What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Berkut]

This is kind og stunning in its catastrophe. I am: triggered.

[jimmy olsen]

Welcome President Silvio Trumpusconi

Isn't Trump being a Silvio Berlusconi level leader one of the better possible results at this point?

[Jacob]

Welcome President Silvio Trumpusconi

Isn't Trump being a Silvio Berlusconi level leader one of the better possible results at this point?

Yeah if I set the range of my expectations for Trump it's Berlusconi as best case, Chavez as worst case.

[mongers]

Welcome President Silvio Trumpusconi

Isn't Trump being a Silvio Berlusconi level leader one of the better possible results at this point?

Yeah if I set the range of my expectations for Trump it's Berlusconi as best case, Chavez as worst case.

Oh I think you can go lower than that, Hugo didn't have nukes or even a functioning military for that matter. 

[Phillip V]

It's a virtuous circle for GOP.  It goes like this:

1)  Fuck the little guy.
2)  Little guy gets angry and can no longer be reasonably expected to not be a bigot.
3)  GOP wins the election.
4)  Go back to 1, harder.

That's what you get when the North de-industrialises, they turn into the South.

Solution to the problem, promote industralisation / innovation zones in deprived areas. Also focus on things like poverty & increasing education standards for all.

What the heck is an innovation zone.

And haven't we been "fighting a war on poverty" and throwing money at education for the past 50 years?

[Admiral Yi]

What the heck is an innovation zone.

Tax breaks and hiring credits.

[jimmy olsen]

Trump's been to two national intelligence briefs. Pence has been to every one.

http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-intelligence-briefing-president-elect-leaving-daily-analyst-findings-vice-2450707

Trump Intelligence Briefing: President-Elect Leaving Daily Analyst Findings To Vice President-Elect Mike Pence

By Marcy Kreiter @marcykreiter On 11/23/16 AT 8:48 PM

President-elect Donald Trump, a neophyte when it comes to security issues, reportedly has declined daily intelligence briefings, leaving the details to Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday Trump has decided instead to concentrate on filling key national security posts.

A senior official who is privy to the same briefings President Barack Obama receives told the Post receiving such briefings would help bring Trump up to speed on world events.

"Trump has a lot of catching up to do," the official told the Post.

Trump has received just two briefings since he claimed victory, the first within days of the election and the second Tuesday before he headed to Florida for Thanksgiving, the Post said.

The President's Daily Brief is a classified document summarizing key security developments and insights from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. It also updates covert CIA programs and typically is delivered each morning.

"The last three presidents-elect used the intelligence briefings offered during the transition to literally study the national security issues that they would be facing and the world leaders with whom they would be interacting as president," Michael Morell, former deputy CIA director who supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, told the Post.

"The president-elect is missing out on a golden opportunity to learn about the national security threats and challenges facing our nation, knowledge that would be extremely valuable to have when he takes the oath of office and when he steps into the Situation Room for the first time."

Trump also has yet to meet with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has submitted his resignation, or other top intelligence officials except for Adm. Mike Rogers, who is the director of the National Security Agency and is said to be in the running to replace Clapper.

Trump selected Rep. Mike Pompeo to head the CIA and retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as his national security adviser.
Related Stories

Flynn is an anti-Islamist who has said Islamist militancy poses an existential threat to the United States. He served as Trump's national security adviser during the campaign and seems to have the same loose relationship with facts that has been a Trump trademark.

His Flynn Intel Group consulting business has ties to Middle Eastern countries, the New York Times reported, adding he took a paid speaking engagement with Russia Today and sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the network's anniversary party in Moscow. He has labeled the current administration's reluctance to use the description "radical Islamic terrorism" as "the worst kind of political correctness."

Pompeo, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, is a foe of the Iran nuclear deal and has called former NSA secrets leaker Edward Snowden a traitor who should be put to death. He also is a proponent of harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding.

Pompeo fought administration efforts to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, blocking efforts to move the prisoners to the mainland and downplaying hunger strikes at the facility.

[jimmy olsen]

Lol 

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/307502-ivanka-on-trumps-sexual-comments-about-her-if-he-wasnt-my

A quote from Ivanka Trump surfaced Thanksgiving morning, showing her reaction to her father commenting on her appearance on a 2006 talk show.

Donald Trump, now the president-elect, has made numerous comments over the years regarding his eldest daughter's looks.

On Thanksgiving morning, journalist Sarah Kendzior tweeted out a remark from Ivanka Trump in an August 2006 "Quotables" section of The Chicago Tribune that revealed her reaction.

"If he wasn't my father, I would spray him with Mace," she said.

[Martinus]

Lol 

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/307502-ivanka-on-trumps-sexual-comments-about-her-if-he-wasnt-my

A quote from Ivanka Trump surfaced Thanksgiving morning, showing her reaction to her father commenting on her appearance on a 2006 talk show.

Donald Trump, now the president-elect, has made numerous comments over the years regarding his eldest daughter's looks.

On Thanksgiving morning, journalist Sarah Kendzior tweeted out a remark from Ivanka Trump in an August 2006 "Quotables" section of The Chicago Tribune that revealed her reaction.

"If he wasn't my father, I would spray him with Mace," she said.

I know you people disagree, but to me they seem like a cool family that likes each other.

[CountDeMoney]

lol, SuKKKers.

The Plum Line
Opinion
The Washington Post

How long before the white working class realizes Trump was just scamming them?
By Paul Waldman November 23

While we're still analyzing the election results and debating the importance of different factors to the final outcome, everyone agrees that white working class voters played a key part in Donald Trump's victory, in some cases by switching their votes and in some cases by turning out when they had been nonvoters before.

And now that he's about to take office, he's ready to deliver on what he promised them, right? Well, maybe not so much:

    President-elect Donald Trump abruptly abandoned some of his most tendentious campaign promises Tuesday, saying he does not plan to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email system or the dealings of her family foundation, has an "open mind" about a climate-change accord from which he vowed to withdraw the United States and is no longer certain that torturing terrorism suspects is a good idea.

The billionaire real estate developer also dismissed any need to disentangle himself from his financial holdings, despite rising questions about how his global business dealings might affect his decision-making as the nation's chief executive.

And it's not just that; at the same time, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are getting ready to move on their highest priorities, cutting taxes for the wealthy, scrapping oversight on Wall Street, and lightening regulations on big corporations.

Imagine you're one of those folks who went to Trump rallies and thrilled to his promises to take America back from the establishment, who felt your heart stir as he promised to torture prisoners, who got your "Trump That Bitch" T-shirt, who was overjoyed to finally have a candidate who tells it like it is. What are you thinking as you watch this?

If you have any sense, you're coming to the realization that it was all a scam. You got played. While you were chanting "Lock her up!" he was laughing at you for being so gullible. While you were dreaming about how you'd have an advocate in the Oval Office, he was dreaming about how he could use it to make himself richer. He hasn't even taken office yet and everything he told you is already being revealed as a lie.

During the campaign, Trump made two kinds of promises to those white working class voters. One was very practical, focused on economics. In coal country, he said he'd bring back all the coal jobs that have been lost to cheap natural gas (even as he promotes more fracking of natural gas; figure that one out). In the industrial Midwest, he said he'd bring back all the labor-intensive factory jobs that were mostly lost to automation, not trade deals. These promises were utterly ludicrous, but most of the target voters seemed not to care.

The second kind of promise was emotional and expressive. It was about turning back the clock to a time when immigrants hadn't come to your town, when women weren't so uppity, when you could say whatever you wanted and you didn't feel like the culture and the economy were leaving you behind. So Trump said he'd toss Hillary Clinton in jail, force everyone to say "Merry Christmas" again, and sue those dastardly liberal news organizations into submission.

And of course, there were promises — like building a wall on the southern border and making Mexico pay for it just so they know who's boss — that claimed to serve a practical purpose but also had an important expressive purpose. And now one by one Trump is casting them all off.

So what are we left with? What remains is Trump's erratic whims, his boundless greed, and the core of Republican policies Congress will pursue, which are most definitely not geared toward the interests of working class whites. He can gut environmental regulations, but that doesn't mean millions of people are going to head back to the coal mines — it was market forces more than anything else that led to coal's decline. He can renegotiate trade deals, but that doesn't mean that the labor-intensive factory jobs are coming back. And by the way, the high wages, good benefits, and job security those jobs used to offer? That was thanks to labor unions, which Republicans are now going to try to destroy once and for all.

Had Hillary Clinton won the election, the white working class might have gotten some tangible benefits — a higher minimum wage, overtime pay, paid family and medical leave, more secure health insurance, and so on. Trump and the Republicans oppose all that. So what did the white working class actually get? They got the election itself. They got to give a big middle finger to the establishment, to the coastal elites, to immigrants, to feminists, to college students, to popular culture, to political correctness, to every person and impersonal force they see arrayed against them. And that was it.

So what happens in two years when there's a congressional election and two years after that when Trump runs for a second term? Those voters may look around and say, Hey wait a minute. That paradise of infinite winning Trump promised? It didn't happen. My community still faces the same problems it did before. There's no new factory in town with thousands of jobs paying great salaries. Everybody doesn't have great health insurance with no cost-sharing for incredibly low premiums. I still hear people speaking Spanish from time to time. Women and minorities are still demanding that I treat them with respect. Music and movies and TV still make me feel like I'm being left behind. When Trump told me he'd wipe all that away, he was conning me. In fact, in many ways he was the fullest expression of the caricature of politicians (everything they say is a lie, they're only out for themselves) I thought I was striking back against when I supported him.

Those voters may decide to vote for a Democrat next time. Or they may be demobilized, deciding that there isn't much point to voting at all. The nearly all-white areas where turnout shot up in 2016 might settle right back down to where they used to be.

Or maybe Trump will find a way to actually improve the lives of working class voters. That's theoretically possible, but absolutely nothing he has done or said so far suggests that he has any idea how to do it, or even the inclination. So he may try to keep the fires of hatred, resentment, and fear burning, in the hopes that people forget that he hasn't given them the practical things he said he would.

[Jacob]

I agree with analysis of the facts - Trump conned those voters - but I am skeptical of the two primary scenarios the writer offers - that those voters will wake up and vote Democrat, or Trump will actual attempt to deliver.

Some other likely scenarios include:

1) Trump et. al. pick scapegoats to blame for his failure to deliver on his promises, whipping people into more of a fervour to keep them voting for him.

2) While they reject Trump, those voters double down on his direction and follow someone who makes similar promises only moreso; potentially sincerely this time.

[Grinning_Colossus]

We need barnstorming left-populists who can convince them that the Republicans/Trump are to blame for their problems and play up labor organization and social democracy. But they need to lay off the social liberalism until the white working class is reasonably estranged from the Republicans.

[PRC]

I don't think it matters to the Trump voters that they were conned by him or the Republicans in Congress... they'll still blame the Democrats for their trials & tribulations.

[Barrister]

I don't think it matters to the Trump voters that they were conned by him or the Republicans in Congress... they'll still blame the Democrats for their trials & tribulations.

No, I think many Trump voters are going to feel conned (since he, you know, did con them by promising things that were impossible).  Not all of them, maybe not even most of them.  But in an election where Trump won by the narrowest hair's breadth, it won't take much.

On a related tone, I'm going to call it - Trump will face a significant primary challenger in 2020 (if he decided to run again at all).  The only question in my mind is if it is going to be a more establishment Republican, or someone who tries to out-Trump the Donald.

[Legbiter]

That Paul Waldman guy typed out that screed CdM quoted while covered in his own excrement if his twitter account is any indication. Meltdown is over 9000!