Donald Trump the road that might not lead to the White House - Redux 2024 thread.

[ddraig]

 

[_Russ_]

Sorry about misunderstanding your conspiracy theorising

Take a look at the Picture released showing his ear now and tell me that stating it shows no apparent injury is anything more or less than factual.
You need to resist the urge of letting your personal opinions lead you into making false assertions and repetitive perso al attacks or risk ending up like poor houby

 

[krtek a houby]

Which leads us nicely into this

Kamala Harris allies deploy new Trump attack line: he is ‘just plain weird’

Tactic calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are now more engaged with election

www.theguardian.com

Tldr?

Trump is weird. Vance is weird. Slowly, ever so slowly, the gloves are coming off, the Democrats need to embrace the knuckle duster now.

 

[tim]

It was far more sinister than that. He's essentially telling them voting won't apply under his dictatorship. There's a good albeit chilling breakdown of exactly what Project 2025 is about and where it's coming from here -

Kevin Roberts, architect of Project 2025, has close ties to radical Catholic group Opus Dei

The Republican Ruth Kelly.

 

[krtek a houby]

Take a look at the Picture released showing his ear now and tell me that stating it shows no apparent injury is anything more or less than factual.
You need to resist the urge of letting your personal opinions lead you into making false assertions and repetitive perso al attacks or risk ending up like poor houby

Everything I've said about you and your bigotry is true, you silly little pumpkin.

 

[tim]

Take a look at the Picture released showing his ear now and tell me that stating it shows no apparent injury is anything more or less than factual.
You need to resist the urge of letting your personal opinions lead you into making false assertions and repetitive perso al attacks or risk ending up like poor houby

So, in your opinion, was Trump injured in that attack or not? You're not being particularly clear.

Maybe, Hallelujah, his lug was healed by one of those shouty pentecostalist preachers

 

[andysays]

Take a look at the Picture released showing his ear now and tell me that stating it shows no apparent injury is anything more or less than factual.
You need to resist the urge of letting your personal opinions lead you into making false assertions and repetitive perso al attacks or risk ending up like poor houby

Not sure what Picture you're referring to, but I would very wary about suggesting than any photo (other than perhaps a medical one, which won't be made public) can demonstrate definitively that Trump didn't suffer any injury to his ear.

 

[Rompipalle]

I believe that Trump did suffer a very superficial injury to the upper, outer aspect of his ear. It likely only caused minor skin damage, without tissue loss. Because of the ear is highly vascular, meaning it has a very good blood supply, this aids rapid healing.

 

[two sheds]

spoilsport

 

[NoXion]

Tbh I read it as "look just get out and vote on the 5th, you won't have to do it again (for another 4 years)"

What, like how every single election is supposed to go? So why couch what should be a simple and obvious message in such ambiguous terms? I ain't buying it. Isn't it suspicious that when non-MAGA types want to encourage voting, their message is simply "get registered and get voting", but when MAGA chuds talk about it, they have to talk out of both sides of their mouth like this?

 

[emanymton]

So, in your opinion, was Trump injured in that attack or not? You're not being particularly clear.

Maybe, Hallelujah, his lug was healed by one of those shouty pentecostalist preachers

Maybe he dipped it in bleach.

 

[danny la rouge]

He grew it back.

 

[emanymton]

I believe that Trump did suffer a very superficial injury to the upper, outer aspect of his ear. It likely only caused minor skin damage, without tissue loss. Because of the ear is highly vascular, meaning it has a very good blood supply, this aids rapid healing.

I once got a tiny cut on the tip of my finger, it bleed like crazy my whole hand was covered in blood in seconds. Next day you could hardly see it when looking for it. I wouldn't be surprised if the ear was similar.

So basically it looks like he got a small cut from a bit of flying shrapnel and is exaggerating it, is anyone surprised?

Mind you if someone shot at me and I had any injury at all I'd probably milk it for all it was worth as well.

 

[Dogsauce]

Which leads us nicely into this

Kamala Harris allies deploy new Trump attack line: he is ‘just plain weird’

Tactic calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are now more engaged with election

www.theguardian.com

bene

Tldr?

Trump is weird. Vance is weird. Slowly, ever so slowly, the gloves are coming off, the Democrats need to embrace the knuckle duster now.

It’s quite pleasing to see them being a bit assertive in their attacks. I think Biden was kind of old school and polite, which is fine if both sides behave that way, which definitely wasn’t the situation. Much as I’d like an ideal world where politics was less toxic/adversarial, it’s no good if you end up trampled by the bully boys of the oligarchy.

There are some beneficial optics to behaving like this too, people will see it as someone who is a fighter, who will stand up for them/their country.

 

[krtek a houby]

Donald Trump accused of falsely vilifying migrants for surge in US fentanyl deaths

Former head of US border security says claim ‘terribly misleading’ and statistics show nine of 10 convicted traffickers are US citizens

www.theguardian.com

Tldr?

Trump lying about migrants again, and blaming the fentanyl crisis on them when, in fact, 9 out of 10 convictions are US citizens.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

To really double-click* on the 'never vote again' line (I mean, everything he says you must take with a pinch of salt so any analysis is meaningless...But here I am ...) it was actually - and quite accidentally - a classic-of-the-genre of the quotes that would cause maximum infuriation on the left, signal to his base on the right, and all have plausible deniability for both, depending on how you interpreted it. Johnson is the true master of them (and they wouldn't be by accident), but Trump came out with a bit of a gem - the very online Dem Twitter people are all assempling to call it out**.

Tbh I read it as "look just get out and vote on the 5th, you won't have to do it again (for another 4 years)" ***. I don't think he's crazy enough to start laying the tracks this early for the forthcoming 2 term limit removal or some other legal somersault that will mean he doesn't have to leave. Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to do it, just because he can. He would have completed US politics by then (if our worst fears come true), and at that age...

*The phrase 'double click' will be added to the Wanky Work Speak thread in due course.

**I have noticed Dems/The Left are recently a bit more forthcoming hyperbolic interpretations of any far/right slip up, almost like they are saying "we can do crazy/not exhaustively verified too". Like watching your football team start diving recognising that 'its part of football'.

***Getting people out to vote has a slightly different context in US - turnout impacts the election much more significantly in that there's some stat whereby campaign dollar spends are massively more impactful spent convincing your opponent's supporters not to bother (or be supportive enough) to get out and vote (and, of course, for your supporters to bother), instead of converting Republican to Democrat and vice versa.

This is pretty much exactly how I read it.

"Get out and vote FOR ME, you won't have to do it again."

Plausible deniability - of course you won't have to vote for me again, as the constitution decrees that the fair and Democratic elections held in 4 years time won't have my name on it.

Dog whistle - galvanise the faithful and trigger the libs, TRUMP 4 LIFE.

Two very different readings of the exact same words.

 

[Maltin]

This is pretty much exactly how I read it.

"Get out and vote FOR ME, you won't have to do it again."

I don’t agree with Ted Striker’s view but yours aligns with what I imagine he means. Trump doesn’t care about anyone other than himself and he is only allowed to serve once more so in his mind, they only ever need to bother voting once more as, from his perspective, he couldn’t care less if they ever voted again.

It’s very strange the twisting people have to do to try to decipher (and defend) what Trump says and try to ascribe different meanings to it and suggest he didn’t mean exactly what he said.

 

[pogofish]

Morning:



E2a is it just me or has he got a bit of a whiny 'poor me' voice going on here?

TBF, he does an awful lot of whining if things aren't going entirely his way - In fact this is one of the things he is "best" at..!

 

[breadandcircuse]

I don’t agree with Ted Striker’s view but yours aligns with what I imagine he means. Trump doesn’t care about anyone other than himself and he is only allowed to serve once more so in his mind, they only ever need to bother voting once more as, from his perspective, he couldn’t care less if they ever voted again.

It’s very strange the twisting people have to do to try to decipher (and defend) what Trump says and try to ascribe different meanings to it and suggest he didn’t mean exactly what he said.

Do you really think he is going to abide by the rules? He has the SC in his pocket who have given him a pass to do what the fudge he likes. Project 2025 is there for us all to see what he and his lackeys are all about. He has bragged about being a dictator on day one. He is a fascist, and has no intention of leaving the WH if he ever gets back in. The torch will be passed to Jr when he pops his clogs, in a dynasty worthy of monarchy. He is a very dangerous autocratic lunatic.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Yes, it could have been even worse. Vance is bright and ambitious and will say and do whatever it takes to get ahead. Changes his mind when the wind blows.
And he has the hillbilly backstory. The extracts I read a few years back - I think it was before he was elected - were well written.

He went to Yale so I would expect his writing skills to be adequate. There's a lot of controversy about his book. There's accusations that its less than factual and that he actually had a middle-class upbringing. There's also accusations that his book brings up some of the worst stereotypes of poor whites as lazy, wifebeating, drunkards.

From one review:

The memoir is billed as “the true story of what a social, regional and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.” While it hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and was later adapted into a Ron Howard-directed Netflix film starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close, many critics — particularly those who live in or hail from Appalachia — questioned the accuracy of some of its claims.

“Elegy is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the White working class,” said a New Republic story, at the time. “Vance’s central argument is that hillbillies themselves are to blame for their troubles.”

“We spend our way to the poorhouse,” Vance writes in the book. “We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.”

In his review of the film for the Associated Press, Jake Coyle noted that explanation was attractive to many readers, especially coming as it did during Trump's first presidential campaign. “The 2016 book came at the moment many were searching for explanations for the political shift taking place across Appalachia and the Rust Belt," he wrote.

In another review of the film adaptation, Vulture writer Sarah Jones wrote, "The book is poverty porn wrapped in a right-wing message about the cultural pathologies of the region. In Vance’s Appalachia, poverty and immorality intertwine. Success happens to hardworking people, and structural explanations for poverty receive glancing attention when he chooses to mention them at all.” ....

But there’s more to the issue than its factual merit, according to Silas House, who talked to Politico about the book in 2020. House, an Appalachian author himself and the Appalachian Studies chair at Berea College in Kentucky, said he looks at Hillbilly Elegy as “not a memoir but a treatise that traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes, less a way to explain the political rise of Trump than the actual start of the political rise of Vance.”

“I think that if it had just been a memoir, it would be a powerful piece of writing, and it would be his own proof," he explained. "But the problem is, it is woven through with dog whistles about class and race, gender. And if your ears are attuned to those dog whistles, you know exactly what he’s saying. If you’re not, then it can read like a heartwarming rags-to-riches story.”

One scene in the book describes Vance’s uncles as “drunks who fight everybody and they beat their wives.” He also calls them “the embodiment of the Appalachian man.” But in House's view, that characterization was “deeply troubling" and more representative of the stereotypes perpetuated by the media than of actual Appalachian men.

House also pointed out that the “intentionally manipulative stories” in the book are so damaging because they offer generalizations that play into harmful stereotypes.

And here's the kicker:

Critics have also noted that Vance’s packaging of the memoir as “an Appalachian narrative” is a bit of a misnomer, because his family moved away from the Appalachian region two generations before Vance was born. “Lots of times in the book when he’s talking about Appalachia, it’s almost like he’s never been to Appalachia,” House pointed out. “This is a Rust Belt story, but Appalachian stories, Appalachian literature, is its own genre.”

“If you read the book, you realize that hardly any of it is set in Appalachia,” he added. “He’s saying, I guess, that generationally you can’t escape Appalachia, because here he is, his grandparents left there when they were very young, his mother never lived there, he never lived there, and suddenly, after the book came out, he’s on every news show as the representative of a region that he barely knows.”

Was J.D. Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy' Really a True Story? All About the VP Candidate's Controversial Memoir

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tapped Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. The politician is also known as the author of 'Hillbilly Elegy,' a memoir about growing up in Appalachia, but critics say the book is rife with stereotypes, prejudice and oversimplifications.

people.com

And, people buy the narrative. I get multiple requests for his book every day. We had to buy extra copies to keep up with the demand. He's just a grifter and that's probably what Trump liked about him.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Putin-Trump is a bit 'who the fuck knows?'. Though yeah, I'd probably give more credence to that view than them slinging nukes about.

Trump also fucking hates China, and relations there are bad enough as it is. Though there are so many variables there it's just... impossible.

It's all for show. The Trump family makes a lot of money off trade with China. His daughter got a number of trademarks in China when he was in office.

TOPLINE The Chinese government granted a total of 41 trademarks to companies linked to Ivanka Trump by April of 2019—and the trademarks she applied for after her father became president got approved about 40% faster than those she requested before Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, according to a new book by Forbes’ senior editor Dan Alexander.

KEY FACTS
On March 29, 2017, Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of President Trump, became an official government employee, joining her husband, Jared Kushner, as an adviser to her father.

The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the Chinese government.

In early May of 2018, ZTE, a Chinese electronics maker, said that it had halted “major operating activities” after being penalized by the United States Department of Commerce for breaking sanctions and selling electronics to Iran and North Korea.

Yet, in mid-May, President Trump surprisingly reversed course when he indicated a willingness to rethink the punishment and vowed to work with Chinese President Xi Jinping to prevent the collapse of the ZTE, which employs 75,000 people, with Trump tweeting, “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

That same month, May of 2018, amid tense trade negotiations between China and the United States, China approved seven Ivanka trademarks, according to Alexander’s book, White House, Inc.

Alexander’s book also details how “after Ivanka met with the prime minister of Japan, his country approved three trademarks for her business, in less than one third of the time it had previously taken, according to an analysis of data from the World Intellectual Property Organization,” and that Canada registered three trademarks following Ivanka’s sit-down with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

On March 29, 2017, Ivanka Trump, the eldest daughter of President Trump, became an official government employee, joining her husband, Jared Kushner, as an adviser to her father.

The day before that appointment, Ivanka applied for 17 new trademarks with the Chinese government.

In early May of 2018, ZTE, a Chinese electronics maker, said that it had halted “major operating activities” after being penalized by the United States Department of Commerce for breaking sanctions and selling electronics to Iran and North Korea.

Yet, in mid-May, President Trump surprisingly reversed course when he indicated a willingness to rethink the punishment and vowed to work with Chinese President Xi Jinping to prevent the collapse of the ZTE, which employs 75,000 people, with Trump tweeting, “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

That same month, May of 2018, amid tense trade negotiations between China and the United States, China approved seven Ivanka trademarks, according to Alexander’s book, White House, Inc.

Alexander’s book also details how “after Ivanka met with the prime minister of Japan, his country approved three trademarks for her business, in less than one third of the time it had previously taken, according to an analysis of data from the World Intellectual Property Organization,” and that Canada registered three trademarks following Ivanka’s sit-down with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Over a span of two months in late 2018, the Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to President Trump and his daughter. In October alone, according to the Associated Press, China’s Trademark Office granted provisional approval for 16 trademarks to Ivanka Trump Marks LLC. The new approvals covered Ivanka-branded fashion gear, including sunglasses, handbags, shoes and jewelry, as well as beauty services and voting machines. In January of 2019, China granted Ivanka’s company preliminary approval for another five trademarks covering child care centers, wedding dresses, and art valuation services. The applications were filed in 2016 and 2017.

Ivanka’s Trademark Requests Were Fast-Tracked In China After Trump Was Elected

The day before she was officially appointed to the White House staff, Ivanka Trump applied for 17 new trademarks in China.

www.forbes.com

At best this was a conflict of interest. Worse, it's probably pay-to-play. Its best with Trump and his ilk to put aside what they say and look at what they do.

 

[_Russ_]

Not sure what Picture you're referring to, but I would very wary about suggesting than any photo (other than perhaps a medical one, which won't be made public) can demonstrate definitively that Trump didn't suffer any injury to his ear.

aAARGH, I said "noticeable injury" whilst comparing it to a claim of a 2cm wound some days earlier...does anyone actually read posts in a literal sense in here?

 

[magneze]

Still no pics?

 

[tim]

This is pretty much exactly how I read it.

"Get out and vote FOR ME, you won't have to do it again."

Plausible deniability - of course you won't have to vote for me again, as the constitution decrees that the fair and Democratic elections held in 4 years time won't have my name on it.

Dog whistle - galvanise the faithful and trigger the libs, TRUMP 4 LIFE.

Two very different readings of the exact same words.

Both readings seek to endow Trump's campaign rhetoric with a level of cogency that they don't deserve. He talks even more shit and tells more lies when he's on the stump than he does normally.

He's evil, but he's not an evil genius.

 

[Ax^]

I believe that Trump did suffer a very superficial injury to the upper, outer aspect of his ear. It likely only caused minor skin damage, without tissue loss. Because of the ear is highly vascular, meaning it has a very good blood supply, this aids rapid healing.

say that to a lot of ex rugby players

 

[Rompipalle]

say that to a lot of ex rugby players

That's probably why forwards all wrap gaffer tape round their heads!

 

[pbsmooth]

is this the generic US election thread? can't see one otherwise

 

[Kaka Tim]

is this the generic US election thread? can't see one otherwise

Yeah. Someone should probably start one.

 

[two sheds]

'Democracy' in America - time is up?

 

[pbsmooth]

'Democracy' in America - time is up?

good idea. go for it...