Gazza M @HomeSteak Trump commands the media because he produces the most reliable enjoyment for both conservatives who get their rocks off to his chauvinism, and the liberals who tirelessly recirculate his gaffes, legal troubles, and parodic, clownish appearance.
He's the best entertainment product in the situation, if one goes by the clicks and ratings. Look how effortlessly he has moved back to the centre of discussion in this thread. If he loses, it won't be by getting free publicity.
One thing I'll give Trump is that unlike Biden he wasn't ducking away from the media when he was president. When was the last time Biden actually faced some kind of questioning from the media?
Trump seemed to be getting in an argument every other week with someone in the media but at least he took the questions. Trump seems to have the thickest skin out due to the sheer volume of shit he takes but also seems to have the thinnest and get offended by anything and everything! Was always on Twitter moaning about random shit.
Qwiss I think the Democrats had convinced the media that the Hilary story before the previous election had swung the election. Then they pushed the whole Russia collusion thing which turned out as being nothing. If the Democrats just put a fucking good candidate out imo they'd win this election, seem to be doing everything except that!
I mean even during Covid a lot of things were being suppressed and there was some next level propaganda going on. Any view which didn't fit the narrative was shut down and now as the dust is settling it is quite worrying how that all happened.
HomeSteak I don't think the point is whether it turned out as being nothing, the fact the media actively colluded to block this story from mainstream media before an election is imo election interference. This story was relevant and was not a Russian disinformation like the media had portrayed.
The laptop didn't have anything incriminating as far as I know but there were references to someone having cuts out of business deals, then some dubious business deals in Ukraine and China from what I remember and showed him as a drug addict and pictures with prostitutes. Now for some people like Burns has hinted above they won't care but for some people they will care and it will influence their decision. I mean if Trump's kids were up to no good it would make wall to wall coverage. He's now been convicted for gun offence and may get done on Tax charges. Right or wrong but all that doesn't reflect well on Joe Biden.
JazzG I think Giuliani went to Ukraine and did a meeting with a KGB agent to try and get email credentials and then access to get some dirty from it. So even if the laptop was true, the Russian are involved, man I'm telling you as east european guy, close to Russia. They are all in, they need him to win, they only stand to win if he wins. It was all over the news what are you talking about ? lol they did coverage of it every day in Romania my man. Trump is main stream media not Biden. I don't know how you don't see that.
And talking about Trumps kids, didn't Jarded Kutchner get 2 billion dollars for a building that was worth negative hunders of millions and was close to killing the business he blacked mailed his dad out of? (despite objections from the fund’s advisers about the merits of the deal) right after Trump backed the Saudis after the CIA said they killed that guy in Turkey? Yeah, like 6 months after Trump was accused of giving them state secrets they came in and made the worst investment in world history and it was barley mentioned right? And the disident(that talked about this) was pulled from amazon, netflix and all. Again, the main stream media is pro trump, very much.
My point is, fuck em both. It is insane to me that the USA has nobody better then a stupid narcissistic orange man with the emotional intelligence of a 10 year old and cognitive intelligence of 5 year old, and a guy that has been out of it for about 5 years now, and should be in a assisted home.
Yeah they are both terrible, Trump regularly just had a go at any journalist who he disagreed with or shut them down altogether. Additionally he actually appointed his kids into roles of influence rather then then just them being his kids and swept up into things. Not to mention he's called press conferences just to boast about the stock market and how he was singularly responsible for it. Biden has plenty of flaws in his running but I don't think Trump has any redeeming quality that puts him in anyway above him. He is certainly in politics just for himself and what he can make out of it he he really doesn't care about public service. He even claimed he trusted Putin more then his own government agencies it's fully bonkers that someone like that can become president and depressing that he could still again.
our political system has been fully captured. trump is literally running for office to make his legal issues go away. if he wasnt facing major legal problems that could land him legit prison time, im pretty sure he'd have been happy to just start his own tv network to rival fox or newsmax. hes doing this to try and stay out of jail.
biden is awful, i think a large chunk of dems know it, but the party elites were terrified to pressure him not to run again, because they also dont believe in kamala harris at all, and having her as the candidate would have been really tough to overcome.
democrats are in an ideal position now as far as they are concerned. they dont have a majority in both the house and senate, so they dont actually have to try and do anything. they dont want to actually fix anything. they are corporatists who are happy to continue to take huge sums of money to keep the status quo what it is. i think they are largely unconcerned about biden losing, because they assume senate republicans wont nuke the filibuster, so they'll be able to largely avoid any major policy disasters. and with trump as president, dems can make him the target of their anger, not actually fixing the issues that are killing the non-elites here.
dems and republicans are aligned on like 80% of issues, especially as it relates to capitalism and exploitation of the poor. there is definitely divergence on repro rights, but a lot of dems are even too tepid there. biden is barely pro choice, and his record there is horrendous. and i think it shows, because abortion access is the one area that has helped dems drive people to polls, and was the reason they won a bunch of special elections over the last 18 months. but the guy at the top of the ticket only grudgingly supports the cause.
its pretty disheartening to me, a xennial, having no political home. i was skeptical of john fetterman (i voted for him) because i knew part of his appeal was a slightly manufactured image that he carefully cultivated, but seeing him completely lose his mind after his neurological event has been extra disheartening. the large majority of people living in this country are so detached from reality and have no idea just badly they are being crushed and stomped on by the wealthy ruling class. and both parties have done a fantastic job making sure they dont find out. bernie sanders started to wedge the door open, and he was promptly exiled to the shadow realm. there have been some breakthroughs when it comes to labor and organizing, but the dems are not pouring resources into it, because they cannot do anything seen as anti business for fear of losing those cushy consulting and lobbying jobs when they leave office.
i'll continue to vote, and for the most progressive candidate possible every time. it just feels really pointless and hopeless. the debate i have most frequently now with my partner is whether or not we'll be alive long enough to see the US truly balkanize and fall apart. she thinks no, and i tend to agree it will come after we are gone. but, climate change is going to destroy the earth anyway, probably a lot sooner than anyone realizes, so this is all kind of frivolous noise anyway
mdgoonah41 I don't know if I should "like" this post md, but it's a very good one. Heartfelt.
JazzG One thing I'll give Trump is that unlike Biden he wasn't ducking away from the media when he was president.
His supporters/admirers tend to rewrite history very quickly. Like we didn't live through it.
Trump is and was a terrible leader, and now he knows the ropes. If he wins can get right back into his MAGA agenda - undermining institutions, blatant corruption, and general ineptitude with zero restrictions this time. Biden is a zombie. Those are the only available options. Get excited.
The trend of fewer briefings is in sharp contrast to President Trump’s own frequent engagements with reporters.
According to data compiled by presidential press scholar Martha Kumar, Trump is well on track to become the most “accessible” president based on statistics dating back to the time of Ronald Reagan.
There's being accessible, and there's pumping out puff pieces and propaganda. The press room is a plenary session with reporters from outlets of all persuasions …
Anyway … Trump is a shit magnet by any measure. On this vast list of lawsuits faced by Trump as a defendant since he became President they've had to break it down by category, because there are probably 40–50 of them, most of which name Trump personally.
I realise that this stuff encourages his supporters to shout "fake news" and engage in all manner of victimology, but the man has had epic civil court defeats for asset fraud and sexual assault in just the past year, not to mention the ongoing NYC criminal investigation:
Trump faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in the first degree, carrying a maximum sentence of 136 years if Trump is convicted on all counts.
I stopped paying attention to all this years ago, but Trump fails every imaginable character test.
The White House press room has been gutted of dissenting voices for years. Obama was as bad as anyone for limiting access.
Qwiss Thanks … appreciate the correction. Thing is, in Trump's case half the Republican establishment hates him too, so it's not like the WSJ or WaPo (which I'm sure someone will pop up to tell me is a liberal outlet nowadays) are necessarily going to be throwing Trump Dorothy Dixers.
Burnwinter Trumps a petty little man who holds a grudge at the most minor slight, he's also completely incapable of playing in cool in those situations and lashes out like the spoilt man child he is. Most presidents are most calculated in how they manage the press.
Sheer amount of misleading videos is crazy, Elon has fucked a few things up Twitter but Community Notes has to be one of the best things to happen to that platform. Not perfect but very quickly misleading posts get called out.
the stop the steal bullshit is what led to the situation at the Capitol, and it was built on a complete fiction.
this 'guard the vote' and 'we don't need votes' language is them revving up the engines for stop the steal part 2. people keep writing off alot of what he says as just more buffoonery, but they need to take him at his word on this. they want to tear out the system because they believe it no longer serves them, and replace it with something that does. and the most dangerous thing, they've self-radicalized to the point that they believe it's now or never
Trump read the Wikipedia page on "stochastic terrorism" (which has rated a few mentions on here over the years) and thought "Cool idea, I'm gonna do that".
However there are solid reasons it's not possible for Trump to emerge as an interwar-style fascist leader.
First, social unrest is far less than in, say, Germany or Italy in the 30s, when irregulars of communist and fascist polarities were attacking each other in the streets in the major cities and economies were in utter crisis.
Second, Trump is not in dialogue with a bloc of the owners of national industries who could be persuaded to form a dirigist, collaborationist regime with its social base in the fantasies of exclusion he chooses to feed. Nation states (with a few exceptions probably) no longer have that capacity to broker enclosed labour and entrenched position to capital across the sectors. Too much of the production on which national economies depend is going on outside national administrative control.
Trump seems to have the attention of a minority of capitalists based on his last term, Biden is similar I think. Only those that imagine an unruly upheaval of laws and institutions that offers them improved profit will throw in decisively with Trump, but that's a different kind of gamble than Hitler and Mussolini were putting forward, as it relies on instability rather than a determinate reorganisation of power in their favour. Most will prefer business as usual.
That said, I think it's pretty likely that Trump's run will accelerate US imperial decline and looting. The well-laid plans of Trump's new cadre about gutting the federal bureaucracy are a case in point. Some of his backers have made a list of Trump-friendly officials and candidate officials they are intent on installing, which would probably be partly successful but also met with the agency pushback that handicapped Trump's first Cabinet in 2016. And I don't know this part, but I assume there's a long wishlist of regulatory functions to be ruined, which is pretty standard for "neoliberalism".
You're right though, whether Trump wins or not, concern about an eruption similar to January 6 but involving greater violence isn't silly. He's not discouraging it any less and the conditions to produce it don't seem much reduced.
My guess is Biden will receive a powerful boost from elite supporters through the second half of the year.
It's depressing how bad Biden has been in this debate. He's making Trump look semi coherent.
The Dems need a new candidate for 2024, otherwise I fear the MAGA cunt will sadly find his way back into office.
this debate is amazing
i wish the world would unite and euthanize the united states. we deserve it
Painful stuff. I can't watch.
I had to turn it off after 5 minutes. based on that, Biden might not make it to November let alone through a second term. wonder if there's any noticeable polling impact after this.
