Trump

Agree

For half a century UK governments have followed an (I believe) short sighted 'open house and make up the deficit through service exports' view rather than a strategic view to balance of trade (using amongst other things intervention through tariffs)

 

Two points worth noting.

First, no one knows how much Trump is worth because he refused to release his tax returns. His known net worth is based on nothing more than his own bragging, and considering his tendency towards lying and exaggeration I don't believe for a second he's worth what he says he is. See: his crowd size at the inauguration. See: claiming that it wasn't raining during his inauguration. Reality doesn't intrude.

Secondly, various analysts have concluded that if he'd just have taken his inheritance and just invested it, he'd be worth far more than he says he is right now...and that's based on his own reports of his net worth. Example: http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/

He's actually a pretty incompetent businessman who has succeeded purely on the basis of the fact he inherited a ridiculous amount of money. Just look at the likes of Trump University for a perfect example.

 

As I said, I'm not defending him. I was just going by the article I quoted which seems to point to him being successful.

I'm not bothered, either way.

 

Ooooooooooh!

 

Didn't mean to imply you were, I was just offering context to the suggestion that he's a good businessman. He really isn't. He's got a jaw dropping number of lawsuits behind him and would be worth significantly more money if he had just invested his inheritance and done literally sod all all week since the early 1970s.

 

Quite clever really ... spouting reported rubbish as truth knowing it can only back up his arguments on fake news

 

Hasn't he been a bankrupt more than once too?

 

If terrorism is defined as acts calculated to induce terror in the general population, does inventing attrocities (Bowling Green, Atlanta, Sweden) make Trump a terrorist?

 

I'd guess that he gets half-decent advice and then just does his own thing anyway. Could be wrong though. There'll be plenty of yes men too. And that Kellyanne Conway (botox queen) and the other prominent (male) press spokesman are both fake news artistes. So who knows. It's a pantomime anyway.

It can't last though. Haystack head and his entourage are rapidly becoming a global laughing stock. It's unsustainable.

 

When was any of his populist 'solution' real?

 

Perhaps you don't get much coverage of this back in Blighty, but Trump's main adviser is Steve Bannon of Breitbart fame. Considering Breitbart is a hyper-partisan conspiracy theory fake news site, that should probably tell you all you need to know.

Trump is an empty suit. He's clueless, unqualified and out of his depth. What's obvious is that more than anything he needs validation, adoration and praise. Tell him he's brilliant and he'll do pretty much anything you want. He's renowned for being surrounded by Yes men in his business dealings.

For example, look at Trump's comments on Obama and Obamacare BEFORE he met Obama, then see Trump's comments after his long meeting with Obama. One meeting with Obama and he completely changed his tune. He's very, very easily lead by anyone capable of flattering him or making him feel special.

Make no mistake, Bannon is the puppet master here.

Four times in business.

 

We get plenty of coverage back here Arakel. Bannon's and Breitbart's role is well recognised. The puppet-masters behind the scene. *****.

 

Arakel, has there been much discussion as to why Trump was elected in the US? As in the core reasoning as to why? I can't believe it's solely down to the Democratic candidate he was up against.

 

Yeah, a fair bit (unsurprisingly).

Mostly it comes down to the fact Hillary was horribly disliked and made some glaring campaign errors, notably not going in hard for the rust belt states because she thought they were a lock in. This arrogance caused her to campaign hard in Texas (where she had no real chance of winning) at the expense of the rust belt. The first rule of business and politics: the most important customers are the ones you already have. Her campaign didn't bear that in mind at all.

Something people need to bear in mind is that Hillary won the popular vote by over 3 million votes and let lost the electoral college. That's unprecedented. Trump squeaked victories in rust belt states by the finest electoral margins and pretty much stole the election on that basis. One thing is for sure: Trump has no real mandate in terms of popular support of the US population. He entered office with the lowest approval ratings in history, and they've fallen since then.

What it comes down to is the rural folk of states like mine saw Clinton as the globalization candidate and Trump as the bring back manufacturing jobs candidate, ignoring almost everything else he said. Then you have the Comey letter, which caused a massive drop in Clinton's polling numbers right before the election. Although Comey later confirmed there was nothing of note in the new emails batch, I think the damage was done and it was enough to tip the scales.

On election day, many voters stayed at home because they found Clinton AND Trump repulsive, but I suspect this was disproportunately weighted towards the Democrats because 1) polls showed Clinton ahead, encouraging complacency and 2) Democrats tend to be a more prone to not turning up than Republicans.

Add the above up, and this is why Trump is now the POTUS despite getting less votes than Mitt Romney.

The whole thing was just a perfect storm. To put it bluntly, Trump got incredibly lucky. If Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, Trump would have been blown out; Sanders' jobs policies would have set the rust belt on fire, and his comments on US wealth disparity resonated widely. There have been a number of town hall shows on CNN since the election, where Sanders went out and engaged with actual Trump voters directly. He had most of the room eating out of his hands by the end of the session. Strange at it might sound, many Trump voters voted for him DESPITE his ridiculous comments on immigration/Muslims/the wall.

For many it was a one-issue vote: jobs, manufacturing and anti-globalization. In fact, one Trump voting guy specifically said that the Muslim ban was unconstitutional and he 100% believed the US courts would block it if Trump should attempt to do it. Thus far, that chap has proven to be correct, so props to him.

Early positioning from Sanders since the election puts him as a major leader in current Democratic politics, and his popularity is soaring. Don't rule out a Trump v Sanders showdown in 2020 yet. The level of energy Sanders has is incredible for a man in his 50s, never mind a man of his actual age. If Sanders runs and gets the nomination, I would not be at all surprised to see a Bernie Sanders/Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) ticket. She is highly impressive: intelligent, articulate, a military combat zone veteran, highly principled, non-reactionary and does her homework (and she's really ****ing hot, too, which would only help).

Apologies for the American spellings here, but spellcheck kept changing them and I can't be arsed to switch them all back.

 

arzed, surely?

 

Related note, this made me chuckle a bit:

 

You can't ignore the race factor for Trump. He managed to convince enough white people that he would 'make America great (white) again'.

This is why the 'Blacks for Trump' supporters get centre of the crowd at rallies. He needs a fig leaf.

 

Here's another fun one:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...axpayer-barack-obama-month-year-a7586261.html

In a matter of weeks, Trump's trips have already cost the US taxpayer what Obama's cost the taxpayer in one year.

The kicker? Most of them have been to his own Mar-a-Lago resort, so much of the money was paid to him.

Drain the swamp.

 

Being reported on the TV here too.

 

It's jaw dropping corruption.

And lets not forget he literally doubled the cost of membership at Mar-a-Lago after winning the election. If that's not profiteering off his office I don't know what is.

 

Thanks for that, interesting post. I wrote something similar about the perfect storm being a factor earlier in the thread.

Sadly, Bernie was too nice for the Democrats who thought they had a sure thing with Hillary. A real shame.

Seems you have to be a warlord in training, complete crook or a nutjob to even get nominated now.

 

The thing that really amazed me was how vacuous the two Trump mouthpieces are when taken out of the their comfort zones (Facebook postings etc).

Tomi Lahren was pretty useless on the two times I've seen here sitting at the "big boys tables" (no puns intended) the Daily Show and Real Time.

And Milos Yiannopolous whose shtick appears to be little more than a Lilly Savage tribute act with the bile turned up to 11 and the "wit" down to zero. Watching his "interactions" with the exceptionally good Larry Wilmore and some very senior ex-spy really showed what a sack of $hyte he truly is.

These are the face of Trump????

EDIT: Just been dropped from a conservative rally.

 

I did not pay much attention to the Primaries. I got the impression though from what I did watch that Bernie Sanders was a bit odd in some way. I expect though the Clinton machine helped portray him like that to casual observers.

 

This might give some insight into the man. Don't start watching unless you've got a spare hour.
[video=youtube;jkUFUkvNYAQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkUFUkvNYAQ[/video]

 

A jaw dropping diagram breaking down what Trump is spending his time doing:



In one month, he has spent TWENTY FIVE hours playing golf and a mere SIX hours in intelligence briefings. He's spent literally more than double the time on tweeting that has has on intelligence briefings.

 

To be kind he might combine golf with diplomacy or briefing, but he's like Dubya tbh, lazy, dangerous, spoilt knut.

 

I can see it now.

"OK, birdie and we invade Iran, par and we yell about CNN being fake news, and bogey we talk about about how massive my election win was. This round's going to be great, believe me, many people tell me I have the best drive."

 

This is the trouble with the situation. Trump has a bad reputation and deserves much of the criticism he gets. But this sort of article/comments are just jumping on the bandwagon for "likes" and laughs. It usually means that unjustified criticisms are made but go unchallenged because everyone else wants to be on the same bandwagon. So everyone laughs.

It is pathetic and belongs in the gutter press.

Intelligent briefings are "briefings". Brevity, as opposed to longevity.

A brief count up of his working hours in the month amounts to 234, without the golf. That is still over 10.6 hours per working day if he worked 22 days in the month.

Compared with the 7.4 hours per day or 162.8 hours per month that most civil service employees works in the UK, that isn't bad.

 

You clearly know nothing about what's been going on.

Trump's not taking the intelligence briefings. He skips 6 out of 7, taking a mere one per week. Furthermore, a briefing does NOT imply brevity; that's a complete fabrication. It refers to a meeting in which information is imparted. It could be 2 minutes, it could be 10 hours.

You also clearly have no idea how many hours the POTUS usually puts in. Trump is doing it part time compared to any predecessor you'd care to compare him to. The fact that he's spent a quarter of his time in office in or around his own Mar-a-Lago resort, meaning taxpayer money is paid to his business, should be a huge ****ing red flag to anyone.

Perhaps before dismissing things as coming from the "gutter press" you should take some time to actually educate yourself about the issue.

 

You clearly hate him, which tbh I can't fault you for, but how do you know what he does unless you work in the white house and follow him around?

 

I thinks its because he appealed perfectly to the 'middle ground voter'. Someone posted a link on the brexit thread which was an article written by the strategist who masterminded the leave campaign. It was actually quite funny because it showed that actually farage was clueless and brexti barely had anything to do with him at all.
But what he says is from his research he found that there is a common misconception that swing, centre ground voters do not have the sort of beliefs that you would expect. It turns out that they actually are concerned about 4 core issues. They support, much higher tax on rich, much higher punishment on executive pay, much tougher punishment on violent crime and high anti-terrorism law.

This is everything trump promised (although hes proved he didnt mean it).

If the US is anything like the uk i think thats the reason + other factors.

 

Depends. The data is gleaned from the Washington Post. Hardly the gutter press. Actually, by my reckoning, you do him a bit of a disservice. I make it a minimum of 248 hours worked. On your 22 day calculation that would give him 11.27 hours p.d. (always assuming the two large portions of 'other work' refer to 'other presidential work'). Giving the POTUS weekends off is quite generous though. Anyway, he's probably putting in a bigger shift than Dubya but certainly less than Thatcher who didn't take weekends off. Trump will be getting more than 3 hours sleep a night too.

 

Are the sources trustworthy? Are they objective? Is the chart accurate? Is there an agenda? Having slivvers marked up 'Intelligence Briefings' and 'Tweeting' does suggest an agenda to me. So that Arakel could make the kind of comparisons he did. But you can't be expected to garner the evidence for everything yourself. There will be those in and around the White House who could have provided accurate information. So do you trust the sources? Sometimes that's justified, sometimes it isn't.

I do quite like the colours.

 

That's inaccurate as far as what Trump promised is concerned I'm afraid. He never promised 'much higher taxes on the rich' or 'much higher action on executive pay'. Rather the opposite (certainly on tax). He suggested to joe public that by taxing the rich less that would free up their business empires to provide more jobs all round and better living standards and cash for all. The latter of those at least is the famous 'trickle down effect'. But it's never worked properly before and it won't now. Not enough ever 'trickles down'. But that's what he sold to joe public and enough of them bought it. That's what it said on Trump's tin and one thing you have to give him credit for is that he will try and carry through what he said.