THE ERA OF TRUMP

[Ph64]

Oh no!
Please don’t throw us into that briar patch, Dems.

Well, it doesn't seem like they are particularly skilled at long-term thinking...

[SuburbanFarmer]

Trump had Pelosi and Schummer in the Whitehouse for a meeting, it got heated. Trump vows to shutdown the government if Congress will not support Border Security.

Not border security... he still wants money for a physical wall.

There is a difference.

[C-Mag]

Trump had Pelosi and Schummer in the Whitehouse for a meeting, it got heated. Trump vows to shutdown the government if Congress will not support Border Security.

Not border security... he still wants money for a physical wall.

There is a difference.

Like Pelosi and Schummer want ANY border security.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Trump had Pelosi and Schummer in the Whitehouse for a meeting, it got heated. Trump vows to shutdown the government if Congress will not support Border Security.

Not border security... he still wants money for a physical wall.

There is a difference.

Like Pelosi and Schummer want ANY border security.

Possibly not. But let’s at least be clear on what he’s demanding.

Now, if they were smart, they’d appropriate funds for actual security measures, and H1-b crackdowns, and force him to decline. But they aren’t smart.

[Fife]

I love how Pence just sits there quietly taking everything in. If Trump does get ousted the liberals will be crying even harder when they are subjected to 6 years of President Pence.

Could he do ten years, or would the two he covered for Trump count as a term?

I can think of no better Christmas gift to give the wailing anti-capitalist, anti-family, anti-religion, race baiters than ten YEARS of president Pence.


They openly mocked him for not meeting with women in private.
His ass looks like a visionary right about now though, doesn’t it?

(Also: Actually, Trump has to make it to Jan. 20, 2019, before Pence takes over in order for Pence to be eligible for 2 terms. If Pence serves more than two years of Trump's term, he's then limited to only being elected once afterwards. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxii)

[Fife]

Trump had Pelosi and Schummer in the Whitehouse for a meeting, it got heated. Trump vows to shutdown the government if Congress will not support Border Security.

[pineapplemike]

decent opinion article, what say you historians

Donald Trump's suffocating presence and unhinged executive power is the product of history
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 065368002/

Another day, another avalanche of news about the President: berating Democratic leaders on camera; unceremoniously announcing the departure of his chief of staff; calling his former Secretary of State “dumb as a rock.”

It never lets up. Trump is a ubiquitous, suffocating presence in American life.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The modern presidency is the framers’ worst nightmare, a flatly unconstitutional concentration of power. As the Trump era has made abundantly clear, the office itself — its size, scope, and prominence in American life — is the driving force of dysfunction in our politics.

Article II of the Constitution outlines a modest office. The president was to execute the laws passed by Congress, appoint some key government posts, interface with foreign leaders, and use the veto to check populist passions.

That’s it. The president was basically a lackey to Congress, the deliberative and more democratically sensitive branch of government.

That design worked pretty well for the first 150 years. On the rare occasions when the executive branch assumed excessive powers — such as Lincoln suspending habeas corpus protections at the height of the Civil War — the office’s constitutional constraints kept the commander-in-chief in check.

All of that changed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His “fireside chat” radio addresses — delivered in his charming aristocratic lilt — provided comfort, advice, and moral instruction to millions. Along the way, they created an unprecedented, immensely exploitable emotional connection with the public.

This connection formed the nexus of the obscene set of expectations that have come to define the office: the president is the savior of the national soul; the healer-in-chief administering alms in the wake of disaster; the superhero battling America’s enemies; the master executive personally credited with the performance of the economy.

Under FDR, these expectations fueled a radical expansion of presidential power, specifically through his use of executive orders. FDR’s predecessors averaged a couple hundred per administration; he issued over 3,700, creating vast new jobs programs and public agencies.

Concentrating power makes the system more vulnerable to abuse. It was an executive order, after all, that established the internment camps for Japanese Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor. There was little public debate over whether FDR actually had the authority to lock a hundred thousand innocent citizens into cages, though there was a Supreme Court case. The mystique worked its magic.

Likewise, immediately following the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush, riding the highest presidential approval ratings in modern history, erected a vast extrajudicial surveillance apparatus to tap citizens’ phone calls and emails.

The advent of television provided presidents an even more powerful tool to craft their image. Personal charisma could now be leveraged to create a cultish devotion.

That’s how JFK, a pill-popping sex addict who shared a lover with a Chicago mob boss, became the youthful icon of Camelot mythology.

That’s how Ronald Reagan, who’s actual policy record is a lot less libertarian than Jimmy Carter’s, became the mascot of small government conservatism.

And that’s how Barack Obama, who railed against the Bush-era expansions of the national security apparatus during the 2008 campaign, got away with retaining that apparatus in its entirety once he got into office. The mystique incapacitates people’s critical faculties.

A full third of the White House staff is exclusively devoted to image management. And that image — and the popularity it produces — is largely detached from the president’s concrete accomplishments.

Executive authority operates on a one-way ratchet. The powers presidents annex during emergencies tend to get retained in peace and passed along to their successors.

That includes the power to wage war. The Constitution explicitly vests that authority in Congress. The president, as commander-in-chief, is charged with leading the military once called into service, but it’s Congress that’s supposed to do the calling.

This order is shattered in June 1950. North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung launches a surprise invasion of South Korea and President Harry Truman, without any congressional authorization, sends tens of thousands of troops to the peninsula. The White House brands its response — which eventually builds to a three-year battle claiming the lives of 30,000 Americans — as a “police action.”

And Congress completely capitulates, setting the blueprint for unilateral executive warmaking: Vietnam under LBJ; Cambodia under Nixon; Bosnia under Bill Clinton. Congress doesn’t start wars anymore; it just signs off when presidents say we’re in one.

Given the evolution of the presidency, Donald Trump, the ubiquitous overlord of American politics, is not a fluke, or some historic anomaly. He’s an inevitability.

A president who treats the office as his own private fiefdom, dismissing critics as the enemy of the people. A reality TV star with a genuine genius for driving the news cycle. A man with the power to shake the stock market with a tweet. As Gene Healy, author of the The Cult of the Presidency, puts in my new mini-doc for We the Internet TV: “Trump is the extreme energy drink version of what’s been on tap for a long time.”

This isn’t democracy; it’s a soft monarchy. A single person dominating government — that’s exactly what the founders designed against. Fixing our politics requires draining the office of both its formal powers and out-sized importance in American life.

[Montegriffo]

I shot the Chérif, but I did not shoot the DUP...

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/natio ... rities-say

Meanwhile Presidunce Trump tries to exploit it despite the suspect being born in France.

Another very bad terror attack in France. We are going to strengthen our borders even more. Chuck and Nancy must give us the votes to get additional Border Security!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 3927185408

[SuburbanFarmer]

Soft monarchy. That’s fitting.

[DBTrek]

Soft monarchy. That’s fitting.

More fitting might be the labeling of citizens as “soft peasantry”. Never have common people had so much, only to do so little.