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rachelramirez

Tea Party Turns on 'Megalomaniac Strongman' Donald Trump - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...ac-strongman-donald-trump.html

trump tea party politics

shared by rachelramirez on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Tea Party Turns on ‘Megalomaniac Strongman’ Donald Trump
  • Now, “may” is the operative word, since rumors of Trump’s demise, as you might have noticed, have been a touch overstated.
  • Rep. Dave Brat, a Virginia Republican who defeated then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a shocking primary upset due in large part to his tough-on-undocumented-immigration stance, also criticized Trump’s approach.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Taylor Budowich, executive director of the Tea Party Express, also said the real estate baron’s stance is incompatible with the Constitution.
  • That said, it remains to be seen if Trump supporters will share Tea Party leaders’ views of their idol.
Javier E

A new poll shows Trump's magical lying powers are failing him - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...l-lying-powers-are-failing-him

trump strategy crisis media politics policy

shared by Javier E on 20 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • A new poll from NPR, PBS News Hour and Marist finds that only 37 percent of Americans have a good deal of trust in the information Trump tells them about coronavirus. By contrast, 60 percent have little to no trust.
  • Meanwhile, the poll also finds that 50 percent have a good deal of trust in the news media’s information about the disease, versus 47 percent who lack trust
  • a great deal is at stake here. Our national response to a crisis with extraordinarily far-reaching destructive potential is more or less under the control of a megalomaniac who, with the eager backing of his media allies, vastly prioritizes protecting his reelection chances over protecting the country.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The Post reports that Trump propagandists like Sean Hannity have stampeded in herd-like fashion from initially attacking the media for supposedly hyping coronavirus to claiming its dire nature actually displays Trump’s heroism.
  • First Trump and his propagandists falsely accused the media of exaggerating the threat to protect his initial instinct to downplay it himself, all to avoid rattling the markets, to buoy his reelection hopes.
  • when it became obvious the crisis was very serious indeed, Trump attacked the media to falsely discredit its aggressive reporting on his failure to respond to it competently and with urgency. And now, Trump’s propagandists are supplanting that accurate reporting with their own narrative — one in which the very same crisis they previously downplayed now showcases Trump’s decisive and “bold” leadership.
  • another report, from the New York Times, ferrets out alarming new behind-the-scenes details that underscore just how unfit Trump is to the task at hand. It shows that Trump’s refusal to accept the seriousness of coronavirus, and his failure to lay down clear chains of command and elaborate a real long-term plan, created a situation in which officials scrambled to address the crisis almost behind his back.
  • it’s somewhat heartening that the new NPR poll finds that 44 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis, while 49 percent disapprove of it.
  • While 85 percent of Republicans approve, crucially, only 40 percent of independents do, while 50 percent disapprove.
  • One bit of bad news: 46 percent of Americans say the federal government is doing enough to combat coronavirus, which is obviously not the case, while 44 percent say it is not.
  • However, 70 percent are concerned that coronavirus will spread to their communities, a massive swing from 44 percent last month, in spite Trump’s efforts to downplay it
  • Meanwhile, only 37 percent of Americans trust what Trump tells them about coronavirus, while 60 percent do not, and among independents, that’s an even worse 35 percent to 62 percent. Among women it’s a staggering 31 percent to 66 percent.
  • All this comes as we are confronting very grim new realities. The White House appears to have been jolted by new research out of Britain demonstrating that if the government and individuals do nothing to combat coronavirus’s spread, up to 2.2 million Americans could die.
  • Conversely, that research also shows that doing what is necessary to seriously curtail such numbers will require sustained, drastic disruptions — and with them, a potentially severe economic downturn.
  • All this means that in addition to the threat it poses to the country, coronavirus also poses an existential threat to Trump’s presidency. This Trump-protection project will only grow more urgent
  • Trump and his propagandists have absolute faith in the power of their magical lies to discredit the news media and to substitute their own version of reality for the one the media is reporting. And Trump has kept up the attacks on the press for precisely this purpose.
Javier E

New questions about Trump's ugly Bible stunt hint at some dark truths - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...le-stunt-hint-some-dark-truths

trump bible stunt causes history

shared by Javier E on 16 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Disturbing new details are emerging about the violent crackdown on protesters that preceded President Trump’s Bible photo op near the White House
  • What was supposed to capture Trump bravely standing up for “law and order” is rapidly coming to typify his megalomania, his terror of looking weak, and — perversely enough — his profound contempt for the rule of law
  • a crucial fact: Trump and his handlers have gone to extraordinary lengths to showcase this moment as a great triumph.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • At the core of the new Post report are two questions: Who issued the order to clear away the protesters, and to what degree was it linked to the decision to hold that photo op?
  • The administration has defended itself by claiming the two were not linked, and that the removal action carried out a decision to expand the security perimeter around the White House that had been made in advance.
  • But numerous other officials, including the chiefs of the D.C. police and National Guard Bureau, have now challenged this claim. They say they had no advance notice that the U.S. Park Police would commence forcible removal. That undercuts the notion that it was part of a pre-planned effort.
  • at the time, Trump was in a rage inside the White House about reports that he was hunkered down, the report documents. White House officials were discussing expanding the perimeter, but they were also discussing holding an event to showcase Trump in control — the visit to the church.
  • ven if the perimeter expansion had been discussed, there was never any firm indication of a time when it would happen. And then, right after Trump made the decision to walk to the church, this was relayed to the Secret Service on the ground, whereupon the crackdown suddenly ensued, including chemical gassing and violent shoving with shields.
  • there’s still another revelation here: The clearing away of the protesters might have violated a 2015 court settlement between the Park Police and the Justice Department.
  • That 2015 settlement set new rules for how federal law enforcement engages with protesters, requiring three audible warnings about pending dispersal, plus the identification of avenues for protesters to disperse themselves peacefully.
  • there was already a strong case that the protesters’ First Amendment rights were violated.
  • “The government can impose reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on speech in public forums, and in some circumstances it can clear protesters to protect public safety or the safety of public officials,”
  • “But the First Amendment requires that the restrictions be reasonable,” Jaffer said. “They went from zero to 60 in a matter of seconds.”
  • The 2015 settlement more clearly defined what law enforcement must do to protect protesters’ rights in a situation like this, yet this appears to have been violated as well,
  • “These limits were totally disregarded here,
  • this episode stands as the precipitating moment at which some of the darkest and most seminal truths about the Trump presidency emerged. Trump’s abuses led military officials to feel the need to signal to the country that something is very wrong, that our values and ideals are under serious threat.
  • We are now learning that the crackdown might have been more tightly tied to Trump’s desire to stage a messianic and megalomaniacal photo op than previously known — and that the abuses undertaken to facilitate it might have been worse than we thought.
Javier E

Opinion | The Brotherhood of the Philandering Oligarchs - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-berlusconi.html

trump megalomaniac narcissism leader power politics history culture

shared by Javier E on 16 Jun 23 - No Cached
  • I covered Silvio Berlusconi.That was from 2002 to 2004, during the second of his four stints as prime minister of Italy. He was arguably at the peak of his power. And he was Trump before Trump, a harbinger of Trump, a dress rehearsal of Trump, nearly as hubristic, similarly nationalistic, contemptuous of norms, disdainful of the law, a creature of show business awash in creature comforts, loud, lewd — all of it.
  • The Times on Tuesday, Mattia Ferraresi sketched the many parallels between the two tycoons, noting, for example, that Berlusconi and his businesses were constantly drawing the attention of prosecutors, that he claimed to be the victim of rigged elections, that he bellowed about his persecution and that he cozied up to Vladimir Putin. Berlusconi and Trump are a Venn diagram that’s all overlap.
  • it’s worth dwelling a bit longer on those shared traits, because they point to verities bigger than the both of them — to dynamics that will play out in Western politics for some time.
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  • Another Berlusconi-Trump lesson is that vulgarity can be an asset, not a liability, because as soon as it’s derided as such — the minute detractors tsk-tsk and curl their lips — it positions a politician in opposition to “the elites.
  • Trump, too, has benefited from a congenital affinity for television. But he also took to more recent inventions, to changes in the information ecosystem that suited him as well as “The Apprentice” did. He spotted the internet’s fertility for lies. He saw that the greatest currency on social media is spite
  • One of those is that ultimate power and ultimate persuasion depend on an intuitive, visceral understanding of the age’s media
  • Another: Voters will put up with narcissism because many of them will interpret it at least in part as a perk of success and as confidence’s sufferable sidekick.
  • And there’s an authenticity to artifice. Trump embodies that oxymoron the same way Berlusconi did.
  • Few among us have gone to the amoral lengths of a Trump or a Berlusconi to preserve ourselves (and I don’t mean cosmetically) at any cost. That’s the real secret binding these braggarts.
  • If you don’t care about how thoroughly you’re degrading your country, if you’re willing to sacrifice its future on the altar of your own greedy here and now, you can scheme with abandon, lie with conviction and vilify anyone and everyone who gets in your way. Shamelessness is its own reward.
  • The Trumps after Trump are taking notes.
Javier E

Opinion | This Is Why Autocracies Fail - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...why-autocracies-fail.html

autocracy authoritarian liberal democracy comparison russia china

shared by Javier E on 21 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • Joe Biden correctly argues that the struggle between democracy and autocracy is the defining conflict of our time. So which system performs better under stress?
  • when it comes to the most important functions of government, autocracy has severe weaknesses
  • it’s an occasion for a realistic assessment of authoritarian ineptitude and perhaps instability. What are those weaknesses?
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The wisdom of many is better than the wisdom of megalomaniacs. In any system, one essential trait is: How does information flow? In democracies, policymaking is usually done more or less in public, and there are thousands of experts offering facts and opinions
  • People want their biggest life. Human beings these days want to have full, rich lives and make the most of their potential. The liberal ideal is that people should be left as free as possible to construct their own ideal. Autocracies restrict freedom for the sake of order.
  • To me, the lesson is that even when we’re confronting so-far successful autocracies like China, we should learn to be patient and trust our liberal democratic system.
  • They don’t hire the smartest and best people. Such people might be threatening. They hire the dimmest and the most mediocre. You get a government of third-raters.
  • Ethnonationalism self-inebriates. Everybody worships something. In a liberal democracy, worship of the nation (which is particular) is balanced by the love of liberal ideals (which are universal). With the demise of communism, authoritarianism lost a major source of universal values. National glory is pursued with intoxicating fundamentalism.
  • Government against the people is a recipe for decline. Democratic leaders, at least in theory, serve their constituents. Autocratic leaders, in practice, serve their own regime and longevity, even if it means neglecting their people.
  • Organization man turns into gangster man. People rise through autocracies by ruthlessly serving the organization, the bureaucracy. That ruthlessness makes them aware others may be more ruthless and manipulative, so they become paranoid and despotic
  • When we are confronting imperial aggressors like Putin, we should trust the ways we are responding now. If we steadily, patiently and remorselessly ramp up the economic, technological and political pressure, the weaknesses inherent in the regime will grow and grow.
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