President Trump

[marcs]

The knives are out here in DC. I think Biden is done for. Running him requires a level of outright fraudulence and fakery that not even our media-enabled oligarchy can maintain.

This need not be a death sentence for the Democrats. Four months is plenty of time for a campaign. In other civilized countries it’s routine to have a three or four month campaign followed by an election with the votes counted and the winner announced the same night! Imagine that.

[Comte Flaneur]

The notion that he will be fit and capable to be commander in chief between now and January 2029 is a ludicrous prospectus. In fact this was the case well before last week’s debacle.

[Claudius2]

Jim
I wonder if the USA is always in election mode.
But I also wonder why the Dems have not already asked Biden to retire with dignity rather carry on and embarrass himself, not to mention the party.

My question here is who could the Dems come up with now? If it was a good candidate who could rally the troops, it may help the Dems hold the White House.

Another issue that needs considering. The media pretty well everywhere is showing Biden as an unfit leader and it is damaging the image of the USA and even worse, emboldening adversaries.

Cheers
Mark

[JimHow]

The Democrats have some highly intelligent, dynamic, very strong alternatives available, including, but not limited to:

Gretchen Whitmer
Gavin Newsom
Andy Beshear
Pete Buttigieg
Josh Shapiro
Amy Klobuchar

Numerous others…
It is astounding that the system produced two very weak candidates like Biden and Harris.

[DavidG]

I think he's going to step down. There seems to be a groundswell developing. Incredible times we are living in.

His ego won’t let him step down

I fear you may be right. Ego and the desire to hold on to power are extremely potent motivators.

I’m hoping his sense of duty and love of country will eclipse his ego. And that he remains mentally sharp enough to understand that he needs to step down. And if not, that others in the party will come to their senses and force him out.

Joe has to go.

[JimHow]

I hope the governors are rough on him today.
The George Stefanopoulos interview could be rough as well, ask that dink Chris Sununu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hepuf_DgtaA

[Comte Flaneur]

[JimHow]

Interesting that the UK has gone left while France and the rest of Europe has gone right. Is it an anti-establishment sentiment or more complicated than that?

[JimHow]

Boy that was a rough day for Joe yesterday. A big day for Joe today.
It is time for him to go but if we are going to be stuck with Harris, no thanks.

[Comte Flaneur]

Interesting that the UK has gone left while France and the rest of Europe has gone right. Is it an anti-establishment sentiment or more complicated than that?

It is complicated here because the traditionally left-leaning Labour Party, which won in a landslide, moved to the centre of the political spectrum, and benefitted from voter disaffection with 14 years of incompetence of the Conservatives, with Brexit being the most conspicuous of many debacles.

[Jay Winton]

Talk about a private politician, the new PM's teenage kids are a total mystery. Doubt that will last but we know the name of their cat.

[JimHow]

I didn't think it was George's best interview, I thought he kind of just kept repeating the same questions in different ways. Joe did not do as badly as I expected but I don't come away with any more confidence. I just came away sad. He's just too old. I wanted to hug him. He really needed to just not run for reelection. A very sad, tragic situation.

[JimHow]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. I wish he would wear his glasses. His face looks pasty, old, tired, his eyes look glassy. He looks cool when he wears his sunglasses.

[Comte Flaneur]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ar ... y-has-sunk

[Comte Flaneur]

He referred to Kamala Harris as Vice-President Trump. If you watch the clip he was not aware he even made a gaffe.

He also referred to President Zelenskyy as President Putin

https://news.sky.com/video/share-13176846

Again no awareness of his gaffe

This is beyond embarrassing

Is it true that George Clooney was really speaking on behalf of Barack Obama in calling for Biden to step aside?

[Nicklasss]

If Joe Biden or Donald Trump are able to be elected and be President of the USA, that clearly mean that I could rule the Galaxy.

[JimHow]

Sigh I've been predicting assassination attempts.

[JimHow]

What a country.

[marcs]

The logic of the rhetoric used against Trump is clearly that he should be assassinated. I mean, listen to how he is described, such a Hitlerian figure should be shot. I’m surprised it took so long with all this wildly intemperate rhetoric.

The American political system needs to get the fuck over Donald Trump. He’s not the first asshole President and he won’t be the last. If anything all this crazy lying and exaggeration and misguided lawfare about him has helped him.

[DavidG]

Sigh I've been predicting assassination attempts.

Sad, sad day for this country.

[Claudius2]

If Joe Biden or Donald Trump are able to be elected and be President of the USA, that clearly mean that I could rule the Galaxy.

No way.
Putin and Xi Jinping already claim that title.
And they do not appreciate any competing views.

[Claudius2]

The logic of the rhetoric used against Trump is clearly that he should be assassinated. I mean, listen to how he is described, such a Hitlerian figure should be shot. I’m surprised it took so long with all this wildly intemperate rhetoric.

The American political system needs to get the fuck over Donald Trump. He’s not the first asshole President and he won’t be the last. If anything, all this crazy lying and exaggeration and misguided lawfare about him has helped him.

Marcs
I am relieved somebody has said what you just said.
Throughout the world, endless countries are ruled by autocrats, kleptocrats, warlords and other scum.
Throughout Asia, Africa, central and south America, assassinations, false imprisonment, "disappearances", torture and other violence against political opponents is rife, and surely, the western world can see the results of that.

There is no excuse for assassinations or other violence.
I am rather relieved that Biden has publicly denounced the assassination attempt.
I feel sickened by this. Biden is right, it IS sick.

I DO need to say that I am not a supporter of either Trump or Biden and have asked on numerous occasions why the US cannot find better candidates, including the running mates for President. But that is never a reason for violence.

In recent years, cancel culture in all is odious forms has become normal practice and assassinations are unfortunately an extension of it. I suppose the most permanent way of cancelling someone is killing them. My point here is that if other forms of cancelling can be rationalised, then rationalising away murder isn't that much of a stretch.

One of my earliest recollections of life way the day JFK was assassinated. I was watching the sci-fi serial "Lost in Space", if anyone else can remember it, and the program was interrupted for the announcement - which came in two parts, the attempt and later, confirmation of death.. I then recall the murders of numerous other political and social leaders, and also the chilling scenes on TV and in newspapers of the USSR sending tanks into Budapest. Unfortunately, too many people, including many in power, see violence as a normal part of political activity.

regards
Mark

[DavidG]

Drawing a line from cancelling speaking engagements or endorsement deals because of political or ideological differences to assassination? That’s beyond reason.

Where there have been actual calls for violence from politicians, it’s more often been from the far right wing nuts. Remember Donald Trump’s 2016 comment about Hillary Clinton: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

Combine the polarization and invective with the gun culture in the US and shit like this is bound to happen.

[JimHow]

This is just mind boggling what happened yesterday. How could there have been a line of site from that rooftop? That just cannot happen. Heads need to roll in the secret service. A millimeter to the right… good grief.

[DavidG]

Secret Service, FBI, PA police all say at presser that Secret Service is responsible for immediate vicinity only, local or state agencies for wider concentric circles including building shooter was on.

People saw shooter getting in position and alerted local police, who apparently had no direct communication with Secret Service?

Some things are going to have to change.

[JimHow]

There’s some insane video on TMZ. This is unbelievable.

[Comte Flaneur]

It was a sad day but I have always argued that the so called deep state has a compelling motive to remove Trump somehow. Pure conjecture, but on the basis that Trump poses a grave national security threat.

[marcs]

Drawing a line from cancelling speaking engagements or endorsement deals because of political or ideological differences to assassination? That’s beyond reason.

Where there have been actual calls for violence from politicians, it’s more often been from the far right wing nuts. Remember Donald Trump’s 2016 comment about Hillary Clinton: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

Combine the polarization and invective with the gun culture in the US and shit like this is bound to happen.

Equating Trump with Hitler and saying he would destroy American democracy forever, and doing it constantly from the highest sources, is asking for an assassination attempt. That goes beyond ordinary cancel culture.

Then there are the darker speculations that a security breakdown this incredible could only happen with insider assistance, per the motives Ian states. I can’t bring myself to believe that. But one thing we do know for sure is that the Trump campaign repeatedly asked for more Secret Service protection resources and didn’t get them. The amount of protection resources probably affected the perimeter they could maintain.

[Nicklasss]

Worried to go to the USA in August and October…

[DavidG]

Drawing a line from cancelling speaking engagements or endorsement deals because of political or ideological differences to assassination? That’s beyond reason.

Where there have been actual calls for violence from politicians, it’s more often been from the far right wing nuts. Remember Donald Trump’s 2016 comment about Hillary Clinton: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

Combine the polarization and invective with the gun culture in the US and shit like this is bound to happen.

Equating Trump with Hitler and saying he would destroy American democracy forever, and doing it constantly from the highest sources, is asking for an assassination attempt. That goes beyond ordinary cancel culture.

Then there are the darker speculations that a security breakdown this incredible could only happen with insider assistance, per the motives Ian states. I can’t bring myself to believe that. But one thing we do know for sure is that the Trump campaign repeatedly asked for more Secret Service protection resources and didn’t get them. The amount of protection resources probably affected the perimeter they could maintain.

The claim in your first paragraph is naive and false. Who “at the highest levels” asked for an assassination attempt?

I have no time for the BS conspiracy crap in your second paragraph.

[jckba]

This is just mind boggling what happened yesterday. How could there have been a line of site from that rooftop? That just cannot happen. Heads need to roll in the secret service. A millimeter to the right… good grief.

This.

[Ognik]

Cui bono?
Who trusts a man who goes over his head?
It's a shame that the only witness is already dead.
Without being paranoid, possibly staged like so many other things.
Sad for those who were harmed for this.
We'll see, maybe.
I see you torn, others will benefit from this.
Don't envy your democracy and wouldn't want to swap.
Beware of the Ides of march.

[Claudius2]

Drawing a line from cancelling speaking engagements or endorsement deals because of political or ideological differences to assassination? That’s beyond reason.

Where there have been actual calls for violence from politicians, it’s more often been from the far right wing nuts. Remember Donald Trump’s 2016 comment about Hillary Clinton: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

Combine the polarization and invective with the gun culture in the US and shit like this is bound to happen.

David
I do not agree and history proves it.
Wars and attacks on various groups of people, individuals and ideologies are inexorably linked. The easiest way of rationalizing atrocities is to label your opponent/s or enemies as inhuman, disgraceful, or any other slogan.

My comments about the generalization of negative views to groups can be clearly manifest in Gaza and Israel at present. The world has always been tribal and focusing your hatred on a person, group or country - however defined - is pretty normal thru history and that’s why there is so much conflict.

My wife grew up in Mao’s China. Individuals who were disliked for any rational or irrational reason - often as simple as envy or suspicion - were denounced by the red guards AND normal citizens using what is called Big Poster” denouncements. From there they were taken to a struggle session, beaten, then imprisoned, gulaged and:or just beaten to death.

Some years ago I helped translate a family history for a local friend. Her grandfather was murdered at a struggle session as one idiot claimed that the wood mill be ran was “haunted”. And whilst you can probably see the craziness in this, tens of millions died during the cultural revolution simply as someone did not like them or agree with what they said.

[DavidG]

Your proof, Mark, is an opinion. A valid one based as it is on familiarity with history in Mao’s China. I can only say that my opinion differs and that the US is not Mao’s China. Yet.

I don’t recall this kind of outrage expressed here on BWE at Republican members of Congress posting pictures of opponents in rifle crosshairs. Maybe I’ve forgotten. But those sorts of public proclamations are much more dangerous than comparing someone to Hitler. Again, my opinion.

In Trump’s case, I’m still waiting to hear which highest government officials called him Hitler. A wanna-be Fascist, yes. And that’s a fair description. He’s a hard-right power-hungry autocrat that has demonstrated little respect for the law, has claimed absolute power and packed the Supreme Court with political hacks who will bend to his will, has separated children from their parents, put them in cages, and didn’t bother to keep track of them so that they can be united, and has referred to neo-Nazi marchers in the US as very good people. That’s just the top few that come immediately to mind.

Are we not to stand up to that kind of evil by speaking out publicly, for fear that a deranged nutter will take up arms? Are we to remain deferential until it’s too late? No, we should speak out in the strongest terms. I’ll tell you what informs my opinion: knowing Holocaust survivors from my parents’ generation, and the hell they went through in the concentration camps.

[JimHow]

For me, I've just been in a funk about this for the past few days. It's just too much. I've seen so many people dead from gunshot wounds in my law practice, too many who die on video, be it a security camera, a police body cam, etc. These homicides don't happen like in the movies. They are just horrible. I can't stop thinking about the nihilism, the absurdity, of that bullet that hit Trump's ear. One minute he's slapping at his ear, like swatting a mosquito. A millimeter to the right and it would have been a catastrophe. I had CNN on this afternoon as the reporter read off the sixteen Menendez guilty verdicts. It's just too much. It just seems hopeless. A country hopelessly broken. We have indeed had asshole presidents before. And some of them have caused great harm to humanity. Orange Head with control of the Senate, House, and Supreme Court, and now his 39 year old protege to carry the torch, an impotent old man ready for the nursing home unable to put two sentences together, let alone prosecute our cause against the Trump Party.... Very depressing.

[Claudius2]

David
There is a logical connection that can be described as an extrapolation.
I am writing this not as an attack on you or anyone else. I am trying to point out that the divisions in the US and the hatred between tribes (however you define them) are creating social instability. Yes, it is happening in all sorts of countries as well, and in many of the latter, there are civil wars and wars between countries. Hatred is hardly bounded by borders.

I do not want to list down all the horrible abominations of humanity and then describe how they happened. But the logic is pretty simple. Whether it be Mao's China, Rwanda, Stalin's USSR, Pol Pot's Cambodia, whatever. My dad spent the entire period of WW2 fighting the Nazis and I heard at a very young age what happens as a result of hatred and tribalism. He was then sent to India where he saw more of the same - Hindus and Muslims killing each other. It wasn't even personal.

The start of tyrannical governments - whether legitimate or not - is with disinformation and subversion, leading to a change in perceptions of reality, and typically the identification of "bad" or "evil" players. There are truckloads of political texts about it, not to mention psychological ones. I spent many years studying both. it starts with division and that division becomes suspicion, labelling and hatred. When the latter is achieved, it then sets the scene for extremism. Orwell used Goldstein in 1984 as the archetypal evil one. he didn't even exist yet rallied the people into hatred.

Is the US standing up against evil? Well, some are, and that is why I praised Biden for speaking out against it. It has no place in a democracy, and he knows it and has acted properly. But the media is unfortunately full of:

A. Media commentators who are saying that Trump is responsible (or at least partly responsible) for the attack. That is, he is a bad person who preaches (...whatever someone does not want to hear...) and thus HE is responsible. Funny, the Nazis said exactly that about the Jews after Kristallnacht. I am saying that blaming the victim is part of that disinformation and subversion of reality. During his Presidency, many blamed ANY act of violence on Trump, which is an even greater stretch of reality. That is, his very existence causes violence even when the violent people do not know him or have never met him.

B. Social media and some areas of mainstream media are now talking up all sorts of conspiracy theories that Trump somehow engineered the attack as a political stunt. Well, I do not think killing your own supporters is such a great storyline, and the sort of nonsense I have been reading is disgraceful. Even the local press here in Singapore is full of stories such as: "liberal conspiracy theories are everywhere on social media" about the attack.

I wish that the world was NOT hateful, ignorant, violent and tribal. I am genuinely sorry it is. I am however glad I live in a peaceful country where all sorts of people from just about everywhere in the world can get along. We don't agree on everything but do not resort to violence (with a few rare exceptions). Yet violence in many parts of the world are common for all sorts of reasons.

regards
Mark

[DavidG]

Mark,

I agree with what you’ve written above. The tribalism is corrosive and dangerous. While there’s a difference in scope and meaning between violence coming from individual nutters vs.the ruling class, it matters not to the victims. Violence should never be the answer to our political differences. Like Jim, for me it is a sad and depressing state of affairs.

I do think Trump will win in November, and I think he will be even Trumpier than in his first term. I think he poses a threat to our democratic institutions, but I’m not so sure how successful he’ll be in dismantling them. I belive our core will hold, but there will be significant erosion at the edges. A lot will depend on the Senate and House races. That’s why I want Biden to step back now. I don’t think the Ds have a chance at winning the White House, but a less unpopular candidate at the head of the ticket may help with the Congressional races.

One thing I Believe Trump will succeed in doing is energizing the left. I fear more potential for violent protests.

[Claudius2]

David
I think Trump is a windbag. He was President for 4 years and in reality didn’t seem to do very much at all. Maybe change tax rates. Even the build the wall rhetoric didn’t change much.

As for the left, there seems to be plenty of leftist loonies across the world. In France, the far left got more votes than the right or Macrons centrist party and they still protested across the country. Ideologues and zealots don’t seem to need much of a reason to turn violent.

The education system in the western world is producing activists and zealots who have been inculcated in leftist thought. I was involved in Australian Unis for 36 yrs as a student, tutor and lecturer and around 2000, I saw a turn for the worse. Sure there was quite a few leftists when I started as a student at UNSW nearly 50 years ago but even the finance and economics dept by 2000 was being run by leftist agitators who wore Che Guevara t-shirts - despite knowing little about him.

When I was growing up, the western world was much more conservative and not always in a good way. It was quite authoritarian and did not tolerate too many views. But in 2024, only current leftist dogma is accepted or you get attacked one way or another. At some point, the culture war will turn more violent and I am not speculating the outcome.

I just think it is sad that there is no longer room for alternate opinions - which is what makes democracy strong in the first place. I am truly dismayed.

Regards
Mark

[marcs]

Are we not to stand up to that kind of evil by speaking out publicly, for fear that a deranged nutter will take up arms? Are we to remain deferential until it’s too late? No, we should speak out in the strongest terms. I’ll tell you what informs my opinion: knowing Holocaust survivors from my parents’ generation, and the hell they went through in the concentration camps.

As it happens both of my parents were Holocaust survivors. I am pretty familiar with that period of history. Trump is not a Hitler figure or even close to it. The political figure he reminds me most of is Berlusconi, but Trump is such a deeply American figure it's hard to make comparisons.

I am also old enough to remember Trump as President. An interesting time, but not a dictatorship of any kind. Indeed almost a strange reverse dictatorship in that most of the societal pressure was aligned against the nominal leader -- you could get fired for publicly supporting him, but criticizing him in the most intense possible terms could bring you publicity, money and career success. Most of the dictatorial energy, in the sense of actually mobilizing state institutions to take authoritarian steps against political opponents, has been on the anti-Trump side.

The events of the past couple of days have been truly remarkable. Supposedly Bismarck once said (probably apocryphal) that providence takes special care of fools, children, and the United States of America. Feels relevant to the assassination attempt. I actually have some optimism looking ahead. Five years from now this will all be past, we will have a new younger generation of politicians, and in comparison to any other country in the world America has numerous strengths to build on.

[marcs]

David
I think Trump is a windbag. He was President for 4 years and in reality didn’t seem to do very much at all. Maybe change tax rates. Even the build the wall rhetoric didn’t change much.

It's remarkable that in four years in office Trump didn't even manage to build his wall -- his central campaign promise, would have cost only a few tens of billions of dollars (a pittance by Federal government budgetary standards), his party was in the majority in both Houses for two years, and he couldn't even get them to cooperate. Yet people seem to actually believe he is going to make the entire fractious U.S. goose step in unison and imprison the half of the population who opposes him. Amazing.