The Trump Presidency (Act V - The One Where Everybody Dies)

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Skeptic Ginger said:
Trump imagining he would have run into the school is more of his fantasy thinking.
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I'm having a hard time imagining him running at all. Maybe give him a golf cart.

The most I can say is "I'd like to think I'd be brave enough to run in and help." I'm not all that shocked to hear that police didn't, given how often many of them have explicitly said, and shown, that they have no tolerance for the slightest perceived risk to themselves. But the idea of Dolt 45 selflessly putting his own life at risk is risible.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
The Commercial Bank of Dubai has now subpoenaed Ivanka Trump’s diamond jewelry line, with the underlying reason being that the diamonds were being used in a $100,000,000 money laundering scheme.

http://www.newsweek.com/ivanka-trump-diamonds-caught-alleged-money-laundering-scheme-757168
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:rolleyes:
In its case, the bank alleges a plot engineered by the Al-Saris family, who controlled a multibillion-dollar Emirati oil-trading empire before running into legal trouble due to unpaid bills. The Al-Saris apparently borrowed more than $100 million from the bank, defaulted on the debt, and hid their assets in shell companies they used to buy diamonds, including some from Trump’s jewelry line, according to court documents, GQ reported.

The bank has not accused Trump’s business of wrongdoing
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I'm not on Team Trump by any means, but this kind of reporting just gives ammunition to the "liberal media bias" story.

Newsweek drives their reporters to maximize clicks and pageviews, not to do good, honest, fair reporting.

How Newsweek Collapsed


But much of the story, as insiders tell it, will ring disconcertingly familiar to anyone involved in the modern news industry. It’s a tale of a precarious business model, a roller coaster of explosive growth and cruel contraction, mercurial corporate ownership, and journalists forced to produce work so shoddy and craven that they were embarrassed to attach their name to it, all in the name of “saving the company”—and their jobs. At a time when Google and Facebook have become the prime conduits to online news, Newsweek’s downfall highlights the existential vulnerability of even the best-known media brands to the whims of tech companies’ algorithms. It also suggests something more chilling: how quickly a reputable news organization can disintegrate in the hands of the wrong owners.

All media outlets are on a constant hunt for traffic, but not all newsrooms are managed the same way. With near unanimity, the staffers I spoke to described a newsroom ruled by fear, internecine rivalry, and a slavish obsession with clicks at all costs. They told of reporters covering beats such as science, culture, and foreign affairs being judged not on their work’s merit but on their ability to meet targets of 500,000 or 1 million page views per month. They told of top editors angling for one another’s jobs by trying to persuade higher-ups that they could bring in more traffic. Allegations of sexism, favoritism, and bullying were rampant.
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Stories like this one, where the headline misleadingly hints at some big scandal are a case in point. There appears to be a crime that really has nothing to do with Ivanka Trump, but they found a way to put her name in the headline even though her only involvement was very indirect and she would have had no way of knowing that the purchasers intended to use the diamonds for money laundering.

In the long run, this sort of reporting only makes readers cynical and destroys the publication's credibility.
 
It's a GQ-story, Newsweek is only reporting on it.

How badly is GQ doing in order to support your argument?

Ivanka got into business with Moshe Lax, who was a shady diamond dealer by anyone's standards. She obviously decided not to do due diligence.
 
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The Great Zaganza said:
It's a GQ-story, Newsweek is only reporting on it.

How badly is GQ doing in order to support your argument?

Ivanka got into business with Moshe Lax, who was a shady diamond dealer by anyone's standards. She obviously decided not to do due diligence.
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So Newsweek doesn't have a monopoly on shoddy, click-baity journalism. In this case they just recycled someone else's. Which is hardly an argument in their favor.
 
Puppycow said:
So Newsweek doesn't have a monopoly on shoddy, click-baity journalism. In this case they just recycled someone else's. Which is hardly an argument in their favor.
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So you don't believe the story?
Or are you saying that Ivanka had no responsibility to make sure the goods she was selling were legally obtained?
Or is it unfair that Ivanka, a top White House aide, gets more scrutiny than the average Joe?

Be objective, not "fair and balanced".
 
Re Trump rushing the school gunman unarmed, this is one I've not heard before: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...in-the-face-of-danger/?utm_term=.3188e4d7b4f7

“I’m not good for medical,” he said in a 2008 interview. “In other words, if you cut your finger and there’s blood pouring out, I’m gone.”

He told Stern about an old man falling from the stage during a benefit at his Mar-a-Lago club.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” Trump said. “I didn’t want to touch him … he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red. And you have this poor guy, 80 years old, laying on the floor unconscious, and all the rich people are turning away. ‘Oh my God! This is terrible! This is disgusting!’ And you know, they’re turning away. Nobody wants to help the guy.”

Trump said that Marines at the benefit came to the aid of the fallen man, and the future president kicked into action.

“I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ ” said Trump. “The next day, I forgot to call to say he’s okay.”
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Certainly sounds like an anecdote told by someone who'd rush into an active shooter scene.
 
As for the diamond story, I tend to agree with Puppycow. If anything, the story suggests either that Trump was opposed to illegal practices surrounding the business, or that she had enough nous (or good enough advice) to avoid being inculpated herself:

Together, Trump and Lax opened a boutique on Madison Avenue, but the first daughter ended ties late last year after Lax became embroiled in various lawsuits claiming extortion and other crimes, with some involving her jewelry line.
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Of course, she could have been involved in wrongdoing, but she could also have been duped into thinking there was none and got out when she realised that there was. By itself this story doesn't favour either hypothesis. It's easy to say "oh, come on! She's Ivanka Trump, of course she knew and was involved", but that's not really much of a sceptical position.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
As for the diamond story, I tend to agree with Puppycow. If anything, the story suggests either that Trump was opposed to illegal practices surrounding the business, or that she had enough nous (or good enough advice) to avoid being inculpated herself:



Of course, she could have been involved in wrongdoing, but she could also have been duped into thinking there was none and got out when she realised that there was. By itself this story doesn't favour either hypothesis. It's easy to say "oh, come on! She's Ivanka Trump, of course she knew and was involved", but that's not really much of a sceptical position.
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And because it's not a clear-cut case the public has no right to know about it?
Why don't they get to decide?
You think it appropriate for the press to shield the First Daughter from a scandal is is literally distanced by only a single degree of separation?

You are advocating for the press to gate-keep the First Family from possible scandal, direct or indirect.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Can you quote where I said that?
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You and Puppy insinuated that it was inappropriate what was being reported on Ivanka's jewelry line.

Since the only alternative was not not report it at all, your criticism of GQ/Newsweek amounts to telling these magazines that they shouldn't have published in the first place.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
So you don't believe the story?
Or are you saying that Ivanka had no responsibility to make sure the goods she was selling were legally obtained?
Or is it unfair that Ivanka, a top White House aide, gets more scrutiny than the average Joe?

Be objective, not "fair and balanced".
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I see no suggestion in the story that the goods she was selling weren't legally obtained. I think you misunderstand what is being alleged. There's nothing about how her company purchased the diamonds in the first place which were sold. The act of selling itself was legal, and the article even concedes that the bank isn't accusing her company of any wrongdoing. The wrongdoing was on the part of people who purchased diamonds from her company among others. Is a seller of diamonds supposed to do some sort of investigation of the people purchasing? That's not how most businesses work last time I checked.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
So you don't believe the story?
Or are you saying that Ivanka had no responsibility to make sure the goods she was selling were legally obtained?
Or is it unfair that Ivanka, a top White House aide, gets more scrutiny than the average Joe?
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Of course it is unfair like asking white house aids about their views on the presidents history of sexual harassment.
 
SezMe said:
Does that, in your view, justify the tax cut bearing in mind that only about 2% of Americans own stock.
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That does not sound right.

From a CNN article:

“Less than a third of people ages 18 to 29 owned stocks on average between 2009 and 2017, according to a Gallup survey released in April. Nearly two-thirds of Americans between 30 and 64 own stocks.”
 
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