The tower was approved the day after a phone call between Trump and Marci. I mean holy shit. Please do not let this fade away.

https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/stat ... 1101270016

That's pretty despicable. It's going to be a long 4 years.

CalvinBall wrote:Justin Amash (R, MI) called him out on twitter fwiw. Hopefully he is the first of many. You can bet for sure Trump saw the tweet with how consumed he is with the medium and who says anything negative about him.

Amash doesn't really count. He's a gadfly who pisses off leadership. It could be the beginning though.

It really doesn't take a lot of Republicans to find courage - especially in the Senate - to make a huge fucking difference.

The main reason I wanted Hillary to win is I was sure if we got into nuclear war with China under her leadership we should be engaged in nuclear war with China. I was, and continue to be, terrified of what Trump will do with the levers of power with regards to our armed forces.

I had a ton of other reasons why I did not want Trump to be president. I didn't spend a ton of time thinking about the Trump conflicts of interest in the run up to the election, and actively defended him on the 'running for president to profit' front about his campaign spending. Think this has moved into my number two concern. Could totally warp decision making on major foreign policy issues, and it's just freaking gross and corrupt.

CalvinBall wrote:The tower was approved the day after a phone call between Trump and Marci. I mean holy shit. Please do not let this fade away.

https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/stat ... 1101270016

Worth reading the whole string. I don't know the source, but as someone who just spent the last 8 years making jokes "can you believe how the media would treat Bush for XYZ that Obama just did" and whatnot, can you believe how the conservative media would be handling this story subbing in Clinton for Trump? It's almost unfathomable.

I adore Paul Ryan. I love the man, and think his motives are pure and instincts are generally right and goals are truly just. He better not sweep all this shit under the rug to try to get tax reform or whatever. And I get the greater good kind of arguments, but this is shaping up to be so unseemly and so improper and so indefensible. This needs to be a GOP cause pressing him to liquidate before Jan 20. And if not this needs to be a front and center investigation by the GOP Congress. They're not going to follow through on that and we probably need divided government in 2018.

Though as noted earlier a few GOP senators can probably make that happen sooner.

Those dimples better not let me down

I find it incredibly naive to think the Republican leadership is going to do anything about Trump enriching himself through the Presidency. This is the party of corporate enrichment uber alles; the party whose idea of infrastructure investment is going to be giving private companies tax credits for infrastructure, plus the right to charge taxpayers for the use of the infrastructure -- effectively giving away public assets to private companies for their own enrichment (what could be referred to as the Putin Plan).

I'll say again: There are no more checks and balances. This is no longer the country you were taught it was. The last semblance of a check against abuses -- the press -- has been so marginalized, so corrupted by its own corporate influences, so focused on sensationalism that it no longer has the ability to stand up for the people in any effective or credible way.

As for the people speaking up on our own, take a look at Trump and the Republicans' attitude towards the anti-Trump demonstrators or the cast of "Hamilton" or anyone else who has spoken out in protest. Right now they're just being chastised and marginalized. Once Trump is in office, do we think dissent will be treated better or worse? When citizens (and the press) are harassed (or worse) by the Trump Administration for their views, who's going to come to their defense? Jeff Sessions' DOJ?

We are now entirely dependent upon the goodwill of Donald Trump, his henchmen and the Republican leadership. The notion that the Republican leadership -- which wants to use a Trump Presidency as a means to their own ends -- is going to stand up and fight against Trump over democratic principles or even common decency -- is breathtakingly naive.

exactly.

I would choose willfully ignorant or dishonest over naive, but yeh.

The Phillipines appointed a guy who is building a Trump tower to be the special envoy to the US.

holy shit to this Argentina story

It's literally 1000 times worse than anything clinton ever did, but crickets from the right.

I honestly don't know what to say to people when they go on "BLM is a hate group" rant

So Trump brought in the network brass and hosts and gave them a dressing down. Our President-elect setting the tone for the coverage of his administration: Intimidation of the free press; stiflingly of dissent.

He was supposed to meet with the NYT today too. He cancelled because he said the rules were changed last minute. Really though, the NYT refused to do it off the record only when previously agreed that would not be the case.

Trump called this not nice this morning on his Twitter account.

Soren wrote:I honestly don't know what to say to people when they go on "BLM is a hate group" rant

i dont feel hated

CalvinBall wrote:He was supposed to meet with the NYT today too. He cancelled because he said the rules were changed last minute. Really though, the NYT refused to do it off the record only when previously agreed that would not be the case.

Trump called this not nice this morning on his Twitter account.

the tweet I care about the most currently (though his attempt at chilling dissent is very very worrying):

@realDonaldTrump 10h10 hours ago
Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world.Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE BUSINESS INTERESTS AS PRESIDENT! YOU LITERALLY CALLED HILLARY 'CROOKED' FOR SUPPOSED CONFLICTS OF INTEREST!

AND STOP CHEATING YOU MANCHILD! PUT ON YOUR BIG BOY PANTS AND STOP TWEETING

Cheney got away with it, why can't he?

btw, with us leaving the TPP we've now left a huge hole that China is going to fill. We found a way to ease Japanese-Chinese relations. Yay us!

also, he publicly lobbied for the UK to appoint a specific person (Nigel Farage!) as ambassador to the US

CalvinBall wrote:He was supposed to meet with the NYT today too. He cancelled because he said the rules were changed last minute. Really though, the NYT refused to do it off the record only when previously agreed that would not be the case.

Trump called this not nice this morning on his Twitter account.

Bravo to the Times for this. I'd like to say that I don't understand why the network news organizations would agree to an off-the-record meeting with the President-elect but, unfortunately, I do understand. Way to increase your credibility networks!