[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.

Sounds good. How about we cover why Columbus was chosen at that time to be a national holiday?

Rapist cheers on holiday for rapist

Guess we can assume that Stephen Miller survived his bout with covid. Damn.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Guess we can assume that Stephen Miller survived his bout with covid. Damn.

maybe it was his dying wish?

Forgive me my public school education, but I thought Columbus never even explored "Flordia", and concentrated on exploring south.

Yeah he never set foot in the continental USA

Columbus became Columbus in the American Revolution—when the United States sought out an origin story that didn’t involve the British

“Particularly after 1776, the Americans don't really want to associate themselves with things, including Cabot, that represent British claims to North America at a time when the United States is asserting its independence,” Jones notes. “What they like about Columbus is that at this time he's being portrayed as being almost an Enlightenment figure. He represents freedom, a guy who had turned his back on the Old World and sailed in the name of a monarch and then been treated very badly by that monarch."

(Widespread accusations of colonial misgovernance led the Spanish crown to have Columbus arrested and returned to Spain in chains, where he served a short prison term. Though King Ferdinand freed him and later financed a fourth voyage Columbus's prestige and power would never really recover.)

“Of course there was a resonance there at a time when Americans felt they'd been treated very badly by George III,” says Jones. “It's not as if people write diatribes against Cabot or discredited Cabot. They just kind of forgot about him.”

"Treated very badly" seems to be a common refrain in conservative American politics.

Rat Boy wrote:

"Treated very badly" seems to be a common refrain in conservative American politics.

Yep. The reality of it from an objective perspective is "being called out for doing harmful and hateful things."

What. An. Asshole.

lunchbox12682 wrote:

How about we cover why Columbus was chosen at that time to be a national holiday?

Because the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, spent decades lobbying to make Columbus Day a thing. And they did so specifically because the Second KKK was on the ascent and this time around the KKK expanded out from just hating black people to hating everyone who wasn't a white Protestant ("One Hundred Percent Americanism" was their rallying cry).

Italians got double dinged because they were part of the second wave of immigration from Europe which saw large numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe that were instantly branded by the descendents of the first wave of European immigrants as dirty, lazy, disease-ridden criminals and because they were Catholic. The Second KKK especially hated Catholics.

So the KoC wanted something that would show that Italians (and to a lesser extent all immigrants) were also American and to make an Italian (and a Catholic) an integral part of the founding mythology of the country.

The KoC was helped over the finish line by Generoso Pope, a true rags-to-riches Italian immigrant, who came to America in 1906 with two bucks in his pocket and eventually became the owner of multiple Italian-language newspapers and radio stations in New York City and Philadelphia. Pope was closely connected to Tammany Hall and, through his media empire, consistently delivered the Italian American votes to FDR and the Democratic candidates down ticket.

Pope himself is also a controversial figure by modern standards because of his long support and open admiration of Mussolini, whom he only disavowed in 1941 after America joined the war.

But, yeah, Columbus Day is a uniquely American holiday if only because it was conceived as a way to stop anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic prejudice and attacks and, over the course of time, has become viewed as a "celebration" of the evils of European and American colonialism and for wiping out the history and voice of indigenous peoples.

OG always brings knowledge bombs to these threads.

This seems like as good a time as any to remember that Bartolome de las Casas was an Italian-American who was not also a monster. So there's that.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/columb...

Gremlin wrote:

I'm guessing if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio had won we would have gone to war with Iran (for no good reason), because Bolton has been pushing for that for ages.

Biden is much less likely to start new wars than Trump.

For that matter, Trump still has time to fire the nuclear missiles before the end of January. If he wins, we probably will see a nuclear war at some point, because he's deliberately letting the New START treaty expire in February.

obligatory:
IMAGE(https://neatnik2009.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/endgame-08.jpg?w=1000)

White House was warned Giuliani was target of Russian intelligence operation to feed misinformation to Trump

Washington Post wrote:

U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former officials familiar with the matter.

The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine, where he was gathering information that he thought would expose corrupt acts by former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The intelligence raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed Russian misinformation to the president, the former officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and conversations.

The warnings to the White House, which have not been previously reported, led national security adviser Robert O’Brien to caution Trump in a private conversation that any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia, one of the former officials said.

The message was, “Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine,” this person said. Officials wanted “to protect the president from coming out and saying something stupid,” particularly since he was facing impeachment over his own efforts to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into investigating the Bidens.

But O’Brien emerged from the meeting uncertain whether he had gotten through to the president. Trump had “shrugged his shoulders” at O’Brien’s warning, the former official said, and dismissed concern about his lawyer’s activities by saying, “That’s Rudy.”

Giuliani visited the White House on Dec. 13, shortly after the House Judiciary Committee voted to proceed with articles of impeachment, and he met with Trump at the president’s resort in Florida eight days later.

...

In a text message on Thursday, Giuliani said that he was never informed that Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian lawmaker in Ukraine whom he met on Dec. 5 in Kyiv, was a Russian intelligence asset. Giuliani said he “only had secondary information and I was not considering him a witness.” But Giuliani met again with Derkach in New York two months later, hosting him on his podcast, and he has promoted his unsubstantiated claims about the Bidens, describing Derkach as “very helpful.”

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach for allegedly running an “influence campaign” against Joe Biden, calling the Ukrainian “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who has maintained “close connections with Russian intelligence services.”

In August, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly described Derkach as part of a Russian effort to interfere with the 2020 election by smearing Biden, accusing Derkach of “spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine” Biden and the Democrats.

So while Trump was being impeached for trying to pressure Ukraine to interfere in our elections by framing Biden he was also meeting with Giuliani--who was actively running around Ukraine on Trump's order trying to dig up dirt on Biden to ratf*ck the election--who was also meeting with a Russian intelligence asset who most definitely were trying to interfere with our elections (again).

Wasn't Giuliani constantly tweeting out that he was over there working on stuff in the middle of the impeachment process?

The White House said, "Oh no sh*t?" as Trump got off the phone with Putin.

Now allow the Republic of California secede from the union. The federal government treats California with utter contempt.

OG_slinger wrote:

So while Trump was being impeached for trying to pressure Ukraine to interfere in our elections by framing Biden he was also meeting with Giuliani--who was actively running around Ukraine on Trump's order trying to dig up dirt on Biden to ratf*ck the election--who was also meeting with a Russian intelligence asset who most definitely were trying to interfere with our elections (again).

SNL's Michael Che wrote:

How did America's 9/11 Mayor become the 9/11 of America's mayors?

RawkGWJ wrote:

Now allow the Republic of California secede from the union. The federal government treats California with utter contempt.

And PLEASE call it the New California Republic...with sugar on top!!

Trump, in usual fashion, has now reversed course on CA.

Trump: *does obviously petty and cruel thing that no other president has ever considered doing*

Everybody: WTF?

People around Trump: This is bad. Very, very bad. *Draws pictures if needed*

Trump: *reverses petty and cruel thing*

Everybody: That's what I thought, Asshole.

Trump: Why does no one praise me? I didn't do that thing no one wanted me to do.

Tscott wrote:

People around Trump: This is bad. Very, very bad. *Draws pictures if needed*

I LOLed at this. Thanks!

Tonight, at his Georgia rally, Trump outlined all the ways in which he was being unfairly treated, then mused: “Could you imagine if I lose?... I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”

Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Tonight, at his Georgia rally, Trump outlined all the ways in which he was being unfairly treated, then mused: “Could you imagine if I lose?... I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”

Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease

If he loses, I want to see him indicted before he flees the country as a fugitive.

I'd really like to see him do the perp-walk, but think that's highly unlikely.

Presumably Trump knows a bunch of national secrets (and foreign intelligence secrets), even if everyone in the intelligence community has treated him as a toddler. Kinda scary if he ended up in Russia.

Eh, pretty sure the Russians can get the secrets from him just fine with him in the US.

Have any former presidents been such liability issues? Is the Secret Service/NSA/Some Deeeeeep Staaaaaayyte covert op going to have to.... handle him?

I was thinking about the ramifications of him fleeing to Russia. If he runs, he will have a Secret Service detail with him. As his protection is their first priority (and requires a level of trust), I doubt that they would bring him back to face state prosecution. I actually doubt they would bring him back for federal prosecution. But they will be with him, continuing to cost us money.