While you guys are playing checkers . . .
. . . Trump is playing 4-D chess.
I see some puzzlement in the media as to why Trump keeps endorsing such lousy candidates.
After losing the 2020 election, Trump immediately began planning his comeback (as I predicted.) The first step was to assure that the Dems took the Senate. Trump intervened in the two runoff races in Georgia, and at a minimum this cost Purdue his seat. With the Dems in total control of Congress and the Presidency, Biden soon became unpopular.
Now Trump’s trying to insure that the Dems hold at least the Senate in this fall’s midterms. Needless to say that is not an easy task, especially given all of the problems we face. But FiveThirtyEight claims the Dems are favored in the Senate. That’s an astounding indication of Trump’s ability to disrupt the natural course of events with some truly horrific endorsements. (Normally, the GOP would easily take the Senate in 2022.)
Politics is like a pendulum. When one party gets control of everything, it gives the out of power party the advantage in presidential races. The last thing Trump wants is a GOP Congress passing national abortion bans that get vetoed by Biden in the summer of 2024. That would force Trump to either come out as pro-choice (which he OBVIOUSLY is), or else take a public stand that would give swing voters a reason to vote for Biden.
Trump is an idiot, but he understands politics better than lots of very smart pundits. There’s a method to his madness.
PS. Trump probably intended for this FBI raid to occur, as it will help him politically. If he didn’t want the raid, he would have turned over the documents voluntarily. Don’t underestimate Trump, he’s not playing checkers.
Tags:
9. August 2022 at 13:58
I’m not following US politics closely, but what do you think of Ron DeSantis’s chances of displacing Trump in 2024? I’m not saying he would be much better than Trump on policy, but surely anyone but Trump would be much better for avoiding – or withdrawing from – banana republicanism?
9. August 2022 at 14:36
At the moment, he’s afraid to even criticize Trump. DeSantis won’t beat Trump; his only hope is that Trump falls and he’s there to pick up the pieces.
I suspect that if Trump wants the nomination and is not literally behind bars, he’ll get it. And I don’t think he’ll be behind bars. How could you get a jury of 12 that didn’t have at least one Trump supporter?
9. August 2022 at 14:49
They’re trying to “cure” inflation through a controlled recession and accompanying wage and job losses to stifle demand. Their view is that inflation comes from too much demand chasing disrupted supply (because MMT and money printing can’t be wrong), so they’re going to “fix” it by destroying people’s lives, pretending they can control it.
9. August 2022 at 15:07
Spitballing about 2024 right now is the height of speculation, but it’s not impossible to think attempts to prosecute Trump could help him in the primaries. That said, I don’t see him winning a general election, and I think it’s more likely he takes the Republican Party down with him. He’s simply too stupid to pull off what may have been possible for a more intelligence, less lazy autocrat to pull off. He missed his opportunities in 2019 and 2020.
Predictit now has Desantis as the slightly more probably Republican nominee.
That assumes he’s not in prison, of course. I’m going to try not to underestimate the US judicial system. Trump is guilty as Hell of many felonies, and he could possibly be charged by Georgia, New York, and the Feds. Georgia, as I’ve read, has some pretty strict anti-racketeering laws. And let’s not forget that refusing to go along with Trump’s attempt to steal the election in Georgia did not cost the Governor or Secretary of State primary victories.
9. August 2022 at 15:27
Trump isn’t an ‘idiot’. That’s why the military asked him to run for President as an outsider in the first place. Both parties corrupted/controlled.
It’s not necessary to pretend that someone is an ‘idiot’ in order to feel good about oneself for not being as successful or as popular or as wealthy or as effective in exposing a communist criminal syndicate that infiltrated the media to deceive the public, and the highest levels of government to control the public towards leftism.
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/report-finds-un-employs-3300-pedophiles-responsible-60000-rapes-worldwide/
“Oh but I’m always right, it’s not my fault that the central banks, whose existence I defend every day of waking life, are not concerned with what I say when I say print slower no no print faster no no print slower again no wait you’re too late no wait you’re too early, blah blah blah”
Easy to tune out while their real purpose of controlling currencies is not ‘for’ the public but for themselves where the public are considered feeder material to their dialectic cult of social control.
BTW, DeSantis isn’t ‘afraid’ to criticize Trump. He just isn’t stupid. He knows that his own political career is highly DEPENDENT on Trump’s base, because 99.99% of DeSantis supporters are Trump supporters. They are aligned identically when it comes to the degenerate ‘woke’ left psychopaths hunting children, almost identically economy-wise, and a lot of what DeSantis is doing he can safely do because Trump ‘normalized’ it, like speaking out against the msm as nothing but the political propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.
“How could you get a jury of 12 that didn’t have at least one Trump supporter?”
By having the trial in DC of course, where a tainted jury (relationships with the prosecutors) voted to acquit Michael Sussman of lying to the FBI despite documented proof he lied “I am not acting as an agent of Hillary Clinton”. The USB stick he carried with him to the FBI was even expensed to Hillary and the DNC. Jury foreman admitted afterwards ‘there are bigger things to worry about than lying to the FBI’.
9. August 2022 at 15:39
https://nypost.com/2022/08/09/judge-who-approved-fbi-raid-on-mar-a-lago-once-linked-to-jeffrey-epstein/
Awake yet?
9. August 2022 at 15:54
economist manque sumner thinks he’s channeling machiavelli when he’s more like the damsel in distress Clarissa Harlowe from Richardson’s classic: he sees plots and schemes everywhere, pretends to analyze, but ends up get savaged by Lovelace.
9. August 2022 at 17:05
agrippa thinks he’s too smart to have missed Trump’s 4D chess
https://fightwithkash.com/articles/trump-authorizes-total-declassification-of-all-documents-related-to-hillary-s-email-scandal-and-the-russia-hoax-as-he-calls-the-fbi-scum
9. August 2022 at 20:53
Love your brutal assessments, mockery and devastating scorn. How refreshing to read someone that recognizes how stupid both parties are. Your assessment of Trump is spot on, but he’s hardly the end of America’s troubles. The American political elite is riddled with idiots, from Sanders to Cruz. My senators have undergrads in elementary education and public administration. No quantitative skills or knowledge at all. They don’t try to actually solve problems in a way that benefits the most people or the country as a whole, they just shill for their financial benefactors. It’s a sad day for America.
Tear it up Scott.
10. August 2022 at 04:10
Scott, I would be interested in your reaction to this article by Jonathan Chait, arguing that Desantis can beat Trump. I know you often say the opposite. I’m partially convinced by Chait’s argument.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/06/why-ron-desantis-can-beat-trump-in-2024.html
10. August 2022 at 05:11
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-dominates-2024-gop-presidential-nomination-straw-poll-turning-point-usa-summit
10. August 2022 at 05:23
James Lindsay logically describes the source code of the Left as a Religion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqj-MKG9SnU
1 hour and 43 minutes, worth every minute.
10. August 2022 at 05:24
538 has changed from projecting:
60/40 – Rep take Senate 51 vs 49, to;
60/40 – Dem hold Senate 50 vs 50.
This is no material difference at all. The senate is a different animal than the house; the house tends to flip hard based off national consensus, the senate does not. It looks like Republicans will demolish democrats in the house which IS expected considering how terrible the current administration is.
Side note, I totally agree he intended the raid to occur. Faith in the FBI is historically poor (across republicans, independents and democrats). The FBI, under the current administration, raiding the leader of the last administration and the leading candidate for the opposition party in the next election is such a Banana Republic look; it is shocking to me that Merrick Garland would sign off on it. Guess it’s a good thing he wasn’t raised to the Supreme Court, just such poor lack of judgement.
This is coming off of 4 years of the FBI working to undermine the Trump administration, based off of pretextualized information given to them by an opposition party. I just can’t imagine a better image to get people galvanized against the FBI than this raid.
If this ends up being about the boxes of documents requested by the National Archives and is NOT about a serious crime – this is the type of thing that would hand Trump the next election…
Congratulations FBI, you may have just ensured another 4 years of Trump.
10. August 2022 at 05:35
“It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way.”
– Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1983). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: collected works”
10. August 2022 at 05:52
Trump as pro-choice? While he probably is, he also doesn’t care. Trump’s only real positions are his own power and self-enrichment; he would sacrifice any other policy to achieve these. I’m not really sure what could force Trump to actually hold any position counter to one of these unless, say, Ivanka threatened to publicly and privately disown him (but she seems to forgive her dad a lot, which happens). Even then, I’m not sure Trump would not just then disown that kid in favor of those who would more satisfyingly bend the knee.
10. August 2022 at 05:56
There is no way that even AG Merrick Garland would be the ‘top’ approval to sign off on a raid of a former POTUS’ home residence.
Joe Biden must have approved this.
If any one individual handed 2024 to Trump, and 2022 Senate and House to the GOP, it’s Potato.
Interestingly, the FBI raiders wouldn’t allow WITNESSES to anything they did at Mar-A-Lago. They even kicked the lawyers out. No eyes, no witnesses. How are we supposed to know whether they PLANTED any evidence? It would not be inconsistent with the same FBI that planted Ray Epps on Jan 6 to incite riots at the Capitol, the same FBI that never raided the homes of Hillary or Comey or Hunter despite open source evidence of lies, sedition and treason. Hillary acid washed 33,000 emails AFTER a congressional subpoena. That’s illegal. No raid.
The msm narrative that the raid was about archival information, or classified information handled improperly, is totally ridiculous, because Trump DECLASSIFIED all the information. That is open source.
These are dark times. A politically weaponized FBI defending and covering up one party’s treasonous crimes while harassing and targeting ‘opposition’ party politicians talking about those crimes is how countries collapse into communist dictatorships.
10. August 2022 at 05:59
derek wrote:
“Trump’s only real positions are his own power and self-enrichment”
Derek I recommend you view information sources outside the Democrat msm machine.
Trump gave up billions and worked for free while POTUS. He gave up every dollar he was paid. He gave up his own safety in going up against the corrupt deep state.
Potato on the other hand, it is open source that he enriched himself while VP, and continued to enrich himself as POTUS, through his son Hunter. China deals, Ukraine deals, it’s all open source, but the msm won’t touch it because their purpose is to serve and protect the Democrat machine.
What you are smearing Trump with on no evidence, is literally what the Bidens are doing and that has evidence.
10. August 2022 at 06:18
The FBI held a SCIF, a secure compartmentalized information facility, INSIDE THE LAW FIRM OF THE DNC, Perkins Coie.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jun/3/fbis-workspace-democratic-aligned-law-firm-raises-/
Is that ‘normal’ for what is supposed to be an ‘impartial’ and ‘politically neutral’ alphabet agency with prosecutorial and arresting powers?
If Trump’s law firm had such a facility, and used the FBI SPYING POWERS to target his political opponents, do you think the msm would be as cavalierly dismissive as they are now? Of course not, they would immediately call for another impeachment and prosecution for sedition and treason.
Two tier system of justice.
10. August 2022 at 06:46
The P.S. is an interesting point because it just seems inexplicable otherwise. I am not sure why he wouldn’t give the records back. On the other hand, the problem is that conviction of this offense disqualifies him from holding office… And this isn’t hard to prove relative to conspiracy or all the other stuff he might be charged with. Maybe I am missing something or maybe this is a law that they just don’t enforce, but this seems to be an open and shut case… he removed the records and was possession of them. It’s like being caught with possession or stolen property. What’s the defense?
18 U.S. Code § 2071 – Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally:
(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
10. August 2022 at 06:53
Student:
“What’s the defense?”
What’s the crime?
Trump declassified everything. It’s not illegal to possess declassified information!
10. August 2022 at 07:01
Scott,
I realize this post is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but seriously, Trump is struggling to play 1D checkers. I’ll grant that he has some good political instincts about what the Republican base wants, but he lacks the foresight and self-control to really capitalize on them.
If anyone deserves credit for Trump’s rise to power in 2016 and possible return in 2024, it will the Democratic Party. Any other political party with even a small amount of competence would love to run against someone like Trump – what an easy victory. Instead, the Democrats will continue to be their own worst enemy and put the deeply unpopular Biden up against Trump in 2024 for the loss.
Here’s my only-slightly-tongue-in-cheek advice for the Democrats: Forget Biden, Harris, Newsom, etc. Convince The Rock to run. Since at least Reagan, the Presidency is mostly a performative piece – he gives speeches, goes to events, represents the USA abroad – its all show and the Rock would be perfect for that job. He’s popular with the “average” people, He would siphon some Trump voters away because they value someone “tough” and “manly” and he is much more of those than Trump is – and looks it too, visually, he would tower over trump in debates and Americans like tall presidents, and he is young guy with a lot more energy and charisma than Trump. The Democrats would get 8 years out of that guy.
10. August 2022 at 07:01
George, read 18 U.S. Code § 2071 again. It makes no distinction about the record being classified or not. It’s talking about any federal record, classified or not.
10. August 2022 at 07:05
Perhaps they argue the records were not concealed or intended to be destroyed… but if they were in a safe… safes are meant to conceal. It’s like their only purpose. My guess is someone told someone that he had records in his safe at the time of the raid, and that’s why they raided the place… to catch him concealing federal records. After all this stuff, I think they get him on this fairly petty (yet possibly massively significant) crime.
10. August 2022 at 07:11
@MSS1914
Could not agree more! Not sure if you’ve seen other posts I have made. But I consistently say the Dems should have The Rock run in 2024.
Politics has already become a joke, we might as well elect one of the coolest people in America 😀
Plus… how great would it be to see him in meetings with other foreign leaders.
PS. The Rock is a hussler, his work ethic is absolutely insane, and he has good instincts. That alone would already make him a better candidate than any of the top contenders for 2024.
10. August 2022 at 07:25
Well it appears as though I was missing something…. Powell v. McCormack and U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton where the Supreme Court ruled that a law cannot add a qualification or condition that is not stated in the Constitution. Hence why term limits for a president required a constitutional amendment.
10. August 2022 at 07:56
Student, I ask again, “What is the CRIME?”
Reread the narrative from msm that is sourcing their/your reference to 18 U.S. Code § 2071.
The reason msm is citing that law is because their 4am talking point narrative is that Trump illegally took information to Mar-A-Lago, and by virtue of that alleged act, he allegedly violated the law referenced.
Reread the crucial part of the law: “UNLAWFULLY conceals, removes, mutilates, etc”.
It is NOT illegal for declassified information, WHICH MEANS BROUGHT TO OPEN SOURCE, to be brought to Mar-A-Lago.
Merely citing a law is not sufficient to even forming a coherent allegation.
10. August 2022 at 08:01
In other words, OPEN SOURCE information is NOT SUBJECT to 18 U.S. Code § 2071. That law references GOVERNMENT OWNED/CONTROLLED INFORMATION.
Open source means it is visible to the world and can be copied and ‘held’ by anyone in the world. It is by definition no longer government privileged.
10. August 2022 at 08:18
Student, You said:
“On the other hand, the problem is that conviction of this offense disqualifies him from holding office…”
Not the presidency, which has lower standards that a job like garbage collector.
MSS1914, It’s like we have two political parties that are competing to see who can commit suicide most effectively.
Everyone, LOL at those criticize the search warrant without any information about what it was about. Josh Hawley says Garland should be impeached. Why? Because the government should not investigate someone that Josh Hawley likes.
We really are a banana republic.
10. August 2022 at 08:31
https://babylonbee.com/news/hunter-biden-breathes-sigh-of-relief-as-fbi-raid-team-passes-by-his-house-on-way-to-mar-a-lago
10. August 2022 at 08:32
Everyone, LOL at those who attack criticisms without any information about what it was about.
10. August 2022 at 08:40
And it is NOT TRUE that we have ‘no information’ about the raid.
Time and time again the logical fallacy of “if I haven’t seen the information, it doesn’t exist”.
The judge who signed off on the search was a former lawyer of Jeffrey Epstein’s child trafficking accomplices, and Obama donor. That is relevant information.
Cringe attempt to define “Banana Republic” not as the FBI passing by Hunter’s house on the way to Mar-A-Lago, but as the calling for impeaching an AG who is in the tank in protecting the Biden family from any negative public optics.
Up is down, black is white, left is right.
10. August 2022 at 08:45
This is how Google and the FBI play ‘the most dangerous game’:
https://www.wired.com/story/capitol-riot-google-geofence-warrant/
10. August 2022 at 09:08
Actually, Trump’s candidates continue to win. All of the candidates he endorsed won yesterday, and overall 85% of his candidates have gone onto victory.
And with the recent disgusting raid of a former presidents home (banana republic style), we can be sure that the American people will move even further to the right than they already were.
Only the radicals, and the pro establishment thugs, continue to support the Pelosi, Romney and McConnell bullies.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Sumner is a pro establishment, pro corruption, individual. He’s pro CCP and pro NATO, so obviously he’s just as gangster as the aforementioned thugs that walk the once hallowed halls of congress.
And if there is one thing we can be certain of, it is that gangsters don’t like it when law and order candidates, with strong morals, rise to the top of the hierarchy. That’s why Sumner hates truckers, farmers, Christians, Catholics, and right wing libertarians. If you don’t have a tattoo, smoke crack, steal money from the tax payers, and bang prostitutes, then you are a “terrorist”.
10. August 2022 at 09:26
Sarah:
Former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov calls them “useful idiots”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfvXwuZ-bok
10. August 2022 at 11:44
This is simply more delusion.
First Sumner tells us Trump was colluding with Russia: He was so sure of it that he wrote 11 blog posts directly discussing Trumps collusion between 2016 and 2018. None of which ended up being true.
Then, Sumner tells us he should be impeached based not on anything he did, but what he was thinking: See dershowitz analysis of that sham political impeachment and his civil defense of freedom to think without being accused of an orwellian crime.
Then, Sumner tells us Trumps is really a Nazi. His only piece of evidence: rumors and gossip that have been debunked/contested by others.
And now he tells us a raid isn’t a raid, and a recession isn’t a recession.
https://www.newswars.com/panicked-dems-scramble-to-redefine-raid-after-fbis-raid-against-trump-backfires/
Do you see the pattern here amongst the neo soviet, CCP party democrats, and those that follow them?
10. August 2022 at 12:04
I am mildly curious as to how Summer’s beliefs have changed regarding Trump and Russia.
10. August 2022 at 12:33
Ryan, Not at all. AFAIK, everything I said about Trump and Russia has subsequently been shown to be true:
1. He encouraged the Russians to try to sabotage the Clinton campaign. Since that was done in front of TV cameras at a campaign rally, I can’t imagine anyone contesting my claim. That was the only “collusion” I ever cited.
2. He’s pro-Putin and anti-western alliance. Trump is skeptical of Nato and the EU. He’s opposed to the recent aid package for Ukraine (which itself is shamefully inadequate.)He frequently praised Putin and trashed allies like Merkel.
It’s true that his administration did put sanctions on Russia, but presidents like Trump have little influence over administration policy—he’s too lazy.
Can you think of anything I said about Trump and Russia that was later shown to be incrrect?
10. August 2022 at 13:09
“He encouraged the Russians to try to sabotage the Clinton campaign. Since that was done in front of TV cameras at a campaign rally, I can’t imagine anyone contesting my claim. That was the only “collusion” I ever cited.”
The following post directly contradicts the above claim:
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/impeach-him-2/
Dialectic semantic games in 3, 2, 1, ….
10. August 2022 at 13:13
Here’s a post favorably citing since debunked fake news on ‘collusion’:
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/babysitting/
10. August 2022 at 13:27
Ricardo:
“Do you see the pattern here amongst the neo soviet, CCP party democrats, and those that follow them?”
That is exactly right. DEFINITION/LANGUAGE CONTROL backed by smears and slanders and worse if you dare dissent, all to control how people are to think, which is to control how people are to behave.
Infiltration not invasion.
What Trump did was expose a criminal communist cult that infiltrated the media and highest levels of alphabet government agencies.
Now many of those who TRUSTED THE LIES are now scrambling and fumbling trying to redefine what it means to “accuse Trump of collusion” and redefine recession, and redefine raid, etc, etc.
The OPERATING SYSTEM of the left is Dialectic Faith. It is a perpetual introduction of smears and conflict narrative, then as the particulars of the original introductions of smears are proved false, the definitions and particulars are CHANGED, to maintain the same fundamental conflict accusatory logic.
Impeachment hoax #1, impeachment hoax #2, Russia Russia Russia hoax, Dossier hoax, pee tape hoax, Russia Alpha Bank connection hoax, etc, etc. Every time the evidence disproves the accusations, the same dialectic faith logic is reimplemented again. Accuse and find the evidence later and obligate the accused to defend their innocence.
The entire Jan 6 Unselect committee is a Stalinist show trial. Trump tweeted out a video urging the protestors to go home in peace. Twitter fascists DELETED THE VIDEO WITHIN 5 MINUTES.
Why?
So that they can trick gullible people into believing their intended narrative that the stolen Nov 2020 election isn’t the problem, no, it’s the ‘reaction’ to it Jan 6 2021. LOOK [HERE] NOT [THERE].
10. August 2022 at 13:38
The funny thing is that in this thread readers are told that calls for impeachment of an AG running cover for the Biden crime family while targeting political opposition are ‘banana republic’, and yet there was a direct call to impeach Trump based on falsehoods where we’re now supposed to believe that ‘the only collusion referenced’ was Trump joking at a rally about Clinton’s emails?
The contradictions are ASTOUNDINGLY OBVIOUS.
10. August 2022 at 15:19
George, Lying about what links contain is pretty silly, given that anyone can just check the links. Right?
10. August 2022 at 15:20
Potato gaslighting the public on inflation. Claims 0% inflation.
Is the WH now REDEFINING INFLATION as a constant positive rate of increase? 10% annual month after month is now 0%?
https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/biden-claims-0-inflation-july-despite-remaining-near-40-year-high
WHERE ARE ALL THE ‘SENIOR’ ‘TENURED’ ‘ELITE’ ECONOMISTS CORRECTING BIDEN ADMIN?????????????????
Oh I forgot, they’re STILL suffering from TDS.
10. August 2022 at 15:21
“Lying about what links contain is pretty silly”
Dialectic semantic in 3, 2, 1, 0
Lying about links is silly? Then stop lying about the link by defining reference to what contradicts the claim as a lie!
Wow, talk about psychological projection.
10. August 2022 at 15:26
I can’t quite tell if you’re being ironic or if you have genuinely built up a guy who’s pure id (which is probably much of his appeal) and clearly stumbles frantically from one day to into the next into some sort of perfect supervillain.
10. August 2022 at 16:06
Another thing about 18 U.S. Code § 2071:
It does not apply to the President of the United States! POTUS has unilateral authority to possess classified information anywhere they want.
Fact: Obama STILL has classified information at his home, so does Bush.
Will the FBI raid their homes?
Mark Z:
Stumbling frantically from one day to the next IS the implementation of the very Hegelian dialectic logic that structures the entire left, and the entire “monetarist” theory. It’s why Monetarists and Keynesians and Communists for that matter get along logically but only disagree on the particulars of object instance implementation.
Central Banking, for example, is Plank 5 in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
10. August 2022 at 16:47
george needs to be less curious.
10. August 2022 at 18:14
Scott,
Don’t forget that Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Trump Jr. met with a woman who described herself as an agent of the Russian government to try to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. That was an attempt to collude with Russia, even if no such collusion took place.
10. August 2022 at 18:16
Honestly, Trump has committed so many crimes publicly, that it’s difficult to even remember a small fraction of them at times. This is what his criminal ex-friend Bannon called “flooding the zone”.
10. August 2022 at 18:19
By the way, do Trump’s defenders defend him appearing on the Alex Jones show, complimenting Jones, and adding his Infowars people to the White House press corp? Jones has always obviously been an insane liar, yet Trump was perfectly okay dealing with him publicly. No other President would have had a thing to do with Jones.
10. August 2022 at 20:49
“At the moment, [DeSantis is] afraid to even criticize Trump. DeSantis won’t beat Trump; his only hope is that Trump falls and he’s there to pick up the pieces.”
Yglesias tweeted the same thing today, and I don’t get it. What’s the benefit to DeSantis of criticizing Trump now?
Even if he ends up running against Trump in 2024, I’m not sure he’ll be criticizing him all that much. Maybe the best strategy against Trump is to engage with him as little as possible, be non-confrontational, let Trump beat himself.
On the other hand, Sumner and Yglesias are right most of the time and I’m wrong most of the time, there’s that, but I thought I’d throw this out there.
10. August 2022 at 21:05
Also, how do Trump supporters defend him pleading the 5th amendment when questioned by the New York investigators?
Here’s what Trump’s said in the past about people who plead the 5th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpfDwx7tiLY
11. August 2022 at 05:59
Michael Sandifer:
Trump already answered that:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/108798953373375449
11. August 2022 at 06:21
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/108800239458187823
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/108801636674776910
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/108801632575173671
You ready for Watergate x 1000?
The ‘raid’ was to collect 30 million pages of INCRIMINATING paper records from the Obama admin that were kept under DOJ/FBI lock and key at Mar A Lago, and were just handed over to Durham. FBI director Wray testified to Congress earlier this week that the FBI is “cooperating fully” with Durham.
Obama had those paper records shipped to Chicago where they thought it would be kept secret, and Obama’s lawyers continually invoked the Presidential Powers act to PREVENT the documents from being forwarded to the Presidential Library. That Chicago location was raided right after Trump became President, and the documents were shipped to Mar A Lago. THOSE documents are what the FBI ‘raided’.
Sumner is correct. 4D chess.
11. August 2022 at 06:33
Michael Sandifer:
Did you really expect that constantly invoking smears and accusation logic where the only ‘approved’ communications are how Trump has to ‘defend’ himself, where Trump supporters have to ‘defend’ themselves, on and on, did you actually believe the Dialectic Faith would reward you?
You say Trump has committed many crimes. WHAT CRIMES ARE THEY? Merely invoking an accusation is not itself proof of a crime.
Mueller report pgs 1-2:
“Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
You have been trusting fake news op mockingbird ever since, riding out the smears over and over and guilt this guilt that over and over, despite Trump being exonerated by the FBI after 2 years and $30 million in costs to the taxpayers.
How about this: TRUTH IS A FORCE OF NATURE.
Your ‘mind’ is not the standard to which reality and other minds must bend.
Dialectic Faith vs. One Source Code of it all is Unified.
Your operating system is the former, which is why your mind is full of disinformation.
11. August 2022 at 06:37
While I don’t think that it is ever good for a comments section to be dominated by back-and-forths with one user, I would like to defend my claim that Trump seems mainly motivated by self-interest, whether that is profit or power. Although it is true that he did not accept the relatively minimal presidential salary, it seems pretty fair to say that Trump Corporation reaped some pretty substantial benefits from Trump’s tenure via bookings by Secret Service agents or diplomats, as well as any easier permitting processes for new hotel openings. Probably most importantly, Trump’s signature legislative achievement, the TJCA, had as probably its biggest flaw the extension of pass-through income taxes to companies such as real estate, which, believe it or not, benefits Trump quite a bit more than a presidential salary would.
11. August 2022 at 06:40
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/trump-got-grand-jury-subpoena-spring-voluntarily-cooperated-home
Do you see what is happening now?
While the fake news took the bait and willingly spewed narrative that ‘FBI raids on Presidential records are good’, ignorantly believing ‘we got Trump this time’ for the millionth time, they ALSO by virtue of that completely sanctioned the raid on Obama’s records that his own lawyers continually tried to PREVENT going into the Presidential Library Archive.
Awake yet?
11. August 2022 at 06:47
derek:
Could you describe how your characterization of Trump’s ‘greed’ categorically differs from yours?
In a prior thread I was smeared and accused by a user ‘Student’ with a ‘future’ flaw of ‘ignoring’ information that presumably would be posted, but by virtue of my alleged future flaw, it was justified in the present for ‘Student’ to ignore the information.
Student literally accused my future self of what Student’s present self was doing.
Psychological projections abound when using the dialectic faith operating system.
How about instead of STARTING with how smears and accusations can resolve themselves in the dialectic faith ether, why not start with there being A TRUTH, and THEN collecting and analyze as much relevant information as possible, then come to an informed conclusion by trusting your mind as independently capable of arriving at what is?
11. August 2022 at 08:34
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/108805118545294178
Trump is mocking and rubbing it in their faces now.
He’s “asking” about 30 million documents that are now already with FBI and Durham after the raid at Mar A Lago.
11. August 2022 at 08:40
Mark, You said:
“I can’t quite tell . . .”
That’s good!
anon/portly, You said:
“I don’t get it. What’s the benefit to DeSantis of criticizing Trump now?”
I am not claiming there is any benefit.
11. August 2022 at 11:46
Excellent! You have your clickbait machine gun firing on all cylinders. 60 comments so far is very high. Plus it’s funny too. But to keep it going, you need toss in a bit more implied hate. But I give this an A.
11. August 2022 at 12:32
“I am not claiming there is any benefit.”
Then what is the evidence and/or theory by which the conclusion that he is afraid to criticize Trump was reached?
11. August 2022 at 15:13
Anon/portly, I’d have thought that was obvious. Almost all GOP politicians view Trump as an idiot. The tiny number that actually criticize him in public are kicked out of the party.
What would you infer from that?
11. August 2022 at 16:20
I just saw Sumner today outside NY.
https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1557482526536515584
If that is not the delusional Sumner, then it must be his brother.
Hilarious. And this guy resembles your delusional Trump hater, who wants to arrest him for…
Yeah. Nothing.
11. August 2022 at 18:05
Scott,
If Trump were actually this clever he would’ve just been a successful business man. Or, if he had this purported political clairvoyance all along he would’ve been in politics far earlier in his life. This is a man who was a Republican president and didn’t even know Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. There is literally no evidence that he possesses the mental capacity to think as far in advance as you would like to believe. A more plausible hypothesis is that he’s the typical rich kid who never has had to face any real consequences and has always assumed he’d just get away with stuff. Whether he keeps getting away with it is what is uncertain.
11. August 2022 at 18:44
Luke, Of course you’re right—he’s an imbecile. I was joking.
12. August 2022 at 04:16
Why does the IRS need:
• Armed agents willing to use firearms up to and including deadly force
• A ka-gillion rounds of ammunition they bought a month or two ago
The answer is SIMPLE:
[They] need a weaponized branch of the Federal Government willing to use deadly force to disarm and seize ALL assets. This is the new enforcement arm of the NWO Uni-Party.
Keyword – SIEZE
It’s not because the government needs money.
They literally print/create all the money needed to pay for every unbalanced budget already. What’s an extra Trillion to them?
The purpose of ramping up the IRS is to take your money away, degrade your financial independence, and then impose a system that rewards only the compliant.
And STILL the “useful idiots” suffering from TDS and cognitive dissonance want to believe the worst evil is not staring at them in the face under the Democrat Party, founding party of the KKK, the party that fought AGAINST freeing the slaves during the civil war, who are daily attempting to destroy the Republic by deceit and subterfuge, while their sycophant intellectuals run cover through Dialectic Faith practise of introducing smears against the NWO uniparty’s ‘opponents’.
12. August 2022 at 04:19
“The tiny number that actually criticize him in public are kicked out of the party. What would you infer from that?”
That voters can see RINOs when they see them of course, and they vote them out.
Kari Lake’s GOP opponent in the AZ primary for example was voted out by the voters.
12. August 2022 at 04:26
And the site owner is LYING when he says ‘tiny number who criticize him’. The number isn’t tiny. It’s big, it’s just that all the RINOs are getting VOTED OUT.
Liz Cheney, war monger and disgusting liar, will be VOTED OUT on Tuesday.
Trump is now 167 and 6 for endorsements this cycle.
VOTERS are voting out all the RINOs and electing MAGA candidates.
What would the Dialectic Faith theists ‘infer’ from that?
tHaT tRuMp iS HiTlEr 2.0
while the IRS expands by 87,000 armed agents under illegitimate President Biden’s dEmOcrAcY.
12. August 2022 at 04:41
The main reason why Trump is called an ‘imbecile’ by the site owner is that the site owner feels like an ‘imbecile’ when dialectically comparing and contrasting the ‘contradictions’ between them, and as is required by Dialectic Faith logic, those thoughts are then psychologically projected and ‘imbecile’ is used to characterize Trump, despite Trump being more intelligent than the site owner, and the site owner knows this.
On the one hand you have someone whose entire life’s work consists of one statement, “Hit CTRL-P at THIS rate when printing fake money, ok pedophile satanic cult who controls national currencies?”
On the other hand, you have someone who successfully exposed that very cult by tricking it into expose itself everywhere it infiltrated society, from msm, to Pedowood, and hundreds of politicians who resigned but the msm didn’t report it so it doesn’t exist to the useful idiots.
Why are children from Haiti in such high demand?
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/629
What occurred on Epstein Island?
12. August 2022 at 04:52
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/3672
Why did ‘donations’ to the ‘charity’ Clinton Foundation collapse after Hillary lost the election 2016? Pay to Play?
12. August 2022 at 05:18
Scott,
I do agree that he possesses some sort of “intelligence” that might lead him to bait the FBI into raiding an empty safe.
I do wonder, why are people keeping incriminating evidence in their houses or on their phones. I would think that after 20 months I would have found a better hiding place. Right?
Also, don’t you think that 3D or 4D chess would favor dumber players more than regular chess does? Or is that your point?
12. August 2022 at 05:21
Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePN9MTJII1Q
Then listen to this:
https://podcast.patriotgames.com/2018217/11125823
THIS is the reason “useful idiots” experience the ‘yOu’Re a NaZi’ patterns of thought in their minds when ‘opposition to communism’ statements are seen and heard.
12. August 2022 at 05:45
The CDC is no longer recommending quarantine or social distancing regardless of vaccination status.
Just in time for the midterms as the people realize the whole thing was a scam, virus was a bioweapon manufactured at Wuhan, and the vaccines never stopped the virus. The hope is their “Useful idiots” will go to the polls with ‘Democrats care about my bodily autonomy, I will vote D again’
12. August 2022 at 07:05
My only comment is that I think George is about to have an aneurysm.
12. August 2022 at 07:26
Philip, I love when Trumpistas admit that their entire movement is a personality cult. Here’s George:
“And the site owner is LYING when he says ‘tiny number who criticize him’. The number isn’t tiny. It’s big, it’s just that all the RINOs are getting VOTED OUT.”
Note the equation of “Trump critic” and “RINO”. It has nothing to do with whether the Liz Cheney’s of the world support GOP policies.
12. August 2022 at 09:20
‘[George says:]
You ready for Watergate x 1000?
The ‘raid’ was to collect 30 million pages of INCRIMINATING paper records from the Obama admin that were kept under DOJ/FBI lock and key at Mar A Lago, and were just handed over to Durham. FBI director Wray testified to Congress earlier this week that the FBI is “cooperating fully” with Durham.
Obama had those paper records shipped to Chicago where they thought it would be kept secret, and Obama’s lawyers continually invoked the Presidential Powers act to PREVENT the documents from being forwarded to the Presidential Library. That Chicago location was raided right after Trump became President, and the documents were shipped to Mar A Lago. THOSE documents are what the FBI ‘raided’.
Sumner is correct. 4D chess.’
No, George. Obama handed his files over to the National Archives. They shipped the files to Chicago, where Obama’s Presidential Library is located. Some files were deemed sensitive to national security and have not yet been transferred to the Library. They probably/hopefully will be in 50+ years.
They are not the files Trump had in Florida, but even if they had been – he’s would still not be allowed to do that? Former presidents cannot take files from the National Archives to their private home.
12. August 2022 at 09:44
“Almost all GOP politicians view Trump as an idiot. The tiny number that actually criticize him in public are kicked out of the party. … What would you infer from that?”
Obviously I agree more or less completely with the Sumner/Yglesias view of Trump. But specifically I would not then infer this:
“At the moment, [DeSantis is] afraid to even criticize Trump.”
I would also not infer this:
“They resort to the most absurd mental gymnastics to avoid directly challenging Donald Trump for control over the party. This is what makes me think DeSantis is overpriced in the gambling markets, you can’t beat Trump without attacking him and nobody will.”
(https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1557337360345534465)
As I understand it, DeSantis is raising a lot of money for a run in 2024. This amounts to an implicit challenge to and criticism of Trump, which I would guess Trump himself understands very well.
Also it suggests that at some point in the future, if DeSantis is actually trying to win a primary or two, that DeSantis may criticize Trump more explicitly.
There are degrees and nuances to everything. In the 2016 primaries, did Bernie and Hillary open up their full hearts with respect to “all the stuff Obama got wrong?” Of course not – that wouldn’t have been prudent. Why alienate some (or any) of your potential voters if you don’t have to? We could say Bernie and Hillary were “afraid” but it’s really “afraid to do something pointless and unproductive.”
It’s like a football player not criticizing his coach, we can say they’re “afraid” to do it but the motives are more complicated than the word “fear” admits. As unhealthy as the current Republican Party situation is, I don’t think this sort of consideration has completely disappeared. DeSantis is the just about the last Republican I’d single out for this specific line of criticism.
(Although again, if it’s me against MY and SS, Vegas should put my odds of being right at about 50 to 1).
12. August 2022 at 09:48
George isn’t even correct that “all the RINOs are getting VOTED OUT,” Raffensperger and Kemp were probably the biggest two on the target list and they survived handily.
12. August 2022 at 10:01
“There’s a method to his madness.”
“[Trump]’s an imbecile. I was joking.”
This post may have been somewhat tongue in cheek, but surely there is a method to his madness, which to me is something like “when people tell you don’t do x, or that you can’t do x, just ignore them.”
The problem is that this works well until it doesn’t. I think it’s clear that we may be seeing this dynamic play out it real time at the moment. This “FBI raid” thing looks – not necessarily, but with currently a high probability – very bad for Trump, doesn’t it?
David Brooks in today’s NYT:
“In a normal society, when politicians get investigated or charged, it hurts them politically. But that no longer applies to the G.O.P. The judicial system may be colliding with the political system in an unprecedented way.”
He seems to be basing this on a poll! Yeesh.
12. August 2022 at 10:14
I’m not sure if this thread has space for monetary policy discussion, but I’ve been thinking about the ultra-hawk position Yglesias has been advocating recently. Specifically, on Twitter he’s urging another big 75 bp hike at the next meeting. I’m skeptical of this, because based on recent CPI data things might be stabilizing. Presumably, the Fed could keep consistent on its messaging and leave the rate unchanged until we’re back at, or below, the 2% target.
Unless, there’s a compelling argument to be made for tightening that induces real deflationary pressures to get us back to a 2% PCE trend faster.
12. August 2022 at 11:00
I hardly think calling for another 75 bps is an ‘ultra-hawk’ position. 150 bps, sure, but 75?
As for things stabilising, Core CPI went up 31 bps in July. Sure, that’s a deacceleration, but that’s still extremely high and far above target.
Yes, if we get some seriously negative data before 21 September, they should probably relax a bit. But all signs right now point towards people having little confidence in the Fed and NGDP growing far above target.
12. August 2022 at 11:20
anon/portly:
I was VERY careful to write they are all “getting voted out”
Not “they have been voted out”
Not “there are no more RINOs in office”
There are RINOs still in office today.
I am expecting the ‘liberal neocon’ philosophy that has unfortunately driven the GOP since after WW2, to eventually, possibly before 2024, be completely eradicated, replaced by ‘America First’ philosophy (government BY and FOR the people).
Tacticus:
No Tacticus, Obama never submitted 33 million pages of documents held in Chicago to the Archive, and his lawyers repeatedly invoked the Presidential Records Act to PREVENT the Archive from receiving the information.
Soon the world is going to learn that the ‘Presidential Library’ was a SCAM to HIDE self-incriminating classified docs.
There is a 5 year statute that the information MUST be provided to the Archive.
“Some files were deemed sensitive to national security”
Deemed by whom? Deemed too sensitive to Obama Admin’s own security on their treason?
MSM is losing their minds over Trump (allegedly) possessing classified information. This is despite the fact he announced he declassified it all (his legal constitutional authority as POTUS), and despite Obama STILL possessing classified information and despite Bush possessing classified information.
What is happening now is the NWO and their Fake News MSM proxy is attempting to declare a HIGHER legal authority over what US government information is and is not classified, than the President of the United States! In other words, they’re totally f’d. They can’t keep going where they’re going without positively declaring themselves as engaged in a war on the Constitution (Treason).
If Trump possessing US government information is so bad, then surely that narrative would logically implicate Obama and Bush.
In truth, the reason they’re going after Trump like this is to cover for the classified information Obama possesses that implicates the entire Obama admin in Treason (Uranium One).
It’s not a coincidence that the Fake News put NUCLEAR information as top ‘smear’ against Trump.
33 million pages from Obama are NOT in the Archive. Trump just said today that there is nuclear information in those docs. Given Trump has the highest security clearance, people can either take the easy road and call him a liar, or, they can watch and learn about an informational war taking place between Patriots and [Domestic/Foreign] Communists for control over the US, the last free country in the world.
I chose what side I’m on.
12. August 2022 at 11:36
Phillip:
“My only comment is that I think George is about to have an aneurysm.”
Don’t mistake your own experience of what it would feel like for you, with what is being experienced by me. I’m cool and confident.
Sumner wrote:
“Philip, I love when Trumpistas admit that their entire movement is a personality cult.”
I never admitted that. My true north is God.
Your ‘thoughts’ are aligned with the satanic cult that seeks to become Gods over the rest of humanity.
“Here’s George:”
“And the site owner is LYING when he says ‘tiny number who criticize him’. The number isn’t tiny. It’s big, it’s just that all the RINOs are getting VOTED OUT.”
“Note the equation of “Trump critic” and “RINO”. It has nothing to do with whether the Liz Cheney’s of the world support GOP policies.”
You keep lying to cover up past exposed lies.
You said:
“Almost all GOP politicians view Trump as an idiot. The tiny number that actually criticize him in public are kicked out of the party. … What would you infer from that?”
You said GOP politicians who criticize Trump.
I call them RINOs, NOT BECAUSE I EQUATE the two, but because the very GOP politicians who publicly criticize Trump, the very ones you’re referring to, like Liz Cheney, HAPPEN TO BE RINOs.
The ten GOP politicians who voted to impeach Trump, 7 have so far been VOTED OUT.
What would you ‘infer’ from that? That Trump’s IDEAS are superior, or, project your own ‘personality cult’ garbage onto others?
12. August 2022 at 11:55
Scott,
“Since that was done in front of TV cameras at a campaign rally, I can’t imagine anyone contesting my claim”.
You need a better imagination. It’s very much a cult of “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes.”
“Note the equation of “Trump critic” and “RINO”. It has nothing to do with whether the Liz Cheney’s of the world support GOP policies.”
The GOP voters generally do not appear to focus on policies. It appears to be much more a cult of grievances and conspiracy theories. Policy is not a major consideration – contrast the GOP donor class generally.
12. August 2022 at 11:57
– Trump playing 3D chess ??? Trump is NOT that intelligent. But I assume that there are people behind him who have a better understanding of how to play the political game.
12. August 2022 at 12:25
https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-cdc-admits-it-gave-false-information-about-covid-19-vaccine-surveillance_4657836.html
CDC admitted they gave FALSE INFORMATION about covid-19 vaccine surveillance.
Read the article closely and notice how the CDC deceitfully treats information very similar to how this site’s owner deals with information. Dialectic semantics over how language is SUPPOSED to have been understood and how everyone is SUPPOSED to define words and how everyone IS allegedly thinking when they say the words they do.
All inconsistencies resolved by insisting self as absolute truth, or, ‘representative’ of what truth is supposed to mean for everyone else, and if you dissent, you’re a liar, you’re a ‘Trumpista’, you’re in a ‘personality cult’, blah blah blah.
12. August 2022 at 12:38
George:
Do you have any source besides Trump’s word that Obama did not submit 33 million pages to the NA? Because the NA says that they have all the files.
There are 15 Presidential Libraries. Are they all scams or just Obama’s? And how is it hiding self-incriminating documents if they supposedly haven’t been turned over to the Library?
The decision about what files were too sensitive was made after Obama left government. His administration did not make the decision about what was too sensitive since they were, literally, out of power. Or how did that work?
I believe Biden is the President of the United States, so I’m not sure where you’re going about POTUS > NWO/MSM. Please elaborate.
I don’t think one can go to war with a constitution. Can you explain that? Does one use an eraser or white-out liquid or what?
Do you have evidence that Obama and Bush hold classified government information?
So, Biden now has the highest security clearance. Does your argument mean that we should listen to whatever he says and take it 100% at face value?
Patriots versus Communists? How do you define Patriots? How do you define Communists?
And what makes the US so free?
12. August 2022 at 12:59
US University Concedes It May Have Broken Law In Contract With Wuhan Lab
https://greatgameindia.com/us-university-contract-wuhan-lab/
12. August 2022 at 13:27
Tacticus:
“Do you have any source besides Trump’s word that Obama did not submit 33 million pages to the NA? Because the NA says that they have all the files.”
Not only do I have a source ‘besides Trump’s word’, it is THE source I used to come to that conclusion, because I’m not in a ‘personality cult’:
https://www.archives.gov/findingaid/presidential-library-explorer/list/who
I took a screenshot:
https://ibb.co/gdQ0kY7
ZERO IMAGES
“There are 15 Presidential Libraries. Are they all scams or just Obama’s?”
They’re all scams.
“And how is it hiding self-incriminating documents if they supposedly haven’t been turned over to the Library?”
Those two statements are not mutually exclusive. They’re linked with ‘and’.
“The decision about what files were too sensitive was made after Obama left government. His administration did not make the decision about what was too sensitive since they were, literally, out of power. Or how did that work?”
Pretty sure Obama does not need to be President for him to have influence over others.
“I believe Biden is the President of the United States, so I’m not sure where you’re going about POTUS > NWO/MSM. Please elaborate.”
Watch 2000 Mules documentary. Watch The Pit tomorrow at noon EST, assuming it’s not a psyop to bait the communists into spending more resources to counter.
“I don’t think one can go to war with a constitution. Can you explain that? Does one use an eraser or white-out liquid or what?”
You need to start thinking INFORMATIONALLY, Tacticus. Once you do, you will hopefully see that your shallow attempts to mock by playing the same freaking dialectic semantics as the site owner, will be seen as manifestations of shallow thinking about information and not a personality cult maneuvering where information is true or false based on the person rather than the content.
The Constitution is Information, yes?
Think in terms of information. When you see the word ‘war’, DON’T assume that whatever definition is floating in your head as the ‘only’ approved definition.
“Do you have evidence that Obama and Bush hold classified government information?”
You mean do I know based on personal observation of their land properties? None whatsoever.
“So, Biden now has the highest security clearance. Does your argument mean that we should listen to whatever he says and take it 100% at face value?”
No, it does not mean that.
“Patriots versus Communists? How do you define Patriots? How do you define Communists?”
Patriots: Loyal to the Constitution they swore to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Communists: Pretty sure we are operating on the same definition there.
“And what makes the US so free?”
The only country where the Supreme law of the land PROHIBITS the state from regulating, controlling or defining SPEECH, i.e. INFORMATION FROM EACH PERSON’S MIND.
I may not agree with what you or the site owner says, but I will defend to the death the right to freely speak our minds.
I do not link information objects with many ‘buts’ or ‘howevers’ or ‘yets’ or ‘neverthelesses’, I link them all primarily with ‘and’, and only then do I make sense of the information.
So often I see people debating and arguing by treating the information objects as somehow ‘destroying’ other information objects, where to even engage information as information is somehow tantamount to erasing or destroying or ‘negating’ other information objects.
It’s a weakness that stems from the very communist infiltration of THE MEANING OF INFORMATION that has logically warped it into such that people are tricked into viewing theirs and other people’s information outputs as ‘negating’ themselves. It’s the same dialectic logic, same as Karl Marx qua Hegel, in practise.
12. August 2022 at 13:29
anon/portly, DeSantis does what he can get away with and shies away from what would get him into trouble with the base. That seems obvious. GOP voters don’t care if he raises money, but do care if he criticizes Trump.
David, I’m with Yglesias on the 75 basis points, but I might change my mind by September.
Everyone, Go to George’s GreatGameIndia website to see where he gets his info. Alex Jones would blush.
George, Do you also believe the moon landing was faked? How about 9/11?
12. August 2022 at 14:01
George:
Your link from the archives shows nothing about 33 million pages missing? Forgive me, but I won’t click on your screenshot link. Do you have another source? But why does it even matter if you don’t trust the archives or the library system or any of that? Why are you relying on them now?
I mean, I get it, you don’t trust anything coming from America. But what makes you think you can trust Trump, then? Why do you think he is not just a red herring planted by the deep state to make you THINK you have someone on your side? Your trust of him is strange. He’s a wealthy New Yorker. Born and raised in the Establishment. Surely he’s just another part of the System? Why do you think we can trust him?
I’m not trying to mock you; I’m just trying to understand you.
12. August 2022 at 14:03
“Everyone, Go to George’s GreatGameIndia website to see where he gets his info. Alex Jones would blush.”
“George, Do you also believe the moon landing was faked? How about 9/11?”
These are statements I would expect from someone who has no gas left in the tank. Tired. Hollow smears and total deflection from the information. “cOnSpiRacY tHeoRy” repeated narrative brought to you by the C_A op mockingbird narrative designed to keep people in the dark.
To clarify, I believe Alex Jones is, or perhaps at least was now that Free Speech Systems, LLC declared bankruptcy days before his ass was handed a deserved $44.5 million punitive fine for harassing and LYING about the Sandy Hook massacre, an asset of foreign intelligence whose purpose is to control and divide the conservative base.
The same sources through fake news ‘attack’ AJ to give him fake credibility amongst POTUS supporting Patriots, thus poisoning the water and directing narrative of the ‘opposition’ through their supported asset aka AJ.
All team effort, coordinated ‘collective’ attacks with pawns and actors serving black hat agenda and attempting to control/divide the Patriots.
And here we have the site owner, repeating the very same designed narrative so that it gives an excuse NOT to think, and to just spew names as if mentioning names even constitutes an argument for or against ANYTHING written.
Lazy. Tired. Stale. PREDICTABLE.
12. August 2022 at 14:22
Tacticus, I am referencing
https://www.archives.gov/findingaid/presidential-library-explorer/list/who
as my source.
After (almost) 5 years after Obama left office, there is not a single digitized page available on the Archive. Obama’s lawyers have repeatedly stonewalled it in court, MUCH to the chagrin of the Archive admins.
“I mean, I get it, you don’t trust anything coming from America”
Not only is that NOT my actual beliefs, it is the exact opposite. I believe that in 2022, the only reliable sources of information about the global war for power is originating from this country precisely because the state can’t censor us, as much as the communist Biden regime tried with the Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” with that psychopath in charge, before it was squashed because THANKFULLY there were enough people to fight back (how loud was the site owner on that?), as much as their coconspirators at Twitter and Facebook (which originated as and continues to be a state spying tool) have censored the truth like Hunter laptop, with msm calling it ‘Russian disinformation’ for years before they finally admitted the truth it was legit.
The war is global, it is underneath the ‘physical’, it is informational and has ‘physical’ features designed to control the information.
“But what makes you think you can trust Trump, then?”
Many reasons. The statements he makes are always attacked by the enemy of the people fake news msm and then when their lies get exposed, Trump is proved right. You have to pay close attention. It happens so often that it’s only possible to miss if you trust the msm.
“Why do you think he is not just a red herring planted by the deep state to make you THINK you have someone on your side? Your trust of him is strange. He’s a wealthy New Yorker. Born and raised in the Establishment. Surely he’s just another part of the System? Why do you think we can trust him?”
Trump is an outsider. He never served in any government role prior to becoming POTUS. Since day one, he has surrounded himself with highly respected military generals. The day AFTER he was elected, fake news began to push the narrative of his impeachment.
They impeached him twice, both based on false information, false accusations. They smeared him as Russian asset, despite no evidence, despite HRC colluding with Russians like Doroshenko with the whole Dossier lie, which HRCls own campaign manager Bobby Mook admitted in court was approved by HRC.
It’s not ‘strange’ to see what’s going on when you see the fake news and the intelligence agencies at war on truth.
When your guide is Truth, it doesn’t matter whose bodies are what.
You ‘see’ me as someone who is using “Trump” as a standard of truth, when I see information completely different from that. I see information as much as I can collect it and analyze it, and if happens to be consistent with people who the fake news attacks every day with lies, then so be it.
“I’m not trying to mock you; I’m just trying to understand you.”
Don’t try to understand ‘me’. Only I can understand the true me, just as only you can understand the true you. Try to understand the information only, and yourself, and your true North whatever it is, and trust yourself.
12. August 2022 at 14:35
But, George, a lack of digitised pages does not mean that the Library doesn’t have any pages. Why are you linking those concepts?
What evidence do you have that Twitter and Facebook originated as state spying tools? All the evidence I’ve seen points towards them being capitalist attempts to make money by selling ads to people based on their personal interests.
Again, everyone attacking Trump does not mean that he is correct or that he is an outsider. He could just be a deep, deep plant. Maybe early in his career he had a talk with CIA and they said, ‘hey, we need you to avoid politics for a while, play the outsider role, and then you’ll take your position as figurehead for a while.’ His statements being attacked by everyone could just be them covering up the fact that he is an inside agent!
If we can’t hope to understand one another, why do we even bother communicating? Why are you typing to me right now?
12. August 2022 at 16:42
Nice call. Sorry, completely wrong. They unsealed the warrant, and to use an old saw, when the tide goes out, you can see who has a bathing suit on. Clearly, Trump has no defense and should do jail time. Speculation, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have tried to sell US secrets to get his billionaire status back.
12. August 2022 at 16:58
Roger, Do people not realize I was being sarcastic?
12. August 2022 at 17:40
Roger:
“Clearly, Trump has no defense and should do jail time.”
What is the CRIME?
12. August 2022 at 17:53
Tacticus:
“But, George, a lack of digitised pages does not mean that the Library doesn’t have any pages. Why are you linking those concepts?”
Obama’s lawyers have repeatedly fought in court, successfully, to PREVENT the documents from being sent to the archive.
That EXPLAINS why there are no digitized pages.
On what basis do you trust NARA? Their statements only? The same Archivist official who notified DOJ in Trump probe but declined to do the same over Clinton emails?
“What evidence do you have that Twitter and Facebook originated as state spying tools?”
Google “Lifelog + Facebook”
“Again, everyone attacking Trump does not mean that he is correct or that he is an outsider.”
When the attackers are perpetually lying…
“He could just be a deep, deep plant. Maybe early in his career he had a talk with CIA and they said, ‘hey, we need you to avoid politics for a while, play the outsider role, and then you’ll take your position as figurehead for a while.’ His statements being attacked by everyone could just be them covering up the fact that he is an inside agent!”
Interesting how Sumner ISN’T calling these statements ‘cOnSpiRaCy tHeoRiEs’
“If we can’t hope to understand one another, why do we even bother communicating? Why are you typing to me right now?”
Are you for real accusing me of holding that belief or are you thinking of that yourself and projecting it onto me?
12. August 2022 at 21:14
Roger,
As President, when his staff packed those boxes, he had an unlimited ability to ‘declassify’ the documents therein. Indeed, I recall an earlier incident in his presidency where he mentioned classified information in a speech. Despite the effort to jump on him for that, it was clearly established that merely by uttering the words he legally declassified whatever he said.
Unlike Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, the President is free to do with classified documents as he wants.
Possession of documents is a political error not a legal one.
13. August 2022 at 03:35
Presidents don’t have unlimited authority to declassify, and there’s a formal process to go through to use such authority.
One thing that most Trump supporters seem to have in common is having no idea how the government works.
13. August 2022 at 13:32
George, the Archive says they have all the pages? I don’t trust them for a second, but how does a lack of digitised papers help our cause?
I don’t trust NARA! I don’t trust any of these people. That’s why I’m asking you why I should trust Trump!
Sure, yes, the attackers are perpetually lying about Trump, but could that not be a cover for him?? By no means does that mean we should trust him! Seriously, why do you not think he is a deep, deep plant?? Isn’t that completely like CIA???
Sorry, but you did say we shouldn’t try to understand one another? So where have I gone wrong with projecting beliefs onto you?
Not to be rude, but you kind of seem like you are part of the complex running everything.
13. August 2022 at 14:59
It seems Trump and the Republicans who’ve hitched their wagons to him have moved too fast toward insanity lately for the Overton window to catch up. I think this is likely the beginning of the end of the Republican Party for a very long time.
They already lost some of their suburban and remaining college educated voters in 2020, and what those voters are seeing now aren’t going to bring them back to the party. These are not happy Democrats now, by any means, but they’re rational enough to hold their noses and vote for the non-crazies. There aren’t many non-crazy Republicans winning primaries anymore.
Just as most Republicans stuck with Bush until the disastrous consequences of many Republican policies became too obvious for too long to ignore, Trump will become a sore memory for Republicans within a decade or so. I just hope the crazies don’t get too violent as their legitimate election prospects continue to die.
15. August 2022 at 06:45
@michael Sandler
I completely agree none or few of us know how government works. What surprises me is you think you do. You have no idea —nor do I- why this Garland home invasion(joke on invasion) makes sense. You can create all the reasons why it could make sense—-but it’s circular. Because it “could” make sense does not mean it does. What you are sure is Trump is bad. Maybe he is. But why?
But that’s not my issue. My issue is you think you have a clue. But you don’t. Why? Because you give no reasons that are knowable. Nor do I. And the fact we don’t is the problem.
15. August 2022 at 10:24
Michael Rulle,
You’re certainly correct that I don’t know much about government, first hand, as an expert. I was a term away from earning a political science degree before I changed majors in college more than a generation ago, so I do have better-than-average understanding of government, but far from expert, and I certainly have no expertise on federal laws governing classified material.
That said, I’ve been listening to a lot of people in interviews who have had high level security clearances, or who are attorneys who specialize in federal law who’ve commented on this, and I’m trusting their expertise. They’ve all said that while presidents do have a lot of authority in deciding what is classified and what becomes declassified, it’s not unlimted authority, and there are formal processes that must be followed to lawfully declassify material. They say presidents certainly do not have unilateral authority to declassify sensitive nuclear weapons-related material.
15. August 2022 at 10:30
More generally, Trump supporters have been attacking the FBI, and raid, and the searh warrant, before knowing about them. This is an undeniable sign that they are simply locked in a personality cult, willing to defend Trump, no matter what. The fact is, whether Trump supporters want to admit it, an FBI raid on a home is usually not a good sign for the suspect. Of course, it doesn’t mean Trump’s necessarily guilty, but given his public behavior, I’m not surprised at all that there are allegations that he mishandled classified material, if not worse.
15. August 2022 at 19:15
I can’t believe people feel so passionately about this search warrant. Thousands of search warrants are issued every day, some justified and some not justified. Trump’s just a person, with no more legal rights than a drug dealer or prostitute. Who cares if the search warrant was justified? It makes no difference. Would you care about a traffic ticket on the highway?
People need to get a life.
17. August 2022 at 06:05
I’m waiting for Trump supporters to move on to the question of, whatever the lagality, whether Trump’s handling of classified material should concern them.
And how’re they addressing the Trump suggestion that some files might have been planted by the FBI, but then admitting he had many files that the government has wanted back since he left office?
I think I’ll be waiting for such questions to be considered for a very long time.
17. August 2022 at 07:39
Sure, it may appear that Trump is throwing Republicans under the bus, but it is just a feint to get the FBI to overreach, after which he will plead guilty as a goodwill gesture, humiliating the Democrats, undermining a NATO destabilized by the addition Finland and Sweden.
He will then lift the ban on the importation large conference tables from Russia, and there is no looking back.
17. August 2022 at 10:09
@Michael Sandler
Understood. Because I to read the experts. But who am I inclined to believe? I used to believe the ones that had my same politics.
Now I basically don’t believe anyone as it relates to what I call unknowables. For example my guess is you believe Liz Cheney is an honest broker. I don’t. But maybe she is and maybe she isn’t. I read much less opinion pieces than I used to
This does not mean no one is to be trusted. But most of what I read is just propaganda. I am speaking of politics of course, not physics or even economics.
Occasionally there is someone I trust. My top two are dead. Julian Simon and Milton Friedman
17. August 2022 at 12:34
Michael Rulle,
My guess is that Liz Cheney is an honest broker, because she is apparently acting against her immediate political incentives. I disagre with her on many political issues, but I respect the fact that she sacrificed her House seat to try to try to do what is best for the republic.
When it comes to Trump, he’s publicly reckless in terms of committing crimes, leaking intelligence info, inciting violence, etc., so it’s not a stretch to think he’s reckless with inteligence material privately.
Also, I’ve never seen so many members of an administration speaking about things the President they worked for did that disturbed them. Trump hired the vast majority of people who testified against him in the Janurary 6th hearings. Then, there are all of the members of his campaign who were convicted of felonies, many of whom confessed. Then, there were those who were pardoned. They include Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Roger Cohen(Trump’s personal attorney), General Michal Flynn, and some I’m forgetting. Are there any organizations so apparently full of criminals that aren’t run by criminals at the top?
Don’t forget that Trump’s business is under investigation, with the CFO having just plead guilty to tax fraud, and that Trump was successfully sued for fraud concerning Trump University and his charity, the latter of which was shutdown by the New York state.
Then, there are the attorneys like Giuliani, whose law license was suspended for 5 years for filing frivolous lawsuits challenging election results and making false public statements, and Sidney Powell, who’s faced similar consequences. Also, both face massive defamation lawsuits for the false public statements they made about Dominion, etc.
Trump reportedly plead the 5th over 400 times when answering questions in a civil case brought by New York…
If there’s no actual fire there, it’s a whole Hell of a lot of smoke!
18. August 2022 at 12:42
Michael Sandifer, why do you even bother? This whole comment is incoherent:
“I completely agree none or few of us know how government works. What surprises me is you think you do. You have no idea —nor do I- why this Garland home invasion(joke on invasion) makes sense. You can create all the reasons why it could make sense—-but it’s circular. Because it “could” make sense does not mean it does. …. But that’s not my issue. My issue is you think you have a clue. But you don’t. Why? Because you give no reasons that are knowable. Nor do I. And the fact we don’t is the problem.”
When he says “[y]ou have no idea —nor do I- why this Garland home invasion(joke on invasion) makes sense,” he must mean “if” and not “why.” Because if it’s “why” then obviously we have “an idea,” we all understand the basic rationale behind it, that Trump was holding on to certain documents that he wasn’t legally entitled to hold on to and that the Justice Department had a valid legal basis for the warrant.
It’s true that we don’t know for certain that in some sense it was a justifiable course of action – it could be that it will all be litigated at some point and some court will rule (in some fashion) against the Justice Department. (Or that some court will rule in favor of the Justice Department, but wrongly).
To say that it is all “unknowable” is to say nothing at all. Everything every government legal entity does every day is “unknowable” in this sense. The cops gave Mrs. McGurdy a ticket last Friday – was she really speeding? It’s unknowable! We think we have a clue but we don’t!
Anyway, every Michael Rulle comment is basically the same, he writes it over and over and over. The guff about “unknowable” was just a frame for this part, which I elided above:
“What you are sure is Trump is bad. Maybe he is. But why?”
Yes, like every other MR comment it all comes back to being butt-hurt that Trump is being treated unfairly. Wah!
I wouldn’t have weighted in but this is the second unusually insipid one in just this one thread (11. August 2022 at 11:46):
“Excellent! You have your clickbait machine gun firing on all cylinders. 60 comments so far is very high. Plus it’s funny too. But to keep it going, you need toss in a bit more implied hate. But I give this an A.”
I would normally give this one a D minus for the feigned jocularity, but being unable to resist putting in “a bit more implied hate” drops it to an F minus minus minus minus. Even for MR this is just way too whiny.
18. August 2022 at 15:26
anon/portly,
I’m trying to be kinder to Trump supporters or those who understate his awfulness now. I’m trying to turnover a new leaf. I still have quite a ways to go, but I’ve gained some patience in recent months.
This is, in part, because there are just too many such people for me to simply dismiss and try to avoid. Also, I’m increasingly confident that Trump is currently leading Republicans over the cliff politically, and I suspect some are starting to question the Koolaid in their hands and are starting to get cold feet about drinking it. But, how do they come off the hill they chose to die on? I prefer to try to be gracious and welcome them back to reality and hope that we can start to become serious and rational again as a country.
I still recall how steadfast support of George W. Bush was, until even many of his voters started abandoning him. He was obviously in over his head and a failure in his first term, but Republicans actually gained congressional seats in the 2002 midterm elections, which almost never happens, and Bush easily won re-election against the insipid John Kerry. Bush rode high for quite some time, despite turning a budget surplus into exploding deficits, and presiding over two ill-conceived and mismanaged wars that were costing trillions of dollars.
It’s not that he’s an evil person. He just wasn’t competent. It didn’t help that his No Child Left Behind program became increasingly hated by parents, and that he was out of step with a bigoted base when he spent a lot of political capital on his comprehensive immigration reform push. I’m increasingly dismayed his preferred immigration reform bill didn’t pass.
So, the fever broke then, and I think it will largely break with Trump too, but the personality cult around Trump is far stronger than it even was with Reagan. Trump is literally a religious figure to some of his supporters.
It seems that wealthy people who make bold promises and take on fights/challenges no one else is willing to take on regarding issues of perceived importance trigger a religious mindset, particularly in those who are religious fundamentalists, and hence more subject to accepting non-evidence based arguments. This is more a right-wing phenomenon in the US, but it’s very much a left-wing phenomenon in Venezuela, for example.
We live in an age of personality cults in the US. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk have strong personality cults. Obama had it to a degree too, though most of his voters weren’t cultish. There’s very little tolerance for any criticism among the cult members.
I just think we should reach out to Trump supporters and start to give them an off ramp, as some of them become increasingly nihilistic and violent as the cult starts to die.
18. August 2022 at 20:23
If the Democrats had a master politician to lead the party now, such as FDR, Republicans would be in the wilderness for at least a generation or two.
He openly mocked Republicans, constantly, for behaving then much as they do today, minus the personality cult and violence. Republicans were constantly trying to make issues of non-issues. FDR had no mercy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqt7b9veFo8
While there were obviously some excesses during FDR’s presidency, and many of his policies were counter-productive, he at least helped keep communism and fascism at bay during our time of greatest economic difficulty, in addition to leading us through World War 2. It was far from perfect leadership, but it was leadership at a time we desperately needed it.
19. August 2022 at 08:24
Michael, Your history is a bit shaky. Bush did not win easily over Kerry, and Kerry ran a good campaign. He outperformed the fundamentals.
“He openly mocked Republicans, constantly, for behaving then much as they do today,”
This is just bizarre. Back then the GOP was more like the modern Democrats (the respectable party) and vice versa. FDR was a demagogue. If you hate Trump then FDR is not the guy you should be citing. Yes, Trump’s far, far worse, but FDR shared many of his bad qualities. Even the authoritarian streak.
“Republicans would be in the wilderness for at least a generation or two.”
That’s not how our system works—the two parties take turns.
19. August 2022 at 10:36
Scott,
Did anyone think Kerry was going to win the 2004 election? And Bush increased his vote share versus 2000.
I obviously very much disagree about Republicans in FDR’s time. They lied about FDR constantly, and hyperventilated about his policies. They’ve long been a party that was home to extremist liars, though it had much more balance pre-Nixon. There used to even be liberal Republicans.
When it comes to FDR, I think it is greatly oversimplifying to compare FDR to Trump, and frankly an insult to the legacy of a great leader, serious flaws admitted. FDR came to office during the worst economic depression in modern history, as you know. NGDP fell in half. Communism, socialism, and fascism were on the rise, including in the US. As he openly stated during his inaugural address that he intended to exercise a level of authority that the emergency of the situation demanded, comparing the challenges faced to that of a foreign invader.
We often disagree about the importance of intentions. This is an important case in which intentions made a critical difference. FDR’s policies suggest a genuine intention to save millions of lives, by putting people to work while building what he considered to be valuable infrastructure. And while his efforts produced rather mixed results, they did boost the economy overall, while saving millions of lives, though they fell far short of ending the Depression. Even Milton Friedman defended the New Deal make work programs, seeing the need for mass relief programs. He even worked under a New Deal program during the Depression.
And of course, FDR also prepared us for the Second World War, not perfectly by any means, but he did drag us to be in a position to win and to emerge from the war in a historic position of dominance. He also laid some of the ground work for the very successful post-war order, as imperfect as his post-war settlement with the Soviets was.
FDR has a mixed legacy in terms of policy results, and the Japanese internment was inexcusable, but we could have done much worse than have FDR in that critical period of history.
FDR was there to serve the people. Trump only cares about himself, and is too stupid to even look after his own interests well. Do you doubt for a moment who did more good for the country, or who had better intentions?
19. August 2022 at 10:57
I should also say that, absent a leader seen as strong, particularly in times of insecurity, voters will often seek strength in extremist, populist leaders. Obama was much, much too passive, particularly in terms of style and bravado. He seemed to think he was above such foolishness, but unfortunately, that foolishness is often required to be successful in politics. FDR was a strong leader who also seemed strong. That was critical.
Instead of the Feds under Obama dealing with that anti-government extremist takeover of the government building in Washington the way Andy Griffith would, for example, they should have been demonstrably stronger and more decisive in their actions. Yes, they arrested the people who needed to be arrested eventually, but the typical voter sees that otherwise more constructive approach as weakness. One of the reasons fascism has gotten out of control is because the government hasn’t cracked down on extremist criminals the way they should have, and Democratic politicians have not dealt with these criminals properly politically.
As far as Republicans being in the political wilderness is concerned, Democrats were dominant in the Congress after FDR for decades thereafter.
20. August 2022 at 07:16
And who did FDR demagogue? Japanese-Americans during World War 2, which was inexcusable, but was this a cold political calculation, or was FDR swept up in the anti-Japanese paranoid hysteria during the war?
You could also say he demagogued banks and brokerage houses, but didn’t FDR really believe they had a significant role in causing the Great Depression? He was wrong in that belief, but I think he thought he was doing the right thing, and even most people today agree with him.
You might say he demagogued the Republicans, and particularly Hoover, but was he wrong to say they mostly twittled their thumbs while GDP fell at a historic rate? Sure, libertarians will say Hoover did more than any President prior to intervene in the economy, but that was from a relatively extremely low baseline, and left most Americans struggling to survive with their needs largely unmet.
This flows into my point about Republicans in the political wilderness. FDR won 4 elections for a reason. He branded the Republican Party the party of Hoover for generations thereafter. Democrats mostly controlled Congress for decades thereafter.
Even members of the Bush administration were openly warning each other they risked becoming the party of Hoover again if they failed to act sufficiently during the GFC.
So, while it may not often be the case that one of the two political parties ends up in the wilderness for generations, it is not always the case. When there’s ridiculous political overreach, such as there was concerning the laissez faire approach to the Great Depression, or the current overreach concerning Republican fascism, a master politician as President can crush such overreaching forces and very permanently change the political landscape.
20. August 2022 at 07:22
Change “So, while it may not often be the case that one of the two political parties ends up in the wilderness for generations, it is not always the case.” to:
So, while it may not often be the case that one of the two political parties ends up in the wilderness for generations, it is not unprecedented.
20. August 2022 at 09:51
Michael Sandifer:
“I’m trying to be kinder to Trump supporters or those who understate his awfulness now. I’m trying to turnover a new leaf. I still have quite a ways to go, but I’ve gained some patience in recent months.”
I strongly agree with this.
I think the best way to think about “normie” or non-intellectual Trump supporters is that they’re low-information.
There are many aspects to this, but two of them that are common thems of this blog is (1) they over-rate the importance of political leaders and personalities; and (2) they aren’t really up on the arguments for (to the extent there are any of these) and against Trump’s ideas.
But one thing they probably do understand well is how the other side views them, e.g. things like Hillary Clinton calling them “deplorables.” And I think this is a key element of the sort of tribal spiral (or game) that is going on.
Note: I think that “low information” is true of a lot of Woke progressive people as well.
If you think of the sociological view of crime – when we see young males from impoverished backgrounds commit crimes, we have to understand how this doesn’t mean that they’re really any different from young males from wealthier backgrounds, they just face different constraints and choices. Progressives should apply this reasoning to Trumpy or even racist people – look at them with understanding, not hate.
But progressives tend not to think this way. As an example, where I live, you often see bumper stickers with things like “Hate is not a family value” on them. What is that saying if not “I hate a certain large group of people?” Progressives are obsessed with bigotry yet don’t seem to understand what bigotry is.
And of course one thing about “normie” Trump fans is that they didn’t spend $200000 in tuition in the process of acquiring their ideological blinders. (A caricature but still).
Finally on yet another hand I have zero sympathy for “intellectual” Trump fans, those who think the Claremonters or the Chris Caldwells or the Scott Adamses aren’t simply peddling crap (and ignoring the obvious).
Or someone who writes comment after comment on this blog suggesting that it’s some sort of mystery why Sumner doesn’t like Trump, rather than attempting to counter any of the dozens and dozens (if not hundreds) of specific critiques of Trump that Sumner’s written.
20. August 2022 at 10:16
Ouch, I press “Submit” on the preceding blathery comment and then (well, after looking at some NFL stuff) go to read today’s Yglesias Twitter, and here’s his first tweet:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1560931879167090688
Really, a much more capably expressed and nuanced explanation of why we should sympathy for Trump voters.
20. August 2022 at 10:29
Michael. You said:
“Did anyone think Kerry was going to win the 2004 election? And Bush increased his vote share versus 2000.”
You are very good at making points that have absolutely no bearing on what I said. What should I infer from that?
FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court, which is certainly a Trumpian action.
“FDR won 4 elections for a reason.”
Yes, Hoover and the Great Depression.
Anon/portly, You said:
“Finally on yet another hand I have zero sympathy for “intellectual” Trump fans, those who think the Claremonters or the Chris Caldwells or the Scott Adamses aren’t simply peddling crap (and ignoring the obvious).
Or someone who writes comment after comment on this blog suggesting that it’s some sort of mystery why Sumner doesn’t like Trump, rather than attempting to counter any of the dozens and dozens (if not hundreds) of specific critiques of Trump that Sumner’s written.”
That’s someone that I also think about. When I meet Reagan supporters I haven’t seen for decades, over 90% of them tell me they despise Trump. When an intellectual tells me they don’t understand why I despise Trump, I write them off as a fool or a liar. What is there not to understand? It’s obvious. There have been Trump-like figures in many other countries for many decades. Authoritarian populist nationalist demagogues. I despised them all. Why should my views change when Trump comes along in 2015?
These are the people who tell you Trump’s no different from any other politicians when you point out all his flaws, and then tell you they like him because he’s utterly unlike any other politician.
The people I can respect are those who acknowledge many of Trump’s faults, but vote for him anyone because of tax cuts, the Supreme Court, deregulation, immigration, etc.
20. August 2022 at 10:34
Anon, Yes, I’ve met people like that. I think he’s right. Most people don’t look at politics the way you and I and Yglesias do.
I now realize that I was a bit bigoted in the 1990s when I wondered how the Italians could have been so foolish as to elect Berlusconi. Italian voters are no different from American or British voters.
(Of course that won’t stop me from wondering again this fall, when Italians elect that fascist party.)
20. August 2022 at 10:38
Michael, I should add that I never said FDR was a bad president.
20. August 2022 at 12:40
Scott,
To: “Did anyone think Kerry was going to win the 2004 election? And Bush increased his vote share versus 2000.”
You replied: “You are very good at making points that have absolutely no bearing on what I said. What should I infer from that?”
I thought I implicitly conceded the point that the 2004 election was closer than I recalled, but I think my general point stands that there wasn’t much confidence that Kerry would win. That is, it’s implicit if you take me in good faith. I’ve been commenting on this blog since the first half of 2009, and I don’t think I’ve argued in bad faith, though I’ve been wrong plenty of times.
So, I explicitly concede that my memory failed on the exact point spread in that election, but I consider it a technicality.
20. August 2022 at 12:50
On the court-packing point, your perspective might be correct, but it’s not the only credible one. We were in the midst of the greatest national emergency since the Civil War, and Roosevelt tried to execute a plan that was perfectly Constitutional as conceived, though motivated by the desire to protect his policy agenda. There are still some of us who believe that extraordinary circumstances sometimes require extraordinary action, whatever one thinks of the efficacy of FDRs many policies.
Sometimes you express opinions with a certainty that no one could justify. These are complex legal issues, in the context of complex historical circumstances, and no one knows what the right answers are. We’re all guessing. We’re not even experts in these areas.
The fact is, the President, in concert with the Congress, can choose to change the number of Justices on the Supreme Court. We can debate whether violating norms in this case would be net positive or negative, but I don’t think FDR’s motive was to become a dictator.
I think it’s safe to say that what McConnell did in denying Obama a vote was just a raw attempt to get his way politically, sans any emergency. He practices realpolitik, in a very destructive way for a republic.
21. August 2022 at 09:53
Michael, You said:
“perfectly Constitutional as conceived”
Perfectly? You think the men who wrote the Constitution would have viewed the NIRA as constitutional?
“I don’t think FDR’s motive was to become a dictator.”
His motive was to get the Supreme Court to be filled with his lackeys. It was a frightening power grab. Even his own party wouldn’t go along.
21. August 2022 at 10:49
Scott,
You replied:
“Perfectly? You think the men who wrote the Constitution would have viewed the NIRA as constitutional?”
I don’t know what the various authors and signers of the Constitution would have thought about anything in the 1930s, and nor does anyone else. There was a great deal of intellectual diversity in some ways among the signatories, and the Great Depression was, as you know better than anyone else, the worst economic disaster in the history of history as a discipline. Plus, the founders couldn’t have imagined the technological development that occurred between the late 18th and early 20th centuries. It’s not hard to believe that their 18th century thought processes would not be representative of their thought processes in more modern contexts.
Looking at the founders more broadly, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin, Madison, Washington,… these were very different thinkers who came together in compromise to form a somewhat new approach to government. Some were slaveholders, while others opposed slavery, for example. Try getting a coalition together today among those with such divergent moral views.
Originalism is a guessing game, and not a useful one, in my view. It’s like trying to compare athletes across eras. Was Tom Brady better than Joe Montana? How about Y. A. Tittle? Who knows? The rules and approach to the game change with the generations.
Would the 18th century versions of these founders support something like NIRA? My guess is that most probably wouldn’t have, but if they’d grown up in the late 19th or early 20th century, who knows?
What we know for sure is that the Constitution was written to allow simple majority votes in Congress and the signature of the President to change how many Justices are on the Supreme Court. In that sense, what Roosevelt was trying to do was 100% constitutional, even if unwise.
There is a long history of changing the number of Justices on the Court for partisan gain:
https://www.msba.org/packing-and-unpacking-the-u-s-supreme-court-a-brief-history/
To quote a paragraph here:
“From a legal perspective, changing the number of justices on the Supreme Court is an easy thing to do. All that it takes is a majority in both houses of Congress to pass legislation to that effect, and the president’s signature (or a veto override, if the president resists). It has been done seven times in the nation’s history, each time for partisan political purposes. Although the practice has come to be known as “court-packing,” Congress has twice lowered the number of justices to deprive a rival party of appointments to the high court. As a brief historical review reveals, the politics of court-packing, and its unpacking, is literally as old as the republic itself.”
You’ve expressed fears that packing the court could take us further down the road to becoming a banana republic. Empirically, this is a questionable claim.
NIRA was bad policy, but context matters. FDR was operating with the understanding of the world that existed in 1937. The New Deal was a series of policy experiments, some of which, like Dollar devaluation, worked brilliantly, though were not taken far enough. Others, like NIRA, were actually counter-productive. Taken as a whole, the New Deal did not solve the underlying problem in the economy, but did save millions of lives, and the US remained in a position to build on world dominance after the Second World War.
21. August 2022 at 10:57
I would also ask you if there are any circumstances under which you would favor packing, or unpacking the Supreme Court?
What if, at the outset of the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled that the southern states had the right to leave the Union peacefully? Should Lincoln have shrugged and accepted the ruling, or packed the Court to preserve the union and end slavery?
22. August 2022 at 19:23
“The New Deal was a series of policy experiments, some of which, like Dollar devaluation, worked brilliantly, though were not taken far enough. Others, like NIRA, were actually counter-productive.”
So the Supreme Court made things better.
No, I never support court packing, although I could support changes if done in a non-political fashion–say 18 year terms, or an expansion phased in very gradually.
23. August 2022 at 04:27
I wouldn’t leave millions of people enslaved.
23. August 2022 at 09:20
It took a civil war to get rid of slavery. Try enforcing a Supreme Court edict in the South.
3. September 2022 at 06:13
The Democrat Party formed the KKK.
The Democrat Party formed the Confederate States to fight AGAINST freeing the slaves.
The Democrat Party voted against freeing slaves.
The Democrat Party voted against giving freed slaves citizenship.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party.
Its mission was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories with the aim of abolishing it entirely. This effort, however, was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court. In the 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford, the court ruled that slaves aren’t citizens; they’re property. The seven justices who voted in favor of slavery? All Democrats. The two justices who dissented? Both Republicans.
6. October 2022 at 02:37
Politics has already become a joke, we might as well elect one of the coolest people in America