Can we please all agree

[Different Drummer]

Can we please all agree that this experiment of having a dumb TV host and shady real estate developer with no government knowledge, 6 bankruptcies, 5 kids from 3 marriages, 23 charges of sexual assault, and 35,000 lawsuits as president is not going well at all? #TrumpMeltdown

Link to tweet

[Wounded Bear]

1. No argument here...

but then I was here about 4 years ago.

[The Mouth]

17. Define "well"

It's going great for his peers.

[quakerboy]

24. Is it?

I mean, i think things are going splendidly for his owners, and probably even for some of his investors. And his family.

But is this really a heyday for two bit con artists, grifters, and serial abusers?

[progressoid]

2. And yet he's still at 41% approval.

There are a lot of blind or stupid Americans out there.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. You are forgetting power-mad greedy hypocritical Americans (like evangelicals for example). . . nt

[aggiesal]

6. GOP Greedy One Percent n/t

[Dem2theMax]

18. More.

GOP. Greed Over People
GOP. Gushing Over Putin

[lagomorph777]

33. Government Of Putin

Groping Old Perverts
Grabbing Our Pussies

[progressoid]

11. Yep.

[MBS]

32. This is what scares me the most. n/t

[Collimator]

4. I don't know. . .

. . . Somewhere up there might be a mischief-maker, trickster-type god who is laughing his ass off.

But for the rest of us mere mortal beings, yeah, the situation sucks.

[Scarsdale]

5. It is a disaster.

The US is the laughingstock of the entire world. We have the dumbest man on the planet claiming to be KING, or so he thinks. Putin must be so proud. He also knows that if tRump is impeached, there are several gop clowns who could easily make as lousy a president as tRump has. McCarthy, Graham, Perry, Pompeo, Mulvaney, all traitors who would do Vlad's bidding for the right price.

[DENVERPOPS]

12. a friend

A friend of mine who is Russian says that all the people in Russia are laughing their asses off at how well Putin is playing Trump and the Republicans...............

[ffr]

7. It's doing wonders though for DEMOCRATIC VOTER REGISTRATION drives!!

Keep these ethically bankrupt dolts talking!

[subana]

8. I agreed with that a long time ago!

there are many reasons why he's a terrible leader but one reason is he is stupid & inexperienced. Many of the problems he has encountered, he created himself! He admitted he fired Comey to put an end to the Russian investigations & when they asked about his phone call to Ukraine he freely admitted it!! Any experience politician would have known why it's a bad idea to admit those things.

Now he has a symbolic noose around his neck & he's the one who put it there with his stupidity!

[SergeStorms]

9. We told everyone that same thing 4 years ago.

But people didn't listen. There was one person who listened: Vladimir Putin. He listened, and he took action to get the career criminal elected. We are where we are because of people who watch FOX Noise and listen to right-wing radio, and of course their bandleader, Vladimir Putin.

[Different Drummer]

10. What you said!

DD

[Gumboot]

13. Agreed 100%!

Here's hoping the pendulum swings back our way in 2020.

[blakstoneranger]

14. You Gets No Argument From Me!!

Why they chose him is a complete mystery to me! There are at least a dozen good conservative businesspersons, with no government experience, who would have made a much better, more qualified president than this overweight, reality show, clown! All he cares about is the media. I have never seen any government official so obsessed with the media. It's like he trying to create a trump TV series using all of us as unwilling participants. It seems every week there is a new episode followed by tweets and angry ranting. I'm almost ready to believe he made up this whole whistle blower/ukraine scandal just to add new episodes to what looks like a long-running TV series. He's been known to plant fake stories in newspapers, alter videos, make stuff up just to make news. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing is just one big hoax! The dems better have a contingency plan just in case!

[thenelm1]

15. Definitely agree.

Can we also agree that the 25 year Republican smear campaign against the Clintons paid off handsomely for them? And that Democrats need to be more vigilant and proactive against such campaigns going forward?

[The Liberal Lion]

16. That was my opinion from day one

nothing has occurred that should make me change that opinion

[lambchopp59]

19. Concur.

[cwydro]

20. Yeah, we can agree on that.

This whole thing is so sad.

[Garrett78]

21. I wish we could, but clearly tens of millions still think he's the bee's knees.

[smirkymonkey]

22. I will never understand this as long as I live.

It is maddening.

[Garrett78]

23. It's racism, as well as sexism. That's the primary explanation.

Absent racism and sexism, the Republican Party would cease to be viable. It's not right wing tax policy or right wing environmental policy or right wing health care policy that holds the party together. It's racism and sexism. Opposition to universal health care and so much more has everything to do with racism, sexism and hating liberals. Why hate liberals? Mainly because liberals tend to oppose racism and sexism, and support LGBTQ rights.

50+ years of increasingly cruel and unhinged rhetoric and policy created a monster.

Trump never would have won the nomination if it weren't for Birtherism and his blatantly racist anti-immigrant rhetoric. He took the dog whistle of Nixon, Reagan and the rest and turned it into a bullhorn. Every bit of social progress faces a backlash (from the Civil Rights Movement to the election of a Black president) and Trump capitalized.

[smirkymonkey]

25. It's sickening that so many people think that way.

Sometimes I really hate this country. I just feel fortunate that I live in a very liberal city. I could not bear to live in a red state.

[Different Drummer]

35. It isn't easy living in a red state.

Take it from one who knows from experience.

[kurtcagle]

28. Greed and Fear and Magical Thinking

Wall Street has always been a balance between these two forces. In general, capitalistic systems, untempered, lead to the aggregation of wealth and, by extension, power, in the hands of fewer and fewer consolidators, until eventually the system collapses under its own weight and everything has to begin again from scratch. Late in the process, magical thinking predominates - if I emulate my leaders, then I too will be wealthy and successful. Trump is beloved by the evangelicals because their religion has been taken over by the prosperity gospel, with Christ as CEO and God as Chairman of the Board. Trump stepped right into that mold, down to the golden throne and corona like hair.

Magical thinking does not allow for logic or differences of belief. I think old school fundamentalism is dead. It died sometime in the 1980s. Old school fundamentalism was xenophobic, but it also embodied a sense of noblesse oblige. You helped those that were weaker than you. You fostered a sense of community. You might be sanctimonious about it, but there was always a sense that salvation was not freely given, that you had to earn it through continuing to do good deeds. Yet with the prosperity gospel, money and power replaced contrition and sacrifice as the stepping stones to heaven, and the xenophobic feedback loop was completed.

This is not really about racism and sexism - it's about greed and xenophobia. There were once a lot of men who didn't think that different from Trump. The world existed for them. Women were servants, wives or mistresses. The darker your skin, the lower your social class. They succeeded by inking the biggest deals, owning the biggest homes, driving the flashiest cars, and damn the consequences. They figured out early on that the way to build a fortune is to convince other people that you know the secret to becoming rich, and if you give them $10,000 of your money, then you'll share your secret with them, then hit them with a load of blather. The real secret is that when you get a hundred people to give you $10,000, then you're a millionaire, and they're just that much farther from being one.

Salesmen often get elected to political office, but few of them actually stay there for very long, because most really have no interest in being responsible for governing. The Republican mindset is a salesman's mindset. Most Democratic politicians are problem solvers, at least in contemporary times. Democrats generally are more holistic thinkers, and recognize that problems cannot be solved with magical thinking. Except they can, for a little while. Ponzi schemes are effective for a surprisingly long time because in the earliest iterations, they draw upon the greed of people to seed their own take, and it's only when the pyramid grows too large does it finally collapse. Of course, by then the original grifter is long gone.

Trump is running a ponzi scheme. It's now collapsing on him faster than he had hoped.

[Garrett78]

30. There are the greedy and then there are those they exploit, primarily by fomenting bigotry.

There's a difference between what motivates Republicans in power and what motivates those who put them in power. And xenophobia has everything to do with racism. It's not merely a fear of foreigners. It's a fear of a certain type of foreigner.

Nixon knew exactly what he was doing with the Southern Strategy. Reagan knew exactly what he was doing by kicking off his campaign by talking about "states' rights" less than 10 miles from where 3 civil rights workers were murdered. Bush knew exactly what he was doing with the Willie Horton ad. His son knew exactly what he was doing by equating Muslim with terrorist and dehumanizing migrants. Trump knew exactly what he was doing by promoting Birtherism and spewing hatred toward brown-skinned immigrants. There's a reason why support for the ACA is greater than the support for Obamacare and why Republicans always refer to the latter.

A recent article featured a white winger who was going to die due to a lack of health insurance, and he was fine with that so long as "they" didn't get health insurance. Numerous studies have made clear that racism was the main motivator for Trump voters.

[Ahpook]

26. And X-Tians support the sloth

They are in my family and it blows me away that they support the thing.

They also call themselves christian.

Phew

[brush]

27. Well since you put it that way...

Excellent summary.

[GregD]

29. seriously? 35,000?

I had no idea. Where did you confirm that number.

[Lock him up.]

31. It's 10x less (3,500) but let's agree that over 100 in a lifetime is way over the top...

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-sue-didnt-pay-lawyers-author-new-claims-1460828

Asked how Trump can afford to constantly pay the legal fees to sue, Zirin claimed that the president simply does not.

"People often ask me: 'how can he bring 3,500 lawsuits or be involved in 3,500 lawsuits?'" the author said. "The answer is he didn't pay most of his lawyers ... He doesn't pay his lawyers. He doesn't pay his architects, doesn't pay his creditors, goes into bankruptcy."

"He really pushes the system for all that it's worth," the attorney asserted.

[kimbutgar]

34. To this day I never got the appeal of how his cult members worship him

He barely talks literate, his past financials dealings were disastrous but he was able to convince a lot of dumb Americans to vote for him. It just goes to show how our educational system and the media have dumbed down an electorate. And all those old people who grew up during world war 2 and knew about Hitler and the cold wars year of Russia voted for a Russian asset and now they’re ok with it!