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The US Presidency 2019

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Coincidental timing... just last week Peter Wehner's new book, The Death of Politics:  How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump  was delivered.  I've been following his writings for some time now, particularly the ones published though the Ethics and Public Policy Center.  While Wehner can occasionally be a bit too religious for my tastes, I certainly can't flaw his thoughtful analyses.

FJAG said:
Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.

It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW.
What completely amazes me is that Trump still  has so many unwavering, unquestioning cheerleaders.  :stars: 


And yes, I understand the difference between agreeing with his policies and dismissing the clearly observable behaviours listed in the article as simply fake news picking on him.  :not-again:

 
Sadly I didn't see any adjectives used by Mr.Wehner to describe Trump that I am not already familiar with.  :nod:
 
Journeyman said:
...

What completely amazes me is that Trump still  has so many unwavering, unquestioning cheerleaders.  :stars: 


And yes, I understand the difference between agreeing with his policies and dismissing the clearly observable behaviours listed in the article as simply fake news picking on him.  :not-again:


I suspect that when he didn't blow up the world or grope the Queen many people settled down and said, "Oh, well, he's not deranged, after all." And, of course, for 18 months or so we had Mattis and Tillerson crisscrossing the globe reassuring people that while President Trump is, pretty clearly, a sub-standard human being he's not mad nor is he terribly dangerous.

I think that's an overly optimistic reaction.

The cover of the Sep/Oct issue of Foreign Affairs shows an interesting array of low lifes:
fa_so19_cover.png
.

I think Donald J Trump belongs in that picture.

I believe that he believes that, having won the election fair and square, despite having lost the popular vote, that he now has carte blanche to do as he wishes ... which is pretty much how Rodrigo Duterte, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping see things.

I expect President Trump to be re-elected in 2020. My guess is that the Democrats will follow their hearts, not their heads, and will fail to nominate someone around whom a real majority of Americans can coalesce.

But even after 2024, the "Trump Party" will not go away ... nor, on the left, will the socialists. The America that Truman, Eisenhower et al built and bequeathed to future generations is, certainly, in retreat and it may be lost.  :'(
 
Would the most sensible candidate to take on Trump be Biden? There are some soft republicans who might vote for him. 

If he picks a decent VP, he could just win.  Somehow the dems are going to have to force the (very) radical fringe out into a third party or they will forever be fractured - some of the current DP candidates and office holders are no less quirky and dangerous than Trump.

And whoever wins next election- Trump or whoever- is going to have finally and concretely deal with guns before they have multiple slaughters per day.
 
Journeyman said:
What completely amazes me is that Trump still  has so many unwavering, unquestioning cheerleaders.  :stars: 

He himself said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters."

 
E.R. Campbell said:
that he now has carte blanche to do as he wishes ... which is pretty much how Rodrigo Duterte, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping see things.

You left out Obama and Clinton
 
1 - Next!

2 & 3 - Some of the other come-and-gone folks (source)

- edit to fix link -
 

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E.R. Campbell said:
I expect President Trump to be re-elected in 2020.
Sadly, I agree.  It's almost as though some deities were drunk gambling and the bet came up of how the Democrats could run the worst possible campaign.... and we now see how the lab rats are playing it out.
    :facepalm:
 
Cloud Cover said:
General Buck Turgidson would be a good fit.
"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks."

:rofl:
 
Brihard said:
On the other hand, now Trump may appoint yet another clapping seal to his inner circle.

"I'm going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people."
https://www.google.com/search?rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-CA%3AIE-Address&rlz=1I7GGHP_en-GBCA592&biw=1280&bih=641&sxsrf=ACYBGNQXVEmtgDFJAT31mFTawTBDBLRQug%3A1568141606930&ei=JvF3XcSoOPKyggf5m7foDA&q=%22going+to+surround+myself+only+with+the+best+and+most+serious%22+people&oq=%22going+to+surround+myself+only+with+the+best+and+most+serious%22+people&gs_l=psy-ab.3...12105.23834..24338...0.0..0.251.2032.0j8j3......0....1..gws-wiz.VY_tGAXXTbA&ved=0ahUKEwjE08Db9sbkAhVymeAKHfnNDc0Q4dUDCAs&uact=5#spf=1568141632905
 
tomahawk6 said:
I don't agree with the administration meeting with the talban without including the Afghan government ...
I suspect Bolton felt the same way, hence the parting of the ways.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
I suspect that when he didn't blow up the world or grope the Queen many people settled down and said, "Oh, well, he's not deranged, after all." And, of course, for 18 months or so we had Mattis and Tillerson crisscrossing the globe reassuring people that while President Trump is, pretty clearly, a sub-standard human being he's not mad nor is he terribly dangerous.

I think that's an overly optimistic reaction.

That reminds me a little bit of the situation faced by the junior officers in The Caine Mutiny.  :)
 

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With Bolton s firing/resignation burning up the ether, this little tidbit has kind of escaped every ones attention. Talk about feeding the young to the lions:

Trump will put Jared Kushner's former assistant in charge of Middle East "peace process"

Avi Berkowitz, a 29-year-old Kushner aide, will take over Middle East peace plan already ripped by experts

Igor Derysh
September 9, 2019 7:00PM (UTC)

A 29-year-old former administrative aide to Jared Kushner is expected to take over for Jason Greenblatt, the departing White House envoy for the Middle East peace process.

Trump announced Greenblatt’s departure on Twitter Thursday. Greenblatt, whose own dubious qualifications included 20 years of working as a lawyer for the Trump Organization, was the architect of the administration’s supposed peace plan, along with Kushner, U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Kushner deputy Avi Berkowitz, who will replace him. Greenblatt is stepping down before the administration has even rolled out the plan, which has already been roundly rejected by Palestinian leaders.

Axios reports that most of Greenblatt’s “assignments and authorities will be transferred to Berkowitz.”

Berkowitz is a 29-year-old friend of Kushner’s who graduated from Harvard Law School in 2016 and met the president’s son-in-law during a pickup basketball game at a Passover celebration in Phoenix, as Business Insider reported in 2017.

The profile described Berkowitz as "in many ways Kushner’s protégé,” who went to work for him at Kushner Companies before joining him on the Trump campaign and later in the White House.

Berkowitz worked on the Trump campaign as an “assistant director of data analytics,” where he was charged with producing the campaign’s “pre- and post-presidential-debate talk show that became a nightly Facebook Live discussion in the weeks leading up to the election,” according to Business Insider.

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks told the outlet that Berkowitz's role at the White House at the time was “primarily administrative and involved assisting Kushner with daily logistics like getting coffee or coordinating meetings.”

Despite Berkowitz's evident inexperience, Kushner has also tasked him with more important responsibilities. During the transition, Kushner sent Berkowitz to meet with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to set up a meeting with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a Russian state-owned bank that had been sanctioned by the Obama administration, as The New York Times reported shortly after Trump took office.

At the White House, Berkowitz was named to the administration’s “peace team” and was a “main player” in drafting the peace plan as he worked alongside Greenblatt for nearly two years, according to Axios.

Greenblatt’s departure comes before the peace plan has even been released, which likely does not bode well for its prospects.

Kushner rolled out the economic component of the plan in June. The plan would create a $50 billion fund that would provide aid to the Palestinian Authority and increase trade with neighboring countries, though it’s unclear where the money would come from.

But the plan was immediately criticized by experts for ignoring reality.

Kushner's plan "treats the West Bank and Gaza as a single entity, which is great so far as the Palestinians are concerned but runs contrary to current Israeli policy and is also belied by the facts on the ground,” wrote Michael Koplow, policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, describing it as “the Monty Python sketch of Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives.”

The proposal was immediately rejected by Palestinian leaders. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said there would be no agreement without a solution that involves a Palestinian state. “We will not be slaves of Kushner and Greenblatt and the other one, Friedman,” he said.

The plan was also ripped by Daniel Kurtzer, who was U.S. ambassador to Israel under George W. Bush.

“I would give this so-called plan a C- from an undergraduate student,” Kurtzer tweeted. “The authors of the plan clearly understand nothing.”

Berkowitz’s ascent on the “peace team” has not made former diplomats more optimistic about the prospect of Middle East peace. Martin Indyk, who served as special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Obama, said that the administration managed to replace the unqualified architect of a widely-panned peace plan with someone even worse.

“If Avi Berkowitz is [Greenblatt’s] replacement it’s a considerable downgrade in the position. He’s Kushner’s 29-year-old assistant,” he wrote. “Nice guy but does not have the weight or experience of Trump’s former real estate lawyer.”

Igor Derysh

Igor Derysh is a New York-based political writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.

Article Link Link also features photos/other links.


 
... Berkowitz is a 29-year-old friend of Kushner’s who graduated from Harvard Law School in 2016 and met the president’s son-in-law during a pickup basketball game at a Passover celebration in Phoenix, as Business Insider reported in 2017. ...

The plan was also ripped by Daniel Kurtzer, who was U.S. ambassador to Israel under George W. Bush.

“I would give this so-called plan a C- from an undergraduate student,” Kurtzer tweeted. “The authors of the plan clearly understand nothing.” ...

:rofl:

This would be so funny if it wasn't so serious.

:facepalm:
 
FJAG said:
:rofl:

This would be so funny if it wasn't so serious.

:facepalm:

This is amazing. I hide my boredom when the wife drags me to Homesense better than Trump hides the blatant nepotism. And I literally tell her to her face that I hate going to Homesense.

I mean, I get that the boots won’t lick themselves, but even by the standards of Trump’s appointments record this is profoundly disappointing. The administration is a sycophantocracy.
 
Saw this today in Canadian Politics,

FSTO said:
Right up there with the series of videos of Joe Biden being the creepy uncle with young girls.

Speaking of "creepy",

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Access_Hollywood_tape#Alleged_other_tapes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormy_Daniels%E2%80%93Donald_Trump_scandal

Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations

The day after his inauguration ,

2017 Women's March
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Women%27s_March
"The largest single-day protest in U.S. history."

George Conway slams Trump for calling Biden 'creepy': You 'palled around with Jeffrey Epstein'
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/443098-george-conway-slams-trump-for-calling-biden-creepy-you-palled

etc...

https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNRm8aZciOtn8Jg81jiQ1qZVEmmUFg%3A1568909733923&ei=pamDXYSGOIutUsCKnuAO&q=trump+creepy&oq=trump+creepy&gs_l=psy-ab.12...0.0..11609...0.0..0.0.0.......0......gws-wiz.lZEbIn6xUBE&ved=0ahUKEwjE7P-apN3kAhWLlhQKHUCFB-wQ4dUDCAo#spf=1568909750293



 
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