Split Trump was a good president (split from: As a politician how can I serve everyone)

[Loren Pechtel]

My favorite question to ask of ardent Trump supporters is: "So...how's that whole 'lock her up' thing coming along?" Their answers vary, but it's almost never "we understand that it was all a bullshit slogan and he never had any intention of following through." Because his supporters (generally speaking) don't understand that they're being sold a bill of goods.

Coulter is also selling a bill of goods, and it looks like you bought it. "Yes sir...Trump was all set to secure the border but he was thwarted by those pesky Democrats and their investigations and impeachments! He was totally going to do that, but his efforts were derailed by the lib-dems, and if it weren't for them we'd have a 100 foot high wall on the border, there would be no more drug trafficking, and our landscaping would be done by guys named Larry instead of Luis! Curse you liberals!"

That's all the Republicans have these days. A bill of good and harming themselves to hurt the liberals.

 

[Elixir]

Flatulence was wrong to make it a campaign promise.

Flatulence doesn’t care about shit like keeping promises. Remember he promised to get rid of Obamacare on Day One and replace it with something much better?
Remember how the pandemic was just a guy from China?
Liars lie, that’s what they do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I didn't ask about Biden. I wonder what you think of Trump's CHARACTER, what you think of Trump's CRIMES, what you think of Trump's MALIGNANT NARCISSISM, what you think of Trump's acts of SEDITION and TREASON.

Why are you afraid to address such questions?

I'm fine with his character. As far as his crimes I mean yeah they are pretty bad he tried to overturn a fair election but I still like his policies and what he represents. His narcissism, sedition and treason yeah it's bad but I still feel like his good outweighs the bad to me.

What in the world do you think was good enough about him to overcome what should at a minimum get him a life sentence in Leavenworth? At least you seem to admit his wrongs, which is more than most Republicans do these days.

 

[Elixir]

At least you seem to admit his wrongs, which is more than most Republicans do these days.

The inability to tell right from wrong is a requirement for anyone trying to get elected on a platform of treason.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

FIFY

There is a huge difference in opinion regarding Jan 6, the democrats thought it was an insurrection and the republicans think it was a protest with violent elements. It is a fact that Trump was over a mile away giving his speech and also a fact he said to protest "peacefully". But regardless your personal opinion, if George Bush and Cheney get the pass for war crimes against humanity by our elites in Washington, what happened on Jan 6 was just a Sunday school picnic by any measure.

There is a huge denial of reality by the Republicans.

1/6 was a plot to disrupt the election process sufficiently that the fallback option of sending it to the House would be used. One state, one vote = His Flatulence elected. Palace coups do not need extensive violence to carry out.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Trump is right about one thing. He didn't become a racist until he became POTUS when it was politically expedient for the media to paint him that way. In fact at one time he was friends with both the Clinton's and Adam Schiff.....the pictures of him posing with them at their parties are easy to find with google.

Over a period of time, edited journalism has been successful painting this racist fiction.

It's not the reporting. However, I'm not sure he's a racist--it's possible he's just sending out the dog whistles to appeal to his base. If he's not racist he's doing a good job of pretending to be, though.

 

[Elixir]

The fact that at one time Cheato was friends with both the WHITE Clintons and WHITE Adam Schiff, has zero bearing on whether he is, was or will be a racist. IT IS CERTAINLY NOT “evidence” that he’s not racist*.
The fact that The Donald has always been a racist is evidenced throughout his criminal career. But it’s not his fault; he was raised by, and given his fortune by, his card carrying, robe wearing KKK member daddy. Of course he has always been a racist.

* Agent Orange being a “friend” of Clintons and Schiff is more a reflection of Clinton’s and Schiff’s tone-deafness to their own racist conditioning.

 

[Swammerdami]

The documentary Unfit is worth a watch. IIRC one thing it (or some other Trump analysis?) pointed out is that Trump is NOT a racist: He's just a sadistic psychopath. He's happy to be anti-black or anti-immigrant when it suits his agenda, but would be just as happy to be anti-Asian or anti-redhead if that suited his agenda of the moment.

 

[Elixir]

He's happy to be anti-black or anti-immigrant when it suits his agenda, but would be just as happy to be anti-Asian or anti-redhead if that suited his agenda of the moment.

How does that make him “not racist”?
The ability to adopt some expedient hatred du jour doesn’t speak to not being racist.
He is a racist insofar as he believes his white skinned blue eyes and blond hair bespeak superior genetics to anyone else. Makes him smarter than scientists about science, better at war planning than generals, better at epidemiology than that Fauci Wop he hated do much… he’s a fucking dyed in the wool RACIST. Sorry.

 

[Elixir]

The more replies I read from Buzz, the more I believe that he's not being honest with us.

About being a human?
Turing tests, anyone?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The documentary Unfit is worth a watch. IIRC one thing it (or some other Trump analysis?) pointed out is that Trump is NOT a racist: He's just a sadistic psychopath. He's happy to be anti-black or anti-immigrant when it suits his agenda, but would be just as happy to be anti-Asian or anti-redhead if that suited his agenda of the moment.

I haven't seen the documentary but that's my general conclusion. I don't think he has much of a position himself, it's always just what he thinks his audience wants to hear.

 

[Swammerdami]

I'm fine with his character. As far as his crimes I mean yeah they are pretty bad he tried to overturn a fair election but I still like his policies and what he represents. His narcissism, sedition and treason yeah it's bad but I still feel like his good outweighs the bad to me.

Sincere thanks for answering some of our questions. May I ask some more?

(1) Trump came to the White House with a promise to "clean the swamp" and appointed top officials whom he carefully hand-picked. But a very large portion of these hand-picked top officials were later fired or resigned. As just one example (I showed others upthread) Jeff Sessions -- the very FIRST Senator to support Trump in 2016 -- was appointed Attorney General, but later Trump forced him to resign when Sessions refused to commit an unethical act. What is your reaction to this strange way of "cleaning the swamp"?

(2) Recently Trump produced a diatribe in which he repeatedly referred to a former President as "Barack Hussein Obama." Yes, that is his legal name, but is a name hardly anyone uses. Why do you think Trump uses this name? How does it speak to his character?

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

The fact that at one time Cheato was friends with both the WHITE Clintons and WHITE Adam Schiff, has zero bearing on whether he is, was or will be a racist. IT IS CERTAINLY NOT “evidence” that he’s not racist*.
The fact that The Donald has always been a racist is evidenced throughout his criminal career. But it’s not his fault; he was raised by, and given his fortune by, his card carrying, robe wearing KKK member daddy. Of course he has always been a racist.

* Agent Orange being a “friend” of Clintons and Schiff is more a reflection of Clinton’s and Schiff’s tone-deafness to their own racist conditioning.

Well, to be fair, Toni Morrison once called Clinton “the first Black President”.

 

[bilby]

I’m interested in how Biden ruined this Country.

Was it how he Lowered Costs of Families' Everyday Expenses?
Is it because there are More People Are Working Than At Any Point in American History?
Is it because we are Making More in America?
Is it because he Rescued the Economy and Changed the Course of the Pandemic?
Is it that you hate the Rebuilding of our Infrastructure?
Or perhaps you oppose the Historic Expansion of Benefits and Services for Toxic Exposed Veterans?
What is it Buzz? How did Biden “ruin” this country?

Aren't you paying attention? He allowed roughly the same number of people as always to stream across the Mexican border, and take jobs that decent, law abiding, white folks didn't want in the first place!

Some of them don't even speak English, and have suspiciously deep suntans!

The only way to save the nation from becoming overrun with hard working fruit-pickers, landscapers, and janitors, is to send everyone who doesn't speak English back to Mexico. (This policy may be a little harsh on newborn babies, deaf-mutes, and non-English speakers who didn't come from Mexico to begin with; But you can't make a fascist omelette without breaking a few eggs...).

Immigrants have ruined America. Just ask the Clovis people.

 

[Swammerdami]

I wasn't sure whether to post this in a Gaza thread or a Trump thread. I think it's important enough to post to both threads.

Did Hamas somehow get inside information about Israel’s defenses from a Trump Leak?
OPINION by Thom Hartmann, October 11, 2023

This past weekend, Hamas launched a brutal, horrific attack against civilians in Israel. While there is a very real history that has led up to this, there is no justification for it. Even in a state of war, civilians must be protected.

This horror raises a couple of important questions.

First, did Hamas somehow get inside information about Israel’s defenses that helped them pull this off?

Second, how might this play out, how might it be resolved, and how can America and the world avoid the mistakes from previous but similar situations?

Pondering these questions, Sunday night just before I went to bed, I tweeted:

“Hamas apparently knew how to get around Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. They probably learned this from Iran. Iran almost certainly got the information from Russia. And who gave it to Russia? Sure looks like it was Donald Trump, at the request of Putin:”​

At the end of the tweet I included a link to a 2017 Washington Post article titled “Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador,” although, because Musk has eliminated headlines from news stories, the article just looked like a picture of Trump with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister yucking it up.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I discovered that my little overnight speculative tweet had caused Republicans on Twitter/X to totally lose their minds.

The tweet had been viewed several million times and produced thousands of responses, the vast majority calling me obscenities and claiming that Trump would never share classified information with anybody because he’s such a patriot and anybody who would wonder out loud about him passing out secrets isn’t.

The Washington Post article I included with my tweet was pretty unambiguous. Reporters Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe wrote:

“President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.
“The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.”​

While nobody knew then (and nobody but Trump and the Russians know now) exactly what top-secret information we got from Israel that was shared with the Russians in that meeting, it was clearly a shocking revelation that caught our and Israel’s intelligence communities by surprise.

As noted in that Washington Post article:

“‘This is code-word information,’ said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump ‘revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.’”​

The Post reporters also note that, before the door was closed, apparently a Trump staffer overheard him tell the Russians:

“I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day.”​

Eight days before Trump was inaugurated as president, a Hebrew language Israeli newspaper with inside information from Israeli intelligence agencies was quoted by the Times of Israel:

“US intelligence officials have warned their Israeli counterparts that President-elect Donald Trump’s ties to Russia could pose a security threat, since information passed on to his administration may reach Moscow and from there be leaked to Iran, a Hebrew-language daily reported Thursday.
“During a recent meeting between US and Israeli intelligence staff, the Americans also assessed that Russia has some kind of leverage over Trump, but did not go into details, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper claimed, citing unidentified Israeli officials who were present at the session.”​

So, whether Trump screwed Israel and the US because Putin told him to, or just to feed his own massively insecure ego, and whether it’s specifically led to this Hamas raid or simply did other damage to Israeli and American security, here we are.

And, as we learned last week when it came out that Trump shared top-secret info about our submarine fleet with an Australian businessman, he has a history of doing exactly this sort of thing.

We also don’t know if that particular intel from 2017 had to do with Iron Dome or Israeli security (the article suggests it might have involved using a laptop to take down a plane) or not.

It’s important to note, though, that it was only one of literally dozens of secret, private meetings Trump had with Russian officials, Russian-aligned people at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, and at least 19 phone calls with Putin, for many of which there are no existing records.

Now Newsweek has published an article about this concern that Trump played a role in the Hamas attack as well, and I’ve been joined in my speculation by several others. The Newsweek article, headlined “Donald Trump's Israel Intel Leak Under Scrutiny After Hamas Attack,” lays it out rather starkly:

“Donald Trump’s sharing of alleged classified intelligence to Russian officials in the White House has come under scrutiny amid a large-scale attack by the Hamas Islamist military group against Israel.
“In May 2017, the former president defended his actions after he was found to have discussed sensitive details about an alleged Islamic State (ISIS) plot with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office. Trump said he had an absolute right to do so. The intel was said to have been provided to the U.S. from Israel.
“It was suggested at the time that the former president’s handing over sensitive information from Israel could have damaged the relationship between the two countries. It also could have raised the possibility that the details could be passed from Russia to Iran, the Gulf nation that is a fierce adversary of Israel and has long supported Hamas.”​

It goes on to quote me, Allison Gill (Mueller, She Wrote), Mike Jollett, and Meidas Touch.

Even Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, tweeted:

“This fucking maniac likely gave Putin (who gave Iran, who gave Hamas) Israel’s national security secrets… Plus, he divulged highly classified information about our nuclear subs to an Australian cardboard guy. Why is he still allowed to roam free?”
​

But, again, all this is speculation. What we do know for sure, though, is that on at least one occasion in the first months of his presidency Trump gave information to the Russians that would have landed any other American in prison. As the Post noted:

“For almost anyone in government, discussing such matters with an adversary would be illegal.”​

And let there be no doubt that the Russians Trump shared that information with are allies of Hamas, even if that wasn’t the specific time and information that led to this attack.

A year ago last month, as the Times of Israel noted, the politburo chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, met with Trump’s Oval Office buddy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Joining them were the number two man in the Hamas Politburo, Saleh Al-Arouri, and Moussa Abu Marzouk and Maher Salah, the two most senior members of Hamas’s political wing.

That meeting was followed up this March with confirmation that Hamas has been regularly meeting with Russia. As Al-Monitor, a newspaper that covers Middle Eastern politics, noted:

“Hamas officials have made several visits to the Russian capital, most recently in September of last year.”​

Whether any of this will end up sticking to Trump is anybody’s guess, but if the thousands of hysterical replies to my tweet are any indication, the GOP is truly freaked out about the possibility. This might turn out to be more politically deadly to him than rape, paying off porn stars, or stealing classified information by the box-load.

Republican politicians have even gone so far as to nakedly lie to the American people about the horrors in Israel, suggesting that the deal President Biden worked out with Iran was used to fund this attack. But it’s not true: of the $6 billion in oil money South Korea was to pay to Iran (but was frozen by international sanctions) not one single penny has yet to be distributed.

That hasn’t stopped the GOP from lying about it incessantly; it got so bad that a Fox “News” host had to intervene and correct a Republican politician, pointing out that no money has changed hands. DeSantis repeated the lie this morning on Morning Joe.

Given how frantically Republicans in the Senate are trying to pin liability for the massacre in Israel on Biden, it sure seems that somebody might be trying to cover something up. Could this have something to do with the secret documents that Donald Trump hand-delivered to Rand Paul, and he then personally transported to Moscow to give to Putin’s intelligence agents?

Jim Jordan and James Comer are fond of saying, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” This “smoke” demands an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, at the very least. And, hopefully, the FBI is all over it, particularly given the horror of these attacks.

But to circle back to the second question, media pundits and even the government of Israel have been using 9/11 as an analogy to the events of this past weekend.

Both were clearly major intelligence failures, but George W. Bush survived his because Democrats chose not to politicize it.

After all, a full month earlier (on August 6th, 2001) the CIA was so alarmed that they flew an agent all the way down to Crawford, Texas in a private jet just to hand-deliver a memo to Bush that was titled:

“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”​

Bush’s response to the possibility of Washington DC being a target was to change his plans and take the longest vacation in the history of the presidency; he went from Crawford, Texas to Florida, a state run by his brother, where Jeb declared a state of emergency on August 24th. George stayed there, refusing to return to DC until after the attacks were over.

Press reports today suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received similar warnings from multiple countries in the region prior to the recent attacks and, like Bush, chose to ignore them. But Israeli politicians are often not as circumspect as America’s Democrats, so it’s possible that what rolled off Bush’s back will stick to Netanyahu. Keep an eye on this one.

While it’s a certainty that Netanyahu will be brutal and unsparing in his retaliation (“vengeance” was the word he used yesterday) against Hamas and Gaza, the situation was, in fact, both untenable and unsustainable and it didn’t take a prophet to predict there would be a blow-up one day.

There’s a huge difference in meaning, however, between the words “predictable” and “justified.” Nothing can justify the level of terror and brutality Hamas inflicted on Israeli citizens (and others) this weekend.

And Hamas, with their commitment to destroying Israel and killing Jews, cannot be an honest broker for any sort of peace in that region; the organization and its leadership must be destroyed. They are not reformable, like, for example, the terrorist Irish Republican Army was back in the day.

Similarly, Iran’s and Russia’s support for Hamas must be cut off. As Iran shows in its attacks on its own citizens, and Russia shows in the brutality of its daily terror attacks against Ukraine, neither are behaving like civilized members of the modern world.

Yet, here in America MAGA Republicans continue to do everything they can to support Iran’s (and, thus, Hamas’) number-one sponsor in the world: Russia.

— Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is blocking military promotions so we have no commander for our fleet in the region because he doesn’t want raped women serving in our military to get abortions;
— Rand Paul (R-KY) has blocked the appointment of our ambassador to Israel because Covid, vaccine, conspiracy;
— Josh Hawley (R-MO) is blocking Dept. of Energy appointees;
— Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has a hold on a nominee for the Dept. of Veterans Affairs;
— JD Vance (R-OH) has a hold on Dept. of Justice nominees;
— and the Putin caucus in the House is trying to shut down our government and thus cut aid to Ukraine, which will strengthen Russia and reward their help to Iran and Hamas.

Our hearts break for the missing and captive Israelis, Americans, and others who are the victims of this medieval Hamas attack. It’s hard to imagine anything more horrific.

The civilized world must stand united against terrorism, wherever it is practiced.

 

[Elixir]

To summarize:
Trump is a traitor, and he probably gave Russia intel that was used by HAMAS to kill Israelis.

Same shit, different day.
The only news here is “Rumpsuckers freak out from Swammerdami pointing out the obvious!”

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I wasn't sure whether to post this in a Gaza thread or a Trump thread. I think it's important enough to post to both threads.

Did Hamas somehow get inside information about Israel’s defenses from a Trump Leak?
OPINION by Thom Hartmann, October 11, 2023

I don't think he leaked anything that was useful to Hamas.

1) I doubt he knew anything relevant.

2) I don't see any high skill in Hamas' attack beyond paying attention to the fighting in Ukraine and copying their drone tactics. Hamas simply swamped Israel's defenses.

 

[TomC]

I don't think he leaked anything that was useful to Hamas.

Why not?

He had mountains of highly classified materials in an unlocked storage room. Available to anyone with a high performance credit card.

Why do you think Hamas supporters like Russians and Iranians were unable to access that?
Tom

 

[Patooka]

I wasn't sure whether to post this in a Gaza thread or a Trump thread. I think it's important enough to post to both threads.

Did Hamas somehow get inside information about Israel’s defenses from a Trump Leak?
OPINION by Thom Hartmann, October 11, 2023

I don't think he leaked anything that was useful to Hamas.

1) I doubt he knew anything relevant.

2) I don't see any high skill in Hamas' attack beyond paying attention to the fighting in Ukraine and copying their drone tactics. Hamas simply swamped Israel's defenses.

The argument being made is Trump not leaking information per se but inadvertently leaking the means and methods of how Israel obtains their intelligence. So the hypothetical timeline is;

1) Trump leaks raw intel about Isis obtained from Israel to Russia.
2) Russia let's Iran know this particular technique is used by Israel
3) Iran tells Hamas, "hey, Israel was able to get info on Isis by doing [X], shore up your internal security so they can't do that to you."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't think he leaked anything that was useful to Hamas.

Why not?

He had mountains of highly classified materials in an unlocked storage room. Available to anyone with a high performance credit card.

Why do you think Hamas supporters like Russians and Iranians were unable to access that?
Tom

They swamped the SAMs and exploited the fact that Israel wasn't set up for drone defense. In hindsight their tactics are obvious, that doesn't take any insider knowledge. I'm not saying they were unable, I'm saying there wasn't any need.