So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

[Stavros]

The Guardian reports on those 'evangelical Christians' ecstatic at the sight of their man standing outside the 'President's church' in Washington DC holding up a Bible. Indeed, one was so excited she burst into 'tongues' which has always made me laugh as there are no 'tongues', just gibberish. Whatever. One in the family put it like this:

“I believe it’s like Ephesians 6:10 through 19,” Horbowy said from Florida. “I believe this is a president who wears the full armor of God.”

Pity he didn't turn some pages back for this:
Ephesians 4:31-32:
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...p-evangelicals

[Stavros]

The Russian Connection is back...but will it become headline news?

"The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the fifth and final volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which details "counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities."
Why it matters: The bipartisan, 996-page report goes further than the Mueller report in showing the extent of Russia's connections to members of the Trump campaign, and how the Kremlin was able to take advantage of the transition team's inexperience to gain access to sensitive information."

• Senate Intelligence acting chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election. ...
• Senate Intelligence ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.): “At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 stands as the most comprehensive examination of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to date – a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections. ... This cannot happen again."

https://www.axios.com/senate-intelli...6220ab35b.html

[Stavros]

Listen up, all you suckers and losers-

"Speaking from the Oval Office on Friday, Trump publicly denied the Atlantic article and claimed to have done more for the military than “almost anybody.”
-https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/sep/04/donald-trump-military-officers-north-carolina-votes-joe-biden-coronavirus-covid-19-latest-news-updates

Hmmm, anybody? Including General Wlliam DePuy?
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Port...ooks/depuy.pdf

And how about the time when the President accused US troops of being thieves?-

"He suggested that troops in Iraq stole the money they were supposed to be handing out: “I want to know who were the soldiers that had that job, because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...-even-know-it/

[Stavros]

Hmmmm....Spooky....

"Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.
Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...b-spy-new-book

[mrtrebus]

he's a cunt

[Stavros]

I watched all of the 45th President's speech at CPAC last night, and it was as expected, deluded and pathetic. A tribute act that took the viewer down memory lane, repeating more or less everything he has said since 2015 as if nothing had happened since that needed to change. The same litany of fears, to which he did brandish a new lance, the spectre of women's sport dying as so many transgenders smash their records, or 'biological males' as he called them, in what was probably scripted for him. Were he asked to name one transgedered athlete, who would he ID?

He talked about peace in the Middle East which 'they said could never happen' (who are 'they'?), as if he had accolades to share, when the US was, under his watch up to its neck in the savage war in the Yemen he did nothing, absolutely nothing to end, just as he complained about Joe Biden and the USA's 'Endless Wars' but did not end them himself by withdrawing all US troops from foreign fields.

He lied and lied and lied, at one point claiming he was responsible for creating in the US 'the greatest economy in the history of the world' or some similar rubbish, the kind of rubbish that makes you wonder if his speechwriters are as thick as he is -does anyone know who, when where and how had 'the greatest economy in the history of the world'? It can't be the USA with its trillions of dollars of household debt, its trillions f dollars of government debt, and the fact there were fewer people in work when Trump left office than when he entered it.

The call for election reform is already under way in those States where Republicans are determined to make it harder for people to register to vote, and presumably to vote on election day.

He went through the list -the New York Times, ominously, calls it a 'hit list'- of Senate and House Republicans who voted against him, and whe naming Mitch McConnell provoked almost as many boos as Liz Cheney. He only made one categorical statement, that he is no going to break away and form a new party, but that handcuffs the party to a man who refuses to accept that he not only lost the Presidency, but under his leadership, lost the House and the Senate, a triple whammy not experienced since the 1930s, but as the election was 'stolen' he cannot be blamed.

And that is the problem the party has -no attempt to engage with failure and ask why it has no policies other than, on education -'open the schools now!' (On a Sunday?). On Immigration -'stop it!', on elections -'one day only!', and on energy 'Stop the Windmills, they kill birds and don't work when there ain't no wind!'

Most shameful of all, but not surprising, no mention of Mike Pence, whose life was at risk throughout that grim January 6 when Trump called him a coward, inflaming the mob. No mention of the people who lost their lives that day, indeed, no mention at all of the most sustained attack on the Capitol since 1812, or the para-military insurrectionists who did it, chanting his name. One wonders if they consider this lack of recognition a betrayal of their 'sacrifice'. But if this man cannot accept losing an election, cannot accept the responsibility for the sedition that took place on January 6, then he remains unfit to hold public office.

It is fine for an insignificant nobody like Schlapp to attack Christians for their humility and the need to apologize when things go wrong, he says the time has come for 'Conservatives' to stop it- 'never apologize' he recommends. But if this is what the Republicans offer, four more years of grievance politics, a constant complaint that the 2020 election was 'rigged' or 'stolen', at what point in the next four years will people say 'enough!' Change the record!

Teasy-weasy may ask 'Who will it be?', but with only 55% at the Conference wanting it to be him, he may need to be more emphatic sooner rather than later, or maybe he prefers being 'Kingmaker' in the Court, every new Republican candidate making the trip to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the Ring, and wear the Halo of Donald's Endorsement?

The mid-terms will beg the question, but what will be the answer?

[Stavros]

So Mike Pence is still dismissed as a coward, and Mitch McConnell has gone from being a political 'hack' to a 'dumb son of a bitch' -but does this mean that both Pence and McConnell will campaign for the Republican Party of Trump and not respond to the abuse of a man it sees they cannot live without? The oddest thing of all is that in the UK it is considered a fact of political life that voters don't vote for divided parties, but will Trump's now relentless attacks on his own party and some of its most prominent representatives have a negative impact on the mid-terms? And what is Murdoch doing from his Cotswold's hideaway? Fox News does't seem to be interested in the 'civil war' in the GOP, but has Murdoch stopped talking to Trump? I am not in the US so I don't get the daily nuances but it seems the disarray in the party has not become headline news.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...hao-mar-a-lago

[filghy2]

It's not much of a civil war when the shots are mostly being fired by one side and the targets are afraid to fire back. The Republican establishment's plan to de-Trumpify the party seems to be to hope that he'll just fade away without them having to do anything to make that happen.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...ty-spat-481222

[broncofan]

McConnell is too shrewd to ever tangle with Trump except to put a final nail in his coffin. He's not going to get into a public spat with him because Trump is the better demagogue whereas McConnell is a master manipulator. It is a battle between a man who supports pure partisanship and a man who is single-mindedly selfish. McConnell is loyal to party over principle and Trump to self over his constituents.

If McConnell is as committed to the GOP as I think he cannot really go after Trump because it would fracture the base. It may be in the best interests of the GOP to move away from Trumpism but they can't be seen to be doing it deliberately or they will lose voters. And what does a move away from Trumpism mean? Continued partisanship, obstructionism, bad faith, but do it in a way that is not as obviously corrupt, buffoonish, and unhinged looking.

[Stavros]

And what does a move away from Trumpism mean? Continued partisanship, obstructionism, bad faith, but do it in a way that is not as obviously corrupt, buffoonish, and unhinged looking.

Athough I agree with the point you are making, it means that in Congress the Republican Party represents nothing, merely a rejection of whatever it is that the Democrats and the President are proposing. McConnell has no other agenda than the one that was developed when Obama was President, but it also means that the people who voted for them can expect nothing other than the 'partisanship' and 'obstructionism' you list.

But in the States, the Republican Party of Trump is not so coy or locked into a condition of atrophy. They are busy demolishing the right to vote, to merge Tucker Carlson's hysterical view with their own, that there are simply too many 'obedient' Democrat voters and they must be taken out of the process.

The Party of Trump thus stands revealed as a Party that does have policies -to replace the US Constitution with a separate agenda that defines US politics in terms of an Either/Or dichotomy shaped by the historic 'heartbreak' of race. No attempt to re-define the purpose of the party, to amend its policy platform to appeal to a more diverse set of voters, many of whom are probably 'Conservatives' who in normal times would vote GOP.

Instead we have Trump's Revenge, Trump's Resentment, Trump's Bitterness, Trump's Accusation, and a lexicon of foul language and loathing, much of it directed by Trump at people, cowards and 'dumb sons of bitches' who he knows will continue to prostrate themselves before him, tongues ready to lick leather.

Why would anyone vote for such people? But is the base of Trump's support so solid they will turn out and vote in 2022, even for those members of the Trump Party their leader has called 'sons of bitches' or whichever is the latest slur?