What's Trump Done This Time Catch-All

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This is the thread for all the non-political platform "entertainment" stuff Trump says and does. Kicking out crying babies, yelling at people, eating KFC with a knife and fork, etc.

Couldn't you make the argument that while running for President, every public action he takes (like his weird attempt to be both humanizing by showing himself eating KFC and projecting power by doing so on his private jet) is somehow political?

That's why it's in the politics section, yes.

...Ok, then wth is the other thread for now?

Wait, then what is the "non-political" and "entertainment" stuff... and how do we distinguish that from the actual political stuff... while he's running for President?

In previous years all of this would be fair game as it reflected on the candidates "character" and, therefore whether or not they were suitable for the office.

I think the important word there is "non-political platform" as in things that are political, but not ideology, policy, etc.

There's also a new thread for all discussion of Hillary's past.

I think both are an attempt to keep the main election thread more focused on all the other aspects of the campaigns.

OG_slinger wrote:

In previous years all of this would be fair game as it reflected on the candidates "character" and, therefore whether or not they were suitable for the office.

To be fair, in previous years we'd maybe see a small handful of isolated incidents that raised significant questions about the character of one of the candidates. This year, we have one whose very existence seems to be a referendum on both the breadth and the depth of ways in which a single person can embody the concept of having character unworthy of any public office, let alone president.

Chronicling the weekly (daily? hourly?) examples of that is a full time job, and aside from being exhausting, distracts from all the more traditional ways in which he's a terrible choice to run our country -- even if it IS an incredibly important and substantive point in the every growing case that we should all be ashamed of ourselves for being participants in a culture that has allowed his candidacy to be more than a farcical joke.

Not that I'm saying it isn't a farcical joke, mind you -- just that it is a terrifying waking nightmare brought to life as well.

Am I alone in being cynical enough to believe that he's doing it for the retirement package and healthcare?

I just love the picture of him.. that is all.

Rezzy wrote:

Am I alone in being cynical enough to believe that he's doing it for the retirement package and healthcare?

I think he is doing it for the money. Why not? It raises his public profile immensely and he gets hundreds of millions in free campaign money that he can basically spend on whatever he wants while he is running. There is no real downside for him. I don't think he takes it all that seriously or really cares if he wins, that is why he just says whatever crazy outrageous thing that pops into his head.

Today, Trump says "The New York Times don't write good." Yeah, he said that, as he considers adding the New York Times to the 20+ news orginzation a he has already banned from his events.

“You look at The New York Times, I mean, the fail — I call it ‘The Failing New York Times’ because it won’t be in business for another, probably more than a few years unless somebody goes in and buys it and wants to lose a lot of money,” Trump said. “But The New York Times is so unfair. I mean they write three, four articles about me a day. No matter how good I do on something, they’ll never write good.”
“They don’t write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don’t — they don’t write good,” he said. "They don’t know how to write good.”
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The comments come just hours after the real estate mogul suggested that he might remove the press credentials for the Times in the general election, a move that would continue a string of attacks and attempted media blackouts by Trump and his campaign.
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Since the onset of this election, the Trump campaign has banned nearly two dozen news outlets from campaign events, including BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Univision, The Des Moines Register and POLITICO. In June, Trump also revoked the press credentials for The Washington Post, citing concerns over their “very dishonest” coverage, a similar blackout to the one suggested against the Times.

Chris Hayes: Ten More Things Trump Has Done That Would Have Ended Any Other Campaign

The link is to a video that I don't have a Youtube source for. Trump has been so prolific, that this weeks list actually has 10 brand new items.

Last week's list:
1. Praising Saddam Hussein
2. Star of David Tweet
3. Fundraising from Foreigners
4. Trump Institute Plagiarism
5. Charity Promises
6. US Troops Stole Iraq Money
7. Bans Washington Post
8. Obama & The Terrorists
9. Attacking “Mexican” Judge
10. Trump U “Fraudulent Scheme”

This week's list:
1. Attacks Khan Family
2. Says Putin’s Not in Ukraine
3. Lies About NFL Letter
4. Criticizes Fire Marshalls
5. Calls Retired Marin ‘Failed General”
6. Invites Russia to Hack HRC’s Emails
7. Visas for Workers at Mar-a-Lago
8. Says NATO Should Pay for Protection
9. Trump Adviser Suggests Executing HRC
10.Ginsberg’s Mind is Shot

In other news, Hillary faces criticism over handling of emails.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Still waiting on those tax returns....

Warren Buffett Challenges Trump to Show Tax Returns, Says 'He's Afraid'

Speaking at a Hillary Clinton rally in Omaha, Nebraska, today, the multibillionaire joked that he would meet Trump "anyplace, anytime between now and election" to go over each other's tax returns. The GOP nominee has claimed that he may not release his tax returns because he is being audited.

"Now, I've got news for him. I'm under audit too," Buffett said. "There are no rules against showing your tax returns and just let people ask us questions about the items that are on there."

Buffett suggested that Trump is worried about scrutiny of his tax returns — but not by the government.

"You're only afraid if you've got something to be afraid about," he told to the crowd. "He's not afraid of the IRS. He's afraid because of you."

Purple Heart Recipient Blasts Trump: 'No One Should Ever Want One of These'

At his rally in Ashburn, Virginia, today, the GOP nominee said he was given a Purple Heart medal by a veteran backstage.

"I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier," Trump remarked.

"As someone who fought for our country in Iraq, was injured, and was awarded a Purple Heart, I can tell you, no one should ever ‘want’ to get a Purple Heart," (Sean Barney, a Democratic congressional candidate from Delaware) wrote in a post on Facebook.

According to the U.S. Army, the Purple Heart is awarded to American service members who are wounded or killed in action or die of wounds caused by enemy combatants. Barney served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2002 to 2007. He was shot in the neck by a sniper while on patrol in Iraq in 2006.

Jayhawker wrote:

Today, Trump says "The New York Times don't write good." Yeah, he said that, as he considers adding the New York Times to the 20+ news orginzation a he has already banned from his events.

“You look at The New York Times, I mean, the fail — I call it ‘The Failing New York Times’ because it won’t be in business for another, probably more than a few years unless somebody goes in and buys it and wants to lose a lot of money,” Trump said. “But The New York Times is so unfair. I mean they write three, four articles about me a day. No matter how good I do on something, they’ll never write good.”
“They don’t write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don’t — they don’t write good,” he said. "They don’t know how to write good.”
-
The comments come just hours after the real estate mogul suggested that he might remove the press credentials for the Times in the general election, a move that would continue a string of attacks and attempted media blackouts by Trump and his campaign.
-
Since the onset of this election, the Trump campaign has banned nearly two dozen news outlets from campaign events, including BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Univision, The Des Moines Register and POLITICO. In June, Trump also revoked the press credentials for The Washington Post, citing concerns over their “very dishonest” coverage, a similar blackout to the one suggested against the Times.

Out of curiosity, and this might be as easy as LMGTFY, does the Clinton campaign bar any major publications from their campaign events?

Jayhawker wrote:

Today, Trump says "The New York Times don't write good." Yeah, he said that, as he considers adding the New York Times to the 20+ news orginzation a he has already banned from his events.

All news media should try to ignore Trump for a single event, to see his reaction. I bet it would be spectacular.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...

"Small Baby Who Annoyed Trump Will Not Disavow Trump"

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

I think the important word there is "non-political platform" as in things that are political, but not ideology, policy, etc.

There's also a new thread for all discussion of Hillary's past.

I think both are an attempt to keep the main election thread more focused on all the other aspects of the campaigns.

I fundamentally disagree with Certis on this. None of the things posted about Trump in the supposed election catch-call are "entertainment."

They are things that reveal his character and show whether or not he is actually presidential material or if he's a burning dumpster of a human being. (Just as Hillary's email scandal and Benghazi are stand-ins for whether or not people consider her trustworthy and has America's interest truly at heart or if she's corrupt, lying, and power-hungry).

I didn't post the baby video because it was "entertainment." I posted it because it showed two things about Trump, the candidate. One, the man literally flip-flopped from "I love babies, babies are the greatest" to "get that screaming POS out of here" in less than a minute. That shows that he'll say anything if he thinks it will benefit him at that moment and say something completely different the very next moment. Not great qualities for presidential candidate (especially a Republican one).

The other is that he literally tossed a baby out of his rally. A f*cking baby. And he didn't do it in a way that showed he has any human empathy, interpersonal skills, or grace under pressure. It was literally "the baby offends me, why would you ever think I would like it, have it removed."

Someone with some basic skills interacting with humans (things we've come to expect in politicians) could have easily done it in a way that thanked the mother for bringing the child, thrown in some policy points about how his campaign supports moms just like her, and asked her to leave both for the child's well-being (it's a big, loud crowd after all) and to let everyone around the baby clearly hear what the candidate was saying. Instead, Trump got the entire audience to turn on a mother and her newborn like jackals.

The thing is that having a president whose word means something and who has empathy, interpersonal skills, and grace under pressure are exactly the characteristics a lot of people want. And they have absolutely nothing to do with whatever the f*ck 'non-political platform "entertainment"' is supposed to mean.

Voters vote for candidates for "soft" reasons. No one is voting for Trump because his policies are the best because he doesn't have any actual policies. They're voting for Trump because they like they way he makes them feel and they think he's pointing out all the same things they think is wrong about America now. The details don't matter to them, which is great because Trump hasn't provided any.

Which turns us to the main election thread. Just what are we supposed to talk about? How high Trump's wall is going to be or which countries he's going to ban Muslim immigrants from? Because those are effectively the only policies he's been consistent about. Everything else has been an ever-changing policy sh*tshow.

This election cycle has been truly horrendous. Nothing is going to change that fact. Outside of truly partisan factions of either party, no one is really happy about the choices they have.

But as polls have pointed out a lot of voters aren't basing their decisions this year about which candidate has the best policies. They're basing their decision on which candidate they think would absolutely f*ck up America if elected. That's because they're not voting for one candidate so much as against the other.

And because of that the so-called 'non-political platform "entertainment"' is what voters are going to base their decisions on.

Good points...I guess the fact we have this thread shows how far we have sunk. But hey Bengahzi amirite?

Edit
I think he put out some Health Care policies that read like some intern cut and paste from the Internet or some journal they found using Google

edit: eh, I was a little snarky; let me rephrase.

OG_slinger wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

I think the important word there is "non-political platform" as in things that are political, but not ideology, policy, etc.

There's also a new thread for all discussion of Hillary's past.

I think both are an attempt to keep the main election thread more focused on all the other aspects of the campaigns.

I fundamentally disagree with Certis on this. None of the things posted about Trump in the supposed election catch-call are "entertainment."

I think you'll be okay posting in this thread about Trump's antics in a way that treats them as serious issues. I think your post is well within the intent of the OP.

If the 'official' election thread winds up with less and less content and this becomes the de facto election thread, then that's probably okay too.

Normally a presidential election catch-all is pretty slow post-convention in the summer. Trump creating headlines on the hour is a weird anomaly to be sure. I used the word "entertainment" to point to news stories about behavior and (although this word is starting to feel vastly outdated) gaffes.

A separate thread is organizational, not a measure of its overall importance or relevance to the election. It's entirely possible this thread will be crazy busy compared to the others, that's fine if it is. That single thread has buckled under the weight of all the different elements at play. Drive-by snark, anger and shouting start to become prevalent when everyone is trying to be heard above the din.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

edit: eh, I was a little snarky; let me rephrase.

OG_slinger wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

I think the important word there is "non-political platform" as in things that are political, but not ideology, policy, etc.

There's also a new thread for all discussion of Hillary's past.

I think both are an attempt to keep the main election thread more focused on all the other aspects of the campaigns.

I fundamentally disagree with Certis on this. None of the things posted about Trump in the supposed election catch-call are "entertainment."

I think you'll be okay posting in this thread about Trump's antics in a way that treats them as serious issues. I think your post is well within the intent of the OP.

If the 'official' election thread winds up with less and less content and this becomes the de facto election thread, then that's probably okay too.

Yeah, look at the bright side. If this becomes the de facto thread you can toss out any criticism of Hillary as "not on topic".

Though I'm just hoping it'll be something interesting to look back on in a few years and wonder how the hell this guy was a presidential candidate.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Co29K65WYAA_fwY.jpg)

Oh, look, fact checking!

Edit- Also

Signing up the old fashioned way to the thread.

Anyone curious if this stuff makes the national news in Greece?

It does.

And yes of course the daily Trump antics make the U.S. look bad. The Simpsons' 3am spoof received equal screen time to Trump antics, btw, getting a full screening on evening news and highlights on late news...

I'm also not a big fan of trying to segregate the Trump antics from the main election thread. In past elections, I agree that this kind of "gaffe" stuff would be worth separating. In the Before Times, the gaffes were only happening occasionally, and were relatively minor incidents that got spun up to be more by the opposing party. The candidates responded, then pivoted back to talking about their policy proposals.

This election is different. The Trump campaign essentially doesn't have policy proposals beyond building a wall, and keeping the Muslim terrorists out somehow. He's got nothing to pivot back to besides vague promises of being great, winning, and making other groups pay. Even if he had something to pivot to, he keeps coming up with new outrageous things to say and do, to the point where that's all that exists for the campaign.

This thread seems to me like we're trying to have a discussion of a Michael Bay movie where all the running, explosions, and butt shots are discussed in one thread, while the real plot is discussed in another. At some point, you have to accept that the running, explosions, and butt shots are really all there is to the thing.

I'm not a fan either, but since it is what it is, here's the latest:
Joe Scarborough Claims Trump Asked Advisor Why U.S. Can't Use Nukes

When Hayden curtly said he’s not aware a single one of his colleagues advising Trump on foreign policy, Scarborough spoke up.

“I have to follow up with that, but I’ll be very careful here. Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked, at one point, ‘If we have them, why can’t we use them?” Scarborough said.

ffs

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