The Official Former President Trump thread

[DI Bruce Robertson]

The wall will stop the drugs- stop being so melodramatic.

[HTG]

34 minutes ago, Deplorable said:

The way black street gangs handle their business is to ride up and just let the bullets start flying. It's not a nice clean criminal to criminal scenario.

Naw. Germany is again falling for a dangerous ideology that will threaten freedom in the West. The USA and UK are going to team up with a bit of an ugly Russian government (Is there any other kind?) to save freedom, liberty, and all that is good in the world.

Nobody is going to round up 11 million people. Targeted raids of high visibility targets and throwing a few employers in jail out to do the trick.

 

 

 

You're an absolute fuckin screwball. 

[Deplorable]

Chief neocons John McCain and Lindsey Graham put out a harsh statement condemning Trump's executive order.

Trump's response:

Just think how lucky we are. If Hillary had been elected we would be setting up a no fly zone over Syria setting up a shooting war with Russia, arming Islamic terrorists to try and take over the country, and importing hundreds of thousands of poor and angry people who hate the West.

[doulikefish]

1 minute ago, HTG said:

You're an absolute fuckin screwball. 

Swampy the master troll nowadays

[Granny Danger]

I am sure the killing of six people at a mosque in Quebec has nothing to do with the hatred being stirred up in the USA.  No sir, not a thing.  I hope no one suggests otherwise.

[Baxter Parp]

[banana]

'Progressives' simply cannot stop being violent, hysterical crybullies. Really a fantastic ongoing example of what ideological indoctrination can do, where it ends up.

Every day is another reminder why a Trump presidency was a necessity.

 

[welshbairn]

40 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

I am sure the killing of six people at a mosque in Quebec has nothing to do with the hatred being stirred up in the USA.  No sir, not a thing.  I hope no one suggests otherwise.

It's possible it's a sectarian thing within Islam. One of the gunmen is said to be of Moroccan origin and they were heard shouting "Allahu Akbar". It appears to be a Sunni Mosque though so perhaps the killers thought they were betraying Islam by not supporting IS and the Caliphate. f**k knows, early days.

Edited January 30, 2017 by welshbairn

[banana]

38 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

I am sure the killing of six people at a mosque in Quebec has nothing to do with the hatred being stirred up in the USA.  No sir, not a thing.  I hope no one suggests otherwise.

Quite. Obama & his cronies have a hell of a lot to answer for.

President Trump has a hard job fixing this, but someone has to do it.

[banana]

3 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

f**k knows, early days.

You're learning! You're finally learning!

[LongTimeLurker]

The Canadian media seems to be reporting now that at least one of the suspects is from Morocco originally. Think people were a wee bit too eager to instantly blame Trump for this. It's very unusual for Canadians to do anything more extreme than getting into a fight during an ice hockey game, so it seemed a bit far-fetched to me that Benoit and Manon suddenly flipped their lid at Tim Hortons after listening to a Trump speech and decided to go on the rampage given a huge portion of the population in Quebec City is monolingual francophone. There would normally need to be a biker gang angle involved for anything like that to happen in Quebec involving people that are Quebecois going back a few generations.

http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1013833/attentat-mosquee-quebec-etudiants-universite-laval

[Forever_blueco]

1 hour ago, Granny Danger said:

I am sure the killing of six people at a mosque in Quebec has nothing to do with the hatred being stirred up in the USA.  No sir, not a thing.  I hope no one suggests otherwise.

Probably more to do with the centuries old Sunni and Shi'ite hatred to be fair going by the reports 

[Paco]

I'm not sure banning Trump from the UK is the right thing to do, as many are suggesting this morning. He's the democratically elected head of one of the country's major allies, regardless of either his policies or May's. Are we going to stop dealing with France if Le Pen wins, or the Netherlands if Wilders wins? We've welcomed the likes of China, Pakistan, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc in spite of their oppressive and openly racist/sexist regimes (and in the case of Saudi Arabia/Pakistan state sponsorship of terrorism). Unfortunately if you're only dealing with the 'good guys' who share your values it would appear you'll be dealing with an ever dwindling list of countries. 

I do accept the point the USA should 'know better' so to speak though, so some strong pressure from May (and the EU) should be the minimum that she tries, and if that results in the cancellation of the state visit then so be it. Outright banning though? Nah. That would be a mistake. 

If security is the genuine concern I could understand a freeze on refugees from Iraq & Syria, similar to Obama's, but the worry here is the ulterior motive. 

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, Paco said:

If security is the genuine concern I could understand a freeze on refugees from Iraq & Syria, similar to Obama's, but the worry here is the ulterior motive. 

It's got nothing to do with security, it's all about putting out a populist message to the fans, and hearing the cheers. He's already having to roll back on it as much of it is illegal. As far as vetting goes I don't see how it could get more extreme than it already is.

I Went Through America’s Extreme Vetting

[Paco]

5 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

It's got nothing to do with security, it's all about putting out a populist message to the fans, and hearing the cheers. He's already having to roll back on it as much of it is illegal. As far as vetting goes I don't see how it could get more extreme than it already is.

I Went Through America’s Extreme Vetting

Well yeah, quite.

The article was a good read, definitely not the picture painted by many in the US including Trump. Much of his rhetoric on the campaign regarding it was ignorance, he wouldn't and couldn't know the full extent of vetting - hopefully after 90 days we see the current measures removed (assuming they're not removed beforehand by the courts) and some shiny new procedure to vet potential refugees revealed, that in reality is much the same as the one outlined in the article.

Hopefully that's all Trump's ulterior motives are - bit of support-building, satisfying the voters, and keeping the media outraged. Hopefully...

[Jambomo]

21 minutes ago, Paco said:

Hopefully that's all Trump's ulterior motives are - bit of support-building, satisfying the voters, and keeping the media outraged. Hopefully...

We could be saying that forever though, the problem is when the voters want more and more to be satisfied and when Trump needs to bring in more extreme measures to keep them happy and voting for him.

[Granny Danger]

I'm glad I hedged my bets on the Quebec shooting until all the facts are known.  

As for Trump's visit, I think banning him would play into his hands.  I think a debate on banning him and a discussion on the reasons why together with protests will show the decent people in the USA that we are with them would be more effective .  I would certainly hope that such protests would be given full scope to take place.

 

[williemillersmoustache]

Quote

Trial Balloon for a Coup?

Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours

The theme of this morning’s news updates from Washington is additional clarity emerging, rather than meaningful changes in the field. But this clarity is enough to give us a sense of what we just saw happen, and why it happened the way it did.

I’ll separate what’s below into the raw news reports and analysis; you may also find these two pieces from yesterday (heavily referenced below) to be useful.

 

From “The Day After Tomorrow.” I resisted the temptation to use the analogous shot from “Planet of the Apes.”

News Reports

(1) Priebus made two public statements today. One is that the ban on Muslims will no longer be applied to green card holders. Notably absent from his statement was anything about people with other types of visa (including long-term ones), or anything about the DHS’ power to unilaterally revoke green cards in bulk.

The other was that the omission of Jews from the statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day was deliberate and is not regretted.

A point of note here is that Priebus is the one making these statements, which is not normally the Chief of Staff’s job. I’ll come back to that below.

(2) Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that the intent of yesterday’s order was very much a ban on Muslims, described in those words, and he was among the people Trump asked how they could find a way to do this legally.

(3) CNN has a detailed story (heavily sourced) about the process by which this ban was created and announced. Notable in this is that the DHS’ lawyers objected to the order, specifically its exclusion of green card holders, as illegal, and also pressed for there to be a grace period so that people currently out of the country wouldn’t be stranded — and they were personally overruled by Bannon and Stephen Miller. Also notable is that career DHS staff, up to and including the head of Customs & Border Patrol, were kept entirely out of the loop until the order was signed.

(4) The Guardian is reporting (heavily sourced) that the “mass resignations”of nearly all senior staff at the State Department on Thursday were not, in fact, resignations, but a purge ordered by the White House. As the diagram below (by Emily Roslin v Praze) shows, this leaves almost nobody in the entire senior staff of the State Department at this point.

 

The seniormost staff of the Department of State. Blue X’s are unfilled positions; red X’s are positions which were purged. Note that the “filled” positions are not actually confirmed yet.

As the Guardian points out, this has an important and likely not accidental effect: it leaves the State Department entirely unstaffed during these critical first weeks, when orders like the Muslim ban (which they would normally resist) are coming down.

The article points out another point worth highlighting: “In the past, the state department has been asked to set up early foreign contacts for an incoming administration. This time however it has been bypassed, and Trump’s immediate circle of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus are making their own calls.”

(5) On Inauguration Day, Trump apparently filed his candidacy for 2020. Beyond being unusual, this opens up the ability for him to start accepting “campaign contributions” right away. Given that a sizable fraction of the campaign funds from the previous cycle were paid directly to the Trump organization in exchange for building leases, etc., at inflated rates, you can assume that those campaign coffers are a mechanism by which US nationals can easily give cash bribes directly to Trump. Non-US nationals can, of course, continue to use Trump’s hotels and other businesses as a way to funnel money to him.

(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.

Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”

Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.

What does this all mean?

I see a few key patterns here. First, the decision to first block, and then allow, green card holders was meant to create chaos and pull out opposition; they never intended to hold it for too long. It wouldn’t surprise me if the goal is to create “resistance fatigue,” to get Americans to the point where they’re more likely to say “Oh, another protest? Don’t you guys ever stop?” relatively quickly.

However, the conspicuous absence of provisions preventing them from executing any of the “next steps” I outlined yesterday, such as bulk revocation of visas (including green cards) from nationals of various countries, and then pursuing them using mechanisms being set up for Latinos, highlights that this does not mean any sort of backing down on the part of the regime.

Note also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday, and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a role in the decision.

That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.

Yesterday was the trial balloon for a coup d’état against the United States. It gave them useful information.

---

A second major theme is watching the set of people involved. There appears to be a very tight “inner circle,” containing at least Trump, Bannon, Miller, Priebus, Kushner, and possibly Flynn, which is making all of the decisions. Other departments and appointees have been deliberately hobbled, with key orders announced to them only after the fact, staff gutted, and so on. Yesterday’s reorganization of the National Security Council mirrors this: Bannon and Priebus now have permanent seats on the Principals’ Committee; the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have both been demoted to only attending meetings where they are told that their expertise is relevant; the Secretary of Energy and the US representative to the UN were kicked off the committee altogether (in defiance of the authorizing statute, incidentally).

I am reminded of Trump’s continued operation of a private personal security force, and his deep rift with the intelligence community. Last Sunday, Kellyanne Conway (likely another member of the inner circle) said that “It’s really time for [Trump] to put in his own security and intelligence community,” and this seems likely to be the case.

As per my analysis yesterday, Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do) Keith Schiller would continue to run the personal security force, which would take over an increasing fraction of the Secret Service’s job.

Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President.

(Note, incidentally, that the DHS already has police authority within 100 miles of any border of the US; since that includes coastlines, this area includes over 60% of Americans, and eleven entire states. They also have a standing force of over 45,000 officers, and just received authorization to hire 15,000 more on Wednesday.)

---

The third theme is money. Trump’s decision to keep all his businesses (not bothering with any blind trusts or the like), and his fairly open diversion of campaign funds, made it fairly clear from the beginning that he was seeing this as a way to become rich in the way that only dedicated kleptocrats can, and this week’s updates definitely tally with that. Kushner looks increasingly likely to be the money-man, acting as the liaison between piles of cash and the president.

This gives us a pretty good guess as to what the exit strategy is: become tremendously, and untraceably, rich, by looting any coffers that come within reach.

---

Combining all of these facts, we have a fairly clear picture in play.

1. Trump was, indeed, perfectly honest during the campaign; he intends to do everything he said, and more. This should not be reassuring to you.
2. The regime’s main organizational goal right now is to transfer all effective power to a tight inner circle, eliminating any possible checks from either the Federal bureaucracy, Congress, or the Courts. Departments are being reorganized or purged to effect this.
3. The inner circle is actively probing the means by which they can seize unchallenged power; yesterday’s moves should be read as the first part of that.
4. The aims of crushing various groups — Muslims, Latinos, the black and trans communities, academics, the press — are very much primary aims of the regime, and are likely to be acted on with much greater speed than was earlier suspected. The secondary aim of personal enrichment is also very much in play, and clever people will find ways to play these two goals off each other.

If you’re looking for estimates of what this means for the future, I’ll refer you back to yesterday’s post on what “things going wrong” can look like. Fair warning: I stuffed that post with pictures of cute animals for a reason.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.qfld4jhkz

 

[Wee Willie]

43 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

I'm glad I hedged my bets on the Quebec shooting until all the facts are known.  

As for Trump's visit, I think banning him would play into his hands.  I think a debate on banning him and a discussion on the reasons why together with protests will show the decent people in the USA that we are with them would be more effective .  I would certainly hope that such protests would be given full scope to take place.

 

but the petition says 'it would cause embarrassment to the f**king queen'
nothing there about any genuine reasons why he should be banned.
As Paco says ' He's the democratically elected head of one of the country's major allies'

 

[Sooky]

I think we should allow the State visit to continue, but he should in no way be invited to address both Houses of Parliament - that should be something of a rare honour, and I don't really think he qualifies. Apparently the possibility of that happening has been discussed?

Also, watch out for the 'bad dudes'!