Donald Trump

[Chip Butty]

For me, Mrs Butty, who I hasten to add, does not do politics, has concluded and decanted his first 30 days or so of office into one succinct statement and has come up with this - he's a knobhead.

 

She's turned into a political tour-de-force in our house after that one.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

He's tweeting about the "fake" media again.

 

Saying they're not his enemy, but are instead "the enemy of the people"

[njackets]

He's tweeting about the "fake" media again.

 

Saying they're not his enemy, but are instead "the enemy of the people"

True statement.

[moof]

True statement.

Alternative truth, sure.

[RedKnight]

It's the work of a dictator, not a president.

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

True statement.

Shurrup, you whopper.

[njackets]

Shurrup, you whopper.

What he's said isn't true?

[Anubis]

.

[razor]

True statement.

 

You are looking in the wrong place for this bastion of integrity who is uncovering the role of the media in maintaining the oppressive status quo.  Don't you see this?

 

Trump being praised for attacking the pernicious media is like praising Aki as there's not enough love in the world.

 

The media are pernicious.  There isn't enough love in the world.

 

Trump telling lies and propagating more "fake news" than he is uncovering and Aki harassing young men feeling their muscles in the street should not be praised as addressing these two sad points.

[Neil G]

Stop feeding it.

[JohnnyH]

[Vincent Vega]

He's reminding me of Clinton Baptiste from Phoenix Nights:

 

"It's not my fault they can't handle the truth".

[cloggypop]

True statement.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39015559

[G Richards]

It's unreal. The outlets he checks aren't even especially left wing - I suppose over here most of them would be, but not way out there. More centre, or centre- left. And Fox is OK? And Breitbart? What a joker!

 

His attack on the press is squarely out of step with the First Amendment. The man's a loon.

[Rick Sanchez C-137]

This whole season of South Park has been dedicated to the Trumpifaction of the world.

[magicrat]

I keep hearing the FBI are about to take him on over Russian contacts going back years. I suppose they must have so much dirt on him they could sink him . Sooner the better please, I keep waking up and finding myself in an alternative universe where a circus clown is leader of the free world

[Vincent Vega]

I heard something on one of the news channels this week that there are American oil companies desperate for Russian sanctions to be dropped as they stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars. I'd imagine Trump's diverged business interests will be due a nice little earner.

 

Does anyone think he will get to complete a year as president, let alone a full term?

[Fugitive]

Njackets defo got egged at the lost luggage office in lime street station last year.

 

What a despicable cunt.

[Lee909]

[Red Phoenix]

 

That has a good point which I'm not going against, but Bernstein himself should be aware of the crap that the WaPo is involved in more than most. This is what he wrote shortly after he left them, and it's a good read : The CIA and the Media - How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

[Fugitive]

That has a good point which I'm not going against, but Bernstein himself should be aware of the crap that the WaPo is involved in more than most. This is what he wrote shortly after he left them, and it's a good read : The CIA and the Media - How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

That self-imposed exile lasted long.

[Red Phoenix]

That self-imposed exile lasted long.

 

Yeah it's the thing with the media, I think it's important to point out some of the hypocrisy involved (and a lot more important than my own bullshit with this thread/forum.)

 

Trump is a nightmare, I agree with you all on that. We have to remember how corrupt the media are at the same time though, and how their motives should be questioned. The WaPo are up there with some of the worst, partly because of the huge influence they have, and partly because of things like this :

 

Jeff Bezos Is Doing Huge Business with the CIA, While Keeping His Washington Post Readers in the Dark

 

Amazon has a bad history of currying favor with the U.S. government’s “national security” establishment.

 

By Norman Solomon / AlterNet

December 18, 2013

 

News media should illuminate conflicts of interest, not embody them. But the owner of the Washington Post is now doing big business with the Central Intelligence Agency, while readers of the newspaper’s CIA coverage are left in the dark.

 

The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon -- which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.

 

Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.

 

And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech “cloud” infrastructure.

 

Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”

 

As Amazon’s majority owner and the Post’s only owner, Bezos stands to gain a lot more if his newspaper does less ruffling and more soothing of CIA feathers.

 

Amazon has a bad history of currying favor with the U.S. government’s “national security” establishment. The media watch group FAIR pointed out what happened after WikiLeaks published State Department cables: “WikiLeaks was booted from Amazon’s webhosting service AWS. So at the height of public interest in what WikiLeaks was publishing, readers were unable to access the WikiLeaks website.”

 

How’s that for a commitment to the public’s right to know?

 

Days ago, my colleagues at RootsAction.org launched a petition that says: “The Washington Post’s coverage of the CIA should include full disclosure that the sole owner of the Post is also the main owner of Amazon -- and Amazon is now gaining huge profits directly from the CIA.” More than 15,000 people have signed the petition so far this week, with many posting comments that underscore widespread belief in journalistic principles.

 

While the Post functions as a powerhouse media outlet in the Nation’s Capital, it’s also a national and global entity -- read every day by millions of people who never hold its newsprint edition in their hands. Hundreds of daily papers reprint the Post’s news articles and opinion pieces, while online readership spans the world.

 

Propaganda largely depends on patterns of omission and repetition. If, in its coverage of the CIA, the Washington Post were willing to fully disclose the financial ties that bind its owner to the CIA, such candor would shed some light on how top-down power actually works in our society.

 

“The Post is unquestionably the political paper of record in the United States, and how it covers governance sets the agenda for the balance of the news media,” journalism scholar Robert W. McChesney points out. “Citizens need to know about this conflict of interest in the columns of the Post itself.”

 

In a statement just released by the Institute for Public Accuracy, McChesney added: “If some official enemy of the United States had a comparable situation -- say the owner of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in secretive contracts from the Maduro government -- the Post itself would lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for making a mockery of a free press. It is time for the Post to take a dose of its own medicine.”

 

http://www.alternet.org/media/owner-washington-post-doing-business-cia-while-keeping-his-readers-dark

[G Richards]

I heard something on one of the news channels this week that there are American oil companies desperate for Russian sanctions to be dropped as they stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars. I'd imagine Trump's diverged business interests will be due a nice little earner.

Does anyone think he will get to complete a year as president, let alone a full term?

Exxon has a $500Billion oil deal with Russia that was frozen due to sanctions. Putin helped to elect Trump in the knowledge that sanctions would be dropped. Rex Tillerson was the CEO of Exxon at the time. He's now part of Trumpy's government as Energy Secretary. There is a lot of money standing to be made on all sides here.

 

At the moment, in an effort to disguise this rather obvious scenario, Tillerson is playing 'hardline' as he recently commented on Russia giving Crimea back to Ukraine. Putin, understandably, was resolute in saying that's Russia's business.

 

My own best guess is all this was sorted out long before Trumpy got into power. America will get some small progress on appearing to take a hardline on Russia, but it will only be what Russia was prepared to give anyway, and it won't be nearly as hardline as the sanctions. After the PR plays out everything will be loosened up and everyone all around will make billions. Literally many billions.

 

Exxon has rights to exploit over 63 million oil rich acres in Russia. Thats about double the size of England. That's a lot of oil. As ever, follow the money...

 

The current President is wholly unqualified. A lot of politicians in history have been a little bit crooked. Hillary Clinton sort of epitomized that, but this is something altogether different again. The White House is being used as a vehicle for personal financial gain for a small group of already super-wealthy elites. It's so obvious it's unreal.

 

I suspect that Trump has an idea that he is susceptible for impeachment, hence his earnest endeavour to brand the media as crooked. If and when he is impeached, it will be 'proof' to his many supporters that the media and the intelligence agencies had it in for him all along.

 

At that point Pence will become President and he will enforce a typical conservative political agenda. A lot of people won't like it, but at least at at point it will become an ideological battle, and not the 'epic swindle' (apologies for the sporting reference) that is currently taking place.

[cloggypop]

I heard something on one of the news channels this week that there are American oil companies desperate for Russian sanctions to be dropped as they stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars. I'd imagine Trump's diverged business interests will be due a nice little earner.

 

Does anyone think he will get to complete a year as president, let alone a full term?

Trump appointed Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, as Secretary of State.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-picks-exxonmobil-ceo-rex-tillerson-for-secretary-of-state/2016/12/12/23ce9c80-c0e3-11e6-897f-918837dae0ae_story.html

 

It's more than a bit crooked.

[G Richards]

PS - not sure if this made the news in England, it's a smaller thing, but fairly incredible nonetheless, and illustrates perfectly the financial dealings happening in and around US government personnel at present.

 

The Kushner family are trying to buy the Miami Marlins baseball team. They are a billionaire family and the son is married to Ivanka Trump and is also part of Trumps inner circle - completely violating ethical standards of nepotism. Anyhow, the owner of the Marlins quite fancies the gig of Ambassador to France.

 

Watch this one! The Kushner family has cooled on the deal 'at this time' but it's a sham. The Marlins owner will get a cushy ambassador gig and the Kushner family will buy the Marlins down the line.

 

Here's a quote from a Kushner family spokesman, note the "unrelated transaction" part. It's laughable!

 

"Although the Kushners have made substantial progress in discussions for us to purchase the Marlins, recent reports suggest that Mr. Loria will soon be nominated by the President to be Ambassador to France,” the statement reads. “If that is true, we do not want this unrelated transaction to complicate that process and will not pursue it. The Kushners remain interested in purchasing a team and would love to buy the Marlins at another time.”