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Where is/can Donald Trump take US (sic)?

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How xxxxing shameful has politics become in the US where the President can promote a doctored video of his opponents and almost none one in his party calls him out for it ? You would think they were just too scared to squeak wouldn't you ?

So it makes one wonder what the rest of mice in the GOP will make of Donald Trump openly interfering with multi billion dollar contacts to support companies that are personal donors to his cause. And (naturally..) the companies are aligned with the Dodgy Brothers.

This story sums up the corruption and cronyism of Trump in a neat little package.

A Single Scandal Sums Up All of Trump’s Failures
The president has been intervening in the process of producing a border wall, on behalf of a favored firm.

Many of the tales of controversy to emerge from the Trump administration have been abstract, or complicated, or murky. Whenever anyone warns about destruction of “norms,” the conversation quickly becomes speculative—the harms are theoretical, vague, and in the future.

This makes new Washington Post reporting about President Donald Trump’s border wall especially valuable. The Post writes about how Trump has repeatedly pressured the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security to award a contract for building a wall at the southern U.S. border to a North Dakota company headed by a leading Republican donor.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/trump-border-wall-contractor/590242/
 
Speaking Truth to Power.
Sadq Khan , Mayor of London, has barrelled Donald Trump nefpre his upcoming State visit. As far as I can tell it is perhaps the only senior political figure to date who has denounced Trumps politics and behaviour.

In my view he has said in public what billions of people say in private or in the safety of friends. Perhaps this is the leadership required to call out Godzilla for the creature he is.
______________________________________________
Last night I watched The Big Short again. Still as powerful as ever. What struck me however was how a few people were able to recognise how totally unsustainable the housing bubble was in the US and the inevitable disaster that would follow. And yet all along the Banks, Big Business the Government, SEC steadfastly refused to see what was happening.

I see a similar story unfolding today.

It’s un-British to roll out the red carpet for Donald Trump
Sadiq Khan
The US president gives comfort to the far right. The prime minister should speak truth to power

Praising the “very fine people on both sides” when torch-wielding white supremacists and antisemites marched through the streets clashing with anti-racist campaigners. Threatening to veto a ban on the use of rape as a weapon of war. Setting an immigration policy that forcefully separates young children from their parents at the border. The deliberate use of xenophobia, racism and “otherness” as an electoral tactic. Introducing a travel ban to a number of predominately Muslim countries. Lying deliberately and repeatedly to the public.

No, these are not the actions of European dictators of the 1930s and 40s. Nor the military juntas of the 1970s and 80s. I’m not talking about Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un. These are the actions of the leader of our closest ally, the president of the United States of America. This is a man who tried to exploit Londoners’ fears following a horrific terrorist attack on our city, amplified the tweets of a British far-right racist group, denounced as fake news robust scientific evidence warning of the dangers of climate change, and is now trying to interfere shamelessly in the Conservative party leadership race by backing Boris Johnson because he believes it would enable him to gain an ally in Number 10 for his divisive agenda.

Donald Trump is just one of the most egregious examples of a growing global threat. The far right is on the rise around the world, threatening our hard-won rights and freedoms and the values that have defined our liberal, democratic societies for more than seventy years. Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France and Nigel Farage here in the UK are using the same divisive tropes of the fascists of the 20th century to garner support, but are using new sinister methods to deliver their message. And they are gaining ground and winning power and influence in places that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

They are intentionally pitting their own citizens against one another, regardless of the horrific impact in our communities. They are picking on minority groups and the marginalised to manufacture an enemy – and encouraging others to do the same. And they are constructing lies to stoke up fear and to attack the fundamental pillars of a healthy democracy – equality under the law, the freedom of the press and an independent justice system. Trump is seen as a figurehead of this global far-right movement. Through his words and actions, he has given comfort to far-right political leaders, and it’s no coincidence that his former campaign manager, Steve Bannon, has been touring the world, spreading hateful views and bolstering the far right wherever he goes.

That’s why it’s so un-British to be rolling out the red carpet this week for a formal state visit for a president whose divisive behaviour flies in the face of the ideals America was founded upon – equality, liberty and religious freedom.

There are some who argue that we should hold our noses and stomach the spectacle of honouring Trump in this fashion – including many Conservative politicians. They say we need to be realists and stroke his ego to maintain our economic and military relationship with the US. But at what point should we stop appeasing – and implicitly condoning – his far-right policies and views? Where do we draw the line?

Rather than bestowing Trump with a grand platform of acceptability to the world, we should be speaking out and saying that this behaviour is unacceptable – and that it poses a grave threat to the values and principles we have fought hard to defend – often together – for decades.

I am proud of our historic special relationship, which I’m certain will survive long after President Trump leaves office. The US is a country I love and have visited on many occasions. I still greatly admire the culture, the people and the principles articulated by the founding fathers. But America is like a best friend, and with a best friend you have a responsibility to be direct and honest when you believe they are making a mistake.

In years to come, I suspect this state visit will be one we look back on with profound regret and acknowledge that we were on the wrong side of history.

It’s too late to stop the red-carpet treatment, but it’s not too late for the prime minister to do the right thing. Theresa May should issue a powerful rejection – not of the US as a country or the office of the presidency, but of Trump and the far-right agenda he embodies. She should say that the citizens of the UK and the US agree on many things, but that Trump’s views are incompatible with British values.

History teaches us of the danger of being afraid to speak truth to power and the risk of failing to defend our values from the rise of the far right. At this challenging time in global politics, it’s more important than ever that we remember that lesson.

Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/01/donald-trump-state-visit-red-carpet-unbritish
 
It is easy to denounce Trump and he well deserves it, but it is the selective denunciation that is the problem. Here is a good explanation from LBC but in relation to Corbyn.

 
bellenuit said:
It is easy to denounce Trump and he well deserves it, but it is the selective denunciation that is the problem. Here is a good explanation from LBC but in relation to Corbyn.

Click to expand...


Absolute spot on as far as Corbyn is concerned.
 
Nawaz so bang on there. Nor only China, but other regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

The anti Trump stuff by Kahn and suchlike is actually embarrassingly childish. It is also counterproductive; if one wishes to be rid of Trump, this kind of peurility only intensifies support for him and the right.

Debate, not faux outrage.

Have not the left learnt this lesson by now?
 
We keep wondering at what point will Donald Trump "stop" ? Where is " a bridge too far" ? In his most recent interview he said that if a foreign nation came to him with adverse intelligence on his political opponents he would still take it onboard. Really ? :eek:

Trump’s Astonishing Confession
The president says he’d do it all again.

“Suppose a president were to announce that he would in no circumstances appoint any Roman Catholic to office and were rigorously to stick to this plan…” Charles L. Black Jr. wondered aloud in his 1974 book, Impeachment: A Handbook. “Suppose a president were to announce and follow a policy of granting full pardons, in advance of indictment or trial, to all federal agents or police who killed anybody in line of duty, in the District of Columbia, whatever the circumstances and however unnecessary the killing?”

In the throes of Watergate, the Yale professor pondered the question: Must a president commit an indictable offense to be impeached? Black imagined a range of non-crimes that might justify removing a president from office. The two I quoted are the climax of a series of increasing ominousness.

But even Black’s inventive mind did not foresee what we all just saw on ABC: The president confessing in advance that he would accept stolen information from a hostile foreign intelligence agency if it helped his presidential campaign.

“There’s nothing wrong with listening,” he told George Stephanopoulos. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, ‘We have information on your opponent.’ I think I'd want to hear it.”

This confession carries heavy implications, starting with the question of whether Donald Trump Jr. lied to Congress when he denied telling his father in advance about the famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, in which he believed a representative of the Russian government would be offering dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Mueller report found that the Trump campaign desperately wished to collude with Russian intelligence—but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone at the campaign actually had done so. But after three years and the special counsel’s investigation? Trump acknowledges that he would do it all again, if given a chance.

Will he be given a chance, whether by Russia or China or Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi or Israel or Pakistan—or for that matter any number of foreign non-state actors, legitimate and criminal, with intelligence-gathering capability?

Yoni Appelbaum argued in an important cover story for The Atlantic in favor of opening an impeachment inquiry into the president. I worried some weeks later on this site about the political and institutional risks of proceeding down that path. But Trump himself gets a vote; Trump himself forces the hands even of those who might wish to restrain the hand. He is such an institution wrecker—his instincts are so lawless—that he may simply refuse to allow Congress not to impeach him.

Confessing a willingness to collaborate with foreign spies against his domestic political opponents is a hand-forcing move. The risks of proceeding are still there. But the risks of not proceeding? Trump just forced us all to confront them in the most aggressively public possible way.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...says-hed-accept-foreign-electoral-aid/591577/
 
....and Jesus H Christ!!!

If not Trump 2020, it looks to be Biden.

Lord, just take me now!
 
Trump doesn't want a war with Iran but clearly some of the Hawks he works with do.
I think they will try to force his hand. I note the Fox thralls are calling for missile strikes.
 
Knobby22 said:
Trump doesn't want a war with Iran but clearly some of the Hawks he works with do.
I think they will try to force his hand. I note the Fox thralls are calling for missile strikes.
Click to expand...

Hopefully he ignores their advice, would imagine lots of pressure from the Arabs / Israel to start a shooting war.
 
IFocus said:
Hopefully he ignores their advice, would imagine lots of pressure from the Arabs / Israel to start a shooting war.
Click to expand...
Through out history blockading countries was considered an act of war,and the unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on Iran are very similar.I heard an Iranian say that they have proxy militias ready to attack all US bases in the Middle East.I think the US will think very prudently before making an attack on Iran-Iran is capable of exacting punishment on a lot of their allies,just across the gulf of Oman.What will happen to our precious share market if the fun begins?
 
chiff said:
What will happen to our precious share market if the fun begins?
Click to expand...

Risk issues should certainly be acknowledged. I wonder what the cost of short positions on the market in the next 1-2 months look like ?
 
chiff said:
Through out history blockading countries was considered an act of war,and the unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on Iran are very similar.I heard an Iranian say that they have proxy militias ready to attack all US bases in the Middle East.I think the US will think very prudently before making an attack on Iran-Iran is capable of exacting punishment on a lot of their allies,just across the gulf of Oman.What will happen to our precious share market if the fun begins?
Click to expand...
Hopefully you have factored that into your fiscal plan.:xyxthumbs
 
Knobby22 said:
Trump doesn't want a war with Iran but clearly some of the Hawks he works with do.
I think they will try to force his hand. I note the Fox thralls are calling for missile strikes.
Click to expand...
It seems the US created a crisis and are now trying to back away .I hope Trump realises he has been led down a stupid path by his hawkish advisers.I well remember during the Serbian conflict that the US claimed to have destroyed 53 tanks.No one ever saw a tank that they hit-decoys everywhere.What will their missile strikes hit in Iran?
 
sptrawler said:
Should I change to cash?
Click to expand...

If you believe Bolton and Pompeo won't create an excuse for a war with Iran there is little need to worry.
But could you ? As far as the markets go you don't want to hang around if/when the merde flies.
 
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