What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Syt]

[The Brain]

Zombies?

[Zanza]

SENATE REPUBLICANS feigned bewilderment the other day at why the White House insisted on including $1.75 billion to rebuild the FBI's downtown Washington headquarters in the latest pandemic relief bill.

In fact, it's no secret why President Trump would want such a thing — just another bit of sleaze oozing from his administration. As everyone in Congress knows, the Trump Organization's financial interests are heavily entangled in the prospects for the current FBI site.

A year after he took office, the president intervened personally to kill a plan, a decade in the works, to transfer the FBI to a campus in the D.C. suburbs. He did so despite the fact that the plan made undeniable sense: The FBI's 46-year-old J. Edgar Hoover Building, on Pennsylvania Avenue, has been crumbling for years, accommodates less than half the bureau's local staffing needs and is vulnerable to terrorist attack.

But shifting the FBI headquarters to the suburbs would clear the way for redeveloping its current site, a prime property ripe for shops, restaurants, high-end apartments — and a luxury hotel. That luxury hotel would compete with another one a block away on Pennsylvania Avenue: the Trump International, which, in 2018, provided the president's company with a substantial chunk of its revenue.

What's the nation's hotelier in chief to do? Following his personal intervention, the government announced that rather than moving the FBI, it would raze the building and rebuild on the same insecure, too-small site, which would force thousands of FBI staffers to move permanently to facilities in Idaho, Alabama and West Virginia. As for the cost, including to relocate more than 5,000 FBI headquarters personnel for years while construction was underway — well, no one could provide an estimate of that.

The Trump Organization's plan to sell its hotel's lease is on hold because of the pandemic, but the sale will surely be more viable, and the property more valuable, if the president is successful in eliminating a potential rival hotel across the street.

Still, GOP senators played dumb when asked why funding for a new FBI headquarters would be a priority for the White House in a bill meant for economic relief from the pandemic's ravages. "That's a big question," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who chairs the Appropriations Committee. "That makes no sense to me," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was more blunt; he called it a "mistake" to include the FBI building in the coronavirus stimulus measure.

In any other administration, self-dealing of this magnitude would be a scandal for the ages. In the Trump presidency, it's just another day. No one can keep up with the gusher of malfeasance, contempt for ethics and recklessness.

Another bit of corruption...

[11B4V]

Drain the swamp

[Syt]

My impression is that his base doesn't care, or if they do they think that the Democrats did the same, but a lot worse.

[The Brain]

Republicans love that crap.

[Tamas]

From about the prime time of Sarah Palin it was confirmed to me how every bloody time the so called moderate right does the same historical mistake: once they start tolerating the far-right they end up consumed by it. Seems like such a historic pattern.

Of course as the NYT guys Syt quoted points at it, maybe this has a simple explanation: most on the right share core "values" with the far-right, the moderation is mostly a cover from being called out on those "values", except for a wafer-thin middle class that breaks easily under pressure.

[Hamilcar]

Time for the US to learn from Weimar/Post-War Germany. Scrap your crappy constitution which is leading you to this authoritarian nightmare and have more enlightened nations impose a better, modern, democratic constitution.

[Hamilcar]

America is like the original democracy mainframe. Ancient, barely working with a bunch of patches, and nobody knows how to maintain it any more. Even the basic legal docs are written in ancient language (COBOL!). Upgrades have become impossible because any changes now cause unforseeable and unfixable issues all the way to permanent damage.

Just wipe the system and install the latest Democracy OS from the App Store. There are plenty of modern ones around in various developed European countries.

[The Brain]

America is more than a country though. It's an idea. The polished turd in a swamp.

Note: j/k, I love the US.

[Tonitrus]

Time for the US to learn from Weimar/Post-War Germany. Scrap your crappy constitution which is leading you to this authoritarian nightmare and have more enlightened nations impose a better, modern, democratic constitution.

If only Europe had learned from Weimar/Post-War Germany...as since that time, far more authoritarian nightmares have come, gone, and still persist there, than we have yet seen on the North American continent.

[Eddie Teach]

No constitution is proof to non-enforcement.

[Hamilcar]

Time for the US to learn from Weimar/Post-War Germany. Scrap your crappy constitution which is leading you to this authoritarian nightmare and have more enlightened nations impose a better, modern, democratic constitution.

If only Europe had learned from Weimar/Post-War Germany...as since that time, far more authoritarian nightmares have come, gone, and still persist there, than we have yet seen on the North American continent.

Patches. Europeans are on the whole far more free, and their governments far more stable than the US today.

[Razgovory]

Time for the US to learn from Weimar/Post-War Germany. Scrap your crappy constitution which is leading you to this authoritarian nightmare and have more enlightened nations impose a better, modern, democratic constitution.

If only Europe had learned from Weimar/Post-War Germany...as since that time, far more authoritarian nightmares have come, gone, and still persist there, than we have yet seen on the North American continent.

Patches. Europeans are on the whole far more free, and their governments far more stable than the US today.

There's like four countries in Europe that hasn't seen a collapse of their government in the last 100 years.  The problems of the US are mirrored in every country in Europe.  Let's not pretend otherwise.

[Sheilbh]

There's like four countries in Europe that hasn't seen a collapse of their government in the last 100 years.  The problems of the US are mirrored in every country in Europe.  Let's not pretend otherwise.

Really? What do you think problems are? Because I'm not sure if they're mirrored everywhere.