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Spoiler: He's a broke fraud.
(EDIT)
"Likewise, now we know for sure why it is Trump is running for re-election. It’s not that he wants the job or has a legislative or political agenda, or has any interest for or in the country he leads or the people in it. It’s because as long as he is president, all his personal financial misfortunes are shoved down the road. It may be technically possible to bankrupt a man with access to nuclear codes, but as a practical matter, it’s difficult. That doesn’t mean he’s not still in thrall, and susceptible to, the people to whom he owes money, or the political players behind those people. As they say, follow the money, and you’ll see an entire nation’s foreign policy hinging on who will cut Trump the best deal on his debt."
I would have said that Putin would have been a shoo-in for that role, but Putin will drop Trump like a hot potato the instant Trump is no longer useful to him, even if Trump has been useful to him in the past. Beyond that, I dunno. I don't foresee anyone else stepping up to the plate to go to bat for such a huge loser as Trump is.
"But let’s be clear that Trump couldn’t have gotten where he is alone. No, I’m not talking about the Russians or the other foreign interests who meddled with the 2016 election, although they did, and, again, everyone knows it. No, Trump needed people on the inside, and got that with the GOP. Trump neither wanted nor deserved a first term. But he got one, thanks to the GOP intellectually and politically neutering itself to the point where its base of voters gleefully swamped the 'best minds' of the party to embrace a flashy con man, who happily peddled the white supremacy and bigotry they craved after eight years of having to tolerate a black man in the White House. Trump then had the good fortune of having as his political opponent someone who was both a woman (hey, did you know the GOP is also structurally sexist?), and also someone the GOP had already spent two decades vilifying on a regular and profitable basis (and yet she still got more actual voters to vote for her than Trump did, which is an important point, and which still galls Trump).
"Trump doesn’t deserve a second term, either, and at this point probably can’t get one fairly. But he might get one anyway, because the GOP has definitively decided to say the quiet part loud, after years of pretending that it wasn’t saying it loudly: That a white supremacist autocracy is better than a democracy where the GOP is out of power, probably forever. That Trump is the instrument of this works perfectly well for the GOP; since Reagan the party has shown a preference for dimwitted, incurious men to install in the top office while apparatchiks do the heavy lifting away from the spotlight. Trump is certainly dimwitted and incurious. He’s also dangerous, because he owes so much money to entities that do not have the interests of the United States at heart, but the GOP has decided that as long as they can finally dismantle the social net, keep women from having control of their own bodies, and shove minorities, immigrants and the gays back into their respective holes, meh, whatever, that’s fine."
This, a million times. (Adding thebmitch mcconnell, lindsey graham, and thom tillis tags to this just for that alone, because even though they're not explicitly mentioned by name, they, and all the others in Congress just like them, are the ones who Mr. Scalzi is talking about right now with that.)
And the worst part of that is that even despite the GOP saying the quiet part out loud now, or maybe even because of it, Trumpanzee voters are (still) going to line up in droves to vote for Trump and them. If it wasn't for the depressing fact that far too many goddamned morons are still willing to vote for them, no amount of malfeasance on their part would keep them in power. And, on the flip side, if there weren't so many GOP politicians willing to pander to them and enact policies helpful to them, the goddamned morons would still be hiding their goddamned moron tendencies under the rocks they've been crawling out from lately.
(/EDIT)
(EDIT 2)
Ugh, I left a comment on there, which was supposed to contain a link going to the Youtube URL of that Last Week Tonight video, but I screwed it up and pointed the link back to this blog instead. Not that that matters, since I linked to here with my username anyway, but still. Annoying and embarrassing. Who'd think copy/paste would be so difficult? *eye roll*
(/EDIT 2)
(EDIT)
"Likewise, now we know for sure why it is Trump is running for re-election. It’s not that he wants the job or has a legislative or political agenda, or has any interest for or in the country he leads or the people in it. It’s because as long as he is president, all his personal financial misfortunes are shoved down the road. It may be technically possible to bankrupt a man with access to nuclear codes, but as a practical matter, it’s difficult. That doesn’t mean he’s not still in thrall, and susceptible to, the people to whom he owes money, or the political players behind those people. As they say, follow the money, and you’ll see an entire nation’s foreign policy hinging on who will cut Trump the best deal on his debt."
I would have said that Putin would have been a shoo-in for that role, but Putin will drop Trump like a hot potato the instant Trump is no longer useful to him, even if Trump has been useful to him in the past. Beyond that, I dunno. I don't foresee anyone else stepping up to the plate to go to bat for such a huge loser as Trump is.
"But let’s be clear that Trump couldn’t have gotten where he is alone. No, I’m not talking about the Russians or the other foreign interests who meddled with the 2016 election, although they did, and, again, everyone knows it. No, Trump needed people on the inside, and got that with the GOP. Trump neither wanted nor deserved a first term. But he got one, thanks to the GOP intellectually and politically neutering itself to the point where its base of voters gleefully swamped the 'best minds' of the party to embrace a flashy con man, who happily peddled the white supremacy and bigotry they craved after eight years of having to tolerate a black man in the White House. Trump then had the good fortune of having as his political opponent someone who was both a woman (hey, did you know the GOP is also structurally sexist?), and also someone the GOP had already spent two decades vilifying on a regular and profitable basis (and yet she still got more actual voters to vote for her than Trump did, which is an important point, and which still galls Trump).
"Trump doesn’t deserve a second term, either, and at this point probably can’t get one fairly. But he might get one anyway, because the GOP has definitively decided to say the quiet part loud, after years of pretending that it wasn’t saying it loudly: That a white supremacist autocracy is better than a democracy where the GOP is out of power, probably forever. That Trump is the instrument of this works perfectly well for the GOP; since Reagan the party has shown a preference for dimwitted, incurious men to install in the top office while apparatchiks do the heavy lifting away from the spotlight. Trump is certainly dimwitted and incurious. He’s also dangerous, because he owes so much money to entities that do not have the interests of the United States at heart, but the GOP has decided that as long as they can finally dismantle the social net, keep women from having control of their own bodies, and shove minorities, immigrants and the gays back into their respective holes, meh, whatever, that’s fine."
This, a million times. (Adding the
And the worst part of that is that even despite the GOP saying the quiet part out loud now, or maybe even because of it, Trumpanzee voters are (still) going to line up in droves to vote for Trump and them. If it wasn't for the depressing fact that far too many goddamned morons are still willing to vote for them, no amount of malfeasance on their part would keep them in power. And, on the flip side, if there weren't so many GOP politicians willing to pander to them and enact policies helpful to them, the goddamned morons would still be hiding their goddamned moron tendencies under the rocks they've been crawling out from lately.
(/EDIT)
(EDIT 2)
Ugh, I left a comment on there, which was supposed to contain a link going to the Youtube URL of that Last Week Tonight video, but I screwed it up and pointed the link back to this blog instead. Not that that matters, since I linked to here with my username anyway, but still. Annoying and embarrassing. Who'd think copy/paste would be so difficult? *eye roll*
(/EDIT 2)
