Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Trump The Manipulator

Trump sent 45 tweets about the caravan / invasion, and now...  None...

And the cost of the deployment is unknown yet...  But it is a LOT of money.

So he worked so hard to scare his True Believers, he spent many many millions on an unnecessary deployment stunt to scare them even further and the manipulation did not get him everything he wants...  So now he is skipping Presidential duties, moping and ranting... I sure wish he would grow up and start working with people instead of trying to manipulate them.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trump lost the popular vote for president, his poll numbers are awful, and he suffered a humiliating defeat in the mid term elections. I don't think he is manipulating anyone. He is being used and his usefulness may be coming to an end.

--Hiram

John said...

Used by who?

Sean said...

There is a story in VOX today about just how worried we should be about how Trump is going to react if he faces a actual threat, instead of the relative calm he has faced so far.

"We have seen the consequences of Trump’s irresponsible rhetoric in things like the mail pipe bombing campaign and a conspiracy-minded shooter attacking the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

If we’re lucky, nothing worse than this will happen. But if we’re unlucky, we’re going to find out what Trump’s mixture of a poor grasp of policy and strong authoritarian instincts means during a crisis period. We know that Trump responded to a fake crisis at the border with a large military deployment, and that as a candidate, he responded to a terrorist attack by proposing to bar Muslims from entering the United States.

Would he, in a crisis moment, respect the limits the law and the Constitution place on his authority? Will he, by the time a crisis arrives, have a team in place that even has the backbone to inform him of what those limits are, or will he have successfully staffed the administration with a solid bloc of sycophants and yes men? And is his inclination to prefer sycophants and yes men to competent officials making a crisis more or less likely?"

VOX: Trump’s incompetence and authoritarianism are both scary

Anonymous said...

What concerns me is that if we do have a crisis we have a president with no credibility at all. We just can't believe what he say, and neither can our adversaries.

==Hiram

John said...

Sean,
I think the VOX story is a stretch...
Some people like to make up horror stories
and tell them around the camp fire. :-)

Hiram,
We have plenty of fact checkers to determine
when he is lying... And it is not like he
lies very well at all.

Sean said...

"I think the VOX story is a stretch..."

You yourself said his response to the bogus caravan threat was "an unnecessary deployment stunt to scare them". You yourself has bemoaned his propensity to lie. But you're not concerned about he would react to an actual crisis? Why?

John said...

He lied about the caravan and deployed troops to get his base to the polls. No harm to America or Americans, except the cost.

What personal benefit Trump would gain by starting a war etc? Especially with half Americans against him and not trusting him.

He seems the have the opposite view of Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick".

Trump is about Trump... He did not blow up North Korea... I am pretty sure we will be all right.

Sean said...

"What personal benefit Trump would gain by starting a war etc? "

I'm not worried about him starting a war. I'm much more worried about him violating civil rights and liberties internally. He's already threatened, for instance, to use the powers of the executive branch to investigate members of Congress who investigate him. And again, this is not at a time of crisis.

John said...

Turn about is fair play...

and

The innocent have nothing to fear from and investigation...

I think we have pretty well proven that the President's powers are pretty limited and constrained within the USA.

Sean said...

"Turn about is fair play..."

Funny, y'all didn't seem to have that opinion during the Obama administration.


John said...

Who is this y'all? I'd like to meet them and ask them what you are referring to? :-)

Sean said...

The Obama Admin was accused of politicizing the Justice Department, the IRS, the ATF, the Department of Treasury, the CPFB, and the EPA, among other Executive Branch agencies.

John said...

Then I guess I was correct...

"Turn about is fair play...

and

The innocent have nothing to fear from and investigation...

I think we have pretty well proven that the President's powers are pretty limited and constrained within the USA."

It seems both parties do it.