On reading how conservatives are outraged that Trump won’t trying to send Hillary to prison and how they’re worried he won’t keep other campaign promises:
Trump probably doesn’t care. In fact, I’m pretty sure he cares more about a strand of his hair being out of place than he cares about the hysterical reaction of the likes of the chattering blowhards that think he owes something to them.. This is big stuff to the far right, which shows how petty, vicious, and pea-brained they are. He doesn’t give half a hoot about what the likes of Steve Deace thinks:
“Trump is a blank slate ideologically. And can only be counted on to do what is best for Trump in any given situation like the Machiavellian he is,” conservative radio host Steve Deace said, warning that “his time in office will rise and fall by the conservatives who got him there getting him to deliver on his promises.”
“They now have a seat at the table, and he wouldn't be there without them, so they must get him to deliver the way George W. Bush never did,” he continued, giving Trump credit for purging New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, his allies and lobbyists from the transition team. “But just because we're happy the Marxists are gone doesn't mean Trump suddenly had a character transplant. Conservatives will need to be diligent.” Conservatives put Trump on Notice, Politico
Now, on Trump’s horrible business related conflicts of interest, his having his kids get security clearance and participate in diplomatic meetings: I consider this the small stuff, I don’t EFFING care about the small stuff, even about the conflicts of interest the talking heads on MSNBC are going ballistic over as I type this.
The big stuff, I mean the gargantuan stuff, is his authoritarian personality, and what he will allow his appointees to do. Masha Gessen, the Russian author of The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, was interviewed by Joy Reid (subbing for Rachel). She explained chilling similarities between Putin and Trump. One thing that we need to remind ourselves is of the power of the presidency and not lull ourselves into a false sense of security because we believe that our institutions will protect us from Tumpism.
In a New York Review of Books article published before the election, Gessen offers a sobering analysis:
Trump is also like Mussolini and Hitler. All of them are fascist demagogues who emerged from their own cultures and catered to them. In fact, Trump is less like Putin, whose charisma is largely a function of the post to which he was accidentally appointed, than he is Mussolini or Hitler.
In the middle of the last century, a number of thinkers whose imaginations had been trained in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany tried to tell Americans that it can happen here. In such different books as Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, Theodor Adorno and his group’s The Authoritarian Personality, and Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, the great European exiles warned that modern capitalist society creates the preconditions for the rise of fascism. America doesn’t need Putin for that. The Trump-Putin Fallacy.
As for his appointees, this is what I wrote yesterday in “Trump’s Transition Reality Show.”
Forget — well never forget — who these likely appointees are and how they will set back the progress made over eight year in the various areas their purviews oversee.
When the least of the changes we can expect with Jess Sessions is to marijuana legalization in the various states that now legalized either medical or recreational/medical marijuana, you know we are in trouble.
Move from there to the attack on Planned Parenthood and women’s right to choose, and we still only have moved up a notch on the scale of losing our rights.
Then we get serious.
We can expect draconian changes to consumer protection, environmental policy, immigration policy, freedom of press, health care protect, voter rights, Wall Street reform, and international cooperation and leadership with our allies.
Some thoughts on the campaign promises the Trump supporters expect Trump to keep.
Trump redefined the word “promise.” Of course his supporters didn’t know it. The conservatives are outraged he’s not going to prosecute Hillary because he promised to do so. But remember there are two meanings of “promise.” One is the English definition. And the other is the Trumplish definition, or as defined in Trumpspeak. It means whatever gets hoots and hollers of approval from his crowds.
Hell, he doesn’t even want to make America great again. If anyone wants to believe that they probably also believes he wants to bring jobs back to the rust belt and solve the immigration problem.
When he said he was going to spend a trillion dollars — a humongous amount for Trump — I’m sure he envisioned getting credit for this even if he could brand the projects with his name like state governors often do. He may think a trillion bucks is a lot, but I am hearing experts ay that to actually rebuild our infrastructure to 21st century standards it would cost $3 trillion.
Of course he will learn the hard way that we can’t rebuild the nuts and bolts of the nation without raising taxes on the upper class. (see recommended article below)
He said what he needed to say to get elected because that started out as a lark, as more fun than a barrel of grabable women became serious when by pure luck he resonated with just the right number of voters to win the electoral college.
Now he’s in his glory because he’s president, he showed the the crooked media, the mocking media who made him into a cartoon.
A bit of snark (but if it comes true I’ll take credit for predicting it)
Being president will wear thin when he realizes that the fun times are over. He’ll discover he can’t have Air Force One jet him all over the country to hold his rallies just about every day. He’ll have to content himself just with Tweeting, and that will get old.
Being as thin skinned as he is, he’ll discover that the best way not to get mocked by Alex Baldwin and find that Saturday Night Live’s rating are soaring as his plummet, is not to do anything.
So he’ll get back to what he knows best, which is to run his business empire and make more money and put his name in giant gold letters all over the world. Who cares if all those branded buildings are terrorist targets, the foreign countries will have to protect them because, after all, they can’t allow lives to be put at risk. And I wouldn’t want to bet against him opening a few new casinos in Mosul once ISIS is defeated there. Oh, and lest I forget, there’s no law against the president hosting a reality show.
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