Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
If the Democrats have any guts, they will use this to hurt Trump badly. He looks like an absolute fool, to the point where even his supporters must be taking some notice. He campaigned on the promise that Mexico would pay for the wall, and now guess what? We're paying for it! And Mexico will totes give us an IOU, despite the fact that Mexico has repeatedly said "we are not paying for that fucking wall." (In fact, in the case of Queseda, that is exactly what he said.
)
New York Times: It’s No Trump Tower, but White House Has ‘Beautiful’ Phones
“These are the most beautiful phones I’ve ever used in my life,” Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview Tuesday evening.
“The world’s most secure system,” he added, laughing. “The words just explode in the air.” What he meant was that no one was listening in and recording his words.
The president sat at his desk — the one used by former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, among others — at the end of his fourth full day in office.
Continue reading the main story The Trump White House Stories on the presidential transition and the forthcoming Trump administration. Pence Will Speak at Anti-Abortion Rally JAN 26 Trump Follows Obama’s Lead in Flexing Executive Muscle JAN 26 Republicans in Congress Tread Lightly in Trump’s Early Days JAN 26 Trump Says He May Cancel Meeting With Mexican President JAN 26 Rejecting the Wall ‘Is Too Emotional,’ and Other Voices From the Border JAN 25 See More »
His mornings, he said, are spent as they were in Trump Tower. He rises before 6 a.m., watches television tuned to a cable channel first in the residence, and later in a small dining room in the West Wing, and looks through the morning newspapers: The New York Times, The New York Post and now The Washington Post.
But his meetings now begin at 9 a.m., earlier than they used to, which significantly curtails his television time. Still, Mr. Trump, who does not read books, is able to end his evenings with plenty of television.
In between, Mr. Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office and has meetings in the West Wing.
“They have a lot of board rooms,” he said of the White House, an apparent reference to the Cabinet Room and the Roosevelt Room.
The White House is the only property that Mr. Trump has slept in that is more famous than one of his own, and he seems in awe. Although he made his name building extravagant, gilded properties, the new president has marveled to aides about the splendor of the White House and the lengths he must walk to retrieve something from a far-flung room.
His preference during the day is to work in the Oval Office. And to stare at it, still. So do his staff members and relatives. “I’ve had people come in; they walk in here and they just want to stare for a long period of time,” Mr. Trump said.
Among modern American presidents, Mr. Trump may be best situated to work where he lives. For decades, he has lived in a penthouse apartment on the 58th floor of Trump Tower and taken an elevator down to the 26th floor, where he has a corner office with views of Central Park. Many presidents have complained of being cooped up inside the White House — George W. Bush in particular said he missed the outdoors — but Mr. Trump can go for days without breathing in fresh outside air.
Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, went back to New York on Sunday night with their 10-year-old son, Barron, and so Mr. Trump has the television — and his old, unsecured Android phone, to the protests of some of his aides — to keep him company. That was the case after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, when Mr. Trump appeared to be reacting to Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, which was airing a feature on crime in Chicago.
In the interview, Mr. Trump demurred when asked about whether it was hard having his family away from him, and he pointed to Thursday, when Mrs. Trump and Barron, who is finishing the school year in New York, are expected to return.
“They’ll come down on weekends,” Mr. Trump said. “She’ll come down on Thursdays and stay.”
He said he was enjoying himself so far, despite his visible displeasure with the coverage of his inauguration and the first performance of his press secretary, Sean Spicer, who shouted at the news media and made numerous false statements about Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowds in the White House briefing room on Saturday.
Mr. Trump and his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, watched Mr. Spicer’s do-over on Monday while eating lunch in the West Wing dining room, where the president murmured approval of Mr. Spicer’s Monday performance and called his press secretary a “superstar.”
His first breakfast at the White House was Saturday morning — a buffet in the residence spread with fresh fruit, pastries and other treats — where his adult children and their families joined him. The kitchen has been stocked with the same types of snacks that Mr. Trump had on his private plane, including Lay’s potato chips.
His oldest daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser, stayed with him in the White House through Sunday. They left for their own new home at the end of the weekend to get their children ready for their new schools. Mr. Trump has not brought along any household staff from Trump Tower, an aide said.
The president spent a part of Tuesday poring over artwork from the White House collections, settling on a portrait of Andrew Jackson — America’s first populist president, who has been invoked by Mr. Trump’s aides as inspiration — to hang in the Oval Office.
“Now, I’m working,” Mr. Trump said in the interview, punctuating his focus by cataloging the work of the day: an executive order restarting the Keystone XL pipeline and his plans for border-related actions over the next days.
Mr. Trump is in the meantime pondering his first break away from the White House, a potential trip to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., possibly the weekend of Feb. 3.
Until then, he is breaking in the residence, which Mrs. Trump is still working on decorating.
“It’s a beautiful residence, it’s very elegant,” Mr. Trump said, deploying one of his highest forms of praise.
“There’s something very special when you know that Abraham Lincoln slept there,” Mr. Trump said. “The Lincoln Bedroom, you know, was his office, and the suite where I’m staying is actually where he slept.”
Mr. Trump was referring to the White House master bedroom, which is now his own.
“Knowing all of that, it’s different, than, you know, just pure elegance and room size,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s a lot of history.”
I pray that the Secret Service is wiretapping the shit out of the White House right now. Even his bath and shower will not be safe.
Mr. Trump was referring to the White House master bedroom, which is now his own.
edited 26th Jan '17 7:24:07 AM by CenturyEye
Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our livesThe Democrats should be screaming from the rooftops "YOU ARE PAYING FOR A FOURTEEN BILLION DOLLAR WALL. NOT THE BROWNSKINS. YOU." Maybe that would get through their racist little skulls.
Although given how much of Trump's bullshit they've already swallowed, I'm sure some of them actually believe that he'll get Mexico to pay.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."And then not actually work, since walls can be gotten around.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"For God's sake, nobody tell him that, or he'll turn the wall into a giant dome over the entire US. We'll be living in that damn Stephen King story.
(Also border crossing is apparently at the lowest it's been in decades, and more immigrants are actually leaving the country than are entering it. But hey, post-fact society.)
edited 26th Jan '17 7:39:40 AM by RBluefish
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."Oh, hey - the Doomsday Clock has been moved 30 seconds closer to midnight. The worst it's been since 1953.
I confess, my very first thought was "only thirty seconds?"
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."The Doomsday Clock is a publicity stunt, a joke. It has no evidentiary value.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Assuming he can even build it. There was an article a couple of pages back pointing out how Trump rammed through his executive orders without consulting the federal and business agencies responsible for actually carrying most of these orders out, and because of that, it's going to be helluva hard if not impossible for Trump to do a lot of what he actually wants to do. It's like starting up a shitton of programs on a computer without waiting for any of them to finish. Rather than actually getting things done that much faster, they'll instead be done that much slower, if they get done at all.
edited 26th Jan '17 7:54:16 AM by kkhohoho
If Feinstein votes for Sessions, she needs to be primaried out in 2018. A list of traitors needs to be compiled, Tea Party-style. As far as potential challengers, there's been some news on Mayor Garcetti of LA as a candidate.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Especially since they'll have to knock down the existing fence first. There's also the hiccup of the fence actually being significantly inland on the American side from the river. I can guarantee that Trump is going to wonder why the wall is neither in the middle of the river, nor on the Mexican side.
And he'll have to get through the states too. Because, as it turns out, the states cover some of the cost of the current fence, and the wall would massive increase the monetary amount of their share of the cost. And California would probably drag their feet with endless surveying and inspections.
"For God's sake, nobody tell him that, or he'll turn the wall into a giant dome over the entire US. We'll be living in that damn Stephen King story. "
OMG, that is such a perfect troll. Somebody get the petition going- "Build The Dome!"
In other news/analysis:
America Has a Koch Problem
- "...His administration hires suggest that Trump, who ran a heterodox and intermittently populist (if consistently bigoted) campaign, has been joining forces with the more established corporate extremism of the Republican Party establishment." Apparently the Trump Regime has hired a Kock Bros operative for an important White House staff position (Director of Legislative Affairs).
Damn right. Sessions should be absolutely non-negotiable. Yeah, the racist asshole will be confirmed no matter what - but which side of history do these Senators want to be on? Because we will remember who was on whose side when it counted.
Noteworthy: so far, Gillibrand is the only Senator who has voted against every one of Trump's nominees. (Well, except for Nikki Haley, but I can give her that one.) Somebody's going to have an edge in the 2020 primaries, methinks. Assuming we have functional 2020 primaries.
edited 26th Jan '17 8:42:18 AM by RBluefish
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."...Also, wow. The State Department's entire senior management team just resigned.
Great first week at work for Comrade Tillerson.
Holy shit.
They found their balls?
New Survey coming this weekend!

Did anyone catch that one ABC interview with Trump? The one where he more or less said "Okay, so the USA is paying for the wall but Mexico will pay us back, I pinky promise!"
edited 26th Jan '17 7:05:14 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised