Trump and Trump-hatred – Page 5 – Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Donald Trump is the best of the worst of us

January 21, 2024 by philg

Although I thought that he needed a more optimistic and unrealistic message for Americans if he were to have any hope of prevailing in a general election, I am shocked that Ron DeSantis is now out:

Republicans are objectively terrible human beings and even the best Republican is inferior to the worst Democrat. Nonetheless, there are approximately 100 million Republicans in the U.S. (population 336 million plus, perhaps, another 10-20 million uncounted undocumented), 74 million of whom turned out to vote for Mr. Deplorable in 2020.

If Nikki Haley continues to underperform, are we forced to conclude that Donald Trump is the best person out of 100 million Americans? That’s sobering!

Is it now time to stop paying attention to Election 2024? Trump couldn’t beat the aging fossil Biden and the sexual opportunist Harris in 2020. Given that Americans are now drunk on student loan forgiveness, weekly abortion care, and other cornerstones of Biden/Harris policy, how could Trump possibly prevail? Is the path to victory Joe Biden dropping dead from old age between now and November and Trump runs against Kamala Harris?

Full post, including comments

Who can explain Donald Trump’s popularity in the current election?

January 19, 2024January 16, 2024 by philg

Iowa Republicans love Donald Trump, it seems, slightly more than two seemingly far more plausible candidates combined (Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis). Who can explain to me why this incredibly old guy is more successful with voters than Haley and DeSantis?

In some poll data from Iowa, it looks as though oldsters are the ones who love Trump. Just as here in Florida, it is the young people who love DeSantis the most:

Trump had a few successes before coronapanic overwhelmed his younger self, but what exactly did he accomplish that so many Republicans want him back?

(I haven’t been following the debates, etc., too carefully. Has anything happened that should alter my opinion that, though DeSantis is more aligned with my smaller-government political philosophy Haley is more likely to win a general election? (Americans overall seem to want a planned economy.))

Full post, including comments

Our democracy has been saved or further threatened by the Colorado Supreme Court?

December 19, 2023 by philg

The Colorado Supreme Court, all of whose members “were appointed by Democratic governors”, has voted for protect our democracy by restricting the group of candidates from which Coloradans can choose in the 2024 Presidential elections.

Although I’m sure that this was well-intentioned, could the result be to threaten our democracy instead? I continue to reject the poll numbers that suggest that Donald Trump is a stronger candidate than Nikki Haley (my favorite Republican for the past few years, though that is arguably like being a dwarf among midgets) or Ron DeSantis (a great governor who needs a softer and more optimistic tone if he’s going to go higher, in my opinion). If Trump is banished from politics by an impartial group of 7 Democrat appointees, mightn’t that actually help democracy-ending Republicans by eliminating a candidate who would lose a general election?

From Quality of Life in Denver (2019)…

What do people read in Denver? I visited the Tattered Cover, an old-school downtown bookstore, to find out. “For the sisters, misters, and binary resisters”:

Full post, including comments

Joe Biden takes Idi Amin’s advice to President Nixon?

June 11, 2023June 10, 2023 by philg

How’s the “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” prosecution of Donald Trump going? I’ve been out in the Mountain West and can’t keep up with all of the legal attacks.

I’m reminded of my 2007 blog post, Idi Amin’s advice to Richard Nixon:

[Idi] Amin sent a letter to Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis: “When the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately, to imprison the leaders of the opposition.”

Democrats knew that Donald Trump deserved to be in prison at least as far back as 2016. Has anything new emerged that is convincing to Republicans or is it still a question of a former president’s right to keep his/her/zir/their papers?

Speaking of insurrectionists, here’s a suspicious character who may have participated in the January 6 insurrection… a golden retriever in Kanab, Utah exercising his Second Amendment rights (carrying bullets in his collar):

Full post, including comments

Now that E. Jean Carroll has won $5 million, what stops hundreds of other plaintiffs from mining out Donald Trump?

May 9, 2023May 9, 2023 by philg

New York Democrats opened the hunting season on Donald Trump on November 24, 2022 (CNN describes how the law was changed to open a one-year window with no statute of limitations for sexual assault) and E. Jean Carroll has now won $5 million despite no precise memory of when the life-changing attack occurred and no evidence that she and her defendant were ever in a store at the same time (New York Post).

The judge allowed multiple other survivors to testify about what they suffered at the hands of Donald Trump. What stops additional plaintiffs from coming forward, calling the survivors that E. Jean Carroll called at her trial and also E. Jean Carroll herself, and winning $millions? How tough is it to say “I also was at Bergdorf Goodman at some point in the mid-1990s, plus or minus 5 years, and was attacked by Donald Trump”?

Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn founder who funded Ms. Carroll’s lawsuit, could himself claim to have been raped, for example. From the NYT:

To make the testimony more credible to a jury of nine Democrats, a plaintiff could assemble some friends and/or family members to testify that the survivor told them about the rape 30 years ago (plus or minus 5 years).

“Reid Hoffman apologizes for funding a group that allegedly spread misinformation in Alabama Senate race” (MSNBC): “AET funneled money to a project that used a Facebook page where people pretended to be conservatives. Participants in the project used language to divide actual conservatives, encouraging them to write in a candidate to divert votes from Republican Roy Moore, who had been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women.”
“LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, planned to visit NYC mansion” (New York Post)
Brogan v. United States, in which the Supreme Court held that saying “I didn’t do it” is itself a crime, separately punishable (Trump lost $3 million for “defamation” by denying that he raped the plaintiff)
Department of #BelieveWomen… “She Wrote of Grief After Her Husband Died. Now She’s Charged in His Murder.” (New York Times): “Kouri Richins wrote a children’s book to help her three sons process their father’s sudden death, she said. Prosecutors said this week that she poisoned him with a lethal dose of fentanyl.”

Full post, including comments

Billboards for Palm Beach from MoveOn

April 16, 2023April 15, 2023 by philg

Here’s a Facebook ad that MoveOn paid to show me… “Will you chip in now to help put up billboards outside Mar-a-Lago … “. If I give them enough money, they’ll construct an Interstate highway-style billboard right outside Donald Trump’s bedroom:

The linked-to page asks for monthly donations of $400 or more (“Individual contributions will be allocated as follows: $5,000 per calendar year to a bank account that operates as a Federal PAC, and the remainder to the Non-Contribution Account of the PAC.”) and says, “Chip in monthly to help put up billboards outside Mar-a-Lago and widen the Trump-Fox News rift.”

This sounds like a great way to spend $5,000 per year, but it is a little confusing given that the national historic landmark Mar-a-Lago is in Palm Beach, Florida, which is not famous for having a lot of billboards or other commercial signs. Palm Beach County flatly prohibits billboards and other “off-site signs” in its unincorporated areas, though perhaps a town or city could permit them. (Some pre-1988 billboards were grandfathered in by the county.)

Here’s Google StreetView:

Full post, including comments

New York Times coverage of Donald Trump indictment

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by philg

The New York Times informs us that humanity faces an “existential crisis” and/or “existential threat” due to climate change (2014 example regarding a New York politician). We also face an “existential threat” from coronavirus (NYT Editorial Board, May 24, 2020). Finally, there is the imminent threat of nuclear war (NYT, Oct. 5, 2022).

With humans potentially going extinct from climate change or COVID-19 and/or being killed millions at a time via nuclear weapons, what is today’s most important news? “porn star” occurs twice in the follow screen shot and “hush money” once. From the front page text, in other words, we learn that a sex worker allegedly got paid for having sex and then not talking about it.

Full post, including comments

America’s system for handling classified documents is broken

January 25, 2023January 25, 2023 by philg

Just a month ago, our fellow Palm Beach County taxpayer Donald Trump was a criminal because he had some classified documents in his palazzo. See “‘It worried people all the time’: How Trump’s handling of secret documents led to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search” (NBC News, 8/13/2022). And “Inside the Justice Department’s decision on whether to charge Trump in Mar-a-Lago case” (NBC News, 11/11/2022):

“If Trump were anyone else, he would have already faced a likely indictment,” said lawyer Bradley Moss, who represents intel agency workers in cases involving classified information.

Today, however, we know that the blame is correctly assigned to the system, not the individual. “America’s system for handling classified documents is broken, say lawmakers and former officials” (NBC News, 1/24/2023):

Far too many documents are classified, and gatekeepers charged with tracking the secret papers are struggling to keep up, experts say.

The U.S. government’s system for labeling and tracking classified documents appears to be broken …

For decades, current and former officials and Congress have warned about the growing problem of labeling too much information secret, or “overclassification.”

Update: this article was highlighted on Twitter by Glenn Greenwald…

How NBC and its "experts" radically and fundamentally changed how they talk about classified document leaks as soon as it went from Trump to Biden:https://t.co/wWgE370khr
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 26, 2023

one of his followers did the same thing with CNN, then and now:

Full post, including comments

Evolution of Jewish victimhood 1947-2022

November 26, 2022November 27, 2022 by philg

“Trump hosted Holocaust denier at Mar-a-Lago estate during visit with Kanye West, a week after announcing 2024 run” (CNN, today):

Former President Donald Trump hosted White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago estate this week, demonstrating his continued willingness to associate with figures who have well-publicized antisemitic views as he embarks on another White House run.

West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, posted a video Thursday on Twitter in which he claimed that Trump “is really impressed with Fuentes,” who has repeatedly made antisemitic and racist comments as chronicled by the Anti-Defamation League.

(Why isn’t it forbidden deadnaming to refer to Ye as “Kanye West”?)

I had to visit Wikipedia to figure out who Nick Fuentes was, i.e., a young Mexican-American who has already been unpersoned by nearly all (Jewish-controlled?) media. Readers: Had you heard about Nick Fuentes before this week?

Here are some typical tweets on the subject of Trump’s dinner table:

We are disgusted to learn former President Trump has taken a meeting earlier this week with Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and vile Holocaust denier.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) November 25, 2022

Nick Fuentes is a gleeful Holocaust denier and an absolutely vile public figure. That is public information, easily accessible. Perhaps Trump really didn't know who he was. I have a hard time believing that. But he surely knows who Ye is. He invited him. And that's bad enough.
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) November 25, 2022

All snark and sarcasm aside, I really, really hope journalists and the Democratic Party treat Trump's meeting with Nick Fuentes as the scandal that it is.

This guy has made openly genocidal, authoritarian statements about the Jews within the past few weeks. it's horrifying.
— Max Berger (@maxberger) November 25, 2022

I’m not sure that I love the evolution of Jewish victimhood over the past 75 years. In 1948, we fought against the regular militaries of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Today our enemy is an individual 24-year-old incel. If we extrapolate out another 10 years, is it reasonable to predict that all Jews worldwide can be taken out by a pet rabbit and we need all of the goyim to rally around us and protect us from that rabbit?

Separately, if indeed it is true that Nick Fuentes is a Holocaust skeptic, why isn’t it reasonable for a 24-year-old to question the Holocaust? Much of what he has been exposed to in U.S. media during his lifetime has proved to be lies. Why is it obvious that on this one subject the New York Times happens to be telling the truth? (Note that the Holocaust was not considered an important subject by the NYT in the 1940s.)

Finally, what is the evidence that Fuentes hates Jews for being Jewish. Maybe he hates the Democrat political program and knows that the majority of secular American Jews have adopted this program as their replacement religion. Is Fuentes on record as saying that he hates Jewish conservatives?

Update: If the pool at Mar-A-Lago were renamed “Wannsee” we could say that a Mexican-American and a Black poet chaired the Second Wannsee Conference.

White men correctly perceive American Jews as their enemies?

Full post, including comments

Should Palm Beach be renamed Elba?

November 2, 2022October 29, 2022 by philg

One powerful obsession has been that a former leader will break out from his island exile and become an absolute ruler once again. I’m talking, of course, about Napoleon on Elba, which was indeed followed by a brief return to power (he was 46 years old at the time).

We face a somewhat analogous situation today. Donald Trump is mostly confined to the island of Palm Beach. It is common for people to express fears regarding the potential for Trump to return to power starting in January 2025 (when Trump will be a little older than 46…).

“Palm Beach” is frequently confused with the city directly across from the ritzy island (where a teardown can cost $110 million). The city has the airport, the office buildings, most of the housing (12X the population), the government offices for “Palm Beach County”, etc. It has the confusing name of “West Palm Beach”.

What about renaming the island that is home to the exiled ruler “Elba” and then we can just use “Palm Beach” to refer to the city and the region?

Speaking of Palm Beach County, here’s a 1974 newspaper article at the county’s massive Japanese garden.