@realDonaldTrump wrote:I built the greatest economy in the World, the best the U.S. has ever had. I am doing it again!

Slowhand wrote:

@realDonaldTrump wrote:I built the greatest economy in the World, the best the U.S. has ever had. I am doing it again!

Seriously delusional.

It was part of the story we knew as the day unfolded that the President and his top military and national security advisors had held a conference call with the nation’s governors in which Trump berated them for looking weak and contemptible in the eyes of the world. He demanded they call in the National Guard to “dominate” the streets and threatened to deploy regular military troops into their cities. Trump told governors: “Most of you are weak. You have to arrest more people” and said Minnesota authorities were becoming “a laughingstock all over the world” for not dominating protestors. Esper and Milley referred to American cities as a “battlespace”.

We now learn that there was a meeting earlier in the day with Trump and the same group of advisors which provided the context for that call. Trump demanded that the Pentagon immediately deploy 10,000 regular military troops into America’s major cities. Esper and particularly Milley allegedly resisted this demand heatedly. And there was something of a standoff. The two Pentagon leaders then used the subsequent call to get them out of the bind of resisting or even refusing Trump’s orders by imploring the governors to do the job for them. They demanded the governors call out their Guard troops or risk having active duty troops sent into their states in the hopes that this would get Trump to drop his Army deployment demands.

What has gotten lost in the mix of this evolving story is another detail that was actually reported on Monday but quickly fell by the wayside. Monday morning President Trump had a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, initiated by Trump. It was first reported by the Kremlin. The White House said the call was about oil prices and coronavirus. But it defies credulity that the nationwide protests enveloping the United States didn’t come up, particularly given Trump’s longtime admiration for Putin’s “strength” and Putin’s own success standing down nationwide protests in 2011-12. Perhaps the most important reason to doubt the topic didn’t come up is Trump’s well-known and total inability not to bring up whatever topic is on his mind even in contexts in which it is highly inappropriate to do so.

Perhaps this all seems conspiratorial. It’s not. The events of the last week and particularly Monday are clearly a critical moment, likely a turning point in Trump’s drive to remake the US government into some version of a presidential strongman autocracy. It was also a key moment in the history of civilian-military relations, with Trump trying to use his vast powers as commander-in-chief to turn the US military on American citizens. On this critical day he had a conversation with the man he openly admires for running just such a strongman state in Russia. Long before we knew anything about hacked emails, Trump Tower Moscow deals or ‘collusion’, Trump made no secret of his admiration for Putin’s “strength” and style of government.

swishnicholson wrote:trump's approval ratings are about the lowest they've been in almost six monthes, validating to my mind the policy of just letting Trump be Trump is the best way to turn off voters from him.

06hawkalum wrote:Biden is now the official Vegas favorite across all books. This one was the last holdout:

https://www.oddsshark.com/politics/2020 ... ds-futures

It had Trump as the favorite until Friday.

Needless to say, it's been a bad three months and a terrible two weeks for Trump.

traderdave wrote:@realDonaldTrump
I have retained highly respected pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, to analyze todays CNN Poll (and others), which I felt were FAKE based on the incredible enthusiasm we are receiving. Read analysis for yourself. This is the same thing they and others did when we defeated...
3:14 PM · Jun 8, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

@realDonaldTrump
...Crooked Hillary Clinton in 2016. They are called SUPPRESSION POLLS, and are put out to dampen enthusiasm. Despite 3 ½ years of phony Witch Hunts, we are winning, and will close it out on November 3rd!
3:14 PM · Jun 8, 2020·Twitter for iPhone



By "highly respected pollster" I assume he means "favorable to me". "Let's prove them wrong again"? Sure sounds like unbiased analysis to me.

06hawkalum wrote:
This joke of a pollster just got paid a pretty penny to blow smoke up Trump’s ass. Good for him!

Bucky wrote:

06hawkalum wrote:
This joke of a pollster just got paid a pretty penny to blow smoke up Trump’s ass. Good for him!

assuming a little much there i think