US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2125

On February 20 2020 04:50 farvacola wrote:
The dislike for Bloomberg among the Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, and Biden fans I know is pretty consistent, so it’ll be interesting to see how the split goes down if they must choose between Bloomberg and Sanders.

White House spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, told reporters: “The president barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he’s an ex-congressman. He’s never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject.”

On February 20 2020 05:12 Nouar wrote:
A fun little tidbit from an english court : Assange's attorney registered a document (accepted by the court) that assesses that, through Rohrabacher, Trump offered a pardon to Assange if he denied that Russia was involved in the DNC hack.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/19/donald-trump-offered-julian-assange-pardon-russia-hack-wikileaks

Man, if there is a paper trail for that :-D
(no, just joking, Trump would dump Rohrabacher, known russian lover, by saying he doesn't know him and never talked to him. So nothing would happen, as there's a fuse, like always with Trump.)


edit : oh well, it didn't take long, I didn't read the english version of the article enough it seems (the french ones didn't mention that)

On February 20 2020 05:56 Mohdoo wrote:


This would be monumentally gigantic, right?

If the white house tries to convince Assange to lie about Russian involvement, to me that says the white house knew of russian involvement.

On February 20 2020 05:57 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Problem for Stephanie Grisham is that they've already found an old interview where he says he was directed by the white house and specifically Kelly to talk to Assange.

+ Show Spoiler +

On February 20 2020 06:07 Gorsameth wrote:
As gigantic as the President trying to pressure a foreign country into investigating the son of a political rival...

Also without any real evidence its a he said, she said between Kelly and Rohrabacher.

On February 20 2020 06:39 Simberto wrote:


Yeah, that is basically the problem with this.

Trump supporters don't care about any of his scandals. There could be a video of Trump shooting a pregnant women in the middle of the street, and then afterwards talking about how much fun it is to randomly shoot people, and that there really wasn't any other reason to shoot her.

And his cult would still either manage to never hear of it, or just accept it and assume that there was a good reason to shoot her.

It is really scary how many people are so desperate to submit to an authoritarian that they even accept Trump in that role. It is just crazy.

On February 20 2020 07:36 GreenHorizons wrote:


We're trained to submit to authoritarians in the home, at school, and in the workplace. Why would we not act that way politically?

On February 20 2020 08:49 Wombat_NI wrote:

It’s a bit of a stretch to extend that to the home and to a degree school IMO. Granted I had good parents and teachers.

That aside people tend to eventually resent figures who abuse their power and are hypocrites, even if they’re our parents. If women didn’t have daddy issues I’d have no romantic life whatsoever. Your teacher can be a hardass but if their discipline is fair and, crucially if they know how to teach their subject, you tend to accept that, even if just retrospectively.

There’s a segment of Trump’s base who more resemble domestic abuse victims, ‘he’s great and didn’t do this you just don’t understand’ kind of mentality.

For the record, although I imagine it’s not necessary as this is a good thread for understand intent and occasional hyperbole, I don’t mean to demean the horrendous experiences that domestic abuse victims undergo.

On February 20 2020 09:12 GreenHorizons wrote:


It's not just Trump. Bloomberg surging in the Democratic party speaks to the same trend.

Resentment isn't resistance unfortunately. For some the former manifests as the latter, but most people just push it downhill.

The authoritarian workplace just seeps into the home and school acts as both for many of the people there. The alienation and oppression we feel is pushed onto the next person based on snap judgments on weakness and proximity. In the workplace we see it from boss down, then the person leaves work and pushes it onto partners and kids. Then the partners and kids push it onto the weakest among them.

The same pattern takes place at schools from administrators, to principals, to teachers, to students, then among themselves, then to animals and inanimate objects.

It isn't entirely universal, in that people interrupt the chain in a variety of ways, but it looms over everything in a way that I don't find people following the same pattern politically as an aberration. At least that's how I see it.

On February 20 2020 09:24 Wombat_NI wrote:

Well my main point was more that for whatever reason I find a resentful child who hates/disowns their parents more commonplace in than a Trump diehard accepting he’s done, anything wrong ever.

Your general point I agree with i just don’t think it really extends to the parent/child relationship.

On February 20 2020 09:27 GreenHorizons wrote:


I'd agree that is the case with "good" parenting, I just don't think it is that common. More specifically that even when it is the case, many times there is an express asterisk that the rest of the world isn't like that and not to expect to change that.

The "Trump diehard" is just a different brand of the "Democrat/Republican diehard" (EDIT: or corporate diehards) imo.

On February 20 2020 10:03 Wombat_NI wrote:

I think they’re slightly distinct, perhaps not. Swamp-draining Trump is basically pardoning anyone who was guilty of political corruption and his base doesn’t care. I think that goes beyond partisanship and into weird territories.

I think the flagrancy of how this goes against his previous utterances and posturing and how it seemingly doesn’t matter at all is something worse.

Maybe there is some Democrat equivalent here, not seeing it currently.

As much as I agree with your position that centrist Democrats are barely distinguishable from their shitness from Trump, I don’t think even the centrist types can be this openly blatant without political consequence.

On February 20 2020 10:23 Nakajin wrote:
I think a part of what Trump diehards are showing us is that actually quite a lot of people just don't care about norms, laws and procedure, or at least care about it way way less than professional journalist and scholars were led to believe and also that there's in fact no constitutional divine strike that will smite the president when he break the law.
And there's certainly something to be said about how norms and constitutional laws allowed Congress to be transformed into somewhat of an empty void of procedural limbo probably didn't help with the anti-norms sentiment.

Although I'm somewhat reluctant about calling Trump "autocratic", he's certainly on the anti-liberal side and certainly a democratic cheaters, but IDK if I'd call someone who has not implement any autocratic policy an autocrat. (I mean he has done some terrible policy don't get me wrong, I'm just not sure they were quite autocratic) To me he's more like a Berlusconi type of character.

But I guess it's potato patato.

On February 20 2020 10:30 Wombat_NI wrote:

He’s shown almost nothing to paint him as anything other than an autocrat. If not in action, when he’s constrained then at least in desire. And also plenty of actions.

I’m not seeing many stretches there, it is what it is.