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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
They're hateful, ignorant, delusional grifters, but even I have a hard time believing they're stupid enough to give up their current positions and rely on Trump for a paycheck.
Unless they somehow manage to cross a line so severe that Fox finally gives them the boot. But I don't think we live in a universe where that can happen.
Not really because this has happened before. The GOP got a bit more moderate and the Koch Brothers finaced the creation of the Tea Party. The Tea Party, being financed by billionaires, proceeded to primary moderates and terrify the remaining professional politicians into supporting their radical agenda.
The Trumpeteers ARE the Tea Party.
Without Trump, they go back to their status as Yall'Qaeda, waiting for a new messiah.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 6th 2020 at 10:54:06 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.NPR:
Trump Dumps 3 Agency Leaders In Wake Of Election
The Trump administration abruptly dumped [read:fired] the leaders of three agencies that oversee the nuclear weapons stockpile, electricity and natural gas regulation, and overseas aid during the past two days, drawing a rebuke from a prominent Republican senator for one of the decisions.
The sudden departures included:
- Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the first woman to oversee the agency in charge of the nuclear stockpile. She was required to resign on Friday.
- Bonnie Glick, deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. She was replaced by the acting administrator John Barsa, who had run out of time for his more senior role under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
- Neil Chatterjee, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He was replaced as chairman, though he will remain at FERC, an independent agency, as a commissioner.
The nukes thing is funnily enough one of the things I'm least worried about. It's one of the few cases where I'm reasonably confident that safeguards amounting to "the people around him wouldn't let him do it" would actually hold up, and even if they did, I'm somewhere where the odds are good I wouldn't have to live in the resulting post-nuclear hellscape. By which I mean I'd be swiftly turned into one of those chilling blast silhouettes.
EDIT: Just realized all my various forum stuff like signature and title got zapped at some point. Fixed that right up.
Edited by Balmung on Nov 7th 2020 at 4:08:19 AM
I find it unlikely there aren’t special provisions in place. But this is purely speculative, I don’t have personal experience with CIA intelligence protection procedures, I'm pretty sure don’t, they’re obviously not public knowledge and if anyone following this conversation did know anything I suspect they’d be in a lot of trouble if they shared anything with us.
My main point stand, we know there’s a risk of Trump fleeing with valuable information, Do we really think nobody at the CIA has had the same thought and come up with a plan?
Firstly he needs the secretary of defence to confirm that it’s really him and not a shapeshifter if he tried to do anything with nukes, so even if Trump wants to burn it all down around him he needs the secretary of defence to feel the same.
Then, from a previous talk had about it my understanding is that the Football doesn't let Trump select targets, just pick from existing strike plans, so even if he could get the military to go along with him using the Football (which I doubt) he’d only be able to launch something at targets they’ve picked. He can order the creation of new strike plans, but I imagine that even at the best of times it takes months to make a new strike plan.
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the Football only contained retaliatory strike plans right now, which obviously can’t be activated until an inbound strike has been detected. Hell it’s not impossible that the US’ entire presidential strike plan library is under review right now and not available for use (though we’d never know), “Sorry my president, the nuclear attack plans are under audit, well release them to you as soon as the audit is done”.
There is obvious the crook risk, where Trump puts some crook in charge of nuclear material protection and they then try and sell some nuclear material off, but I doubt anyone in the market for nuclear material is in a position to buy from the US right now.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
>My main point stand, we know there’s a risk of Trump fleeing with valuable information, Do we really think nobody at the CIA has had the same thought and come up with a plan?
There's also the part where trump lies and exaggerates literally all the time. How trustworthy is he as a news source to foreign agents? How much does he actually care and know when he loves to play golf and bases policy on Fox News? Seems like a really high risk for foreign powers to take, for very questionable gain.
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>The nukes thing is funnily enough one of the things I'm least worried about
He would basically have to construct an argument where it's legal enough that his generals can't refuse the strike. Which assumes Trump is in the state of mind where he can make such an argument and that who he wants to hurt is neatly in a strike package already.
The prior risk was that Trump would have the time and crooks to get this done, but as outbound president that would be a LOT harder.
Edited by devak on Nov 7th 2020 at 11:16:29 AM
AP News: Incendiary texts traced to outfit run by top Trump aide
The texts were sent using phone numbers leased to the text-messaging platform Opn Sesame, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition they not be further identified. The company's CEO is Gary Coby, the Trump campaign's digital director. It provides text-messaging services to GOP clients including the Republican National Committee.
A top Trump campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the message did not come from the campaign. Because Opn Sesame is used by multiple customers, none of whom the company would identify, it could not be determined exactly who sent the message. Coby declined to comment.
About the nukes, the nuclear chain of command does not mean that the officers in charge of nuclear weapons must verify that the launch orders are coming from a sane president, just that the orders are from the president, and not from some imposter. USAF Maj. Harold Herring
was discharged from the USAF for asking whether he could check if the president was sane.
And also, the US doesn't have a no first use policy either.
"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow![]()
As a matter of policy, no US President has ever ruled out a nuclear first strike.
Trump starting a war is the least of our worries. Nukes are even less concerning. Getting through the military bureaucracy is difficult even for a president who has a good relationship with the DoD. Once Trump realized how much work he’d have to do to go to war he’d give it up. Frankly, I’m more concerned about the domestic damage he could do on the way out.
Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 7th 2020 at 4:38:52 AM
They should have sent a poet.Sure but the secretary of defence can simply lie, or not answer the phone.
Also in such a situation you’re going to find there’s suddenly a lot of leeway around verifying the president’s identity. I could imagine someone playing a logic game of “The president is sane, the person giving me this order is clearly insane, as such the person giving me this order cannot be the president, as such I will ignore this order”.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranPeople gotta worry.
Full Disclosure: My father worked for the CIA. After he retired there were no restrictions placed on him regarding international travel. He was expected to tell them if anyone approached him inappropriately, but nobody was watching him. As for Trump doing a runner to Russia, as we have seen in the past, a lot of what we think are covered by laws and rules are really just informal understandings and traditions ("Hey, it's actually not a crime to ask a foreign power to investigate my political rival! Who knew?"). I am 99.99% certain that there are no plans out there for dealing with a rogue ex-president—because it's just that unprecedented.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.

Edited by sgamer82 on Nov 6th 2020 at 10:23:05 AM