Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Trump: Disrupter-In-Chief
Well, just what exactly did you expect?
Trump the Candidate was a loud, braggadocious, outrageous, counterpunching, reality show celebrity/businessman who never let an attack go unanswered. To refresh your recollection, you should go do a search for “2016 Republican debate highlights.”
You’ll see Big D lashing out at each of the 16 other Republican candidates, but only after they take a shot at him. Highlights include his takedown of Rand Paul at the beginning of the first debate after Paul lashed out at Big D at the outset. Then there’s the “little Marco” moment; the “low energy Jeb” jibe; the “lyin’ Ted Cruz;” and his disarming of Carly Fiorina by accurately pointing out her disastrous reign as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
I agree with what you are saying. Many of these moments are cringeworthy. But his labels resonate—e.g., “Crooked Hillary.” And they stick.
Trump is not nice. Republicans tried “nice” with Mitt Romney in 2012. They tried “experienced and professional” with John McCain in 2008. Both lost. One of the reasons? No matter who is the Republican candidate, the Democrat politicians, and the heavily-Democrat media are not going to be nice nor professional. They’re going to say and do whatever it takes.
In the general election, it was Trump against Hillary and the Clinton army’s $2 billion war chest. Aiding Clinton and debasing Trump were the usual liberal, leftist suspects: Hollywood, the music industry, 90% of the mainstream media, pollsters, academics, and the vast majority of Deep Swampsters, including 100% opposition from the public employee unions like SEIU and the national teachers’ unions.
Big D also had against him the “never-Trumpers” in the GOP, including John McCain, who personally dispatched an aide to fly to London to pick up the Steele Dossier and return it to D.C., where McCain personally delivered it on December 6, 2016 to now-disgraced FBI Director Jim Comey. McCain fully admits this dossier gambit in his recent autobiography, “The Restless Wave.”
Trump voters were labeled “deplorables” by Hillary. Peter Strzok referred to them as smelly WalMart shoppers in an email to girlfriend Lisa Page. But, even after the vulgar Billy Bush tape, Trump voters, whom Obama described as “clinging to their guns and bibles,” voted for Donald J. Trump in droves on November 6, 2016, resulting in an electoral landslide.
If you expected these left-wing losers to lick their wounds and walk away, you fail to understand their self-righteous, quasi-religious zealotry. Before and after Big D’s inauguration, top management at Obama’s DOJ, FBI, and State Department implemented what Peter Strzok called their “insurance policy.” FBI used non-agent informants to spy on Trump’s campaign and his transition team. These informants entrapped the hapless wannabes, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, and FISA warrants were issued based on false allegations in the Steele Dossier, paid for by HRC and the DNC, and made up out of whole cloth.
These same Democrat interests who fought Trump in the campaign, continued post-election, to fight their dirty war against President Trump. The falsified Russia collusion claim was promoted by Deep Staters Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr (Bruce and Nellie), Brennan, Clapper and others, aided and abetted by Rosenstein and Mueller.
The elements leading up to the Mueller appointment: Jeff Session’s recusal, the rise to power of Rosenstein, the Comey/Clapper leak of the Steele Dossier to CNN, who handed it off to BuzzFeed for publication, were orchestrated seamlessly by these Swampsters.
This “insurance policy” could not have been pulled off without significant advanced planning and coordination. Of course, all developments were breathlessly reported by a mainstream media fed by incessant leaks from the Swamp.
So, when Big D demeans others who attack him (e.g., traitorous John Brennan, Omarosa, Schumer), or when he says something gauche or vulgar; or when he does anything that makes you wince, just remember that Trump would never have beaten his Republican opponents or HRC if he were a conventional politician.
And if Trump had lost, we would not have enjoyed 4% GDP growth in the last quarter. There would have been no tax cuts and no massive deregulation. The military would have continued to deteriorate; Big Government would have continued to expand.
So, just look the other way while Trump is “draining the Swamp.” The Swamp is not going to give up without a fight. And Big D is a fighter par excellence.
Published in Politics
Spell check wants me to type this as “Crania-Rectal Inversion” or as “Cranial-Rectal Inversion.” Are you sure that “Cranio-Rectal Inversion” is correct?
Is this a regular word that spell check would handle?
No; I am not. Of your two examples, I’d go with the latter.
Damn! I will copywrite “Cranial-Rectal Inversion,” however all are encouraged to steal it without attribution!
Completely off-subject, but it’s been a meme for a long time. At my old job-site, someone retiring after getting fed up with the company passed out the photo below with the caption: Just Trying to See Things From Management’s Point-of-View.
Yep, this was the McLame point I was going to make. I’m sorry, Gary, but while there is a pattern to your repeated point – it is not causal in nature. Learn the mantra – “correlation is not causation”. It will serve you well.
There are three requirements to access classified information.
1. A security clearance at the requisite level (Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret). – this drives the cost to obtain the clearance, and the time frame between re-investigations.
2. Need to know. This is determined by the position the individual holds and the determination of the owner of the information (the original classification authority)
3. A signed and current NDA.
In short, Brennan had a current investigation, but not need to know anything or (I suppose, absent a consulting contract) a current NDA.
President Trump’s determination invalidates his current background investigation (necessitating another), removes his “need to know”, and invokes the termination clause of his NDA.
I’m convinced that 90% of those reporting in the media have no clue. I knew someone who had what the security folks call a “reportable incident”. That resulted in an investigation into whether his clearance should be revoked for cause. Because I knew the situation, I spent well over an hour in the hot seat being interviewed about what happened and whether to revoke his clearance. That is completely different from being told that because you have completed your specific assignment, you will be “administratively de-briefed”. In the latter circumstance, one can have his clearance re-instated in a very few weeks if the sponsoring agency desires, and of course, if the investigation is current. What is the situation for Brennan, or is anyone certain?
I don’t know this to be the case but I heard a retired CIA person say it. ‘A retired CIA officer must behave as if still with the Agency’. This may not be enforceable but it certainly would justify the pulling of the security clearance. And as far as I can tell it only applies to CIA personnel.
I’ve heard this one described as administrative.
Here is another thing. If this all turns out the way it is looking to those of us who think what went on with the Clinton email server and the Trump Campaign/Russia thing was wrong and perhaps criminal, there will be lots of security clearances revoked and I suspect many of those are closely connected to contract and legal work by people not working as government employees. A lot at stake would explain the angst.
It’s sad, but there is nothing new about this stuff. Those in the community are familiar with the story of John Deutch. This is from wikipedia:
Deutch left the CIA on December 15, 1996,[2] and soon after it was revealed that several of his laptop computers contained classified information wrongfully labeled as unclassified.[8] In January 1997, the CIA began a formal security investigation of the matter. Senior management at CIA declined to fully pursue the security breach. Over two years after his departure, the matter was referred to the Department of Justice, where Attorney General Janet Reno declined prosecution. She did, however, recommend an investigation to determine whether Deutch should retain his security clearance.[9]Deutch had agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets on January 19, 2001, but President Clinton pardoned him in his last day in office, two days before the Justice Department could file the case against him.[10][11]
In no way, shape or form is Trump reducing the size of government. He is rolling back some regulations which is to the good, but let’s not pretend that he has any interest in reducing spending. He is spending to the hilt and has not interest in slowing it down in the aggregate. Can’t we “conservatives” at least be honest about that?
Of course, but there are multiple issues. The size of government is not measured just in the dollars it consumes, but also in what I’ll call, for want of a better term, the “reach” of government. By that term I mean the degree to which the federal government interferes in the daily lives of its citizens. Trump seems to be tackling that aspect first. At least, I hope it’s first and not just the only aspect he will eventually address.
It’s not simple. There is also
• a frabjously corrupt, wasteful, and dysfunctional military procurement system
• and a real need to spend on defense, even without R2P or spreading democracy as part of the mission.
I see this but it pales compared to the political corruption within government bureaucracies that should be neither political nor corrupt. That needs to be handled first and foremost. That will be for all the people.
Come on, Guys. These are not new terms. I heard them from my father when I was growing up.
So the only way to counter it is to claim that anyone would have won?
What if these claims cancel each other out? What if we just say that Trump won (that is a matter of record and requires no supposition) against both all the other Republican candidates and against the Democrat nominee.
Only Trump/Any Fool positions may be sincerely – even religiously – held, but they remain in the realm of how-many-delegates-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-hanging-chad territory.
Amen, TBA. After endless Ricochet wrangles over the subject, neither side has proven or could in fact ever prove that they’re right. The fact that he did win is what counts.
Sure, but how?
Government is invented and funded by Congress and the Senate. Presidents just run the thing.
You can copywrite it all you want, but unless you manage to copyright it nobody needs your permission.
For a classic use of a related term, see
Yea, but did he copyright it? If not, it is fair game!
His comment was a response to the OP(a post about the very topical 2016 election) that stated the government is getting smaller. It isn’t. The opposite is happening actually. There’s not only no huge cry for it to shrink, there’s not a peep, especially by this President. But some people are used to saying smaller government as a reflexive talking point, so lets attribute that too to the great leader.
And you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to defend it. You saw all the suggested versions in the Google machine. Clearly it is widely used.
Might want to put together a form letter for that.
I would go with this deal, that it has not been proven (a) that only Trump could have beaten Hillary, (b) that any Republican would likely have won in 2016. The truth is likely somewhere in between.
And Trump was legally elected as President.
Let’s move on.
Good luck with enforcing that on a phrase that has been in common parlance for at least forty years. And I suspect he picked it up when he was in the army in the Fifties.
It would take a guy with a cranial-rectal inversion to even want to try it.
Since I had never heard it before, it was only just invented!
By me!
Kids these days. They think the world was invented the day they were born.
How old are you? I am 66, having been born in 1952.