Is the former President tweaking again, or:

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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

Post by Moksha »

Gunnar wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 10:18 pm
The longer this nonsense goes on, the more incredible it seems that so many Republican politicians are still eager to hitch their wagons to the increasingly obviously doomed Trump train.
Trump represents the American Fascist movement which coalesced under him. As long as Trump lives, the former GOP will goosestep behind him.
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

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This is interesting:

“Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res said on Wednesday night that, in her opinion, Weisselberg has flipped and was cooperating with New York prosecutors with two criminal investigations hanging over him.”

deetz: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ident.html

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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 12:51 am
This is interesting:

“Former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res said on Wednesday night that, in her opinion, Weisselberg has flipped and was cooperating with New York prosecutors with two criminal investigations hanging over him.”

deetz: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ident.html

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I would be looking for Michael Cohen to comment on this. I would have confidence in his assessment.
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

Post by Gunnar »

Moksha wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 10:52 pm
Trump represents the American Fascist movement which coalesced under him. As long as Trump lives, the former GOP will goosestep behind him.
I don't think this is just coincidental. There is abundant evidence that Trump is an actual admire of Hitler and his tactics. There are numerous people familiar with both Nazi Germany and Trump's tactics who have clearly pointed out the similarities between his modus operandi and Nazi Germany's.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/escape-hitlers-germany-taught-trumps-america/ wrote:What My Escape From Hitler’s Germany Taught Me About Trump’s America
To those who say that comparisons of Trump’s presidency to Nazi Germany are hyperbolic, I say try telling that to the mothers whose infants have been torn from their arms. A president responsible for such an atrocity exposes a level of cruelty that has no limits. None. Trump has already told us that for him there is little difference between the neo­-Nazis in Charlottesville and the Americans who took to the streets to condemn their bigotry.

Unlike his apologists, Trump was entirely open about what he would do if he were to lose his 2016 bid for the presidency, an outcome he and the rest of the country fully anticipated on the eve of the elections. He issued thinly veiled threats that his loss would be seen by his supporters—the ones he assured us would continue to stand with him even if he shot a person on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight—as evidence of a rigged election that would trigger an insurrection. His pal Roger Stone went further, promising a bloodbath if Democrats were to steal the race. Although Trump lost the popular vote—a loss he attributed to massive electoral fraud that, like the unprecedented attendance at his inauguration, existed only in his own imagination—we were spared the promised bloodbath because he prevailed in the Electoral College.
Thirteen Similarities Between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler

Trump: America’s Hitler?
Whether by design or by instinct, Trump has followed Hitler’s tactics in his path to power:

Hitler built his campaign around making Germany “great.” Trump’s rallying cry is “Make America Great again.”
Hitler gave the German people enemies — the Jews — to hate, blaming them for many of Germany’s problems. What he couldn’t blame on the Jews, he blamed on communists, socialists and liberals. Trump campaign of hate and fear blames our problems on immigrants, Muslims and Liberals.

Hitler had his own media outlets and attacked any media that showed him in a bad light as the enemy. Trump uses Fox News and an army of right-wing bloggers, talk hosts and commentators to deflect attention from his failings and shady activities while supporting his conspiracy theories. Any criticism of him, he labels as “fake news.”

Some German Christians believed Hitler was a gift from God because of his opposition to [anti-God] communists and his promise to restore Germany’s traditional values by coming out against, among other things, homosexuality, liberalism and abortion. Trump has gained the fanatical support of American evangelical Christians with much of the same arguments. They, too, consider Trump anointed by God to return America to its traditional [white-dominated] values and morals in spite of his demonstrated lack of morals and his consistent promotion of hate, fear and violence.
Hitler loved rallies of thousands of adoring fans to spread lies and propaganda. Trump clearly loves rallies. He uses these to rail against groups and individuals he identifies as enemies. These rallies serve to propagate his lies, misstatements and conspiracies. Since becoming president, he has told over 20,000 lies and misleading statements [as of July 13, 2020, documented by the New Your Times].

Hitler had a private militia he used to intimidate and inflict violence on his enemies. They were known as the “Brown Shirts” and were eventually replaced by the SS. Trump has already tested the concept of a private army when he sent what appeared to be law enforcement officers to harass peaceful demonstrators in Portland, Oregon. These officers had no organizational or personal identification and they arrived in vehicles that had no identifying marks. He has since made what are obvious overtures to unsanctioned white supremacist militias.
The above examples are just a small sampling of the indications that Trump very likely admired and tried to emulate Hitler.

One of Trump's chief advisers sounded like and even looked like Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's chief propogandist and one of the architects of Hitler's rise to power, particularly in his repeated claims that the free press was the enemy of the people.

Trump apparently admired the writings and speeches of Adolf Hitler:

Schmidt: Trump's 'only affinity for reading anything were the Adolf Hitler speeches he kept on his nightstand'

This was confirmed by Trump's ex-wife:
According to a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump once told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that her husband, real-estate mogul Donald Trump, now a leading Republican presidential candidate, kept a book of Hitler's speeches near his bed.
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

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Gunnar wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 2:09 am
One of Trump's chief advisers sounded like and even looked like Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's chief propagandist and one of the architects of Hitler's rise to power, particularly in his repeated claims that the free press was the enemy of the people.
Goebbels probably would have questioned why Trump insisted on lying about everything, but he would have appreciated Trump being a disciple of The Big Lie.
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

Post by Gunnar »

Moksha wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 4:12 am
Goebbels probably would have questioned why Trump insisted on lying about everything, but he would have appreciated Trump being a disciple of The Big Lie.
Considering Trump's penchant for lying even when the truth wouldn't have hurt him, and even a few times when the truth would actually have served him better, you may well be right. I'm sure that even Goebbels would have thought it foolish of Trump to lie even when there were no clear benefit or advantage to be gained by doing so. Any clever con man knows it is impossible to establish any kind of credibility with his intended marks without telling easily verifiable truths a good part or even most of the time.
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

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Gunnar wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 10:18 pm
The longer this nonsense goes on, the more incredible it seems that so many Republican politicians are still eager to hitch their wagons to the increasingly obviously doomed Trump train.
It's the transactional mindset: what works now. It got them elected. But Gunnar, I must admit that it is still baffling. The handwriting on the wall is getting easier to read, but no one seems to be reading.

****

Jennifer Weisselberg (Alan's former daughter-in-law) told CNN she thinks Alan Weisselberg will flip. Why would she say that? It's possible she is trying to push her ex-husband's father towards that decision by making it a public possibility, because it then becomes more of an inevitability for him.

Look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars for private schools and summer camps, all provided by Grampa Alan. By not flipping, Weisselberg threatens the most important thing in his life: the wellbeing of his family. I think the man genuinely loves Trump, but his family will prevail.

Guys like Weisselberg, they're the Albert Speers of the world. The technocrats who get sucked into evil for wealth, power and self-validation. Believe it or not, I feel for the man. People compartmentalize because it allows them to survive without having the same set of values for all decisions. What is happening is that the wall he built in his own mind between business and his family has been blown up. His business and family life had always run on parallel tracks, but the tracks are diverging and he has to make a decision. Take the Trump train, have the government seize your assets and go to jail, or take the family train and betray your padrino.

At this point in his life I think Weisselberg could consider suicide but for what it would do to his family. No, it boils down to loyalty to family or Trump. And by now, everyone is familiar with the deal. You give the government EVERYTHING.
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

Post by Gunnar »

MeDotOrg wrote:
Fri May 21, 2021 7:18 pm
Gunnar wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 10:18 pm
The longer this nonsense goes on, the more incredible it seems that so many Republican politicians are still eager to hitch their wagons to the increasingly obviously doomed Trump train.
It's the transactional mindset: what works now. It got them elected. But Gunnar, I must admit that it is still baffling. The handwriting on the wall is getting easier to read, but no one seems to be reading.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that no one seems to be reading. There seems to be a slowly growing number of Republican defectors who are beginning to notice and understand "the handwriting on the wall", but I agree it is baffling how few of them there are, as well as alarming.
Jennifer Weisselberg (Alan's former daughter-in-law) told CNN she thinks Alan Weisselberg will flip. Why would she say that? It's possible she is trying to push her ex-husband's father towards that decision by making it a public possibility, because it then becomes more of an inevitability for him.

Look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars for private schools and summer camps, all provided by Grampa Alan. By not flipping, Weisselberg threatens the most important thing in his life: the wellbeing of his family. I think the man genuinely loves Trump, but his family will prevail.
Unless Weisselberg has a mindset similar to Trump's (or perhaps, Albert Speer's whose biographical details you linked to), I find it at least equally baffling that he would genuinely love Trump. I fervently hope you are correct that his concern for his family will prevail. It would also be nice if his love for his country and fellow citizens and democracy would also prevail over his devotion to Trump.
At this point in his life I think Weisselberg could consider suicide but for what it would do to his family. No, it boils down to loyalty to family or Trump. And by now, everyone is familiar with the deal. You give the government EVERYTHING.
I'm sure it has proved or will prove to be hard and painful lesson to him. I have a hard time having sympathy for him, though. He should have known better than to place so much stock in an obvious charlatan like Trump that he would willingly facilitate or overlook Trump's shady business practices, and thereby risk serious legal and criminal consequences to himself as well. I have much more sympathy for his family, who could wind up living with whatever embarrassment or disgrace they might feel for those consequences he might have brought upon himself.

Thanks for the link to Albert Speer's life and the role he played in Hitler's despotism. It added greatly to what little I already knew about Speer, and was fascinating and entertaining reading. :)
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

Post by Gunnar »

Gunnar wrote:
Sat May 22, 2021 12:29 am
I wouldn't go so far as to say that no one seems to be reading. There seems to be a slowly growing number of Republican defectors who are beginning to notice and understand "the handwriting on the wall", but I agree it is baffling how few of them there are, as well as alarming.
On second thought, the real problem probably is not that most of them don't notice or understand "the handwriting on the wall." They are so cowardly and fear the very shadow of Trump so much that they don't dare acknowledge the increasingly obvious truth out of fear of Trump and his cult-like base and how they will turn on them if they do so.

Cheney says some GOP members voted against impeachment out of fear for their lives
Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, whose criticism of former President Donald Trump led to her ouster from House Republican leadership, said Friday that several Republican members of Congress had voted against impeaching Trump out of fear for their own lives.

Telling CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead" that there are "more members who believe in substance and policy and ideals than are willing to say so," Cheney cited the impeachment vote earlier this year, in which she was one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to hold Trump accountable for the Capitol riot.

"If you look at the vote to impeach, for example, there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security -- afraid, in some instances, for their lives," she said. "And that tells you something about where we are as a country, that members of Congress aren't able to cast votes, or feel that they can't, because of their own security."
This is a tragically sad state of affairs! :( :evil:

Even ajax cannot possibly claim with a straight face that Cheney is saying this because she is a secretly a liberal, communist loving flake, can he? She has consistently shown herself to be one of the hardest right conservatives! Much more conservative than her replacement Stefanik!
Last edited by Gunnar on Sun May 23, 2021 1:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is the former President tweaking again, or:

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Gunnar wrote:
Sun May 23, 2021 12:58 am
This is a tragically sad state of affairs! :( :evil:
They got what they chose.

If they had any sense at all, they could make him irrelevant in a heartbeat. But they don't have any sense. So they're not.
We only get stronger when we are lifting something that is heavier than what we are used to. ~ KF

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