Trump Thread

[jtauke]

No his full post was: your wife is lovely. My wife is love of my life.

Sit with it a little. You’ll see why people poke fun at it.

Pretty sure “love of my life” is much stronger wording than lovely…I’d say if you’re the love of someone’s life, it’s implied that they think you’re lovely.

Can you admit that it was NOT a Cruz PAC that put out the Melania Trump ad? It’s a purely anti-trump PAC (they’ll support anyone but him). If it’s Clinton vs Trump, they’ll make ads supporting Clinton.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Pretty sure “love of my life” is much stronger wording than lovely…I’d say if you’re the love of someone’s life, it’s implied that they think you’re lovely.

I was agreeing with you. Cruz’s statement was stronger.

 

[queenofheartscv]

Pretty sure “love of my life” is much stronger wording than lovely…I’d say if you’re the love of someone’s life, it’s implied that they think you’re lovely.

Can you admit that it was NOT a Cruz PAC that put out the Melania Trump ad? It’s a purely anti-trump PAC (they’ll support anyone but him). If it’s Clinton vs Trump, they’ll make ads supporting Clinton.

There are only cruz and Kasich left against trump. The ad said to vote cruz. I dont believe cruz had nothing to do with it. You can’t prove it othersie either.

 

[Peter_J]

You’ll see why people poke fun at it.

Sometimes it’s better not to ask why people do what they do.

You’ll notice that I haven’t asked why you continue to “Trump bait” people on this forum.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Who really cares? Melania Trump isn’t running for president, and unlike Cruz she really doesn’t qualify, i.e. foreign born, no American parents. Should she become the First Lady, I don’t think she’s going to be posing sans clothing.

I can’t stand Trump, but fair and fair.

 

[Son_of_Niall]

Well, since I was having fun with cruz post, I don’t see why you can’t do it with trump. Go at it!

Certainly distracts us from talking about how Trump feels about torture, Muslims, taking out the families of ‘suspected’ terrorists, building a wall at the border…

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Certainly distracts us from talking about how Trump feels about torture, Muslims, taking out the families of ‘suspected’ terrorists, building a wall at the border…

Only momentarily. We all know the things Trump has said.

 

[gracepoole]

No his full post was: your wife is lovely. My wife is love of my life.

Sit with it a little. You’ll see why people poke fun at it.

This seems like a real stretch. Trump clearly demeaned Heidi Cruz by retweeting a side-by-side shot of Heidi and Melania that was meant to depict the former unfavorably. I can’t imagine why he thinks doing so is decent.

And why is he so obsessed with women’s looks? Good grief.

 

[queenofheartscv]

Certainly distracts us from talking about how Trump feels about torture, Muslims, taking out the families of ‘suspected’ terrorists, building a wall at the border…

I think for anti trump people this actually provides fodder to further dislike him, so you should be happy.

People actually like trump more when it comes to issues.

Some trump supporters get upset with him about these retweets. But you have what you have.

We’ll see what happens.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thank you for the reply Ridge, I appreciate your thoughts as ever…

I’ll concede that he claims “in public” to be in favour of ‘free trade’ (and he certainly benefitted from cheap foreign labour as a businessmen, that being a cardinal irony if you will given what he says now to appeal to white blue-collar workers fearful of losing their jobs to the very people who once enriched Trump himself) but his stated policies belie any claims to the contrary.

Levying exorbitant tariffs on any country that is deemed to be unfairly or “unilaterally” benefitting from US trade policy might very well be attractive to people who want to stick two-fingers up to the outside world. But when these blue-collar Americans start having to pay huge inflated sums for frequently used products and manufacturing production (name removed by moderator)uts go up in price, as a result of the punitive retaliation the US will receive from other countries in response, they might live to regret jumping on board with the Donald. It will be revealed as a big ‘populist’ con of the working man. That’s on top of the slowdown in international growth that will likely accrue, as happened with Smoot-Hawley under Hoover (and I do side with the orthodox historiography on that front).

Trump’s trade “policies” make excellent 'bread and circuses’ theatre shows for the masses. But translate them into realpolitik and they are likely to be disastrous in the international arena.

If a global recession occurs from Trump’s trade wars, we may resume discussion on this point regarding his ‘protectionism’ and the merits thereof…Watch this space…

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I’m not very good at responding to multiple-part posts, so I’ll just start here.

I don’t think anyone could seriously doubt that a lot of American trade agreements are not well-balanced. So, for example, Caterpillar wanted to get in on the building boom in China. So, it wants to sell equipment to Chinese concerns. What did China offer? Yes, China would buy CAT equipment MADE IN CHINA. CAT would have to build factories in China to produce it. So what does CAT do? Well, it builds factories in China so it can sell in China. And yet, virtually everything you see in Walmart or Lowes is made in China. That’s a fair trade deal?

I know some people who have a meat byproduct business. They found they could produce a “chicken jerky” product for dogs cheaper than Chinese manufacturers could do it. But USDA required that the people here dye it green, whereas the Chinese aren’t required to do it. Try convincing a dog owner than green “dog jerky” is what he wants. So the American manufacturer just gave it up, at least for a time.

If a Mexican investor wants to buy a business in the U.S., he can just do it. If an American investor wants to buy a business in Mexico, he has to have a Mexican partner who owns more than half of the business. That’s a fair arrangement?

It goes on and on.

I’m not a protectionist. But there needs to be some mutuality to trade agreements or they’re not worth having.

From the American standpoint, and certainly from the standpoint of American labor, it’s hard to justify not demanding at least an equal opportunity to compete. That, I believe, is what Trump is talking about, not barring foreign goods altogether.

And whether Smoot-Hawley actually made the depression worse is a debateable thing. All business everywhere was going sour at the time, and got into the dumper before the trade bill was enacted.

 

[Peter_J]

Melania Trump isn’t running for president

Thank you!!

Some got upset a few weeks ago because I said that the thread “Melania Trump: I don’t approve of Donald’s language” and the thread “Melania Trump: I followed the law as immigrant” didn’t interest me, and because I didn’t explain why I “needed” (huh? ) to say that. I mean give me a break.



Frankly, some discussions on the web can get a little ridiculous.

 

[gracepoole]

There is now no possibility that the Republican Party will survive its rendezvous with Donald Trump unbroken.

If Trump is the party’s nominee, the best-case scenario — the best case! — for G.O.P. unity probably involves a host of Republican officials withholding their endorsements in the fall and millions of Republican-leaning voters simply staying home. The other scenario involves an independent candidate as a vehicle for #neverTrump conservatives, who might take anywhere from 5 percent to 30 percent of the general election vote depending on the candidate and how Trump fares outside his core constituency.

If Trump isn’t the nominee, if he enters the convention with a plurality of delegates and leaves without the nomination, then he becomes the spoiler — either as a third-party candidate or (more likely, I think) as a kind of permanent roadshow, attacking the Cruz-Kasich ticket at every opportunity and urging his supporters to never vote Republican again.

…]

[A] Trumpian schism probably wouldn’t lead to a full realignment, a real re-sorting of the parties. Instead it would likely just create a lasting civil war within American conservatism, forging two provisional mini-parties — one more nationalist and populist, concentrated in the Rust Belt and the South, the other more like the Goldwater-to-Reagan G.O.P, concentrated in the high plains and Mountain West — whose constant warfare would deliver the presidency to the Democrats time and time again.

…]

The lesson here for conservatives and Republicans is sobering. A rift is upon their party, and it won’t be healed before November. But if the party can’t be united under Trump, both his fans and his foes will probably face a stark choice in the aftermath: Rejoin or die.

nytimes.com/2016/03/24/opinion/campaign-stops/trumpism-after-trump.html

Well. That certainly sounds…dire.

 

[Ridgerunner]

That isn’t the primary reason I accuse him of xenophobia. It is the way he characterizes entire ethno-cultural groups of people and demonises them as the “threatening other”. I cannot think of anything more xenophobic than depicting Mexicans carte blanche as “murderers, criminals, rapists and drug dealers” and demanding the construction of a wall to keep them out which their own government will have to pay for. It is hateful speech designed to stir up the umbrage of the masses. And it works.

If he merely said, “we need tighter border controls for security purposes at a sensitive time like this”, I’m OK with that but of course he didn’t.

.

Trump did not say all Mexicans are rapists, etc. Nor did he say he would exclude them all. One needs to remember that he talked of bringing it into control under the law. He also talked about the “giant door” for expedited readmission of those who had no criminal records, were employed, etc. After decades of “open borders” and no followup on visa overstayers, we don’t have any idea who all has come into this country. Some would say we just have to accept that. I don’t agree with that fatalistic view.

Wanting to ensure that we know who is coming into this country is not xenophobic. It’s simple prudence. Never did Trump say he wanted to exclude all foreigners.

He is plain-spoken and oftentimes it comes across negatively. But at least people remember it, and after nearly eight years of being lied to about uncontrolled immigration, perhaps he felt that it had to be said dramatically if anyone is now to believe it could actually happen. I, for one, question whether even he can do it, but experience has shown that nobody else will.

And by the way, you possibly don’t know that it’s illegal in the U.S. to question the identity of any job applicant whose ID is facially valid. So, no matter how much you suspect someone is illegal, or even if you know he is, you can’t question it further if his ID looks right on the surface. Since fake ID makers are pretty good at their trade, so nobody in the U.S. can ever be sure he has not hired illegals.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The truth is that if the US and her allies had been more involved in bringing a speedy end to the Syrian Civil War and had not permitted Russia to ‘weaponise’ the migrant crisis as a tool to destabilise European institutions, we wouldn’t be facing the humanitarian disaster that we are facing. But that’s a different story.

.

I make no excuses for the Obama administration or for Hillary Clinton’s diplomacy during it. The U.S. could, at minimum, have kept ISIS from seizing the Iraqi oil fields or, indeed, any part of Iraq. Obama was told exactly what it would take to keep them out. But he chose to abandon Iraq despite the pleas of the Sunni tribal leaders, the Kurds and the Sistani Shia and the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his own CIA head.

The U.S. was not involved in Syria until ISIS’ seizure of much of Iraq made it a more formidable enemy than it was when it was confined to Syria. One needs to remember as well that the Turks offered to go into Syria in force against ISIS if the U.S. would provide a “no fly zone” over their heads. But Obama wouldn’t do that.

 

[Thorolfr]

Here’s some interesting news from the Guardian:

Donald Trump not only maintains his polling lead among Republicans in three new surveys – most Republican voters agree with him that if he wins the most delegates before the national convention, even if it’s not an outright majority, he should be the nominee.

A Bloomberg poll found 63% of Republicans who have voted or plan to vote in the primary process think Trump should be nominated if he leads the delegates race in July.

One problem, for Republicans, is that the same poll found that Trump was viewed unfavorably by 68% of Americans. That’s a lot – even more than the fairly unpopular Hillary Clinton, whose disapproval rating was measured at 53%.

theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/mar/24/presidential-campaign-2016-trump-delegates-clinton-sanders-cruz

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m sorry to be so frank about it but you only have to listen to the sheer vulgarity and chauvinism of his speech to see that he is a women-hating prig with an inflated sense of his own masculine virility and sexual prowess. I find him utterly repugnant in this respect, very much like a Putin or Mussolini caricature.

He continually derides women based upon their looks, rather than characters. Carly Fiorina. Meghan Kelly. Angelina Jolie. Hillary Clinton.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more outwardly sexist public figure, not at least since the heyday of Berlusconi and his prostitutes in the presidential mansion over here in Europe.

Is this really the example we want to set for impressionable young men? Should they aspire to be women-hating lotharios?

He refused, at first, to disassociate himself from David Duke and the KKK. There have been racist taunting from elements among his supporters towards black protestors at rallies. His Mexican rants are tainted with racial bias.

Not so in my case, I merely abhor the expressed views and persona of Donald Trump.

.

Crudeness of expression is not new in American politics, and I’m not sure it’s all that terrible. Harry Truman indulged in it, and Lyndon Johnson made Trump look like a goody two-shoes, he was so vulgar. One quick story about Johnson. He often required government functionaries or even foreign dignitaries to meet him in the White House bathroom while Johnson was, um, sitting on the throne defecating. he did that to unnerve and intimidate them. As far as I know, Trump hasn’t reached that level yet.

Before concluding that Trump is truly sexist, one needs to know how he treats his many female employees. Maybe terrible stories will emerge, but so far nobody has made any credible claim that Trump doesn’t treat them fairly, well, and with dignity. That means a lot more than how he treats political opponents.

So, okay, we’ll disqualify all potential leaders who have bad manners. But should we? One remembers Churchill’s quip about the talking dog in the circus.

And in my opinion, Meghan Kelly had it coming. She went on a partisan attack against him in a forum in which she was supposed to be a neutral interlocutor. Was he to let it go just because she’s a woman? She’s his political enemy, and she made that clear right at the beginning and has continued to do so since then. Meghan Kelly is good at what she does, no question about it. But she occasionally gets an Athene complex and becomes almost unbearable. Trump wouldn’t let her get by with it when she tried to humiliate him.

Possibly Trump actually didn’t know who David Duke was when first asked. From the accounts, it seems perhaps he didn’t. Maybe he should be faulted for that, but I doubt more than 10% of the American people did before the story broke out. The “David Duke story” is what, thirty years in the cask now? He later made it clear he does not approve of the KKK. Enough said.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Here’s some interesting news from the Guardian:

theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/mar/24/presidential-campaign-2016-trump-delegates-clinton-sanders-cruz

So the two people the voters hate most are the front runners. LOL What does that say about us, the voters? Though I’m a Sanders supporter, and he’s viewed favorably.

 

[Tomdstone]

With Melania nearing fifty, I have to wonder when he’ll divorce her.

More vicious, uncharitable personal attacks on Mr. Trump and his family.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

More vicious, uncharitable personal attacks on Mr. Trump and his family.

It’s not an attack on anyone. LOL I think Melania Trump is pretty, and she seems nice enough. Trump himself has said women “have to be young and beautiful.” That’s a quote from him. Melania is no longer young, and some say she is no longer beautiful since she’s now middle-aged.

“You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful [expletive].”

huffingtonpost.com/entry/18-real-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-women_us_55d356a8e4b07addcb442023

 

[FollowChrist34]

Possibly Trump actually didn’t know who David Duke was when first asked. From the accounts, it seems perhaps he didn’t. Maybe he should be faulted for that, but I doubt more than 10% of the American people did before the story broke out. The “David Duke story” is what, thirty years in the cask now? He later made it clear he does not approve of the KKK. Enough said.

Sorry, but we do need a little ‘fact checking’ here.

1991

CNN’s Larry King: “Did the David Duke thing bother you? Fifty-five percent of the whites in Louisiana voted for him.”

Trump: “I hate seeing what it represents, but I guess it just shows there’s a lot of hostility in this country. There’s a tremendous amount of hostility in the United States.”

King: “Anger?”

Trump: “It’s anger. I mean, that’s an anger vote. People are angry about what’s happened. People are angry about the jobs. If you look at Louisiana, they’re really in deep trouble. When you talk about the East Coast, it’s not the East Coast. It’s the East Coast, the middle coast, the West Coast…”

— exchange on “Larry King Live,” shortly after Duke lost a race for governor of Louisiana, Nov. 19, 1991
2000

“The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. [Patrick] Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. [Lenora] Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.”

— Trump, in a statement saying he will not accept the Reform Party nomination for president, Feb. 13, 2000

NBC’s Matt Lauer: “When you say the [Reform] party is self-destructing, what do you see as the biggest problem with the Reform Party right now?”

Trump: “Well, you’ve got David Duke just joined — a bigot, a racist, a problem. I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party.”

—remarks on NBC’s “Today Show,” Feb. 14, 2000

Compare to present campaign:

Trump: “Well, I have to look at the group. I mean, I don’t know what group you’re talking about. You wouldn’t want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I would have to look. If you would send me a list of the groups, I will do research on them. And, certainly, I would disavow if I thought there was something wrong.”

Tapper: “The Ku Klux Klan?”

Trump: “But you may have groups in there that are totally fine, and it would be very unfair. So, give me a list of the groups, and I will let you know.”

Tapper: “Okay. I mean, I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here, but…”

Trump: “I don’t know any — honestly, I don’t know David Duke. I don’t believe I have ever met him. I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him. And I just don’t know anything about him.”

Tapper: “All right.”