1. #28476
    Member elche's Avatar
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    Trump said on Thursday he would leave the White House, if the electoral college votes for Biden. It's not his choice. If diaperDon loses, he has to leave. It's a matter of law, not choice.

  2. #28477
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    In the words of our (your) (or someones) forever classy first lady...
    "Fuck that Christmas shit".

    Who subsequently stole that original quip from Frank Zappa, unknowingly I'm sure.

  3. #28478
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    Isn't it great to think that he'll be totally irrelevant next year?

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    Quote Originally Posted by hallelujah View Post
    isn't it great to think that he'll be totally irrelevant next year?
    hallelujah .

  5. #28480
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    Quote Originally Posted by hallelujah View Post
    Isn't it great to think that he'll be totally irrelevant next year?

    He is already working on rerunning in 2024. That's the reason he riles up his braindead supporters with false claims of election fraud.

  6. #28481
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    He looked young back then.

    ... and thin.

    He really needed a feed!
    Last edited by David48atTD; 28-11-2020 at 10:49 AM.

  7. #28482
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    I feel for these guys. Pity mainly ... but still feel for them.


  8. #28483
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    When he leaves office, can ex-President Trump be trusted with America's secrets?


    WASHINGTON — When David Priess was a CIA officer, he traveled to Houston, he recalls, to brief former President George H.W. Bush on classified developments in the Middle East.


    It was part of a long tradition of former presidents being consulted about, and granted access to, some of the nation's secrets.


    Priess and other former intelligence officials say Joe Biden would be wise not to let that tradition continue in the case of Donald Trump.


    They argue soon-to-be-former President Trump already poses a danger because of the secrets he currently possesses, and they say it would be foolish to trust him with more sensitive information. With Trump's real estate empire under financial pressure and his brand suffering, they worry he will see American secrets as a profit center.


    "This is not something that one could have ever imagined with other presidents, but it's easy to imagine with this one," said Jack Goldsmith, who worked as a senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration.

    "He's shown as president that he doesn't take secret-keeping terribly seriously," Goldsmith said in an interview. "He has a known tendency to disrespect rules related to national security. And he has a known tendency to like to sell things that are valuable to him."

    Goldsmith and other experts noted that Trump has a history of carelessly revealing classified information. He told the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in 2017 about extremely sensitive terrorism threat information the U.S. had received from an ally. Last year he tweeted what experts said was a secret satellite photo of an Iranian nuclear installation.

    The president also may be vulnerable to foreign influence. His tax records, as reported by the New York Times, reveal that Trump appears to face financial challenges, having personally guaranteed more than $400 million of his companies' debt at a time when the pandemic has put pressure on the hotel industry, in which Trump is a major player.

    "Is that a risk?" said Priess, who wrote "The President's Book of Secrets," about presidents and intelligence. "If it were someone applying for a security clearance, damn right it would be a risk."

    The White House did not respond to requests for comment. The Biden transition declined to comment.

    Trump has said his finances are sound, and that the debts are a small percentage of his assets. Generally, though, large debts to foreign banks — Trump's biggest creditor is reported to be Deutsche Bank, a German institution with links to Russia — would exclude a person from a top secret clearance.

    Presidents, however, are not investigated and polygraphed for security clearances as all other government officials are. By virtue of being elected, they assume control over all the nation's secret intelligence, and are allowed by law to disclose any of it, at any time, to anyone.

    Former presidents aren't subject to security clearance investigations, either. They are provided access to secrets as a courtesy, with the permission of the current president.

    Typically, former presidents are given briefings before they travel overseas, or in connection with an issue about which the current president wishes to consult them, Priess and other experts say.

    When President Bill Clinton sent former president Jimmy Carter to diffuse a tense stand off in Haiti, for example, Carter likely received classified briefings on the situation ahead of his trip.

    And when George H.W. Bush visited his son in the White House, he sat in on on the President's Daily Brief, the highly classified compendium of secrets that is presented each morning to the occupant of the Oval Office, according to Priess, who interviewed both men for his book.

    It's unclear whether former President Barack Obama has received intelligence briefings after he left office, but President Trump said in March that he hasn't consulted his predecessors about coronavirus or anything else.

    Former presidents have long made money after leaving office by writing books and giving speeches, but no former president has ever had the kind of international business entanglements Trump does. Trump has business interests or connections in China, Russia and other U.S. adversary countries that covet even tiny portions of what he knows about the American national security state.

    That said, Trump probably is not conversant with many highly classified details, experts say, He was famous for paying only intermittent attention during his intelligence briefings and declining to read his written materials. Moreover, intelligence officials tend not to share specifics about sources and methods with any president, unless he asks.

    So Trump probably doesn't know the names of the CIA's spies in Russia, experts say. But presumably he knows a bit about the capabilities of American surveillance drones, for example, or how adept the National Security Agency has been at intercepting the communications of various foreign governments.

    Like so much with Trump, his track record of sharing secrets has been unprecedented in American presidential history.
    In interviews with the journalist Bob Woodward for a book released this fall, Trump boasted about a secret nuclear weapons system that neither Russia nor China knew about.
    According to the Washington Post, Woodward's sources "later confirmed that the U.S. military had a secret new weapons system, but they would not provide details, and that the people were surprised Trump had disclosed it."
    When Trump briefed the public about the commando raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, he disclosed classified and sensitive details, according to reporting by NBC News.

    In 2017, Trump gave the location of two American nuclear submarines near North Korea to the president of the Philippines.
    That same year, a member of his golf club at Mar-a-Lago took a photo of a briefing Trump and the Japanese prime minister were receiving in a public area about North Korea, and posted it on Facebook.

    In 2018, the New York Times reported that Trump commonly used insecure cell phones to call friends, and that Chinese and other spies listened in, gaining valuable insights.

    Doug Wise, a former CIA officer and Trump critic, argued this week in a piece on the Just Security web site that Trump has long posed a national security danger, and that affording him access to secrets after he leaves the White House would compound that danger.

    Trump's large debts, he wrote, present "obvious and alarming counterintelligence risks" to the United States.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin, for one, would have a great incentive to pay Trump to act on Russia's behalf, Wise wrote.
    "Assuming President Joe Biden follows custom, Trump would continue to have access to sensitive information that the Russians would consider valuable," he wrote. "As horrifying as it would seem, could a financially leveraged former president be pressured or blackmailed into providing Moscow sensitive information in exchange for financial relief and future Russian business considerations?"


    It was not impossible to envision Trump paid millions on retainer by Gulf Arab states or other foreign governments, Harvard professor Goldsmith said, "in the course of which he starts blabbing and disclosing lots of secrets. It wouldn't be an express quid pro quo, but people would pay for access to and time with him, knowing that he will not be discreet."

    Former CIA Director John Brennan, a frequent Trump critic who was denied access to his own classified file by the president, said the Biden administration should carefully weigh the question of Trump's access to future secrets.
    "The new administration would be well-advised to conduct an immediate review to determine whether Donald Trump should have continued access to classified information in light of his past actions and deep concern about what he might do in the future," he said.


    Then again, it may never become an issue, said former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos, who pointed out that Trump has long displayed "disdain" for American intelligence agencies.


    "I would frankly be surprised if he even wanted these briefings," Polymeropoulos said.
    When he leaves office, can ex-President Trump be trusted with America'''s national security secrets?

  9. #28484
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    ^ fuck no, are you kidding me.

  10. #28485
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    ‘Mini desk. Tiny hands. Small soul’: Trump mocked for giving speech at little table

    President Donald Trump-enyp8nhxyao1zlz-jpg



    For a US president obsessed by size – his hands, his wealth, his crowdsDonald Trump made something of a bold U-turn on Thursday night by addressing the country from a desk seemingly designed for a leprechaun.

    Trump said on Thursday he would leave the White House if the electoral college votes for the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden – the closest he has come to admitting defeat – but his furniture stole the limelight.

    While he harangued reporters and repeated unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, the internet zeroed in on his unusually small desk. Some called it symbolic of Trump’s diminished stature, some wondered if it was photoshopped (it wasn’t), most just laughed.

    The actor Mark Hamill tweeted: “Maybe if you behave yourself, stop lying to undermine a fair election & start thinking of what’s good for the country instead of whining about how unfairly you are treated, you’ll be invited to sit at the big boy’s table.”

    The hashtag #DiaperDon swiftly trended on Twitter, with people mocking the president as an infant banished to the children’s table for Thanksgiving.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...dent-furniture

  11. #28486
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    Quote Originally Posted by bsnub View Post
    President Donald Trump-enyp8nhxyao1zlz-jpg



    For a US president obsessed by size – his hands, his wealth, his crowdsDonald Trump made something of a bold U-turn on Thursday night by addressing the country from a desk seemingly designed for a leprechaun.

    Trump said on Thursday he would leave the White House if the electoral college votes for the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden – the closest he has come to admitting defeat – but his furniture stole the limelight.

    While he harangued reporters and repeated unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, the internet zeroed in on his unusually small desk. Some called it symbolic of Trump’s diminished stature, some wondered if it was photoshopped (it wasn’t), most just laughed.

    The actor Mark Hamill tweeted: “Maybe if you behave yourself, stop lying to undermine a fair election & start thinking of what’s good for the country instead of whining about how unfairly you are treated, you’ll be invited to sit at the big boy’s table.”

    The hashtag #DiaperDon swiftly trended on Twitter, with people mocking the president as an infant banished to the children’s table for Thanksgiving.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...dent-furniture
    Been posted and commented on a lot since yesterday.


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    I reckon after the ragging he got about that someone copped an earful.

  13. #28488
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    I reckon after the ragging he got about that someone copped an earful.
    It couldn't be more fitting though.

  14. #28489
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    From the diaperdon twitter feed.



    President Donald Trump-en4qwttxyaaresi-jpg

  15. #28490
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    ...irony: many of the folks in that audience^ are devout Christians...you know: "love they neighbor, hate the sin, not the sinner"-types...look at their faces...how did they get so gullible, so easily misled, so incredibly stupid? I blame Jesus...

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    Shoutout to whoevers idea it was anyway.

  17. #28492
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    Quote Originally Posted by tomcat View Post
    ...irony: many of the folks in that audience^ are devout Christians...you know: "love they neighbor, hate the sin, not the sinner"-types...look at their faces...how did they get so gullible, so easily misled, so incredibly stupid? I blame Jesus...
    And there you see the ugly face of America looking back at you

  18. #28493
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    Op-Ed: How Trump is laying the groundwork for violence and unrest during Biden’s presidency
    By COLIN P. CLARKE
    NOV. 29, 20203:05 AM

    President Trump’s post-election antics are dangerous. Few expected him to be a graceful loser, but his refusal to officially concede and his flood of tweets insisting the election was rigged may have serious and long-term violent consequences.

    Even though he fashions himself as a modern-day strongman, Trump’s tactics mirror those of tin-pot dictators, who simply dismiss election results that don’t work out in their favor — and who portray their political adversaries as illegitimate and resort to intimidation to silence the opposition. It’s the kind of thing we saw in Algeria in the 1990s, Kenya in 2007 and Belarus earlier this year.

    In one of the hundreds of tweets Trump has posted since the election in an attempt to undermine the will of the voters, he declared “I WON THE ELECTION, VOTER FRAUD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY.” By trying to convince his supporters that Democrats stole the presidency, Trump is actively delegitimizing the Biden administration and, in the process, condoning all forms of civil disobedience and public unrest related to the election results.

    I firmly believe that the president of the United States is laying the groundwork for violence and disruption to unfold regularly over the next four years. As a national security researcher, I never imagined I’d write that sentence.

    I’ve studied the causes and outcomes of every insurgency between the end of World War II and 2009. There are 71 of them. Many of the conflicts began when a sizable minority believed its government was in some way illegitimate. Oftentimes the insurgents were correct — governments lost the confidence of the governed due to corruption, human rights abuses or an inability to provide basic services.

    Obviously that is not the case in the U.S., where a free and fair election took place. Still, Trump publicly refuses to accept the results. Despite losing, Trump garnered 70 million votes, and many in his fanatic base believe his claim that the election was stolen, inundating social media with the hashtag #StopTheSteal.

    By firing Chris Krebs, a well-regarded director of the federal agency that vouched for the reliability of the 2020 election, Trump is showing his supporters that he’s serious about his claims of impropriety — and demonstrating just how desperate he is to hold onto power.

    Of course, Trump encouraging his supporters to engage in insurgency-like behavior is nothing new. His incessant rants against the “fake news media” helped motivate Cesar Sayoc, described as a “Donald Trump superfan,” to mail 16 pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and members of the media in 2018. After Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” in April following the establishment of COVID-19 protocols in that state, legal scholars accused him of inciting insurrection. In Michigan, armed men stormed the state’s Capitol building and anti-government militias plotted to kidnap and potentially kill the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

    Several days after the presidential election, while vote-counting was still taking place in Pennsylvania, police arrested two men on weapons violations near the convention center in Philadelphia. A decal on the back of their vehicle featured QAnon, the conspiracy theory the FBI has labeled a terrorist threat. On Nov. 10, a Staten Island man was arrested for threatening violence against protesters, law enforcement and politicians in response to an election he believed had been “fraudulently stolen from us.”

    The result of Trump continuously attacking the pillars of American democracy could be four years of durable disorder, with semi-regular acts of violence that become banal. We could respond the same way Americans have adapted to mass shootings — we stop and notice but barely flinch. Also, when a person or group is repeatedly demonized in public, it drastically increases the chance that someone will be incited to carry out a violent act against the individual or group. It happens over and over around the world.

    Under Trump, the U.S. has become a tinderbox. Political polarization is dividing us, gun sales have reached record highs, and eight months of being cooped up due to the COVID-19 pandemic have made Americans anxious and angry. Looming economic uncertainty and widespread unemployment will only fuel existing grievances and make it easier for anti-government extremists to recruit. Militia activity spiked after the election of Barack Obama and might escalate again because many will be unhappy that Kamala Harris, a woman and a person of color, has ascended to the vice presidency.

    So far, President-elect Biden has said all the right things. In speeches following the election, he has declared, “I will be a president for all Americans, whether you voted for me or not.” He has called for unity and pointed out that Democrats and Republicans may be political opponents, but “we are not enemies.”

    For many Americans, these healing words will fall on deaf ears. Research on terrorism refers to “ungoverned spaces,” parts of a country that exist beyond the writ of the government. Within the U.S., violence could occur in the domestic equivalent of ungoverned spaces, as anti-government extremists stockpile weapons and dare the federal government to take action. We may be headed toward another siege of an armed compound, like the ones that occurred at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and Waco, Texas, the following year. Both incidents are still celebrated in far-right propaganda.

    We are lucky to live in a country with law enforcement skilled at foiling plots and arresting would-be assailants. But it only takes a small number of people who want to perpetrate regular acts of violence to cause broader instability. If this scenario does play out, Trump’s relentless claims of a rigged election will be a major reason why.

    Op-Ed: How Trump is laying the groundwork for violence and unrest during Biden'''s presidency - Los Angeles Times

  19. #28494
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    "So Much Winning!" #1,294,237

    The defeat is yet another loss for Team Trump, which is so bad at the basics of writing law that George Washington University law professors Robert Glicksman and Emily Hammond termed their effort "regulatory slop."
    Judge rules against Trump ploy to force elderly into nursing homes | Salon.com

  20. #28495
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    President Donald Trump-wu201125-gif

  21. #28496
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    I'm wondering why Jared has spent so much time in the ME over the last 6 months. He is in Qatar right now as we speak. We know for a fact that it certainly isn't for America. But we do know that he and his criminal father-in-law are short of cash and have major debts coming due in 2021 (around $800 million in total). Are they using the last few months of the office of the WH, as they have done repeatedly, to leverage favors from rich oil barons in the ME in a quid pro quo agreement where he approves the sale of military hardware to rouge countries as long as they pay for the favor under the table? After all, this is the standard business practice of the trump crime family where ever they go.

  22. #28497
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    Quote Originally Posted by elche View Post
    I'm wondering why Jared has spent so much time in the ME over the last 6 months. He is in Qatar right now as we speak. We know for a fact that it certainly isn't for America. But we do know that he and his criminal father-in-law are short of cash and have major debts coming due in 2021 (around $800 million in total). Are they using the last few months of the office of the WH, as they have done repeatedly, to leverage favors from rich oil barons in the ME in a quid pro quo agreement where he approves the sale of military hardware to rouge countries as long as they pay for the favor under the table? After all, this is the standard business practice of the trump crime family where ever they go.
    Wouldn't surprise me at all.

  23. #28498
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    Quote Originally Posted by elche View Post
    But we do know that he and his criminal father-in-law are short of cash
    And more likely, his actual criminal father...prosecuted by Chris Christie as I recall...

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    He'll be negotiating the sale of state secrets.

  25. #28500
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    The Trump administration formally notified Congress that it plans to sell 50 advanced F-35 fighter jets to the UAE as part of a broader arms deal worth more than $23bn. I have to wonder how much under-the-table cash Jared secured from the ruling family of UAE on this exchange, in the final days of the trump crime family in the WH?

    Dozens of rights groups denounce US arms sales to UAE | United States | Al Jazeera

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