General Trump hilarity free-for-all thread

[MMIX]

Burning bridges with Australia, for no reason whatsoever, it worries me the amount of damage that can be done before 2020 next week.

ftfy

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

He is apparently moving forward with his promise to lift the separation of church and state.

[Cain]

Burned bridges with Australia, threatened Mexico with sending in troops without their leave and appears to be threatening Iran with some kind of violence AND launched a botched counterterrorism raid last week in Yemen, which ended up killing an 8 year old girl and a Navy SEAL.  And Bannon is brainstorming a South China Seas conflict.

But Hillary Clinton is a warmonger! 

[00.dusk]

I'm at the point where not even laughter is stopping the horror from setting in, it's more like an automatic reflex in between the incoherent shrieks.

For the lazy-but-interested:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politics/malcolm-turnbull-donald-trump-pena-nieto/index.html Australia + Mexico

http://www.twincities.com/2017/02/02/trump-vows-to-repeal-political-limits-on-churches/ Church/State

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/iran-trump-michael-flynn-on-notice Iran
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-officials-trump-ordered-raid-in-yemen-that-killed-us-navy-seal-was-approved-without-sufficient-intelligence-2017-2 Yemen
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/steve-bannon-donald-trump-war-south-china-sea-no-doubt South China Sea

[Cain]

On the domestic front, Trump has revealed plans to rebrand the "Countering Violent Extremism" program as "Countering Islamic Extremism".  All references to far-right groups or attempts to counter far-right extremism have been dropped from the program.

Coincidentally, the FBI has been investigating the infiltration of the American far-right into local police forces.  The infiltration is so bad that in some districts, the FBI refuses to share intelligence with local PDs for fear of compromising operations against the far-right.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well I mean, this all seems to confirm everything everyone was saying about how a Hillary Presidency would be exactly the same as a Trump Presidency. I mean, sure is a good thing all those protest voters didn't waste their vote on her, because then, well, someone with a vagina would be President and we can't have that.

[Cain]

Just like Hillary https://newrepublic.com/article/140344/steve-bannon-turning-trump-ethno-nationalist-ideologue

[LMNO]

BUT HER EMAILS

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

EMAILS

[MMIX]

My favourite news of the week [among the many  ]

Poll: Trump voters OK with a private email server
And finally by a 42/39 spread Trump voters think he should be allowed to have a private email server: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2017/01/americans-think-trump-will-be-worst-president-since-nixon.html ...
5:09 PM - 26 Jan 2017 · Raleigh, NC

According to another new report, at least four senior officials in President Trump's White House have active accounts on a private Republican National Committee (RNC) email system.
Counselor Kellyanne Conway, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner — Trump's son-in-law — all have rnchq.org email accounts, Newsweek reported Wednesday.

both quotes from The Hill http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/316414-trump-voters-think-he-should-be-allowed-to-have-a-private-email

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Trump voters and republicans in general aren't going to be convinced by sense, but what about nonsense? Here are some nonsense concepts that we should get circulating

"The muslim ban doesn't go far enough. We need to ban Saudi Arabia too." (We're never going to convince them to do Saudi Arabia instead, but Saudi Arabia should be banned because if would screw up up Trump's business interests there and honestly while it would make the whole thing even more heavy handed than it already is it would also make it more sensible as that was where the 9/11 hijackers came from)

and conversely

"Trump left Saudi Arabia off the list because he knows that Bush did 9/11"

and also

"Trump is the antichrist/Putin is the antichrist/Trump and Putin are two of the heads of the beast. The signs are all there."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Charming.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/us/politics/donald-trump-business.html?_r=0

Just days before his inauguration, President-elect Donald J. Trump stood beside his tax lawyer at a Midtown Manhattan news conference as she announced that he planned to place his vast business holdings in a trust, a move she said would allay fears that he might exploit the Oval Office for personal gain.

However, a number of questions were left unanswered — including who would ultimately benefit from the trust — raising concerns about just how meaningful the move was.

Now, records have emerged that show just how closely tied Mr. Trump remains to the empire he built.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11794343

A fascinating and scary article has been doing the rounds in recent days, which suggests that Donald Trump's ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries was an attempt to see how far he can push his power, as the first step to mounting an all-out coup.

A Google engineer named Yonatan Zunger has suggested that the way the White House has repeatedly gone around long standing conventions shows it is testing to see whether a coup is possible.

One man's coup is another man's "strong leadership". But what Zunger is talking about is Mr Trump's inner circle grabbing power in a similar way that Vladimir Putin has done in Russia, where he exercises power unchallenged by any other body.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I'm not sure whether I should be hoping that america doesn't get destroyed by a nuclear war or hoping that it does.

[Junkenstein]

Hey Cain, any truth in the "Iran selling oil to Japan using the yen" stuff as the real motivation for sanctions? Would seem to fit as Japan needs the import and the almighty petrodollar shall not be fucked with. Can't find a decent source for it though.

[Cain]

Pretty sure that declaration came after the travel ban, did it not?

If this was a test for anything, on the international arena, it may have been a test to see how tight Iran and Russia are.  Trump's people are pretty crazy about Iran, but Russia isn't going to drop Tehran as a partner any time soon.  Balancing their pro-Russia approach with an anti-Iranian agenda is not going to be easy.