, but it is coming.  And I do think it will translate into votes and not just bluster.  The way Beto is turning things around is bringing us back to the times when we felt our votes mattered.   I think that is happening in pockets all over the country. 

What is scary to me is where is the big money in all this?  Which way are they pushing their bought and paid for lawmakers?  Are they still believing in America, or have they already given up and are pushing us towards a new future, more one worldly?   Trump and his band are a side show.  The question is what will it be after he is gone.  And that big money is going to have a lot to say about that.   And we know above all else they will push and support only those things they will profit from. 

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21 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

I don't think so.  I think he is trapped and has nothing else he can say without incriminating himself.  I agree with Tom that he is putting this out there for it to be accepted as truth, but in the mainstream the bulk of Americans are growing weary of it and are just waiting for someone or something to bring this all to an end.   Nazi Germany is still fresh in enough minds for us to recognize both the social aspects that drove Germany towards Nazism, and the way Hitler and his henchmen pulled it off. 

Yes there are a lot of his base that are not going to be changed, but there is a significant groundswell of people who are waking up and starting to take their country back.  We just don't see as much of that because the Trump administration is always on the news, and there is little news out there for these small pockets of resistance that are growing.   Case in point was the alt right rally last week or so.  What, 30 participants and 300 protestors?    And we have those protestors camped right across from the white house, whose numbers grow every day. 

It will take more time for this to gain steam and become organized, but it is coming.  And I do think it will translate into votes and not just bluster.  The way Beto is turning things around is bringing us back to the times when we felt our votes mattered.   I think that is happening in pockets all over the country. 

What is scary to me is where is the big money in all this?  Which way are they pushing their bought and paid for lawmakers?  Are they still believing in America, or have they already given up and are pushing us towards a new future, more one worldly?   Trump and his band are a side show.  The question is what will it be after he is gone.  And that big money is going to have a lot to say about that.   And we know above all else they will push and support only those things they will profit from. 

While I agree with most of this the thing that concerns me the most is the radicalization of Trump’s hardcore base.  That hasn’t stopped or slowed down.  It’s not a growing movement in numbers but they are becoming more and more detached from reality and they will still be a voting block politicians will pander to.  The emergence of the QAnon people is a great example of how this segment of the population is being assaulted by bad actors.  The consequences of this will be awful and long lasting. 

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1 hour ago, pyrohornIII said:

I don't think so.  I think he is trapped and has nothing else he can say without incriminating himself.

...................

 

What is scary to me is where is the big money in all this?  Which way are they pushing their bought and paid for lawmakers?  Are they still believing in America, or have they already given up and are pushing us towards a new future, more one worldly?   Trump and his band are a side show.  The question is what will it be after he is gone.  And that big money is going to have a lot to say about that.   And we know above all else they will push and support only those things they will profit from. 

In thinking about it, I think he's pretty trapped to - while he seems to ignore his lawyers, notice that for all of his incessant whining, he's not firing people to get to Mueller, or having people fired.  On some level, somebody has gotten through to him that he will be in a world of legal or political shit if he does that, because it's clear that he's scared shitless of Mueller.  I am 100% certain that if he could have fired people to get to Mueller without being in a world of shit before now, he would have.

Whoever that person(s) is that has kept him from firing Mueller, has probably told him he can tweet about certain things, but not others, although I still think he gets away from their instructions at times when he's twitter-shitting.

As for where the big money is - we already know what the Kochs are doing.  In general, those with The Big Money probably have access to information we don't, and many play a long game, and they want to keep those already bought-and-paid-for lawmakers in Congress.  It feels like they are taking a knee and trying to run the clock out on Trump.  If they have their folks stick their necks out too far for Trump in the here and now, there is a real risk that they will not only see their folks booted out of office in 2018 and 2020, but they will be replaced with a group of people who will set their agenda back many years.  

Even worse, if this Russian stuff is as bad as it looks, and if the GOP decides it's truly the Party of Trump as the GOP Chairwoman said and is willing to go down defending Trump, the GOP Big Money folks are potentially facing the problem that the GOP will successfully be labeled as the Party of Putin.  That means that they will have to discard a lot of their bought-and-paid-for legislators and start from scratch.  It could take many election cycles for the GOP to recover from that (assuming it does).  

Also, look at how fast Trump started reversing a lot of Obama-era stuff.  Imagine a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress.  Their first priority, besides nailing Trump and his supporters to the wall, will be reversing all of the damage they see being done by Trump and Co.  Not only that, but they will most likely act in such a way to make it harder for somebody like Trump to reverse their efforts in the future.

The problem for GOP Big Money is that even though they are trying to take a knee and run the clock out, right now, in August of 2018, the Trumpkins still hold a lot of power - enough that they (or a nasty tweet from Dotard) can sink a Republican politician if they don't play along.  

It's hard to take a knee and run out the clock when somebody else on your team has the ball and is disregarding common sense.

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1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

While I agree with most of this the thing that concerns me the most is the radicalization of Trump’s hardcore base.  That hasn’t stopped or slowed down.  It’s not a growing movement in numbers but they are becoming more and more detached from reality and they will still be a voting block politicians will pander to.  The emergence of the QAnon people is a great example of how this segment of the population is being assaulted by bad actors.  The consequences of this will be awful and long lasting. 

They are not acting though.  The recent Unite the Right rally showed that the younger ones looking for a fight are scared of being identified.  

They also hit their peak numbers, and Hillary isn't running again.

They also had the wrong kind of publicity and scrutiny shined down upon them with the Q stuff.  While the older folks may not trust say NBC News overall, the actions of the Q folks they see on TV and what they read online is going to make them take a step back and wonder if that NBC News expose had a little bit of truth to it.

For Trump's target audience, the Q stuff is too complex, and far too encompassing.  Look at TexAgs - plenty of the Q fans there are confused as hell about things.  When you confuse folks, and when you bring in so many elements, you risk each of those elements turning off this or that group of people.  The best theories are simple and can be understood within a few minutes.

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21 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

They are not acting though.  The recent Unite the Right rally showed that the younger ones looking for a fight are scared of being identified.

They are not acting as a group.  That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about more lone shooters, bombers, incels, and domestic terrorists.   They  are really hard to detect/prevent when the population of crazies is significantly larger than it once was.

When people get that detached they have a tendency to latch on to some really destructive stuff.  Then the bad things happen.  The tragedy is much of it would have been preventable with the good leadership.

 

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31 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

They are not acting as a group.  That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about more lone shooters, bombers, incels, and domestic terrorists.   They  are really hard to detect/prevent when the population of crazies is significantly larger than it once was.

When people get that detached they have a tendency to latch on to some really destructive stuff.  Then the bad things happen.  The tragedy is much of it would have been preventable with the good leadership.

Those types of folks have always been present.  Q and Trump are not creating new ones out of thin air.

Their heroes are being booted off of social media, NBC is running exposes on their movement, and they aren't doing jack shit to the social media networks or NBC or the NY Times.

In short, they are losing their platforms, and their beliefs are starting to be exposed to the mainstream, and they do nothing but bitch about having to live with their parents who watch the History Channel.

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38 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Those types of folks have always been present.  Q and Trump are not creating new ones out of thin air.

I really think you’re minimizing it here.  A lot like the people that say “Russia has always meddled in our elections.”  

The dynamics have significantly changed and I’m not just being hyperbolic, there are statistics that back this up. 

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CR_5154_25YRS%20RightWing_04_0.jpg

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51 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

They are not acting as a group.  That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about more lone shooters, bombers, incels, and domestic terrorists.   They  are really hard to detect/prevent when the population of crazies is significantly larger than it once was.

When people get that detached they have a tendency to latch on to some really destructive stuff.  Then the bad things happen.  The tragedy is much of it would have been preventable with the good leadership.

 

 

36 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Those types of folks have always been present.  Q and Trump are not creating new ones out of thin air.

Their heroes are being booted off of social media, NBC is running exposes on their movement, and they aren't doing jack shit to the social media networks or NBC or the NY Times.

In short, they are losing their platforms, and their beliefs are starting to be exposed to the mainstream, and they do nothing but bitch about having to live with their parents who watch the History Channel.

I don't doubt there are going to be some isolated instances of violence.  A lot of those people have bought up arsenals and set aside all this doomsday prep stuff just for this new revolution they see Trump leading and them being the boots on the ground.  However they are more bark than bite, they are too soft and too cowardly to stand up in this new revolt for long.

We will see some of it, I am sure, but it won't last long and they will be shunned and dismissed while the rest of the country moves on, in whichever direction. 

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22 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

 

I don't doubt there are going to be some isolated instances of violence.  A lot of those people have bought up arsenals and set aside all this doomsday prep stuff just for this new revolution they see Trump leading and them being the boots on the ground.  However they are more bark than bite, they are too soft and too cowardly to stand up in this new revolt for long.

We will see some of it, I am sure, but it won't last long and they will be shunned and dismissed while the rest of the country moves on, in whichever direction. 

For the record, I’m not afraid of the violent extremists.  They’re loons and not a significant threat to overthrowing anything by force.  However, more tragedies and bloodshed will happen because current leadership isn’t doing enough to confront the problem on their side, and that starts with Trump at the top.  The consequences of those tragedies will lead to more knee jerk solutions that infringe on everyone’s rights in the name of safety and security.  Things like too much gun control and censorship on the internet.  Do you see where this is going? 

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Yes, I see that, but I also think that it will run out of steam before it does irreversible damage.   It might even lead us to shaking our complacency and taking a look at dismantling some other things already in existence that infringe on our liberties, such as the Patriot Act.    Or at least I think that is where you are headed, to use the Trump experiment and its outcome as reason to start even more stringent Orwellian policies? 

I have had the idea for a long time that there are those on a higher level of control than I that are pushing us to some sort of civil unrest or revolt.  I am not convinced that it is completely Russian driven, though they have played a big part in driving wedges in our country. 

I just think that Trump might have been too much.  He hasn't been subtle enough to move us closer to the edge.  He doesn't have the skills that other fascists leaders had in keeping all the people in lockstep.  I think we are seeing the opposite.  And I think there are enough numbers are waking and rising up to overcome these actions and hopefully right the ship.  I appreciate Brisket, but I am not quite ready to step on the ledge yet. 

Its just going to take some time to get organized.  Like I said, the Beto campaign seems to me a microcosm of response, not only in the grassroots part of it, but the growth.  If he can activate the vote and win, then that will go a long way to help people feel they actually do have some control over their government again.

Edited by pyrohornIII
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20 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

The only good thing about Jeff Sessions is that he won't quit out of hatred for Donald Trump.

I imagine Trump has nightmares about little elves with strong Alabama drawls taunting him, taking away his two scoops of ice cream and all his cookies. Sessions is the leader and the 17 wee little angry Democrats are the other elves. 

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