Cont: The Trump Presidency: Part 23

[Stacyhs]

He hasn't, but I do wonder sometimes if it's deliberate, a kind of chewbacca defense where he gives an answer that makes no sense, rather than just saying "no comment" or trying to come up with some coherent, rational answer. If your answer has no actual content or meaning, there's nothing to pick apart.

What with the other symptoms he's exhibiting, though -- problems with walking, not managing to lift a glass of water with only one hand, etc., I'm leaning towards it being an actual mental decline.

I don't think it's deliberate at all. It's just where he is mentally now. I'm not saying he has dementia but there is definitely a decline in how well he expresses himself now.

 

[Belz...]

In a classic example of irony, Trump commenting on Biden's 'gaffe' of saying "120 million deaths" before quickly correcting it to "120 thousand death":



This coming from someone known for rambling word salads that make no sense.

Someone pointed out that he said "1 million 870 thousand million" recently.

 

[Belz...]

No, he was not. Go back and look at video of interviews from 10 or so years ago. He was much more coherent. Here's a 1987 interview with Larry King. Notice he can stay focused and doesn't ramble. Notice the difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8wJc7vHcTs

Slightly more coherent, though it's the same stupid rhetoric.

 

[Horatius]

Oh, and the ships were going to be ugly so he personally redesigned them.

I wonder if someone in the Navy is engaging in a classic "manage the manager" maneuver. There's a theory that whenever you need to get a manager to approve a plan, you should include one really obvious bad idea for them to change. Because a lot of people won't approve something if they haven't "contributed" to the design, you give them something irrelevant to change, so they don't change something important just so they feel like they've done their job.

"Can you believe they wanted to put a giant purple dildo on the front of every ship? Well, I put a stop to that, let me tell you! This whole project would have been a disaster without me."

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Not sure what you're arguing.

Trump got over 40% of the vote in the 2016 election. His current approval rating is ~40%. (In fact, even at its lowest, it was over 35%.) Real Clear Politics has a polling average of ~40% for Trump in a Trump/Biden match-up.

How else can we define that as anything but 40% of the electorate?

The 'electorate' generally refers to all eligible voters, not just those who actually voted.

Trump was elected by a little more than a quarter of eligible voters

so far, only about 56.9 percent of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot on Election Day. That means 43.1 percent of people eligible to vote just didn’t...

It also means that Hillary Clinton, based on the latest estimates, got a little more than 27 percent of the voting-eligible population’s vote, while Trump got just 27 percent...

the US actually has below-average turnout among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): About 53.6 percent of the US voting-age population turned out to vote in 2012, while 87.2 percent did in a recent election in Belgium, 66 percent did in Germany, and 61.1 percent did in the UK.

That means a large proportion of eligible voters didn't care enough to vote. But this time they might - depending on strongly they feel about the candidates.

Any poll that doesn't count only actual voters is likely to be skewed towards the side that is more apathetic, which right now is Trump. The vast majority of that '40%' are republicans who currently think they have no choice but to vote for Trump simply because he is their man. But the enthusiasm (such as it ever was) is waning, and they do also have the option of not voting. Meanwhile liberals who might not have voted for Clinton are bound to turn out in force this time, since their lives could literally depend on it.

I am betting that this time the proportion of actual democrat voters will be significantly higher than polls of the entire electorate (or even 'likely' voters) suggest.

Trump's 'approval' rating is also suspect. The majority of those 'approving' of him do so only because he a Republican. Many of them disapprove of much that he has done, yet feel obligated to tick 'approve' because to them the question is not 'do you approve of Trump' but 'do you support conservative ideals'.

 

[Minoosh]

Trump tells Wisconsin shipyard workers the Navy chose their yard to help him get re-elected.

Oh, and the ships were going to be ugly so he personally redesigned them.

Not enough mirrors on the ceiling and gold shag carpeting?

 

[Segnosaur]

The 'electorate' generally refers to all eligible voters, not just those who actually voted.

Any poll that doesn't count only actual voters is likely to be skewed towards the side that is more apathetic, which right now is Trump.

Yes, there can be differences in polls between eligible voters, likely voters, registered voters, etc. But, the opinion polls between the various groups were generally within a few percent.(Which suggests the non-voters split between Trump and Clinton in roughly the same proportion.)

Trump's 'approval' rating is also suspect. The majority of those 'approving' of him do so only because he a Republican. Many of them disapprove of much that he has done, yet feel obligated to tick 'approve' because to them the question is not 'do you approve of Trump' but 'do you support conservative ideals'.

What 'obligation'? An opinion poll isn't legally binding. It doesn't force the respondent to vote against Trump in the next election.

And even if they said they 'agree' with Trump just because they are republicans... they still have the ability to look at Trump's activities and break off from the group. Giving them a pass just because "Gpsh, they are so weak minded that they didn't deliberately support Trump" is being far too kind to them.

 

[Segnosaur]

I wonder if someone in the Navy is engaging in a classic "manage the manager" maneuver. There's a theory that whenever you need to get a manager to approve a plan, you should include one really obvious bad idea for them to change. Because a lot of people won't approve something if they haven't "contributed" to the design, you give them something irrelevant to change, so they don't change something important just so they feel like they've done their job.

"Can you believe they wanted to put a giant purple dildo on the front of every ship? Well, I put a stop to that, let me tell you! This whole project would have been a disaster without me."

Those were only going to be for the ships that are docked in the state of Gay Island.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13137199&postcount=12

 

[Segnosaur]

A pair of court cases... one a win for Trump and the republicans, one a loss.

Wasn't sure if this belonged here or in the Coronavirus thread...

From: NBC News
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request by Texas Democrats to allow all of the state’s 16 million registered voters to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.

Right now, vote-by-mail is available to people in Texas who are either senior citizens, or who can give a valid reason why then need to. (Fear of getting sick is not a valid reason.) Democrats wanted to expand it to everyone, Republicans wanted to suppress votes.

It was not a left/right wing split on the court... basically everyone voted the same way. I could be wrong here, but it looks more like a procedural thing... (Democrats tried to bring things to the supreme court early, Supreme court thought it needed to go through the lower courts.)

And on a totally unrelated note...

From: LA Times
A federal appeals court decided 2-1 Friday that the Trump administration violated the law by using military money to build a wall at the southern border.

The ruling was along partisan lines... with 2 democrats voting against 1 trump appointee.

Sadly, there are a couple of problems...
- The supreme court refused to act on this issue earlier, when there was a request for emergency action (i.e. the supreme court didn't stop it when they had the chance). That means that if this case gets appealed again (and finds its way to the supreme court), the supreme court may side with Trump
- Much of the money has already been spent, even if the ruling ends up standing.

 

[Aridas]

And the Republicans who stormed the classified hearing room? What should happen to them?

IIRC, that was a felony.

A felony that they knew that Trump and the Trump Administration had no intention of charging them with, of course, but still a felony.

What should happen to them? They should be punished in accordance with the law.

The point of having a second term is to let the statutes of limitation run out.

I agree. That's only one aspect, of course, but that is a major motivating factor.

 

[alfaniner]

Just killing some time, I searched in the transcript for the Tulsa speech.
This is at roughly 55 minutes.

The choice in 220 is very simple. Do you want to bow before the left wing mob? Or do you want to stand up tall and proud as Americans.

It appears to be accurate from what I remembered. I can't see it as any other interpretation than a mistake, without a correction. I didn't think it was a big deal really, until he started harping on Biden making a similar gaffe (which Biden did immediately correct.) ******* hypocrite.

 

[Lurch]

Just a short time ago I watched a video by YouTuber, Beau of the Fifth Column wherein he reported on an allegation of Trump having looked the other way upon learning the Russians were targeting Americans in Afghanistan in order to (presumably?) keep the US mired there...

Even if not verified, such an accusation is sufficiently believable that Trump defenders are not even bothering to shriek about it being false, just jumping straight to trying to justify it.

I checked, and it's not April first. Beau has been not given to pulling pranks that I've seen thus far. If this is the real deal, holy crap.

 

[Belz...]

What 'obligation'? An opinion poll isn't legally binding. It doesn't force the respondent to vote against Trump in the next election.

No but The Atheist's point is that people, not being rational creatures, tend to answer in certain ways when polled.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I wonder if someone in the Navy is engaging in a classic "manage the manager" maneuver. There's a theory that whenever you need to get a manager to approve a plan, you should include one really obvious bad idea for them to change. Because a lot of people won't approve something if they haven't "contributed" to the design, you give them something irrelevant to change, so they don't change something important just so they feel like they've done their job.

"Can you believe they wanted to put a giant purple dildo on the front of every ship? Well, I put a stop to that, let me tell you! This whole project would have been a disaster without me."

According to the link

Marinette Marine, which has built ships in Wisconsin since the 1940s, was acquired by the Italian yacht-maker Fincantieri in 2009. The firm’s winning frigate design is based on an Italian warship that already exists, and was not designed by the president.

So strictly speaking it's not even an American ship.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Tweets

I just had the privilege of signing a very strong Executive Order protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues - and combatting recent Criminal Violence. Long prison terms for these lawless acts against our Great Country!

Big WIN in Texas on Mail-In Ballots!

I was going to go to Bedminster, New Jersey, this weekend, but wanted to stay in Washington, D.C. to make sure LAW & ORDER is enforced. The arsonists, anarchists, looters, and agitators have been largely stopped...

...I am doing what is necessary to keep our communities safe — and these people will be brought to Justice!

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Retweeted

Ronna McDaniel
@GOPChairwoman
The enthusiasm is undeniable. @realDonaldTrump’s town hall on Fox News drew over 5 MILLION viewers, beating MSNBC and CNN COMBINED!

 

[Parsman]

Not sure what you're arguing.

Trump got over 40% of the vote in the 2016 election. His current approval rating is ~40%. (In fact, even at its lowest, it was over 35%.) Real Clear Politics has a polling average of ~40% for Trump in a Trump/Biden match-up.

How else can we define that as anything but 40% of the electorate?

Of those who got out and voted in 2016 he achieved about 46%. That was still less than Clinton managed (48%) by some margin. And those who voted were not the "electorate". Of potential voters in the USA he managed about 30% considering the number of people who didn't get out and vote. For a Trump victory in 2020 assuming that his base hasn't grown as seems to be the case from all surveys we can see then he has to hope that the anti-Trump vote stays home again. I suspect that remembering what did happen in 2016 even those progressives the least enthused about Joe Biden will be more motivated to get out to the polls and that will badly affect Trumps ability to eke out an electoral college win (he is never going to win the popular vote).

 

[zorro99]

Russian operation targeted coalition troops in Afghanistan, intelligence finds

John Hudson

A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops, in a striking escalation of the Kremlin’s hostility toward the United States, American intelligence has found.

The Russian operation, first reported by the New York Times, has generated an intense debate within the Trump administration about how best to respond to a troubling new tactic by a nation that most U.S. officials regard as a potential foe but that President Trump has frequently embraced as a friend, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence matter.

The officials said administration leaders learned of reported bounties in recent months from U.S. intelligence agencies, prompting a series of internal discussions including a large interagency meeting that was held in late March. According to one person familiar with the matter, the responses discussed at that meeting included sending a diplomatic communication to relay disapproval and authorizing new sanctions.

Russian involvement in operations targeting Americans, if confirmed, is likely to lead to outrage on Capitol Hill and questions about why the administration hasn’t responded to it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...710092-b80f-11ea-9b0f-c797548c1154_story.html

 

[Darat]

I concur. Never mind N dimensional chess. He's an imbecile who might know how to play tic-tac-toe. The 2016 political universe was aligned for a dim-witted reality show racist grifter.

He's a genius, he plays solitaire tic-tac-toe and always wins!

 

[Darat]

Trump understands the Republican base better than Noonan does.

No he doesn't understand his base, he just does what he has always done, that it appeals to a certain percentage of voters is nothing to do with a political strategy.