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Trumpery

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Trumpery

Late Night Open Thread: Missed Like An Aching Tooth

by Anne Laurie|  January 25, 20211:27 am| 42 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Trumpery, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up

Not one damn thing. #ThingsImGonnaMissAboutTrump pic.twitter.com/tXnMUxN3MZ

— Jen (@JenTusch) January 20, 2021

Of course he’ll never entirely go away — even if he weren’t catnip to the Media Village Idiots, we’d still have the impeachment trial to deal with. But isn’t it lovely not to have to approach every news break (and there are so many fewer such) as potentially life-threatening?

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The Russians are showing clips of Trump walking up the steps with toilet paper stuck to his shoe and refer to him as "the President with the smallest hands" on Kremlin-controlled state TV, so there's that.https://t.co/9q6l5i2QRN

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) January 19, 2021

#ThingsImGonnaMissAboutTrump
The awesome works of art he inspired. pic.twitter.com/XL65mQkt15

— carol?????????????? (@maloryknoxx) January 21, 2021

Nancy in the background #ThingsImGonnaMissAboutTrump pic.twitter.com/YPbabHBDk5

— Biden Won (@subt3xt) January 21, 2021

#ThingsImGonnaMissAboutTrump

How he united people… pic.twitter.com/k0mzi2GeRy

— Cryptoe the NeverTrumper – #ArrestThemAll (@cryptoe2020) January 21, 2021

Level achieved: Send him back.
Next level: Lock him up. https://t.co/1380iiz9IW

— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) January 20, 2021

#ThingsImGonnaMissAboutTrump

The way he always wore it better. pic.twitter.com/mVvLOw0OYn

— The Adults Are In Charge ?????? (@ErlynneCC) January 21, 2021

Who knew Melania had such excellent comic timing https://t.co/fatD0UBZJ1

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) January 21, 2021

The @MuseumofLondon is adding the Trump Baby Blimp to its protest collection. The giant balloon depicts Donald Trump as a screaming orange baby and greeted the U.S. president when he visited London in 2018.https://t.co/3XemXXVcK7

— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) January 18, 2021

Late Night Open Thread: Missed Like An Aching ToothPost + Comments (42)

Good Riddance

by Cheryl Rofer|  January 20, 20218:17 am| 268 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads

Marine One arrives to pick up POTUS pic.twitter.com/2OSdq3lmJ0

— joe johns (@joejohnscnn) January 20, 2021

Trump’s White House departure has been delayed by about half an hour. He’s still expected to speak at Joint Base Andrews — notably without a teleprompter.

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) January 20, 2021

Typically Trump is late for departure. No truth to the rumor that they’re having to pry him from the bedpost pic.twitter.com/QAY2BBvRtI

— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) January 20, 2021

The scene at JBA pic.twitter.com/y7p8bpajwT

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 20, 2021

Donald Trump has left the White House pic.twitter.com/qm8hA1Mqdu

— Tom Namako (@TomNamako) January 20, 2021

Good RiddancePost + Comments (268)

Christ It’s Almost Fucking Over

by John Cole|  January 19, 20215:41 pm| 139 Comments

This post is in: Trumpery

A visual representation of how I feel after four years of Trump and a year of pandemic:

Christ It's Almost Fucking Over

I got the very welcome news that my parents will be getting their covid vaccinations in a few weeks. Just a couple more weeks, and they will be safe and able to resume their lives. It’s such a relief. I’m so glad they listened to me in the early days and took it seriously, and stayed at home and let me do things for them rather than have them go out and expose themselves to danger.

As I noted elsewhere, I know they aren’t going to live forever, but I will be god damned if this virus or by the callous disregard, incompetence, and malignant negligence from the tumor in the White House.

I hope he is in court every day of the remainder of his life before he finally chokes on a double cheeseburger and oozes his way off this planet.

Christ It’s Almost Fucking OverPost + Comments (139)

Incompetence Is Its Own Reward

by Tom Levenson|  January 19, 20211:09 pm| 77 Comments

This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads, Politics, Trumpery

Here’s a bit of contextually good news:

President Trump’s last-ditch effort to remove civil service protections from tens of thousands of career federal employees appears to have lost steam, facing time constraints and legal hurdles as the administration prepares to leave office, officials said.

This was to have been the finishing blow in Trump’s and the GOP’s long attempted murder of the independent Federal civil service.

Incompetence Is Its Own Reward

Instead, it collapsed in a broad spectrum display of gaffers.

The order gave agencies until Tuesday to review potentially affected jobs. But as of Monday night, no…federal agencies had delivered a list of affected employees to White House officials for review, with the exception of the Office of Personnel Management, which also rushed to reshuffle much of its staff of roughly 3,500 people into the new category.

My guess as to why? An administration whose baseline level of competence was never that high found itself embroiled in weeks of election denialism. Eyes flew off the ball.  If Trump had won, this would have all sailed through sometime over the next month or so. Without that luxury of time, and with a fair amount of WH staff distracted or disengaged, and confronting a bureaucracy that had less than zero interest in complying with Trump’s command? Not a chance.

This is a big Biden deal. If the White House had managed to drive this through, and especially if they had then managed to salt the executive branch with the same kind of folks who peopled the Iraq occupation, the damage they’ve already done to functional governance would have been made damn near permanent.

Trump and his cabal have still managed to do plenty of damage in the last two and a half months, of course. But thank Dog for the small mercy that they just aren’t good enough to swing the wrecking ball as far and hard as they want.

Image: John William Waterhouse, The Remorse of Nero After the Murder of His Mother, 1878

Incompetence Is Its Own RewardPost + Comments (77)

Revisiting November 2016 predictions

by David Anderson|  January 18, 20218:42 am| 151 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Election 2016, Politics, Trump Crime Cartel

Now that this error is almost over, I think it is time to revisit predictions from November 2016.

TLDR: We’re fucked hard and good

Yep!

I expect the Supreme Court to be a 5-4 reactionary majority on voter rights. I would not be shocked if there is a bill filed to expand the court to 11 or 13 Justices filed and floating around as a sword of Damocles to threaten Kennedy to vote for anything coming off of the Susan B. Anthony fund’s wishlist. I expect the filibuster to be gone by lunchtime on the first day of the new Congress.
 

Yes, there is a reactionary majority on voting rights and it looks to be durable. Susan B. Anthony List wishlist will be fulfilled but through a different mechanism than I thought. The filibuster is still limping along.

I would give myself a 1.5 out of 3

I expect the Republican Party to use their position of concentrated minorities against a dispersed majority to do as much as they can to lock in as much of a partisan tilt as possible. Packing the courts is the big one as the Democrats have majorities on most of the Appeals circuits right now. Getting to Republican majorities via packing in 40 something Federalist society drones is extraordinarily efficient as that can only be altered quickly if the Democrats can get a trifecta and they re-pack. It’s nasty but efficient.

Yep! 1 for 1

We’re going to see massive mistakes of basic execution (and many executions that should not occur even if one supports the death penalty) as competence does not matter. We will be governed by the Brietbart comments section. Any policy (even if it is a good one) that is more complex than allowing contributors to use the commons as a waste dump or passing out large checks to the already comfortable or beating up on liberals/Democrats/Other will get fucked up. Deep Water Horizon in the Trump Administration would still be leaking.

Yep, significantly more federal executions. Significantly more use of the commons as a dumping ground and upward redistribution of wealth. I under-estimated the clusterfuckedness of incompetency and inattention when it came to COVID.

3 for 3

We are going to be in caveat emptor low trust/high verification cost world as fidicuary duty obligations disappear, as the CFPB disappears and Dodd-Frank unwinds.

I was wrong on Dodd Frank —its sails got trimmed by regulation but not much by law.

1 for 2

We’re going to see any larger opioid outbreaks in rural counties as Medicaid funded drug treatment will be harder.

We’re going to see a lot of counties that voted for Trump continue to get kicked in the balls economically.

We’re going to lose a lot of people that have options to go elsewhere in the world. Immigrants with an education will find other places to go.

3 for 3

A lot of what has happened was predictable as it was predicted.

51 more hours of this error.

Revisiting November 2016 predictionsPost + Comments (151)

Late Night Open Thread: What Is Best in Life?… (Redux)

by Anne Laurie|  January 18, 20211:20 am| 63 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Repubs in Disarray!, Trumpery, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up, Schadenfreude

There’s a high-souled, pure-minded joy in considering the installation of a working (Democratic, of course) government. There’s also much schadenfreude!

LOL I love that as a last gesture of fealty to Trump the bitter-enders will have to get up at five in the morning to be ready to see him off. https://t.co/TpdpvxDA5l

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) January 18, 2021


… Because, rumor has it, if he leaves early enough, he’ll still be ‘President’ when the helicopter lands at Marred-A-Largo. Also, he refuses to be in DC when Biden is inaugurated, for reasons. Sad, cranky alte kaker reasons.

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ETA:

Trump is leaving White House early enough Wednesday morning that he's still president when he lands in Florida and motorcades to Mar-a-Lago, aides told me last week.

Departure events on South Lawn before he boards Marine One and at airport before he boards AF1 for final time. https://t.co/4FX6OVcIaf

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 17, 2021


‘Forty-two gun salutes, because I’m *special*’

There’s no one left https://t.co/qmp0Co5cuW

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 18, 2021

are you threatening me with a good time https://t.co/u4IK8QOo1i

— kilgore trout, brad r’s brother (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 16, 2021


(Yeah, it’s Rand Paul, so you know it’s pure BS.)

I’m glad I haven’t gotten used to the capacity of people to abase and humiliate themselves over this ludicrous old man. https://t.co/YYy6gp8IgP

— KochBroHat (@Popehat) January 18, 2021

pic.twitter.com/hWr7eFGEde

— Michael Huggins (@MichaelHugg2591) January 15, 2021

Late Night Open Thread: <em>What Is Best in Life?… </em> (Redux)Post + Comments (63)

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Final Daze

by Anne Laurie|  January 15, 202111:00 pm| 177 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Open Threads, Repubs in Disarray!, Trump Crime Cartel, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up, Schadenfreude

I’m also giving Trump a major send-off, I’m just not sure I can build the catapult fast enough. https://t.co/7jiTTcHs9a

— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) January 15, 2021

After this week, we’ve all earned some easy targets…

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Trump has banned aides from mentioning Richard Nixon's name. https://t.co/cKcpEYzqkr

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 15, 2021

In his final days in office, President Donald Trump has found the parts of the job he loved replaced by cold legal warnings, forced video addresses and a shrinking circle of downtrodden aides, all anxiously wondering what life will be like after noon on January 20.

Gone are the clicks of flashing cameras. Absent is the roar of a cheering crowd. Instead of a commanding final full week of winning, the President is playing the role of victim and not a gracious leader departing office.

Trump has been consumed by the unraveling of his presidency during his last days in office, according to people around him, which included a casual discussion among advisers recently about a possible resignation…

He told one adviser during an expletive-laden conversation recently never to bring up the ex-president ever again. During the passing mention of resigning this week, Trump told people he couldn’t count on Vice President Mike Pence to pardon him like Gerald Ford did Nixon, anyway…

Inside the building, Trump has been weathering a second impeachment and growing isolation from his onetime allies in sullen desolation. He has grown more and more worried about what legal or financial calamities may await him when he is no longer president, people who have spoken to him said, fueled by warnings from lawyers and advisers. He is weighing pardons, including for himself and his family, as he attempts to muster a legal team for another impeachment trial. And he is resentful of Republicans who he feels abandoned him in his hour of need, including the GOP leaders of the House and Senate…

As one of their final acts, Trump’s team is working to organize a crowd to see him off on the morning of Biden’s inauguration, when he plans to depart Washington while still president and is expecting a major send-off. Even though some of his allies had encouraged him to attend Biden’s inauguration, and Trump quizzed his circle on whether he should, few ever expected him to participate in the swearing-in of his successor.

Trump told people he did not like the idea of departing Washington for a final time as an ex-president, flying aboard an airplane no longer known as Air Force One. He also did not particularly like the thought of requesting the use of the plane from Biden, according to a person familiar with the matter…

Lots more at the link.

Quite a description of Trump's epic failures, from @djrothkopf:https://t.co/ZXxnAbZ7iQ pic.twitter.com/If2w1AGjtA

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 14, 2021

Reuters also puts the boot in — “Inside Trump’s final days: Aides struggle to contain an angry, isolated president“:

… Trump had wanted to join the thousands of hardcore followers who assembled at Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. He told aides in the days leading up to the rally that he planned to accompany them to demonstrate his ire at Congress as it moved to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s November election victory.

But the Secret Service kept warning him that agents could not guarantee his safety if he went ahead, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump relented and instead hunkered down at the White House to watch television images of the mob rioting he is accused of triggering…

Trump has suffered a sudden rupture with his vice president, the departure of disgusted senior advisers, his abandonment by a small but growing number of Republican lawmakers, the loss of his cherished Twitter megaphone, and a rush by corporations and others to distance themselves from him and his businesses…

Trump’s focus on claims of voter fraud, egged on by personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, consumed most of his days. Two days after the election, said a source familiar with the meeting, daughter Ivanka Trump was in a meeting with senior White House staff and said words to the effect that, “We accomplished so much and we had a great run.” A representative for Ivanka Trump declined to comment.

But no one in Trump’s orbit could convince him to explicitly acknowledge defeat and use his remaining weeks in office to hold events to tout accomplishments that he and his aides are proud of…

Even before the riot, Trump’s mood had been darkening as dozens of court cases filed by his legal team and surrogates failed to overturn the voting results in key swing states, people familiar with the matter said.

Aides who would enjoy dropping by the Oval Office to check on Trump found themselves avoiding him lest he give them an assignment related to voter fraud that they knew was impossible, three sources said…

Pence and Trump did not speak for days after the Capitol riot. The vice president had to be spirited to safety in the Capitol basement after rioters, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” penetrated the building…

would he settle for me launching water balloons filled with cat piss at him as he’s wheeled out of town in a garbage can https://t.co/QtqNmum4ri

— kilgore trout, brad r’s brother (@KT_So_It_Goes) January 15, 2021

Tonight | As he leaves office, Trump owes hundreds of millions to a bank that doesn't want to do business with him.@davidenrich tells @caroloffcbc "He's going to need to find money…and I frankly don't know where he's going to get it." pic.twitter.com/GWohkYrBOc

— As It Happens (@cbcasithappens) January 14, 2021

Pence. Kushner. McEnany. Ingraham. Even Giuliani… Here Are All People Trump Now Reportedly Feels Have Betrayed Him https://t.co/gYVRKrAckH

— Jacqueline (@jptrib1) January 14, 2021

Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Final DazePost + Comments (177)

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