Adding my name to the roster of those previously ignorant of The Cheesecake Factory. I originally thought Obama was refering to a literal cheesecake factory.
It's just posturing. Ozymandias wants us to look around at his works and despair. But nothing will remain. The next President, probably regardless of party, will issue a proclamation revoking Trump's, rip down the gaudy gold Cheesecake Factory decorations and sell them for a profit at the Smithsonian gift shop, using the proceeds to pay down the national debt.
Technically, under the Antiquities Act, a president may declare a place a National Monument. I do not think there is a provision for any changes. In the past, I was taught, since Congress authorized the Antiquities Act, Congress had the right to make changes. However, Trump moved to reduce two previous National Monuments, and no one challenged him.
I imagine the next President works with the Congress after 2028 to change that loophole.
For that matter, should someone get impeached and the Senate votes for his removal, I would not be surprised that someone will personally strip all the gold off the walls before the US Marshals can kick him out of the People's House.
There is of course nothing new about what Talarico and Hamilton have been proclaiming. The truth is that far too many US Christians have not been proclaiming that. An individualised gospel can produce a discounting of the corporate dimension of “love your neighbour”
Re “Love God and your neighbour as yourself” Jesus argued that these were the greatest commandments. And his answer to the question “who is my neighbour “ was a helpful heretic who acted better than people of their own faith. It was an inclusive and challenging message.
I remember Tony Campolo arguing about 1990 that the marriage of convenience between conservative Christians and the GOP would put back the message of Jesus 50 years. Maybe not so long?
I suppose it is divisive and particularly in a community where it has been half forgotten. The implications are certainly challenging. But there is something in the argument that a politics of love may be an antidote to the current polarisation.
We’ll see. Whatever else it may be, it’s not politics as usual.
And the appointment by Trump of Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff (replacing Susie Wiles who I suspect will be glad to go) puts out a clear signal. Confrontational divisiveness and zero recognition of his mistakes will continue in the Trump White House. It’s always someone else’s fault.
Trump has apparently heard nothing from the people re the midterms about their perception of his Presidency.
It’s a disastrous appointment. Let’s see if the GOP representative can start to show something other than servile obedience. Impeaching Hegseth would be a start.
Also we’ll know on Sunday but it looks as though Netanyahu will no longer be Israel’s Prime Minister. Eisenkot looks as though he can form a government - with elected Israeli Arab support!
I wonder what that does to the crumbling Trump apology for a Middle East policy? Maybe the times really are achanging?
It does sound as if Trump is going to let Miller run the country while he finishes the ballroom, gets his arche built and remake the Potomac Golf Course.
Just gives the hardline Democrats more of an excuse to impeach Trump. Will they get a conviction? Depends on how badly Miller screws up, IMHO.
A lot of the UK YouTube serious news commentators are picking up that he seems disinhibited about fetishing men’s bodies in his recent rallies. Leading on into the series of questions, is he bi and been hiding it, if so wtf given how damaging his policies have been for the lgbtq+ community, and will this put off his evangelical base ?
He was way more pornographic in his second-hand insinuations about Arnold Palmer's penis just before the 2024 election, and it did not seem to hurt him with evangelicals at all.
I will read into the record that Tucker Carlson, conservative cultural warrior extraordinare, released a post-election video yesterday calling into general question the heterosexual credentials of Trump and his particular faction of Republicans. I didn't hear any mention of the ass-ogling, but lotsa stuff about dancing to YMCA; exhibiting a supposedly feminine personality by obsessing over past slights; and an administration of "beta males" trying to fake it as alpha by launching wars against foreign nations.
But I honestly wouldn't expect most GOP evangelicals to have even that degree of cultural sophistication in their analysis.
Oh I’m not in the least interested in his sexual preferences. His vanity, cruelty, egomania and spite, those are aspects of his nature that I’m appalled by.
Oh I’m not in the least interested in his sexual preferences. His vanity, cruelty, egomania and spite, those are aspects of his nature that I’m appalled by.
It is my impression surviving Congressional Republicans are not happy with the appointment of Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff. It is as if the American people voted out fascism--against ICE, against increased voting restrictions and intimidations, against tariffs, and against war. So, what does Trump do? He doubles down, appointing Mr. Fascist himself as CoS.
This is not reconciliation, it is a declaration of war on the part of the Orange One.
Hold on to your seats, people. If you thought the last two years were rough, the next two years...
Just gives the hardline Democrats more of an excuse to impeach Trump.
There are plenty of grounds for impeachment, but I fervently hope congressional Democrats will let impeachment be pretty far down the list of priorities. If they have any hope of this past week’s Big Beautiful Wave translating into success in 2028, they need to be laser-focused on the economy and the War in Iran. Impeachment might play okay if it’s clearly tied to corruption. But if it looks like just more retribution, then congressional Democrats will have spectacularly squandered this opportunity.
I have some hope the Democratic leadership understands this.
Oh I’m not in the least interested in his sexual preferences. His vanity, cruelty, egomania and spite, those are aspects of his nature that I’m appalled by.
Right. But @Doublethink, I believe it was, had mentioned that some UK commentators were speculating that some of Trump's evangelical base would turn against him if they suspect him of being bisexual. So that's the context I was writing in.
It is my impression surviving Congressional Republicans are not happy with the appointment of Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff. It is as if the American people voted out fascism--against ICE, against increased voting restrictions and intimidations, against tariffs, and against war. So, what does Trump do? He doubles down, appointing Mr. Fascist himself as CoS.
As I've recently posted somewhere around here, I personally doubt that a significant portion of Democratic voters on Tuesday were consciously voting against ICE, much less against the overarching ideological apparatus known as fascism. And I'd be surprised if many of them know why Stephen Miller might be a bigger asshole than anyone else in the administration.
Granted, Miller might have something of a villainous image among those Hispanics who were supporting Trump until they realized just how racist his rhetoric and policies were gonna be. But I still think the name-recognition would be only among a minority of even that group. Open to correction or augmentation on this.
Just gives the hardline Democrats more of an excuse to impeach Trump.
There are plenty of grounds for impeachment, but I fervently hope congressional Democrats will let impeachment be pretty far down the list of priorities. If they have any hope of this past week’s Big Beautiful Wave translating into success in 2028, they need to be laser-focused on the economy and the War in Iran. Impeachment might play okay if it’s clearly tied to corruption. But if it looks like just more retribution, then congressional Democrats will have spectacularly squandered this opportunity.
I have some hope the Democratic leadership understands this.
Ideally, the Democrats would find a way to keep Trump and Company's corruption in the headlines, without making it look like they're the ones pushing the issue forward. Then wait around for a time(if, indeed, that time ever comes) when the revelations become so outrageous that the public themselves are demanding action.
It is my impression surviving Congressional Republicans are not happy with the appointment of Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff. It is as if the American people voted out fascism--against ICE, against increased voting restrictions and intimidations, against tariffs, and against war. So, what does Trump do? He doubles down, appointing Mr. Fascist himself as CoS.
As I've recently posted somewhere around here, I personally doubt that a significant portion of Democratic voters on Tuesday were consciously voting against ICE, much less against the overarching ideological apparatus known as fascism. And I'd be surprised if many of them know why Stephen Miller might be a bigger asshole than anyone else in the administration.
Granted, Miller might have something of a villainous image among those Hispanics who were supporting Trump until they realized just how racist his rhetoric and policies were gonna be. But I still think the name-recognition would be only among a minority of even that group. Open to correction or augmentation on this.
While Steven Miller may not have high name recognition now, he will within the next year.
My point was that the Republicans that survived the mid-term shellacking do not like him now. They know he will not do them any favors leading into the next election
Steven MIller's priorities are
1. Continue the ICE raids regardless of what Congress thinks
Note: while the raids were not high on the voters lists. They are top priority on Steven's list
2. Countering Congress--many Congressmen see his actions as unconstitutional.
3. Continuing to Support the War against Iran--the main reason why fuel prices around the world have jumped. Iran is not even willing to discuss opening up the Gulf of Hormuz.
4. Maintaining the tariffs: He sees them as taxes on the foreign producers, not Americans.
5. If a Supreme Court Judge steps down, his job will be to get Trump to nominate another very conservative jurist.
6 Restore MAGA. But as De Santas said, the Mid Terms were like an extinction even for MAGA if not the Republican party.
As I see it, none of these priorities will help surviving Republicans retain their seats the next go around. Don't tell me some of them will shortly be crying "Qu'on lui coupe la tête." Off with his head.
As I've recently posted somewhere around here, I personally doubt that a significant portion of Democratic voters on Tuesday were consciously voting against ICE, much less against the overarching ideological apparatus known as fascism. And I'd be surprised if many of them know why Stephen Miller might be a bigger asshole than anyone else in the administration.
I don't know what percentage of voters were voting against ICE and what looks like fascism to me, but I can guarantee you that that was close to the top of my list of my concerns. That goes for nearly all my friends including the Republican ones who have been absolutely horrified by trump and his henchmen.
Yes, Stephen Miller is as evil as trump or more so, plus having more intelligence than trump (which isn't hard) to make life as dystopian as possible for everyone. That includes the Maga-ites except for the billionaires, of course.
I have to agree. I see very little difference between ICE and the Gestapo. One of the first orders of business of the new Democratic Congress must be to rein them in, or better yet to dissolve them. Of course such action will be vetoed, but perhaps enough votes can be rounded up to override the veto.
As I've recently posted somewhere around here, I personally doubt that a significant portion of Democratic voters on Tuesday were consciously voting against ICE, much less against the overarching ideological apparatus known as fascism. And I'd be surprised if many of them know why Stephen Miller might be a bigger asshole than anyone else in the administration.
I don't know what percentage of voters were voting against ICE and what looks like fascism to me, but I can guarantee you that that was close to the top of my list of my concerns. That goes for nearly all my friends including the Republican ones who have been absolutely horrified by trump and his henchmen.
I don't doubt that at all. It would certainly be true, mutatis mutandis, for my social circle in Canada. And since my original comment specified "Democratic voters", I'll concede there would certainly have more anti-ICE sentiment among them than among the general electorate.
A way of framing the question would be: How much lower would the Democratic vote have been if ICE were doing the same stuff they're doing in our time-line, but if the economy were in better shape.
[Posted this on the midterms thread, but intended it for this one.]
While I do not doubt that the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Champions may very well have the neccessary skills to be WH press secretary, the fact Trump chose that particular company's CEO clearly indicates he's planning to double-down on the existing image.
I don't think it really matters that Stephen Miller is now Chief of Staff instead of Deputy Chief of Staff. I doubt very much that Susie Wiles was directing a lot of the White House policy choices. Miller will either re-direct some of the time he's spent promulgating Nazism toward keeping the White House admin going, which might lessen the effectiveness of his Nazism-promulgation, or he won't re-direct some of his time because he just really wants to do the Nazi thing, in which case the White House admin will get worse, making everything harder for them to do. Plus he's not popular with the other staff, which will also make it harder for him to get stuff done.
I think the Democrats in the new Congress should recruit Republicans to vote with them when they can, and if they do things right, it's not a crazy idea. If they take up issues one at a time, there will be things some Republicans might want to be able to take back to their constituents and say they got done. The questions Republicans up for re-election in 2028 have to ask themselves is if and when and how to break with or distance themselves from Trump, whose star is fading fast. A full break won't be possible in a lot of cases where they need hardcore MAGA voters in primaries (though I think a fair number of MAGA folks might go back to not voting at all), but some judicious distancing might help them in the general. Congress needs to take back the power it has ceded to the executive branch, and seeing as the president elected in two years could very well be a Democrat, I could see at least some Republicans thinking it might be a good idea to have more power in the hands of Congress. Where it belongs in the first place.
If Congressional Democrats can't get any Republicans on board, they should hold the votes for the things the American electorate has said it wants -- everything touching on affordability and corruption -- and make them go on record against those things. Then use that against them in the 2028 election.
[Posted this on the midterms thread, but intended it for this one.]
While I do not doubt that the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Champions may very well have the neccessary skills to be WH press secretary, the fact Trump chose that particular company's CEO clearly indicates he's planning to double-down on the existing image.
Beat me to this. All I have to say is the circus is getting weirder by the minute!
Analysis I have seen suggests that while ICE and Trump’s immigration policies were not what most voters listed as the issue most important to them, many cited it as a factor in their decision, and the majority of those people opposed Trump’s policies.
Among Latino voters, it was understandably a much higher priority. It undoubtedly led to Repiblicans’ loss of the gains they’d made with Latino voters two years ago.
And it was also a higher priority in places like Minnesota.
I’m always a little skeptical of rankings of voters’s priorities; o tend to put more stock in polls that ask something like “what are the three most important issues to you?” than “what is the most important issue to you?” While I have no doubt the economy was front of mind for many voters, I suspect that most voters’ votes are driven by a combination of factors and issues.
Immigration and ICE become part of a larger motivating factor that can be described as “I think the country is headed in the wrong direction” or “I don’t support Trump’s policies” or the like. And it was that larger motivating factor that lost the GOP the election.
Social media is suggesting that (gasp!) the otherwise Divinely Inerrant Petulant Trump offered the press secretary job to the wrong Dana White. You see, there is a Dana W. White, who was the Director of the Washington Roundtable for the Asia-Pacific Press at The Heritage Foundation, as well as being a publicist for (wait for it) Fox News.
Speculation is that Petulant Trump was urged to ask THAT Dana White to be press secretary, but, being an idiot, he thought they meant UFC CEO Dana White.
"Nothing is foolproof because fools are such geniuses."
I don't think it really matters that Stephen Miller is now Chief of Staff instead of Deputy Chief of Staff. I doubt very much that Susie Wiles was directing a lot of the White House policy choices. Miller will either re-direct some of the time he's spent promulgating Nazism toward keeping the White House admin going, which might lessen the effectiveness of his Nazism-promulgation, or he won't re-direct some of his time because he just really wants to do the Nazi thing, in which case the White House admin will get worse, making everything harder for them to do. Plus he's not popular with the other staff, which will also make it harder for him to get stuff done.
I think I'd agree. And I'll add that, as far as the public making the connections goes, IME Americans don't much praise/blame a given WHCOF for the administration's policies.
Anecdotal, but I think the only WHCOF I can name off the top of my head is Donald Regan, and that's only because he wrote those memoirs revealing Mrs. Reagan's forays into astrology. I certainly had strong opinions on the stuff going on in Mr. Regan's White House, but did not in any way connect them to him.
All that said, Miller does start out with a higher than average public-profile, and sometimes events can pull a given induvidial into face-of-the-regime status(see Rumsfeld). But if he takes your second option and just keeps doing the same fascist schtick that most of the MAGA celebrities are already doing one way or another, I don't know that it grabs him much more attention than it did before.
I don't think it really matters that Stephen Miller is now Chief of Staff instead of Deputy Chief of Staff. I doubt very much that Susie Wiles was directing a lot of the White House policy choices.
Reports I’ve been seeing in the last month or two suggest Trump has been ignoring Wiles or leaving her out of the loop completely for a while now.
I think the Democrats in the new Congress should recruit Republicans to vote with them when they can, and if they do things right, it's not a crazy idea. If they take up issues one at a time, there will be things some Republicans might want to be able to take back to their constituents and say they got done. The questions Republicans up for re-election in 2028 have to ask themselves is if and when and how to break with or distance themselves from Trump, whose star is fading fast.
This, especially the one issue at a time part. At the least, the Democrats should force Republicans to go on the record as either voting with Trump or voting for what is in people’s interests and for what voters want.
Social media is suggesting that (gasp!) the otherwise Divinely Inerrant Petulant Trump offered the press secretary job to the wrong Dana White. You see, there is a Dana W. White, who was the Director of the Washington Roundtable for the Asia-Pacific Press at The Heritage Foundation, as well as being a publicist for (wait for it) Fox News.
Speculation is that Petulant Trump was urged to ask THAT Dana White to be press secretary, but, being an idiot, he thought they meant UFC CEO Dana White.
"Nothing is foolproof because fools are such geniuses."
Someone got a cabinet position in a roughly similar way in Quebec politics in the 1970s. I think he was some sort of mid-profile academic, and one evening his wife told him a "M. Levesque" had called that day, and the guy incorrectly assumed it was Rene Levesque, the charismatic leader of the sovereigntist PQ, recruiting candidates for the upcoming election.
So he called up Rene Levesque and offered hinself as a candidate, and Levesque for some reason agreed to find him a riding, and following the subsequent victory appointed him to cabinet. According to Levesque's memoirs, the guy was an absolute disaster in office.
Of course, in that snafu, the mistake was on the part of the civilian, not the politician. Though Levesque was at fault for going along with the idea.
CNN is reporting Dana White, turned down the Press Secretary offer. Smart man.
Yeah. Like I said, it's a plausible career shift, but if he was not aware of the offer until the day of the announcement, probably not one he was ready to make.
Also, I'm pretty sure it would be a pay cut, and I'm guessing Dana White does not fancy himself a dollar-a-year man.
CNN is reporting Dana White, turned down the Press Secretary offer. Smart man.
Yeah. Like I said, it's a plausible career shift, but if he was not aware of the offer until the day of the announcement, probably not one he was ready to make.
Also, I'm pretty sure it would be a pay cut, and I'm guessing Dana White does not fancy himself a dollar-a-year man.
Dana is now saying he will meet with Trump on Monday. Not liking how this sounds.
CNN is reporting Dana White, turned down the Press Secretary offer. Smart man.
Yeah. Like I said, it's a plausible career shift, but if he was not aware of the offer until the day of the announcement, probably not one he was ready to make.
Also, I'm pretty sure it would be a pay cut, and I'm guessing Dana White does not fancy himself a dollar-a-year man.
Dana is now saying he will meet with Trump on Monday. Not liking how this sounds.
At the end of the day, an MMA heel as PresSec probably wouldn't make that much of a difference to anything. Not much that he says is likely to be any more outrageous than the stuff that Trump says to us directly.
CNN is reporting Dana White, turned down the Press Secretary offer. Smart man.
Yeah. Like I said, it's a plausible career shift, but if he was not aware of the offer until the day of the announcement, probably not one he was ready to make.
Also, I'm pretty sure it would be a pay cut, and I'm guessing Dana White does not fancy himself a dollar-a-year man.
Dana is now saying he will meet with Trump on Monday. Not liking how this sounds.
I’ve seen reports that he’s simply trying to help Trump save face by going through motions before not taking the job, since it’s clear that, as @Hedgehog noted, Trump appears to have asked the wrong Dana White.
CNN is reporting Dana White, turned down the Press Secretary offer. Smart man.
Yeah. Like I said, it's a plausible career shift, but if he was not aware of the offer until the day of the announcement, probably not one he was ready to make.
Also, I'm pretty sure it would be a pay cut, and I'm guessing Dana White does not fancy himself a dollar-a-year man.
Dana is now saying he will meet with Trump on Monday. Not liking how this sounds.
I’ve seen reports that he’s simply trying to help Trump save face by going through motions before not taking the job, since it’s clear that, as @Hedgehog noted, Trump appears to have asked the wrong Dana White.
Accoring to the BBC news, Mr Trump is now saying 'I was just a joke'. Hmmmm ......
I understand that when the Houses change polarity the president is known as a lame duck president. Radio 4 tells me that in this case Mr Trump is a lame duck a l'orange president.
My YouTube algorithm just gifted me with Trump's 2016 Too Much Winning speech.
You clearly need to change your viewing habits!
Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure I got it because I'd been googling "MAGA meltdowns", and that speech(as far as I can tell) is mostly remembered by Trump's opponents with ironic appreciation.
Comments
Technically, under the Antiquities Act, a president may declare a place a National Monument. I do not think there is a provision for any changes. In the past, I was taught, since Congress authorized the Antiquities Act, Congress had the right to make changes. However, Trump moved to reduce two previous National Monuments, and no one challenged him.
I imagine the next President works with the Congress after 2028 to change that loophole.
For that matter, should someone get impeached and the Senate votes for his removal, I would not be surprised that someone will personally strip all the gold off the walls before the US Marshals can kick him out of the People's House.
Here is an observation in the Guardian.
There is of course nothing new about what Talarico and Hamilton have been proclaiming. The truth is that far too many US Christians have not been proclaiming that. An individualised gospel can produce a discounting of the corporate dimension of “love your neighbour”
Re “Love God and your neighbour as yourself” Jesus argued that these were the greatest commandments. And his answer to the question “who is my neighbour “ was a helpful heretic who acted better than people of their own faith. It was an inclusive and challenging message.
I remember Tony Campolo arguing about 1990 that the marriage of convenience between conservative Christians and the GOP would put back the message of Jesus 50 years. Maybe not so long?
I suppose it is divisive and particularly in a community where it has been half forgotten. The implications are certainly challenging. But there is something in the argument that a politics of love may be an antidote to the current polarisation.
We’ll see. Whatever else it may be, it’s not politics as usual.
Trump has apparently heard nothing from the people re the midterms about their perception of his Presidency.
It’s a disastrous appointment. Let’s see if the GOP representative can start to show something other than servile obedience. Impeaching Hegseth would be a start.
Also we’ll know on Sunday but it looks as though Netanyahu will no longer be Israel’s Prime Minister. Eisenkot looks as though he can form a government - with elected Israeli Arab support!
I wonder what that does to the crumbling Trump apology for a Middle East policy? Maybe the times really are achanging?
Just gives the hardline Democrats more of an excuse to impeach Trump. Will they get a conviction? Depends on how badly Miller screws up, IMHO.
I will read into the record that Tucker Carlson, conservative cultural warrior extraordinare, released a post-election video yesterday calling into general question the heterosexual credentials of Trump and his particular faction of Republicans. I didn't hear any mention of the ass-ogling, but lotsa stuff about dancing to YMCA; exhibiting a supposedly feminine personality by obsessing over past slights; and an administration of "beta males" trying to fake it as alpha by launching wars against foreign nations.
But I honestly wouldn't expect most GOP evangelicals to have even that degree of cultural sophistication in their analysis.
This.
This is not reconciliation, it is a declaration of war on the part of the Orange One.
Hold on to your seats, people. If you thought the last two years were rough, the next two years...
I have some hope the Democratic leadership understands this.
Right. But @Doublethink, I believe it was, had mentioned that some UK commentators were speculating that some of Trump's evangelical base would turn against him if they suspect him of being bisexual. So that's the context I was writing in.
As I've recently posted somewhere around here, I personally doubt that a significant portion of Democratic voters on Tuesday were consciously voting against ICE, much less against the overarching ideological apparatus known as fascism. And I'd be surprised if many of them know why Stephen Miller might be a bigger asshole than anyone else in the administration.
Granted, Miller might have something of a villainous image among those Hispanics who were supporting Trump until they realized just how racist his rhetoric and policies were gonna be. But I still think the name-recognition would be only among a minority of even that group. Open to correction or augmentation on this.
Ideally, the Democrats would find a way to keep Trump and Company's corruption in the headlines, without making it look like they're the ones pushing the issue forward. Then wait around for a time(if, indeed, that time ever comes) when the revelations become so outrageous that the public themselves are demanding action.
While Steven Miller may not have high name recognition now, he will within the next year.
My point was that the Republicans that survived the mid-term shellacking do not like him now. They know he will not do them any favors leading into the next election
Steven MIller's priorities are
1. Continue the ICE raids regardless of what Congress thinks
Note: while the raids were not high on the voters lists. They are top priority on Steven's list
2. Countering Congress--many Congressmen see his actions as unconstitutional.
3. Continuing to Support the War against Iran--the main reason why fuel prices around the world have jumped. Iran is not even willing to discuss opening up the Gulf of Hormuz.
4. Maintaining the tariffs: He sees them as taxes on the foreign producers, not Americans.
5. If a Supreme Court Judge steps down, his job will be to get Trump to nominate another very conservative jurist.
6 Restore MAGA. But as De Santas said, the Mid Terms were like an extinction even for MAGA if not the Republican party.
As I see it, none of these priorities will help surviving Republicans retain their seats the next go around. Don't tell me some of them will shortly be crying "Qu'on lui coupe la tête." Off with his head.
I don't know what percentage of voters were voting against ICE and what looks like fascism to me, but I can guarantee you that that was close to the top of my list of my concerns. That goes for nearly all my friends including the Republican ones who have been absolutely horrified by trump and his henchmen.
Yes, Stephen Miller is as evil as trump or more so, plus having more intelligence than trump (which isn't hard) to make life as dystopian as possible for everyone. That includes the Maga-ites except for the billionaires, of course.
I don't doubt that at all. It would certainly be true, mutatis mutandis, for my social circle in Canada. And since my original comment specified "Democratic voters", I'll concede there would certainly have more anti-ICE sentiment among them than among the general electorate.
A way of framing the question would be: How much lower would the Democratic vote have been if ICE were doing the same stuff they're doing in our time-line, but if the economy were in better shape.
While I do not doubt that the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Champions may very well have the neccessary skills to be WH press secretary, the fact Trump chose that particular company's CEO clearly indicates he's planning to double-down on the existing image.
I think the Democrats in the new Congress should recruit Republicans to vote with them when they can, and if they do things right, it's not a crazy idea. If they take up issues one at a time, there will be things some Republicans might want to be able to take back to their constituents and say they got done. The questions Republicans up for re-election in 2028 have to ask themselves is if and when and how to break with or distance themselves from Trump, whose star is fading fast. A full break won't be possible in a lot of cases where they need hardcore MAGA voters in primaries (though I think a fair number of MAGA folks might go back to not voting at all), but some judicious distancing might help them in the general. Congress needs to take back the power it has ceded to the executive branch, and seeing as the president elected in two years could very well be a Democrat, I could see at least some Republicans thinking it might be a good idea to have more power in the hands of Congress. Where it belongs in the first place.
If Congressional Democrats can't get any Republicans on board, they should hold the votes for the things the American electorate has said it wants -- everything touching on affordability and corruption -- and make them go on record against those things. Then use that against them in the 2028 election.
Beat me to this. All I have to say is the circus is getting weirder by the minute!
Among Latino voters, it was understandably a much higher priority. It undoubtedly led to Repiblicans’ loss of the gains they’d made with Latino voters two years ago.
And it was also a higher priority in places like Minnesota.
I’m always a little skeptical of rankings of voters’s priorities; o tend to put more stock in polls that ask something like “what are the three most important issues to you?” than “what is the most important issue to you?” While I have no doubt the economy was front of mind for many voters, I suspect that most voters’ votes are driven by a combination of factors and issues.
Immigration and ICE become part of a larger motivating factor that can be described as “I think the country is headed in the wrong direction” or “I don’t support Trump’s policies” or the like. And it was that larger motivating factor that lost the GOP the election.
Speculation is that Petulant Trump was urged to ask THAT Dana White to be press secretary, but, being an idiot, he thought they meant UFC CEO Dana White.
"Nothing is foolproof because fools are such geniuses."
I think I'd agree. And I'll add that, as far as the public making the connections goes, IME Americans don't much praise/blame a given WHCOF for the administration's policies.
Anecdotal, but I think the only WHCOF I can name off the top of my head is Donald Regan, and that's only because he wrote those memoirs revealing Mrs. Reagan's forays into astrology. I certainly had strong opinions on the stuff going on in Mr. Regan's White House, but did not in any way connect them to him.
All that said, Miller does start out with a higher than average public-profile, and sometimes events can pull a given induvidial into face-of-the-regime status(see Rumsfeld). But if he takes your second option and just keeps doing the same fascist schtick that most of the MAGA celebrities are already doing one way or another, I don't know that it grabs him much more attention than it did before.
This, especially the one issue at a time part. At the least, the Democrats should force Republicans to go on the record as either voting with Trump or voting for what is in people’s interests and for what voters want.
Someone got a cabinet position in a roughly similar way in Quebec politics in the 1970s. I think he was some sort of mid-profile academic, and one evening his wife told him a "M. Levesque" had called that day, and the guy incorrectly assumed it was Rene Levesque, the charismatic leader of the sovereigntist PQ, recruiting candidates for the upcoming election.
So he called up Rene Levesque and offered hinself as a candidate, and Levesque for some reason agreed to find him a riding, and following the subsequent victory appointed him to cabinet. According to Levesque's memoirs, the guy was an absolute disaster in office.
Of course, in that snafu, the mistake was on the part of the civilian, not the politician. Though Levesque was at fault for going along with the idea.
Yeah. Like I said, it's a plausible career shift, but if he was not aware of the offer until the day of the announcement, probably not one he was ready to make.
Also, I'm pretty sure it would be a pay cut, and I'm guessing Dana White does not fancy himself a dollar-a-year man.
Dana is now saying he will meet with Trump on Monday. Not liking how this sounds.
At the end of the day, an MMA heel as PresSec probably wouldn't make that much of a difference to anything. Not much that he says is likely to be any more outrageous than the stuff that Trump says to us directly.
Accoring to the BBC news, Mr Trump is now saying 'I was just a joke'. Hmmmm ......
You clearly need to change your viewing habits!
Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure I got it because I'd been googling "MAGA meltdowns", and that speech(as far as I can tell) is mostly remembered by Trump's opponents with ironic appreciation.