The Trump Presidency – 2016

[JPhillips]

Romney will say some mean things about Trump and join with Rubio to vote for anything that comes up.

Now if the Dems somehow win the Senate, then I could see him being a real thorn in Trump's side.

[CrimsonFox]

maybe a dem will beat romney again XD

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by CrimsonFox

maybe a dem will beat romney again XD

Not in Utah. Nope.

[CrimsonFox]

they said that in alabamy

[larrymcg421]

If Romney gets embroiled in a child fucking scandal, then I agree that he will lose Utah.

[albionmoonlight]

Roy Moore was always a weak GOP candidate. It just was that Alabama was red enough that it didn't matter.

Romney, in Utah, is a very strong candidate.

[Atocep]

Not much of a story, but rather funny.

Roy Moore's Jewish lawyer voted for Doug Jones, raised money for his campaign

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

The question is whether he is thinking about primarying Trump in 2020.

Someone is going to, and once that door opens, it may be a long list to come for him.

[RainMaker]

Romney is incredibly popular in Utah. Trump didn't even get 50% of the vote in that state.

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Roy Moore was always a weak GOP candidate. It just was that Alabama was red enough that it didn't matter.

Romney, in Utah, is a very strong candidate.

Is Evan McMullin likely to run? He's about the only one I can think of off the top of my head that might have a chance against him.

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Is Evan McMullin likely to run? He's about the only one I can think of off the top of my head that might have a chance against him.

McMullin will almost certainly be campaigning for Romney. They are allies. Romney never officially endorsed McMullin in 2016, but McMullin's staff was filled with Romney guys and he used Romney's donor lists.

And even if he did run, McMullin would have no shot. Romney got 89% and 93% in two GOP primaries there.

[JPhillips]

McMullin has already called fro Mitt to run.

[Jas_lov]

I thought General Kelly was supposed to stop these stupid tweets.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by Jas_lov

I thought General Kelly was supposed to stop these stupid tweets.

[NobodyHere]

I think the tweets are the only thing I enjoy about the Trump Presidency

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

So Trump took credit for there being no airline deaths in 2017. Social media set him straight:

Social media users mock Trump for taking credit for air-travel safety record | TheHill

I guess he won't take credit for this:

Coal mining deaths double in 2017 | TheHill

[BBT]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...ngerous-216202

There was the matter of Mexico and his promise to build that “big, beautiful wall,” presumably to keep not just Mexicans but all of their citizens out of the United States too. And the threat to blow up the North American Free Trade Agreement. And then, a month earlier, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump had volunteered that he was considering a “military option” in Venezuela as that country’s last vestiges of democracy disappeared. Amid the international furor over his vow to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea in the same golf-course press conference, the news that the president of the United States was apparently considering going to war with its third-largest oil supplier had gotten relatively little attention. But the leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama invited to the dinner remembered it well.


So, it turned out, did Trump. After the photo op was over and the cameras had left the room, Trump dominated the long table. His vice president, Mike Pence, was to his right; Pence had just spent nearly a week on a conciliatory, well-received tour of the region, the first by a high-ranking administration official since Trump’s inauguration. To Trump’s left was his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. “Rex tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,” the president told the gathered Latin American leaders, according to an account offered by an attendee soon after the dinner. “Is that right? Are you sure?” Everyone said they were sure. But they were rattled. War with Venezuela, as absurd as that seemed, was clearly still on Trump’s mind.

By the time the dinner was over, the leaders were in shock, and not just over the idle talk of armed conflict. No matter how prepared they were, eight months into an American presidency like no other, this was somehow not what they expected. A former senior U.S. official with whom I spoke was briefed by ministers from three of the four countries that attended the dinner. “Without fail, they just had wide eyes about the entire engagement,” the former official told me. Even if few took his martial bluster about Venezuela seriously, Trump struck them as uninformed about their issues and dangerously unpredictable, asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner. “The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’”

By the fall, it was clear to those who had hoped it might be otherwise: The grownups might be in the room with Trump, but they couldn’t always deliver. “I invested in McMaster,” said the European official, “but I see in retrospect he is scared to come out and oppose some of the views of Trump. He is nowhere as strong as all my previous counterparts.” In the first few months, many of Trump’s critics overseas had kept their mouths shut, fearing a Trumpian eruption or Twitter blast. Now, they started speaking up as German Chancellor Merkel did after that disastrous May summit in Brussels. In private, there was talk—not necessarily realistic—of how Merkel and France’s energetic new centrist leader, Emmanuel Macron, would have to fill the West’s leadership void. The Latin Americans who met for dinner with Trump in September told the former U.S. official afterward that maybe they should invite the Chinese into the region instead.

[CrimsonFox]

Originally Posted by larrymcg421

Not in Utah. Nope.

Mormon church president just died. Think that'll change things?

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Roy Moore was always a weak GOP candidate. It just was that Alabama was red enough that it didn't matter.

Romney, in Utah, is a very strong candidate.

I also think Romney would be a good senator from Utah for the rest of the country. And I think he'd be a pretty good senator from Massachusetts if he'd gone that route. He just needs to end any national delusions.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

At this point, the two of them just need to tweet out pics of their junk and be done with it.

[bob]

So what's going to happen to everyone's paychecks in 2018? Previously, we all had filled out W4 forms with allowances that at least somewhat matched exemptions.... but now that exemptions are gone, are W4s invalid?

Maybe not the best place to post it, but this thread has been a catch all for the tax law changes.

[NobodyHere]

Bannon: 2016 Trump Tower meeting was 'treasonous'

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by bob

So what's going to happen to everyone's paychecks in 2018? Previously, we all had filled out W4 forms with allowances that at least somewhat matched exemptions.... but now that exemptions are gone, are W4s invalid?

Maybe not the best place to post it, but this thread has been a catch all for the tax law changes.

Great question. I REALLY don't want to be surprised by the changes. I put my info into some of those really simple "calculate your taxes under the new law" things online, and I got that we'll be paying ~$1,000 more (my fault for working for a living instead of having rich parents and a trust fund). That's doable, but I'd like to have that taken out over the course of the year.

My fear, though, is that the IRS won't do it because they want everyone to think that they got a tax break, so they won't actually withhold enough.

[Ben E Lou]

So teh Donald just unloaded on Bannon.

[HomerSimpson98]

Im having a hard time separating reality from reality TV-like bullshit.

This is surreal.

[Ben E Lou]

Play-by-play from Breitbart today https://t.co/ear5L1Hiu8

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) January 3, 2018

[ISiddiqui]

Breitbart helped elect Trump. Turning against Bannon is going to kill him with his base.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

huge goober

Boehner retires. Paul Ryan will retire. Bannon and Trump & his kids will all MAGA cage fight each other to death.

McConnell will end up being the last GOP man standing when this is all said and done. Long live the Goober.

[JPhillips]

That statement has Kushner all over it.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Breitbart helped elect Trump. Turning against Bannon is going to kill him with his base.

I think Breitbart's reach is over-exaggerated. It's still pretty small time. I'd wager most of the people who voted for him don't know what Breitbart or don't have any allegiance to Bannon.

[ISiddiqui]

Where do you think the fake news gets generated from? Now, there is a chance that Fox News doesn't reiterate Breitbart articles if Bannon is turning on Trump, but we'll see.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Where do you think the fake news gets generated from? Now, there is a chance that Fox News doesn't reiterate Breitbart articles if Bannon is turning on Trump, but we'll see.

Infowars, Federalist, there's a million of these sites and Twitter feeds around. Heck they started a giant fucking conspiracy theory over some guy posting crap on 4chan the other day.

[RainMaker]

I'll still never understand having access to all the information you could ever want and spend your day watching cable news instead.

A day in the life of the president who doesn’t watch much TV primarily because of documents. pic.twitter.com/JMt0inwOGR

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 3, 2018

[Thomkal]

:::makes some popcorn and gets ready to enjoy the Trump/Bannon sideshow.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I'll still never understand having access to all the information you could ever want and spend your day watching cable news instead.

My observation/hypothesis is that he's more interested in what people are saying about him than in the information.

[RainMaker]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

My observation/hypothesis is that he's more interested in what people are saying about him than in the information.

He has the NSA!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

He has the NSA!

To be more specific, I mean, "what is the news saying publicly about me so that everyone can hear it???" I think that's a huge deal for him.

[AlexB]

Obviously no way of knowing how much/if any of these are true, but stories of the extra TV in his room rings true.

10 explosive revelations from new Trump book - BBC News

Also would tie in with the timeline of his tweets in Rainmaker’s post if he watches TV immediately before/after working 9-5 (and clocked in 15 minutes late!)

[Thomkal]

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/03/politics/manafort-lawsuit-robert-mueller-authority/index.html Manafort sues Mueller

[bronconick]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

I'll still never understand having access to all the information you could ever want and spend your day watching cable news instead.

He's not bright. TV news spoon feeding him is about as complex as he's capable of.

[NobodyHere]

North Korea accidentally hit one of its own cities with a missile, report says

[Thomkal]

Not a good day for Donald:

Trump signs order disbanding voter fraud commission

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Not a good day for Donald:

Trump signs order disbanding voter fraud commission

Well it wasn't his fault. It was all because the states weren't participating, so that's all their fault. They have fraud and he tried to fix it, but the dark state wasn't interested, so he's still the best there ever was.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

At this point, the two of them just need to tweet out pics of their junk and be done with it.

That's one way for Bannon to defeat Trump Junk!

[Atocep]

From the exerts from this book, Trump is dumber than anyone imagined and those theorizing that he didn't actually want to win seem on point.

Conservatives actually elected a reality TV star that wasn't trying to win the election.

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Well it wasn't his fault. It was all because the states weren't participating, so that's all their fault. They have fraud and he tried to fix it, but the dark state wasn't interested, so he's still the best there ever was.

:::vomit:::

[JPhillips]

BREAKING - Attorneys for President Trump send Steve Bannon a cease and desist letter citing the non disclosure agreement he signed during the campaign https://t.co/jDybwQenJ2

— John Santucci (@JTSantucci) January 4, 2018

Wait, I thought it was all lies.

[NobodyHere]

[Julio Riddols]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

I guess he won't take credit for this:

Coal mining deaths double in 2017 | TheHill

He can say he brought back coal mining deaths.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

BREAKING - Attorneys for President Trump send Steve Bannon a cease and desist letter citing the non disclosure agreement he signed during the campaign https://t.co/jDybwQenJ2

— John Santucci (@JTSantucci) January 4, 2018

Wait, I thought it was all lies.

If you read the linked article, though, it's not 'just' a non-disclosure agreement. It's apparently also a "non-disparagement" agreement.

In other words, "you're not allowed to disclose what happens, but neither are you allowed to say anything that would make us look bad."

So they can go after him and say "he's a lying liar who lies, and he's in breach because he's passing off his defamatory lies as inside baseball, so he's doubly in breach."

Which doesn't matter a whit to the truth of what he's saying, but it gives them some cover to go after him while still pushing back against his specific claims.