Trump number 8

[Hank Venture]

Yeah, he has Alzheimers and is rapidly deteriorating. I'm convinced.

[BlodwynPig]

Poor sod

[Spoon of Ploff]

TRUMP: "... & we were at the bottom of this incredible room...'"

Just when you think he's hit the bottom of the incredible room...

[Alberon]

Over the last three years I think we've got used to his normal level of bullshit. Stuff that would have once been headline news worldwide coming from a US president just flies under the radar as business as usual.

But we're heading into unchartered territory now. Ex-Chief of Staff John Kelly gave an interview last week saying that he should be judged less on what he did and more on what he stopped Trump from doing. However much influence the 'adults' ever had is debatable, but they're all gone now. The Mueller investigation is rapidly approaching its close and for the first time Trump has to deal with the party he nominally belongs to not having control of all of government.

Latest from the President is that the shutdown is purely politcs.

The Shutdown is only because of the 2020 Presidential Election. The Democrats know they can't win based on all of the achievements of "Trump," so they are going all out on the desperately needed Wall and Border Security - and Presidential Harassment. For them, strictly politics!

'strictly politics!' is the reason Trump chucked a bipartisan funding bill and started the shutdown mess in the first place.

The Democrats will pass bills to reopen the government (while not funding the wall) and look like they are doing what they can to get things moving again while Trump will just sit there and blame everyone but himself. The Wall is totally opposed by Democrat voters and is not that generally popular among all voters. It plays to Trump's base, but as Ed Balls illuminating documentary showed last year, most of his base are sticking with him due to feeling financially better off and they mostly ignore the wackier stuff he comes out with. If the next global financial slump is coming soon that will leave him in severe trouble.

As to his mental capacity. It is hard to tell. Whenever he's talking to the camera he's in a mode that sounds mentally incapacitated, but it is a style he's run for many years that worked for him. I'd like to hear audio of him in a normal conversational situation. Either way, he seems to genuinely overrate his abilities in the way the severely ignorant can do.

If he doesn't run again, or loses the 2020 election I bet you what you like his lawyers will be trying a version of the dementia defence in any indictments that come his way.

[Head Gardener]

US issues China   
travel warning

[ajsmith2]

Gods sake Ben. (have to admit I'm surprised he didn't give Trump a larger bulge in his shorts though.)

[Ferris]

How much mileage are they going to get from Hillary Clinton?

The campaign was in 2016, it is currently 2019. Obsessed.

[Moribunderast]

How much mileage are they going to get from Hillary Clinton?

The campaign was in 2016, it is currently 2019. Obsessed.

Well, they're obsessed with winning and it's the only real win they've had.

[Head Gardener]

[Cuellar]

PHWOAR thread is over there pal

[kngen]

Everything that was predicted by the president and Secretary Nielsen and homeland security and others has come true. There are violent elements in this caravan. The mainstream media only wants you to see the children, the families. They're not telling you that most of the caravan are males traveling by themselves.

(The Democrats) are now turning a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis, which includes children, tender age children under the age of five in need of medical care taking a perilous journey. Some of them are already ill. Some of them haven't seen a doctor in a while

I don't like some of the Democrats using these deaths (of migrant children)as political pawns.

I realise pointing out these hypocrisies makes about as much sense as swinging punches at a patch of fog, but Jesus, imagine being that grotesque a human being. In a just world, she will spend the rest of her life being haunted by the ghosts of those whose deaths she's hijacked for a TV soundbite. Instead, she'll just be haunting the rest of us on cable news channels until she's slowly hollowed out by her own blackened heart.

[Mobius]

Quite an interesting video about where Trump gets his talking points from

https://youtu.be/iIFcvntn-_Y

Probably liberal propaganda or summat but still

[Alberon]

Trump (or more likely one of his henchmen) has come up with a way to resolve the wall funding problem.

Citing multiple sources, ABC News is reporting that President Donald Trump is seriously considering declaring a national emergency to help pay for parts of his desired border wall.

"Sources tell ABC News the discussions are still on the 'working level' adding that there's a range of legal mechanisms that are being considered before such a decision is announced."

Trump himself just said

"I can do it if I want," Trump said. "We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly."

[Gulftastic]

Starting to look a lot like a dictator.

[Zetetic]

Somewhere around another 1,000 likely civilian casualties from US-led Coalition bombing in Syria and Iraq in the final few months of 2018. (Comparable figures for Russian-led bombing are not available, so I can't provide any context on that basis.)

I'd suggest that the withdrawal talk acted as cover except there's no great difference in shit-giving from the (more massive) 2017 bombing campaign.

[Howj Begg]

Quite an interesting video about where Trump gets his talking points from

https://youtu.be/iIFcvntn-_Y

Probably liberal propaganda or summat but still

"I meant to say that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified due to terrorison't. I think that clears that up."

[hummingofevil]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1080858959404240896?s=21

Man's a cunt but genuine LOLs at this.

[rjd2]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1080858959404240896?s=21

Man's a cunt but genuine LOLs at this.

Warren and others are trying to hard to be likable as AOC and its not nice viewing. The beer incident the other night yuck.

I think she will regret not backing Bernie in 2016, if so she'd have the progressives and Bernie going hard for her in 2020, but alas not to be.

https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1080824020151480321

However that is promising, Maddow probably got a furious text from Bill Kristol afterwards.

[Urinal Cake]

The whole Ancestry DNA thing proved Trump got under her skin. But it's not a killer if she plays hard like Jon Stewart and returns the favour.

Warren is looking like the compromise candidate with the VP pointing to which faction wins out. Hopefully Gabbard, Sanders or maybe even Khanna. 

[Ferris]

The whole Ancestry DNA thing proved Trump got under her skin. But it's not a killer if she plays hard like Jon Stewart and returns the favour.

Warren is looking like the compromise candidate with the VP pointing to which faction wins out. Hopefully Gabbard, Sanders or maybe even Khanna.

Trump needs someone to punch against. Declaring early just gives him years of punching material.

It's when he's left to actually govern that he gets in complete shit.

I think he'll get away with this state of emergency thing, because cunts always get away with this sort of stuff.

[Hank Venture]

Dream pairing for me: Bernie with Barbara Lee as VP. Or Nina Turner. And a campaign manager that is willing to play as dirty as the Dem establishment are (we're already seeing the machine kick into gear with these sexual misconduct allegations)

[rjd2]

Very confused by Hailey backing  Bolsonaro as Brazilian president. The media had told me she was a rare moderate and sane person in the GOP.

[Dog Botherer]

moderate and sane person in the GOP.

error. does not compute.

[Mister Six]

Bolsonaro wants to smash "socialists" and privatise the Amazon rainforest, which puts him squarely within the political parameters of the Trump administration, surely?

Dream pairing for me: Bernie with Barbara Lee as VP. Or Nina Turner.

Read that as "a Ninja Turtle", which would have been interesting.

[Dog Botherer]

Bolsonaro wants to smash "socialists" and privatise the Amazon rainforest, which puts him squarely within the political parameters of the Trump administration, surely?

Those would probably be considered his most moderate policies.

[Alberon]

The Guardian has an interesting piece on Trump's increasing use of 'acting' heads of department rather than trying to fill them permanently.

"I like acting," Trump said. "It gives me more flexibility. Do you understand that? I like acting. So we have a few that are acting. We have a great, great cabinet."

That's been generally taken to mean they are less likely to oppose his various whims.

On Saturday night, the Pentagon chief of staff – not a cabinet post – announced his resignation. Obama-era UN ambassador Samantha Power responded by tweeting: "It is [5 January] 2019: we have no Secretary of Defense & now no DoD chief of staff, no Attorney General & no evident guardrails in Trump's inner circle.

...

There are 24 cabinet-level positions and six are now filled by individuals serving in an acting capacity, after the departure of members confirmed by the Senate. Other than the White House chief of staff and the vice-president, cabinet-level officials require such confirmation. Federal law allows presidents to temporarily fill vacancies by appointing acting department heads who are already employees there.

Trump said last month he was in no hurry to name a new defense secretary, after Mattis quit.

Elsewhere, David Bernhardt is acting secretary of the interior department, Matthew Whitaker is acting attorney general, Andrew Wheeler is acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Mick Mulvaney is the acting White House chief of staff. Jonathan Cohen is acting ambassador to the United Nations.

Acting heads are far easier to fire, though he might eventually have to start properly filling these posts. Meanwhile it is another uncomfortable parallel with dictatorships which often have such posts vacant as a clear sign of a non-functioning administration.

As to Trump's wall. He's stated again that he'll switch from a concrete wall for one made of steel slats which he asserts "will be less obtrusive and stronger." Democrats meanwhile don't give a flying fuck whether its concrete or steel. Either way they're utterly opposed. From The Washington Post

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in her first sit-down interview on network television since reclaiming the gavel last week, maintained that the goal of Saturday's meeting was to reopen the government and blamed Trump for the continued impasse.

She also blasted Trump for suggesting that he may unilaterally move to build the border wall.

"The impression you get from the president [is] that he would like to not only close government, build a wall, but also abolish Congress so the only voice that mattered was his own," Pelosi told Jane Pauley in the interview, which aired on CBS News's "Sunday Morning."

As to Trump's actual ability to call a national emergency and bypass the House and Senate-

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said that while Trump may have the power to act unilaterally, doing so is likely to open him up to legal challenges.

"There is a provision in law that says the president can declare an emergency. It's been done a number of times. But primarily it's been done to build facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq," Smith said on ABC's "This Week." "In this case, I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying, 'Where is the emergency?' You have to establish that in order to do this."

But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump's words were just "threatening talk" with no power behind them. After bowing to his base and refusing to compromise with Democrats, Schiff said, Trump needs to "figure out how he unpaints himself from that corner."

"Look, if Harry Truman couldn't nationalize the steel industry during wartime, this president doesn't have the power to declare an emergency and build a multibillion-dollar wall on the border. So that's a nonstarter," the Democrat said.

There still doesn't look like there is anyway out of this shutdown.

[Head Gardener]

meanwhile in a classroom somewhere in America

[Head Gardener]

[Blumf]

Trump will go all The Outer Limits with the US's TV sets tonight, to chat about the  "humanitarian and security crisis on the southern border"

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/politics/trump-address-border-visit.html

[im barry bethel]

No live audience no whooping and a hollering and a speech written by trump himself, Huckerbee Sanders must be shitting herself