[Discussion] Hope to Remember The Trump Administration Thread as being 'transparent and honest'

Let's follow and discuss what our newest presidential administration gets up to, the good, the bad, the lawsuits, and the many many indictments.

Rallick wrote:

What a f*cking troglodyte. And claiming diminished responsibility is just the icing on the cake. This whole week has just been an utter sh*t show.

Prepare for an infinite number of more

OG_slinger wrote:

The man's lawyers are now claiming that he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and, because of that, he believed Trump had ordered him to attack the boy: "His commander in chief is telling people that if they kneel, they should be fired, or if they burn a flag, they should be punished. He certainly didn't understand it was a crime."

Ok, so I accept his defense. And because of this brain injury he may attack anyone at anytime so he is a clear danger to the public and should be involuntarily institutionalized for the rest of his life.

farley3k wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

The man's lawyers are now claiming that he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and, because of that, he believed Trump had ordered him to attack the boy: "His commander in chief is telling people that if they kneel, they should be fired, or if they burn a flag, they should be punished. He certainly didn't understand it was a crime."

Ok, so I accept his defense. And because of this brain injury he may attack anyone at anytime so he is a clear danger to the public and should be involuntarily institutionalized for the rest of his life.

That's what i don;t get about these sort of defenses. Are they honestly saying "My client is uncontrollably violent because of TBI, therefor he should be free from consequence from his violence, and also must be free to repeatedly commit violence in the future"

farley3k wrote:

Ok, so I accept his defense. And because of this brain injury he may attack anyone at anytime so he is a clear danger to the public and should be involuntarily institutionalized for the rest of his life.

The irony, of course, is that he's already used the excuse of his brain injury in another violent incident. In 2010 he pulled a gun on a family member and threaten to kill them. Luckily, the family member was able to talk him down. He was sentenced to ten years for that, but his entire jail term was suspended.

I gotta unplug from this sh*t...

Trump supporter briefly detained in El Paso after reportedly carrying gun, knife

Dallas News wrote:

Days after the massacre directed at Latinos across the country, a supporter of President Donald J. Trump allegedly armed with a gun and knife was detained in front of a migrant community center, putting an already grieving city on edge.

The incident, following the shooting deaths at a Walmart here that claimed the lives of 22 people and left about two dozen injured, has residents in this heavily Hispanic community wary of being targeted.

Police spokesman Robert Gomez said Thursday that a "suspicious subject" was "detained and interviewed released" because he was carrying his firearm legally. He would not elaborate.

The 21-year-old drove his pickup -- plastered with a Rambo-like image of President Donald J. Trump carrying a large weapon -- from Houston for Trump's trip to the city on Wednesday. He was parked outside the center when police detained him. In the back window was a campaign poster for Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Turns out the guy confronted mourners at the El Paso memorial last night because that's what stable geniuses do. The conservative Washington Examiner even interviewed him:

Washington Examiner wrote:

Thomas Bartram, 21, said he had driven his truck, complete with banner of the president dressed as Rambo, from Houston to make a point.

“It seemed like the right thing to do, to come out and support Trump. He’s getting a lot of criticism,” he said.

He added that he was “an open-carry kind of guy” at political rallies but had opted not to bring his gun because of the nature of the tragedy.

“It’s a funeral so it didn’t seem like the right thing to do,” he said.

The newspaper also published this photograph of him casually displaying the white power OK hand gesture next to his truck that was festooned MAGA Bomber style with "9/11 was inside job" (dude would have been three years old on 9/11...) and InfoWars bumper stickers.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/78AQ7WS.jpg)

Oh look. Another f*ckING SCUBA DIVER.

DSGamer wrote:

Oh look. Another f*ckING SCUBA DIVER.

Well he *does* kind of look like he's wearing underwater goggles...

DSGamer wrote:

Oh look. Another f*ckING SCUBA DIVER.

Clearly a scuba diver. So we need to really think about what we are condemning him of.

TheGameguru wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Oh look. Another f*ckING SCUBA DIVER.

Clearly a scuba diver. So we need to really think about what we are condemning him of.

Also, it's clear the the scuba diver who kind of resembles Trump on the back of that submarine is carrying a harpoon for defense against sea monsters that they could encounter down there under the sea where they obviously are!

No patient at the El Paso hospital would meet with Trump for his photo op, so they had to bring in patients who had already been discharged...like a two-month old baby who was orphaned in the attack.

It's appropriate that Trumbo is holding a Russian weapon.

But why is there an RPG round shoved into the barrel of an M60?

Gremlin wrote:

No patient at the El Paso hospital would meet with Trump for his photo op, so they had to bring in patients who had already been discharged...like a two-month old baby who was orphaned in the attack.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBf05foXYAAX0YD?format=jpg&name=medium)

Guess that kid has to never actually watched Rambo.

OG_slinger wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

No patient at the El Paso hospital would meet with Trump for his photo op, so they had to bring in patients who had already been discharged...like a two-month old baby who was orphaned in the attack.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBf05foXYAAX0YD?format=jpg&name=medium)

This is so sad. What the f*ck is wrong with him? What the f*ck is up with that smile? That kid is an orphan now. The f*cking f*ck?

The poor taste just drips and is jaw dropping. FFS, the thumbs up?!?!?!?!?!? Yet again, things just get worse and worse and more crazy. I'm of the mindset now that I'm ready to sacrifice my life for good. Would never do violence, but I'm ready to try and put my body in between bull sh*t.

He did double thumbs up with hospital staff in a picture, just saw it on Seth Meyers. He has no sense of human empathy. It's all about him, just another campaign rally in his mind.

Just saw video. The mother f*cker was bragging about crowd size at the hospital and trying to slam Beto for only having 400 people at a nearby event.

But they're not going to stop using it...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The Republican Party, the Trump campaign and other GOP organizations said Thursday that they are freezing their spending on Twitter to protest the platform’s treatment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In Trump’s speech after the shootings he named video games and social media as sources of violence. I get that video games seems a great scape goat but social media felt like a bit of a tangential target. I’m wondering if Trump is looking for a pretext to introduce investigative practices that would allow him to cause trouble for or shut down political opponents and just people he doesn’t like to Twitter, etc.

The impeachment inquiry Trump has feared is here

WaPo wrote:

House Democrats have begun impeachment proceedings against President Trump. A key Democrat admitted as much Thursday.

“This is formal impeachment proceedings,” the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), told CNN on Thursday, after weeks of dancing around whether his committee would formally consider impeaching Trump.

“We are investigating all the evidence, gathering the evidence," Nadler added. "And we will [at the] conclusion of this — hopefully by the end of the year — vote to vote articles of impeachment to the House floor. Or we won’t. That’s a decision that we’ll have to make. But that’s exactly the process we’re in right now.”

His statement makes clear what a lawsuit filed Wednesday by his committee states: that the "Judiciary Committee is now determining whether to recommend articles of impeachment against the President based on the obstructive conduct described by the Special Counsel.”

In fact, Democrats may have already begun an impeachment inquiry without most people noticing and without the fanfare (and potential political backlash) of a big announcement that it’s happening. In a court filing in late July to get the full, unredacted Mueller report, the Judiciary Committee argued that it needed the information because it “is conducting an investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment.” Since then, Democrats’ language has only become stronger in court filings, culminating with Nadler’s statement that impeachment proceedings have begun.

Higgledy wrote:

In Trump’s speech after the shootings he named video games and social media as sources of violence. I get that video games seems a great scape goat but social media felt like a bit of a tangential target. I’m wondering if Trump is looking for a pretext to introduce investigative practices that would allow him to cause trouble for or shut down political opponents and just people he doesn’t like to Twitter, etc.

White House drafting executive order to tackle Silicon Valley’s alleged anti-conservative bias

I think you are pretty much spot on in that, they are building pretext.

JC wrote:

But they're not going to stop using it...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The Republican Party, the Trump campaign and other GOP organizations said Thursday that they are freezing their spending on Twitter to protest the platform’s treatment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Hilarious. The only reason to spend money on Twitter is to buy ads. The end result of this boycott is people won't see their sh*tty campaign ads on Twitter.

IMAGE(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/490/511/148.jpg)

grrrrr...

I had more to write but grrrrr...works.

OG_slinger wrote:

I gotta unplug from this sh*t...

Trump supporter briefly detained in El Paso after reportedly carrying gun, knife

Dallas News wrote:

Days after the massacre directed at Latinos across the country, a supporter of President Donald J. Trump allegedly armed with a gun and knife was detained in front of a migrant community center, putting an already grieving city on edge.

The incident, following the shooting deaths at a Walmart here that claimed the lives of 22 people and left about two dozen injured, has residents in this heavily Hispanic community wary of being targeted.

Police spokesman Robert Gomez said Thursday that a "suspicious subject" was "detained and interviewed released" because he was carrying his firearm legally. He would not elaborate.

The 21-year-old drove his pickup -- plastered with a Rambo-like image of President Donald J. Trump carrying a large weapon -- from Houston for Trump's trip to the city on Wednesday. He was parked outside the center when police detained him. In the back window was a campaign poster for Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Turns out the guy confronted mourners at the El Paso memorial last night because that's what stable geniuses do. The conservative Washington Examiner even interviewed him:

Washington Examiner wrote:

Thomas Bartram, 21, said he had driven his truck, complete with banner of the president dressed as Rambo, from Houston to make a point.

“It seemed like the right thing to do, to come out and support Trump. He’s getting a lot of criticism,” he said.

He added that he was “an open-carry kind of guy” at political rallies but had opted not to bring his gun because of the nature of the tragedy.

“It’s a funeral so it didn’t seem like the right thing to do,” he said.

The newspaper also published this photograph of him casually displaying the white power OK hand gesture next to his truck that was festooned MAGA Bomber style with "9/11 was inside job" (dude would have been three years old on 9/11...) and InfoWars bumper stickers.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/78AQ7WS.jpg)

This fine upstanding young man is apparently on his way to Portland to attend the giant “free speech” rally on the 17th, alongside many other fine upstanding young men who are super into anime and white ethnostates. With how high tensions have been lately and how Andy Ngo has managed to scam the far right into seething over Portland... I’m just hoping something won’t happen that will end up being seen by history as the US’s Reichstag Fire. Coincidentally (and completely unrelated) the rally happens to be on the same day that my parents are coming to visit me for the first time since I moved to Portland 8 years ago. Despite my assurances they already have a severely warped view of the city from watching Fox News, I’m sure this isn’t going to help any.

Ngo scammed people? Isn't Trump Truck guy trolling?

Ngo is an agitator that shows up to protests alongside white supremacists and goads leftists into attacking him, then whines on social media and writes articles about how violent the left is. Someone punched him at a protest a couple months ago and he claimed to have a serious brain hemorrhage and raked in a ridiculous amount of Gofundme money from conservatives. He tried to do the same thing earlier this year when he and a contingent of Patriot Prayer stooges rolled up to a popular leftist bar and started a fight, that incident just didn’t get as much media traction since they were more clearly at fault that time and it was harder for Ngo to cast himself as a victim. He got maced during that bar fight and tried to pass it off as an “antifa chemical attack.”

Ngo is also a sub-editor at Quillette, most famous recently for publishing a supposed DSA expose that they had to take down when it turned out to be made up out of whole cloth. This should have been obvious just from the number of blatant errors in the first paragraph, which gives you some idea of their editorial standards.

Jacobin was able to do more investigative journalism than the entire editorial staff of Quillette, and got an interview with the author of the article.

They also have a weird obsession with phrenology and other racist pseudo-sciences.

State Department suspends energy staffer linked to white supremacist group

Politico wrote:

The State Department has put on leave an employee of its energy bureau after reports that he has been an active member of a white supremacist group for more than five years, two sources familiar with the situation said on Thursday.

Matthew Gebert, a foreign affairs officer for the department’s Bureau of Energy Resources, was linked to the Washington D.C.-area chapter of a white supremacist organization and published racist propaganda online, according to a report published Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate speech.

In a May 2018 episode of a white nationalist podcast, Gebert, speaking under a pseudonym, called for white people to establish “a country of our own with nukes, and we will retake this thing lickety split,” according to the SPLC report.

...

Gebert started working at the bureau as a career employee in 2013, according to a posting in the George Washington alumni magazine the SPLC cited. He worked on energy issues involving Pakistan and India during his time there, former co-workers told POLITICO.

Former State Department officials expressed surprise that security screenings had not flagged Gebert’s involvement with the hate groups. Gebert would have undergone a routine screening before starting his position and another at his five-year work anniversary, said Amos Hochstein, who served as special envoy and coordinator for the State Department’s international energy affairs from 2014 to 2017 and was Gebert’s boss.

“It is inconceivable he got security clearance twice,” Hochstein told POLITICO. “If Gebert was Muslim or a person of color, it would have been caught. Neo-Nazis are not all shaved heads and tattoos, they are hiding in plain sight. I'm horrified Gebert worked for me at the State Department.“

It Seems A White Nationalist Managed to Pass the State Department's Background Check

Vice News wrote:

...

In his current role, Gebert would have been making $105,000 at the very least, and was on a career path that would eventually allow him to travel around the world, meet important international figures, and stay at five star hotels on the U.S. government’s dime.

And yet, during an appearance on white nationalist podcast “Fatherland” in August 2017, the same month as the violent Charlottesville rally, Gebert reportedly made it clear he was willing to put his white nationalism before almost anything else.

“There are bigger things than a career and a paycheck, and I don’t want to lose mine,” Gebert, speaking as Coach Finstock, according to Hatewatch. “I am prepared to lose mine, because this is the most important thing to me in my life … in tandem with my family, of course.”

...

According to Hatewatch, by 2016, Gebert was running Helicopter Pilots, an organizing chapter of white nationalist Mike Peinovich’s organization “The Right Stuff.” Peinovich, who also goes by “Mike Enoch,” is known for his role organizing the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that left one dead and dozens injured, as well as his blog and podcast. Gebert and his wife regularly entertained Peinovich and other white nationalists at their home in Loudon, Virginia, Hatewatch reported.

...

Gebert apparently worked hard to keep his two identities separate. But he took risks. According to Hatewatch, he attended Unite the Right, wearing a hat and sunglasses as a disguise.

“I came back in one piece. Un-doxxed. Knock on wood,” Gebert said on the Fatherland podcast. “Un-arrested. Just with some mild war wounds that frankly I’m kind of proud of.”

And now on the short list for DNI.