meanwhile ..... some NDA's are expiring .... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/30/trump-apprentice-racial-slur Ex-Apprentice producer claims Trump used racial slur for Black contestant Bill Pruitt also says the then reality TV star was incompetent and implied illicit trysts while engaged to Melania Donald Trump used a racial epithet to reject the prospect of a Black winner on the debut season of The Apprentice, the Emmy-nominated series that transformed the former president into a reality TV star and fuelled his political career. Trump rejected the views of close aides that Kwame Jackson, a broker who worked for Goldman Sachs, had been the most impressive contestant, saying, “Would America buy a [N-word] winning?”, according to a producer who worked on the NBC show’s opening series in 2004, when it was called Meet the Billionaire. The anecdote is related by Bill Pruitt in a long essay in the online magazine Slate, titled The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice. According to Pruitt, Jackson had emerged from a field of candidates to contest the final with a white competitor, Bill Rancic, after being assigned the task of overseeing a Jessica Simpson benefit concert at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City. Jackson reportedly impressed two Trump advisers with his ability to overcome obstacles, including his handling of a difficult fellow contestant who had earlier been eliminated but whom he had hired to help stage the concert. Yet when one adviser, Carolyn Kepcher – who ran Trump’s hospitality units and one of his golf clubs – praised Jackson, saying he “would be a great addition to the organisation”, Trump demurred, winced – and then uttered the racial slur.
Nice run down to the final 34-0 pretty funny with a great result. I was out playing my git-fiddle when the news came in. I thought the people in the cafe were somehow applauding us.
So....I've seen numerous tweets, stories, diarrhea of the fingers and mouth - where Cult members are saying that "May 30th, 2024 - the day that Donald Trump won the 2024 election". Why would this be true? Do they really really think that there will be some groundswell of support now for one of the most corrupt, vile, disgusting, homophobic, racist, grifters of all time all because he was found .....guilty of massive financial fraud, misappropriation of campaign funds, etc.?? I get that that Cult is voting for him come hell or high water - he could literally kill someone in public and they would still vote for him (in his own words no less) - but why would anyone that even remote aware of...anything....say "yep - that was the straw that broke the camel's back - definitely voting for Trump now!"
This election situation is pretty difficult for me to analyze because of the significant amount of negative selection behind polling results. Trump poll numbers include the hard core believers for sure, but they also include people who find him personally odious but are repelled by the current administration's policies on a number of issues. Similarly, a lot of Biden voters are pretty unenthusiastic about his age and his policies but can't bring themselves to vote for someone like Trump. This has to be one of the worst sets of choices in a national election in our history.
It's sad for the country to see a former president convicted like this but absolutely important for democracy to show that no one is above the law.
I agree. I’m not sure I get the optics, stats or metrics that get Lumpy from a conviction in a Manhattan courtroom to Pennsylvania Avenue. Once you venture outside the world of the MAGAidiots, the take, as best I can tell, is that “you pays your money and you takes your chance”. And like 2020, Lumpy lost. I’m not sure how losing the court case brings more votes to his side. Sure, it’ll increase the resolve of some MAGAidiots, but they were always going to vote for him or not for Biden. There might be a small number of right of center types who feel Lumpy was railroaded and voting for him in November is the best revenge. But equally, you’re going to have more than a few who feel he chanced the merry-go-round and lost and will refuse to vote for him (one poll today has this number as 1 in 6 voters). Maybe the feeling is that with this conviction, he’ll fundraise the billion he tried to strongarm out of the Big Oil execs and that’ll propel him to 1600, but I don’t see that either or at least I don’t understand why it would be so. It’s cheaper to vote for him and if he can’t garner the votes, I don’t understand how he would rake in the money. I think there have been a lot of armchair pundits (and real ones) who’ve bought into the Lumpy rhetoric that this WILL be so, therefore it IS so without examining the how and the why. I’m still waiting to read or see something that explains this to me logically, devoid of lunacy of Lumpy and the MAGAidiots.
Lumpy has claimed today in his stream of consciousness press conference that in court he was “literally crucified”. I’ll have to admit that I wasn’t really paying attention to the trial except for the headlines, so I obviously missed this crucifixion, but that’s huge. It must be in the trial transcript but I wonder is there a video? Regardless, he appears to have recovered well, whether it was by resurrection or medical treatment.
the trajectory he's on, he'll soon ramp it up to dropping hints that the country can only be saved if Biden is removed from office "in any way possible".
can't see it. piss away millions of shareholder dollars on a felon who "might, maybe, possibly, one day TRY to do something for you (and hope there's support in congress)"? they have shareholders to answer to.
Hang on, I’ve just been informed that it’s very likely that Lumpy misspoke and that he confused crucifixion with the “fried chicken” he was served for lunch. To be fair it’s an easy mistake to make as both experiences are very similar.
here's a nice change of subject, I'm sure we'll all enjoy learning about: Whether it is the fountain of youth or the elixir of life, men have travelled the world looking for the key to increasing their longevity. They should be looking a bit closer to home, according to one leading researcher – although after they do, they might end up taking the years God intended for them. When it comes to increasing the lifespan of any male mammal, “there is one way you can intervene”: castration. Cat Bohannon, the celebrated author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, said men went through life “smuggling two little death nuggets”, with research suggesting an orchiectomy can lend a few more precious years. Speaking at the Hay festival on Friday, Bohannon said castration was a “way to make male mammals live longer”. This effect was observed in American men in the mid-20th century who were institutionalised, usually because of mental illness, and castrated, and in Korean eunuchs. The castrated men lived longer than their “regularly balled peers”.* https://www.theguardian.com/science...-longer-if-they-are-castrated-says-researcher * calm down - it's "balled" not "bald".
Missed my point. Big Oil has pretty much given him a no on the $1bn, so maybe he’s hoping that he can use this conviction to fundraise the $1bn from the rubes that Big Oil don’t seem to want to give him. As a sidebar. If a CEO judges it financially, legally prudent to fundraise a portion of $1bn to increase the share price down the road, then the shareholders will give the CEO a bigger bonus. If it fails, there’s still an excellent chance that the CEO gets a bigger bonus anyway as it could well be seen as an excellent ploy that just didn’t pay off. Don’t ever underestimate the cynicism of capitalism.
This is the glitch of the problem - what was sad for the country was to elect a venal, utterly mendacious, criminal rat-human in the first place. The allowing of that descent into slime was the first and last problem with all of this. Throw away the old "golden mean" and this is what you likely get
Same thing happened in 2004 with GWB when he was running against Kerry. Lots of GOP and independent voters that year were generally unhappy with the state of the country (and GWB), but they ended up just grumbling about it and went and voted for GWB once they had to choose. I'll be willing to bet we see polling numbers change once we get closer to the election. As poorly as it reflects on our citizenry, most voters in this country are paying zero attention to politics and the election right now. Only energized partisans are - and many of those are dyed-in-the-wool MAGAts and left-wing Palestinian supporters. For the non-partisans Trump has done nothing to improve his standing with them, so as long as the economy doesn't tank in the next six months they'll probably end up voting very similarly to how they did in 2020. I can't imagine that left-wing partisans will be any less motivated to vote against Trump than his MAGAt idiots are to vote for him.
The only question (the big unanswerable question) with all of the above said - is there enough common sense media reaching the centrist and independent voter bloc. The unaffiliated, still in sanity crowd, for want of a better term. Or has the constant bullsh!t stream of Russian infested garbage and lies created a fake but seemingly veritable insulation blanket of Biden-this, Biden-bad-that, and the worst Trump did was steal from the candy jar and he doesn't make mad speeches in the Bronx and vocalize Goebbels.
That's my hope too Hubba - but i really think that there needs to be a series of Billboard and tv ad daggers speared through the heart of the swine in the final 6 weeks. In the key 8 or 9 states - and specifically targetting the mind and eyes of centrists.
I really don’t think you have to look further than Mitch McConnell here as a metaphor for the GOP as a whole and indeed, politics in its entirety. He’s stepping down as GOP Senate leader and perhaps retiring when his term is up, so he no longer has a dog in the fight and is not subject to political retribution. He’s had quite a few disagreements with Lumpy over the years and Lumpy even racially abused his wife, Elaine Chao, despite her being in his cabinet. Yet when Lumpy became the GOP nominee, McConnell says that as a Republican, he’s going to vote for the Republican candidate. He had more reasons to vote against him or at the very least not vote for him, yet tribalism prevails. Now, don’t for one moment think that I’m excusing the Democrats from similar cynicism (hell, I’ve voted for a number of Democrats where I’ve held my nose; then again I’m not a political leader. But anyway…). But when you have a solid entrenched 2 party system, this is what you get. When you close the curtains in the booth, tribalism prevails, felony convictions notwithstanding. Now maybe there’ll be a GOP smoke filled back room move to exclude Lumpy before the Convention, but I expect him to be the nominee and I expect him to run by it closer than anticipated. For what it’s worth, I don’t see him winning, just running close, but I thought that in 2016. At the end of the day, tribalism prevails.
Also - does he still get to say "Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!" at his rallies? Or is that too ironic? (And next question - maybe for another time - why is the legal system corrupt when he loses (Merchan), but great when he wins ("Judge" Cannon")?).
I see that millions of dollars have been wiped off Lumpy’s media thing since the verdict came down. This is the type of reaction I expected, not the counterintuitive one that a guilty verdict (or 34 of them) will somehow cause him to garner hundreds of thousands or millions more votes than he would have if he’d been found innocent.