The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated

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Santi_Mesut_Alexis_87 said:
Well, he has to explain something. There are too many things linking him to Russia. Are they all fake? I don't think so.
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Up until recently I would have agreed with you. Reality has set in for me. This will be labeled a mistake by someone new to the politics.

I wonder if this particular trumpturd will have to hand over the reigns to his brother if things escalate?
 
So the guy who spent 8 years constantly claiming the last POTUS wasn't really an American is now claiming that using his son's own words against him is the "greatest witch hunt in political history".

I mean, seriously.
 
2cents said:
Man I still can't believe the son posted the emails on Twitter.
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He did it when I was on my way home from work yesterday. A bus and a train later and I was still laughing at it. I can't believe how bizarre this presidency is.
 
Rado_N said:
So the guy who spent 8 years constantly claiming the last POTUS wasn't really an American is now claiming that using his son's own words against him is the "greatest witch hunt in political history".

I mean, seriously.
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This is a pretty good article on why it's actually a vaguely understandable idea to do that. In this specific case you've got two relevant theories:
Motivated Reasoning Theory said:
When they asked students at each of their universities to watch video highlights from the game, 90 percent of the Princeton students said it was Dartmouth that instigated the rough play. Princeton students were also twice as likely to call penalties on Dartmouth than their own team. The majority of Dartmouth students, on the other hand, said both sides were to blame for the rough play in the game, and called a similar number of penalties for both teams. Hastorf and Cantril’s conclusion wasn’t that one set of fans was lying. It’s that being a fan fundamentally changes the way you perceive the game.

The lesson is simple: “People are more likely to arrive at conclusions … that they want to arrive at,” the psychologist Ziva Kunda wrote in a seminal 1990 paper, making the case that motivated reasoning is real and pervasive.

And there’s plenty of proof of it today. When Gallup polled Americans the week before and the week after the presidential election, Democrats and Republicans flipped their perceptions of the economy. But nothing had actually changed about the economy. What changed was which team was winning.
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Moral Foundations Theory said:
Moral foundations is the idea that people have stable, gut-level morals that influence their worldview. The liberal moral foundations include equality, fairness, and protection of the vulnerable. Conservative moral foundations favor in-group loyalty, moral purity, and respect for authority. These moral foundations are believed to be somewhat consistent over our lifetimes, and they may have a biological basis as well. (There’s some fascinating experimental work that shows that conservatives are more excited — as measured by perspiration — by negative or alarming images.)

Moral foundations explain why messages highlighting equality and fairness resonate with liberals and why more patriotic messages like “make America great again” get some conservative hearts pumping.

...

What both sides fail to understand is that they're arguing a point that their opponents may be inherently deaf to.

In a study, psychologists Robb Willer and Matthew Feinberg had around 200 conservative and liberal study participants write essays to sway political opponents on the acceptance of gay marriage or to make English the official language of the United States. Almost all the participants made the same mistake.

Only 9 percent of the liberals in the study made arguments that reflected conservative moral principles. Only 8 percent of the conservative made arguments that had a chance of swaying a liberal.
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Not entirely relevant here, but this is by far the most depressing idea I've ever come across...

dehumanization_chart2.jpg


In Kteily’s studies, participants — typically groups of mostly white Americans — are shown this (scientifically inaccurate) image of a human ancestor slowly learning how to stand on two legs and become fully human. And then they are told to rate members of different groups — such as Muslims, Americans, and Swedes — on how evolved they are on a scale of 0 to 100.

Many people in these studies give members of other groups a perfect score, 100, fully human. But many others give others scores putting them closer to animals.

With the “Ascent of Man” tool, Kteily and collaborators Emile Bruneau, Adam Waytz, and Sarah Cotterill found that, on average, Americans rate other Americans as being highly evolved, with an average score in the 90s. But disturbingly, many also rated Muslims, Mexican immigrants, and Arabs as less evolved.

“We typically see scores that average 75, 76,” for Muslims, Kteily says. And about a quarter of study participants will rate Muslims on a score of 60 or below.
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I mean, their views on Arabs and Muslims disgust me, but when mainstream media feel comfortable enough saying this then it's hardly a surprise. The fact that they think they're more human than Icelanders though...:wenger:
 
Rado_N said:
So the guy who spent 8 years constantly claiming the last POTUS wasn't really an American is now claiming that using his son's own words against him is the "greatest witch hunt in political history".

I mean, seriously.
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You sound surprised to see that he's a hypocrite!
 
InfiniteBoredom said:
@langster Iirc there's a Trump hotel built in Azerbaijan, pushed hard for by Ivanka. Many have questioned the viability of that deal but it'd make some sort of sense if it's just a big money laundering scheme for some Russian oligarch.
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Built away from the river and nice part of Baku in the slums without so much as an off ramp to it from the adjacent highway.

Fishy doesn't even begin to describe it...
 
Not sure whether its a sign of anger and dismay at a local level from Republican voters towards Trump and the GOP, but Democrats won 2 local elections in Oklahoma yesterday.

GOP won the 2 seats by 10 and 19 points at the last election.
 
senorgregster said:
Nothing will come of this. Nothing.
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In terms of the potential legal ramifications, this is a pretty decent summary. The essential point is that Trump Jr. may well get out of it, but it's extremely problematic for Kushner. He can't pretend he didn't know she was Russian because a) she spoke Russian and communicated through a translator and b) he was in the e-mail chain named "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential". He's signed a form and then amended it excluding this meeting both times, which is pretty clearly in violation of federal law.

Trump Jr. is only legally liable in terms of campaign financing and the people that lead that kind of legal prosecution typically don't do much about it. Kushner is liable for a lot more - the maximum sentence is 5 years in prison for simply being aware of and attending this meeting and not disclosing it. It's pretty much impossible to sweep that one under the rug. The question isn't whether anything will come out of this, but rather whether it will lead to anything much worse.
 
Brwned said:
This is a pretty good article on why it's actually a vaguely understandable idea to do that. In this specific case you've got two relevant theories:

Not entirely relevant here, but this is by far the most depressing idea I've ever come across...

dehumanization_chart2.jpg




I mean, their views on Arabs and Muslims disgust me, but when mainstream media feel comfortable enough saying this then it's hardly a surprise. The fact that they think they're more human than Icelanders though...:wenger:
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I get what he's doing and why, it just beggars belief that people are dumb enough to follow him.
 
Great post @Brwned. Almost everyone is fixated with the wrong person/people in all of this. Many are hung up on Trump Jr having broken the law and they fear he will probably get away with it, and many more constantly wondering if it in some way implicates his father with many saying he must have told his dad about the meeting. They are right, Trump Jr probably did tell his dad, and Trump Jr himself HAS broken the law BUT Kushner and Manafort are the two here who are probably in the most trouble because both have changed their stories a few times now, and they have already had to amend statements where they have continually omitted meetings with Russians. A fair few on Twitter are asking why Kushner's security clearance hasn't been revoked yet. They most certainly have a point, although it wouldn't matter because Trump will still be President and I personally think he is complicit with everything. Taped phone conversations of Trump being complicit would be the icing on the cake of all this.

Organic Potatoes said:
Built away from the river and nice part of Baku in the slums without so much as an off ramp to it from the adjacent highway.

Fishy doesn't even begin to describe it...
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Yes, Rachael Maddow did an excellent piece on it not so long ago. That must be what Montell Williams was banging on about yesterday. It was pathetic to see Louise Mensch trying to crawl up his arse by retweeting him and being all familiar with him on Twitter, I haven't checked recently but he had so far completely ignored her :lol:
 
Raoul said:
I'd have to guess Trump may have to pardon Kushner before this is all over.....

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That's partly my point. If
Brwned said:
In terms of the potential legal ramifications, this is a pretty decent summary. The essential point is that Trump Jr. may well get out of it, but it's extremely problematic for Kushner. He can't pretend he didn't know she was Russian because a) she spoke Russian and communicated through a translator and b) he was in the e-mail chain named "Russia - Clinton - private and confidential". He's signed a form and then amended it excluding this meeting both times, which is pretty clearly in violation of federal law.

Trump Jr. is only legally liable in terms of campaign financing and the people that lead that kind of legal prosecution typically don't do much about it. Kushner is liable for a lot more - the maximum sentence is 5 years in prison for simply being aware of and attending this meeting and not disclosing it. It's pretty much impossible to sweep that one under the rug. The question isn't whether anything will come out of this, but rather whether it will lead to anything much worse.
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I agree those two are probably in worse trouble but do you believe either one of them, or trumpturd jnr, will serve a single day in the big house?
 
senorgregster said:
That's partly my point. If

I agree those two are probably in worse trouble but do you believe either one of them, or trumpturd jnr, will serve a single day in the big house?
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None of them will ever serve jail time, even if they are deemed guilty. Trump can simply pardon them, as well as himself. Best case scenario is impeachment and/or Trump's credibility among Republicans eroding to levels where he is unelectable.
 
Raoul said:
None of them will ever serve jail time, even if they are deemed guilty. Trump can simply pardon them, as well as himself. Best case scenario is impeachment and/or Trump's credibility among Republicans eroding to levels where he is unelectable.
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What are the chances of Trump being primaried?
 
senorgregster said:
What are the chances of Trump being primaried?
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I think he'll get primaried no matter what. There's bound to be at least one moderate (Rubio/Graham/Kasich) and one freedom caucus member (Cruz) throwing their hats in the ring with adequate support. Rand Paul will run as always.
 
Has Mike Pence said a single word about everything lately? He has been AWOL for pretty much the entire Presidency so far. I think the most memorable thing from Pence has been him touching something at NASA that had "Critical Flight Hardware DO NOT TOUCH" written on it :lol:

I would bet heavily that Pence is just sitting waiting to take the reigns.
 
senorgregster said:
What are the chances of Trump being primaried?
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Low, as whoever challenges him from within would get hit hard by Trump's people/resources/tweets well before they have sufficient time to gain any momentum against him. Even if Trump's numbers fall within the GOP from let's say the current 80% to 65%, that's still enough to keep him as the GOP nominee next time.
 
He is still gonna be around for 4 years and there is no guarantee that he wont get re-elected (Though he wouldn't run for 2nd time)
 
Rado_N said:
I get what he's doing and why, it just beggars belief that people are dumb enough to follow him.
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I'm instinctively as baffled as you, but the point I'm making is it's not necessarily true (and certainly not helpful) to dismiss it as simply people being dumb. There was an article from a couple of years ago that showed the number of times more educated folk voted for politicians and political decisions that did more harm than those less educated, which, depending on how much importance you place on the self vs. the environment could be seen to be a more damning indictment of "smart" people. They can make better arguments but they don't necessarily make better decisions in incredibly complex scenarios, at least in part because decisions are made based on emotion rather than logic in a great deal of situations. I can't find it but I did find this. There are valid reasons why people act this way and dismissing it as imbecilic behaviour hasn't shown to help the situation in any way.
senorgregster said:
I agree those two are probably in worse trouble but do you believe either one of them, or trumpturd jnr, will serve a single day in the big house?
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I think it's a pretty open-and-shut case in that he'll get a presidential pardon, in which case Trump Snr.'s a goner, or Kushner will go in jail. I'd say the latter is more likely. That's assuming nothing more comes out...which seems pretty unlikely.
 
Went for one. Going to an hostile country still under sanctions and hacking you to get dirt on your oponent is a lot worse than getting information about Trump and his weight shaming of a miss universe contestant.
 
Lindsey Graham just read the Trump Jr. emails to the FBI Directory nominee and asked him to tell all politicians that if they get a call/email like what Trump Jr. got that they should contact the FBI.
 
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