Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "The Lincoln Project"
channel.
-
1200
-
1000
-
972
-
959
-
Trump lives by the rules of the coward's playbook.
Rule 1. Take credit for everything, but responsibility for nothing. Always blame others for acts that you have clearly committed, and take credit for positive things that you had absolutely nothing to do with.
Rule 2. Never tell the truth, when a lie will do just fine. Lie about all things, great and small.
Rule 3. Take advantage of any crisis, and use them as an excuse to unleash your true authoritarian nature.
Rule 4. Become the victim, and the " strongman." You must master the art of playing the poor victim, juxtaposed with playing the "strongman" that always wins.
Rule 5. Never put anyone or anything before yourself, unless you're physically using that person or thing as a shield.
Rule 6. Betrayal is a good thing.
Rule 7. Loyalty is a one way street that runs from everyone else straight to you.
Rule 8. When in doubt, blame Obama.
Rule 9. In any situation, always ask yourself "what would a man of integrity do? What would a man with intestinal fortitude do? What would a man of physical and moral courage do?" And then do the exact opposite.
771
-
"Since Donald was elected, I’ve been surprised by nothing he’s done or said. But I have been shocked by the wholesale abdication of responsibility by the Republican party during this election campaign and throughout the past four years. I didn’t understand the extent to which they would be willing to enable him in Congress and in his cabinet. If they had done their job and acted as a separate branch of government, he would have been contained. By siding with him 100% of the time, they have ensured we are now faced with several concurrent disasters that are getting exponentially worse.
No other president in history has been able to push the envelope the way Donald does. He’s always trying to see what he can get away with and, as I have seen through the course of his life, he’s always got away with everything. No one holds him accountable. He constantly gets rewarded for failing. The Republicans understood what he was capable of and have allowed him to push through an agenda that is completely at odds with what the majority wants.
My theory about the way Donald has run his campaign is that he knows he’s in desperate shape, so he’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division, because that’s where he succeeds. He knows that he’s losing – he’ll deny it mightily – and at some level he understands what’s at stake. If he loses, he’s probably going to prison. So, if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.
I’ve always believed that deep down Donald is a terrified little boy. The amount of fear he’s feeling now has got to be unhinging him. Not only did he get sick with the virus, there’s the tax story and his prospects in the election looking really bad right now. He’s got to be absolutely panicked.
He’s ignored the severity of the pandemic all year because the idea of illness as weakness is so deeply ingrained in his family, that even an association with it is unacceptable. But now his statement – you can beat it, don’t be afraid of it – is going to result in more people becoming sick, and many of those will die. Even before he said that, I believed he was engaging in ma55murder, but that sealed it for me. Anybody who’s capable of putting hundreds of millions of people at risk to avoid looking bad doesn’t care about you."
--Bob Woodward
698
-
A descendant of Robert E. Lee stepped down as pastor of a small NC church after his comments supporting racial justice sparked a backlash.
The general's distant nephew, the Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, issued a statement saying he resigned from Bethany United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem after the congregation decided to put his tenure to a vote.
Some church members were not comfortable with Lee’s remarks during the MTV awards when he introduced the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville while protesting against white supremacy.
“We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate,” he said on the music network. “As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America's original sin.”
Although Lee issued an apology to church members for causing them pain with his remarks, he said he continues to “strongly support” removal of monuments to his ancestor and other Confederates..
To me, this is proof that some Christians only talk the talk. But there are some who actually walk the walk like this pastor. Kudos to you Reverend Lee.
545
-
Trump thought he could just BS his way through the presidency the same way he has BS'ed his way through life, and everything would be just fine.
Trump has never solved a problem in his life. Trump IS the problem. He has always been an agent of chaos and destruction.
In the end, he really doesn't care what happens to the country. It's all just a game to him, and the objective of the game is for him to extract as much personal wealth as he can before everyone finally catches on to his con, and realizes that he has no clue what he's doing. He has done the exact same thing with his fake charity foundation , his fake university, and his casinos.
Even as his casinos did poorly, Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. And that is Trump in a nutshell. A narcissistic sociopathic con-man who only cares about himself, and will use others to achieve his own self-serving desires.
In interviews with The Times, Trump acknowledged that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic City was that he had made a lot of money there.
Trump assembled his casino empire by borrowing money at such high interest rates — after telling regulators he would not — that the businesses had almost no chance to succeed.
His casino companies made four trips to bankruptcy court, each time persuading bondholders to accept less money rather than be wiped out. But the companies repeatedly added more expensive debt and returned to the court for protection from lenders.
After narrowly escaping financial ruin in the early 1990s by delaying payments on his debts, Trump avoided a second potential crisis by taking his casinos public and shifting the risk to stockholders.
And he never was able to draw in enough gamblers to support all of the borrowing. During a decade when other casinos there thrived, Trump’s lagged, posting huge losses year after year. Stock and bondholders lost more than $1.5 billion.
Trump now says that he left Atlantic City at the perfect time. Well no sh't. He left after he had ruined everything, and there was no more money for him to grift. The record shows that he struggled to hang on to his casinos years after the city had peaked, and failed only because his investors no longer wanted him in a management role..
He just did not put the equity into the projects he should have to keep them solvent,” said H. Steven Norton, a casino consultant. “When he went bankrupt, he not only cost bondholders money, but he hurt a lot of small businesses that helped him construct the Taj Mahal.”
In an interview with the Times, Trump said “Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.” Like a true sociopath, Trump boasts about how he ravaged Atlantic City, without any regard for all the people and businesses he hurt along the way.
Beth Rosser of West Chester, Pa., is still bitter over what happened to her father, whose company Triad Building Specialties nearly collapsed when Trump took the Taj into bankruptcy. It took three years to recover any money owed for his work on Trump's casino" she said, and her father received only 30 cents on the dollar.
“Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said Ms. Rosser, who runs Triad today. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects."
“He put a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them,” said Steven P. Perskie, who was New Jersey’s top casino regulator in the early 1990s. “So when he left Atlantic City, it wasn’t, ‘Sorry to see you go.’ It was, ‘How fast can you get the he// out of here?’”
445
-
398
-
In her new book, Trump's niece Mary describes Donald as a “toxic” bully who practices “cheating as a way of life,” and someone who values money above anything.
In the forward to his new book entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir,” Michael Cohen writes: “Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything — and I mean anything — to ‘win’ has always been his business model and way of life,” he added.
Trump will definitely try to cheat in order to win reelection. Trump is a natural born loser, therefore he has to cheat. He's never achieved anything in his life without lying and cheating.
Trump's failure as a president was inevitable. Trump was never equipped to do his job. He doesn't have the necessary tools or the wherewithal to do his job. Trump is grossly incapacitated intellectually, mentally, emotionally, temperamentally, socially, and psychologically. He couldn't properly do his job as president even if he wanted to. (Which he doesn't) Trump was always going to fail, and he was always going to blame his failures on someone or something. Lying, cheating, and bullying are his only tools for survival. They are the tools of his trade, which is being an agent of chaos, misery, and destruction. It's all he knows. He is a sad and pathetic excuse for a human being. In fact, he is less of a human being, and more of a collection of every human flaw known to mankind, all rolled into one man.
356
-
Multiple Obama-era officials have said they left the Trump administration with a 2016 “pandemic playbook” that detailed exact steps to take in the event of an infectious disease outbreak.
"What President Obama did leave Trump, was a global health infrastructure that we had set up, informed by the lessons of the Ebola outbreak,” Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under Obama said, referring to the NSC pandemic directorate that was dismantled by the Trump in 2018.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see, comprehend, or care about the threat of pandemics. Trump has defended his record, arguing, “I’m a "businessperson." I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them. When we need them, we can get them back very quickly.”
Except experts argue that’s not how pandemic preparedness works, and that's definitely not how a virus works. “You build a fire department ahead of time,” Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security stated. “You don’t wait for a fire.”
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
Ronald Klain, the White House Ebola response coordinator from October 2014 to February 2015, tweeted out a link to a document titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily. It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
The document is a 69-page National Security Council guidebook developed in 2016 with the goal of assisting leaders “in coordinating a complex U.S. Government response to a high-consequence emerging disease threat anywhere in the world.” It outlined questions to ask, who should be asked to get the answers and what key decisions should be made.
Nicole Lurie, another Obama administration official, confirmed the existence of the NSC pandemic playbook and also said similar documents were created for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The playbook listed types of infectious disease threats that could emerge. “Novel coronaviruses” were among pathogens flagged as having potential to cause heightened concern.
“We absolutely did leave a plan. It was called a playbook,” said Lisa Monaco, former homeland security adviser to President Obama. The goal, she said, was to share the lessons learned during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks..
347
-
341
-
321
-
February 2016
Ted Cruz: "Donald can't defend his own record. Whenever you point out what he's actually said, he just screams, 'liar.' He insults you. He attacks you. He makes it personal, and he gets very rattled. He doesn't like anyone pointing to his actual, substantive record. And I think that's a sign of weakness."
May 2016
Ted Cruz on Trump: "This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies — practically every word that comes out of his mouth. He's narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen."
“I think he’s a kook, I think he’s krazy. I think he’s unfit for office."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Feb, 2016
"Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you make America great again, by telling Donald Trump to go to he//."
--Lindsey Graham on Trump, Dec 8, 2015
Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting as if I'm a REAL president, and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House..
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
305
-
280
-
241
-
Trivia question: "Who goes to Moscow on the 4th of July to celebrate America's Independence day?
Republicans, that's who.
In 2018, eight republican lawmakers celebrated the 4th of July inMoscow: Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who led the delegation, along with Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, North Dakota’s John Hoeven, Jerry Moran of Kansas, South Dakota’s John Thune, and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas. The dubious reason they gave for the trip was “engagement."
The group met with a number of RussianAgents, and keyRussian officials, including foreign minister and former RussianAmbassador to the US, the two who 14 months earlier were photographed by the RussianPress yukking it up with Trump in the Oval Office, the day after Trump fired Comey for daring to do his job of investigatingRussian interference in our elections. To this day, we have no way of knowing what was discussed during their visit toMoscow, as the media was barred from the closed-door meetings, much to the delight of the GloatingRussians.
223
-
206
-
192
-
192
-
182
-
177
-
175
-
174
-
173
-
172
-
133
-
121
-
118
-
U.S. intelligence officials with the National Center for Medical Intelligence issued a report in late November warning that a virus was taking root in China. Analysts concluded it could be a "cataclysmic event,” and the report was shared with the White House, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the Defense Intelligence Agency. There were multiple briefings about the report throughout Dec, Jan, and Feb for the National Security Council, and the White House..
On Dec. 31, China publicly confirmed that dozens of people in Wuhan were being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. Three days later, on Jan. 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he first learned of the spread of the virus in China at a White House briefing attended by CDC and Prevention director Robert Redfield. Trump fired Alex Azar shortly there after because he knew too much.
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
114
-
113
-
109
-
106
-
103
-
I think America needs to have a long conversation about Trump and his crime family's close business relationships with Jyna.
Trump and his crime family have many lucrative business deals with China. Trump's products are manufactured in China. And Ivanka has conveniently received more than 30 new trademark deals in China since Trump became president. This is what happens when you have a president who from day one was compromised by greed and his own self-serving interests.
The Trumps are the landlord to one of China’s top state-owned banks, which has occupied the 20th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan since 2008. The bank’s lease is worth close to $2 million annually, according to industry estimates and a bank filing.
And despite Trump's rhetoric about American manufacturing, assembly-line workers in China still produce blouses, shoes and handbags for the clothing line created by Ivanka. Trump’s business interest in China is long-standing. He began applying for trademarks there in 2005, and in 2012, the Trump Hotel Collection opened an office in Shanghai, its first in Asia.
Trump business relationships with China are among the main examples plaintiffs in multiple court cases have cited in allegations that Trump is violating the Constitution’s “emoluments clause” by accepting payments from foreign governments.
Two of the Trump Organization’s foreign partners — developers in Dubai and Indonesia, each building residential complexes that include a Trump golf course — have announced new partnerships with state-run Chinese companies. On June 10 2018, Dubai’s Damac Properties announced that the state-run China State Construction Engineering Corp. had been awarded a contract to build roads and infrastructure at the new Akoya Oxygen. Trump will be paid to operate a golf course there, his second in the area, and paid for the use of his name.
In May 2018, Trump’s partner in Indonesia — MNC Corp. — announced that it had signed a construction contract with another state-run Chinese company, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, for its planned Lido City development. Plans for that project, in a mountainous area of West Java, include a Trump-branded golf.
Days later, Trump announced his support for Chinese-backed telecommunications firm ZTE, a departure from his previously aggressive stance toward Chinese industry that prompted ethical experts to question whether the two actions were related. But of course they were related. This is Don the con we're talking about.
103
-
97
-
92
-
On April 18, 2019, a redacted copy of Mueller’s report was released to the public. The Mueller report builds on the U.S. intelligence conclusion that there were two campaigns to elect Trump— one run by Trump and one run by the Russian government. The Mueller report clearly identified connections between the Trump campaign and Russia...
A total of 272 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia-linked operatives were identified, including at least 38 meetings. We now know that at least 33 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisers had or were at least aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition, including Trump himself, Don Jr, Manafort, Flynn, Jared, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone, just to name a few. But what's worse, is the fact that they all lied about these contacts. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover them up, every single one of them..
The question every American should be asking is why were there so many contacts(272) between Trump’s people and Russian officials and operatives, and why did Trump and his people lie about those contacts?
Helsinki July 16, 2018.
Trump: "My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me, and some others, they said they think it's Russia, I have President Putin, he just said it's not Russia . I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today."
Make no mistake, Putin is America's enemy, and not because we want him to be, he's America's enemy because that's what he has chosen to be. Trump is a Russian asset, and not because that's what we want him to be, he's a Russian asset simply because that's what he has chosen to be. We should treat them both accordingly with the choices that they have made..
Semper Fi..
91
-
90
-
The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.
This moment, Rubenstein says, “is crucial for creating the in-and-out system of government that we have. And this is unique. In that time and era, politicians would gain power, or kings would stay in office until theyDie.” At that nascent stage in American history, before precedents such as the two-term limit were even set, many were uncertain about what would happen after a galvanizing figure like Washington resigned office. But at this critical juncture, the leadership of Washington and others proved more than adequate to preserve the democracy. “Stepping down is unique,” says Rubenstein. “It’s a powerful statement about Washington and American democracy.”
84
-
83
-
79
-
78
-
Public-health experts have stated that Trump's early efforts to downplay the threat of the virus robbed the US of valuable time needed to prepare for what is now a pandemic — potentially costing thousands of lives...
You need a president who’s willing to hear bad news, willing to understand that they’re going to have to focus on something that they may have not intended to focus on. President trump clearly did not want to hear that bad news when he heard about the outbreak in coronavirus,”
--Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Adviser under President Obama..
Trump spent "two months of completely ignoring every bit of scientific advice," Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute stated in mid-March. "We've wasted two months. And this is not a disease where you're allowed to waste two months."
Jha, who received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical school, criticized Trump for telling Americans that everything was "under control" when it was very clear to anybody paying attention that it was not under control."
"I don't use these words lightly, and it's incredibly painful for me to say it," he said, adding: "The cost of all of this is that tens of thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessarily." He went on to say: "It was wholly preventable, and not just preventable in hindsight — it was preventable in foresight. Everybody said this is how it was going to play out if they didn't act."
Trump said that COVID-19 “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.” His comments left scientists, doctors, and national security experts in a state of disbelief. Experts had been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House, charged with preparing for WHEN, NOT if, another pandemic would hit the nation.
Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see or comprehend the threat of pandemics.
“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed. She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”
67
-
Trump: "I'm not taking responsibility for any of this. People are acting like I'm a REAL president and a real leader. I'm the same guy who betrayed America in front of the entire world in Helsinki. I'm nothing more than a fraud, who with the help of Putin, managed to con my way into the Oval Office. Plus most people knew I was fundamentally unfit intellectually, morally, temperamentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be president. Someone as mentally unstable and divorced from reality as I clearly am, should have NEVER been allowed anywhere near the White House...
So again, don't blame me, blame the people who were dumb enough to vote for me. Blame republicans in Congress who aided, abetted, and pardoned my crimes. Blame people like Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch. They both know exactly who and what I am, but yet they continue to defend me. For crying out loud, Lindsey Graham even stated on fox, that I was in fact, a Krazy, race-baiting bigot. So you see, I'm the same person that I've always been, an irredeemable con-man and a sociopath, but you already knew that."
66
-
63
-
59
-
59
-
53
-
For the last four straight years, Trump, along with his surrogates, have adopted and used some of the most fiendish propaganda tactics on his followers. They have told so many lies, that Trump’s followers can no longer distinguish truth from fiction.
Goebbels in 1941 said, “There are so many lies that truth and swindle can scarcely be distinguished."
"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition, and a psychological understanding of the people concerned, that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise."
-- Joseph Goebbels
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH shall set you free
52