The Art of No Deal

[DB Roy]

I'm somewhat interested in the QAnon conspiracies, have looked into it a little bit. One fact: Q posts started in October 2017. So the pizza gate shooting in Dec. 2016 could not have been inspired by Q. The Las Vegas shooting was on 10/1/17 so that is also extremely unlikely to be influenced by Q, the shooter planned for a long time.

There was an early Q thing going on on 4chan. It was exactly the same kind of shit. He didn't start calling himself Q until after Trump made the Calm before the storm reference. In all likelihood, Q is just one of many people all engaged in the same conspiracy theory. He got lucky. What's frightening is that Trump has brought a lot of people into the govt who believe this stuff. Michael Flynn and his son, for example. And Flynn was no outsider--he's a career military man with lots of contacts.

A lesson from the McMartin preschool panic of the 1980s is that when accusations of massive child abuse or pedophilia are claimed, you are most likely looking at a growing hysteria. That should probably be the default starting point, then look for compelling evidence to the contrary. That's what the Q phenom has become, sheer hysteria.

This is not the same thing. Satanic Panic was launched among the general public who believed it because of that idiot, Geraldo. The general public doesn't buy Q Anon for a second--it's just kooky. But that's the problem. It will always remain fringe--maybe even among the fringe--and there it will fester and spread until its hardcore adherents decide something has to be done because the public isn't listening.

On the other hand, the best thing we can do is talk about it. Share the info. Shine light on it. It's like a mold. Throw light on that it stays contained. Ignore it and it grows an grows and grows until we're looking around and saying "Where did all this come from??" 4 chan and 8chan have been that mold. But now they are getting a lot of light thrown on them. Of course, even if they shut down, they'll just do to the dark web. Most of them are already on it. Eventually we'll need to raid the dark web and shine a light on all the huge array of disgusting creepy-crawlies breeding down there.

Just when QAnon is getting more into the MSM news cycle, it may be starting to break down. I've seen a few recent posts from Q supporters claiming Q = LARP = Live Action Role Playing = a hoax! (Evidently he made some huge predictions that didn't come true.) However I've also seen a few posts like "Even if Q is LARP it's a good thing because he is bringing us Patriots closer together and making us stronger!" Wow...
Disclaimer: this is after a cursory review, I could be way off...

As I said, talking about it will likely force it more underground but we can't stop there. We have to keep pursuing. Chasing the termites into the cellar won't stop them from destroying your home.

[LanDroid]

In a reverse funhouse mirror conspiracy theory It's Looking Extremely Likely That QAnon Is A Leftist Prank On Trump Supporters.

Also entertaining: the hacking collective Anonymous vows to take down, expose QAnon

[Harry Marks]

So if one person brings an assault rifle to a pizzeria because it's really a pedophile ring, they all will.

Come again?

I was just reflecting on the implications of "one, then all" when one of them bought the bogus story about the pedophile ring in the pizzeria. Like, doesn't their slogan obligate them all to do the same idiotic thing?

But truth be told, I would rather just work with the simplest and most obvious explanation, which is that he woke up one day and decided he wanted to kill as many people as he could, than go down that rabbit hole.

Investigators themselves called it an example of "meticulous planning." So, no, he didn't just wake up that morning and decided to do this. He had planned it carefully for a long time.

Well, the morning he decided to kill people was well in advance of the date of the deed. Obviously I don't know, but there do seem to be people out there who just want to make a mark, so to speak.

Then there is the issue of his missing hard drive. What was on it? Could be anything--maybe child porn--but clearly it was something he did not want anyone to know about.

Yeah, anytime a hard drive goes missing, it raises suspicions. I don't think it's a big problem to be suspicious, and to wonder, but I am clearly not going to get close enough to the truth to make it worthwhile for me to investigate, so I would rather think about the mysteries of economics. Or religion. Or music. Or raising mushrooms. Nearly anything.

He sent his girlfriend out of the country before the shooting so he clearly wanted her out of harm's way. So why? Nothing about it adds up.

Maybe she was an immigrant and he resented Trump. Apparently ((wiki)) his father was a bank robber. He may have been bipolar, or mixed valium with alcohol too often. It all fits, or none of it does, depending more on how much I want it to fit than anything else.

It's possible is all I'm saying. I have, in all my years, never seen anything like this presidency. Would that I never see it again. A president with his own fanatical, devoted cult ready to do anything he tells them. I've never seen anything remotely like this.

I agree. I don't know if you ever saw "Talk Radio". (Oliver Stone, Eric Bogosian, who also wrote the play.) We know there have been fringies out there, (ahem, Timothy McVeigh), but to have them get a candidate nominated by a major party indicates a scary undercurrent. I remember telling my classes that a long, deep recession produces craziness, but I thought we had gotten through it okay. But no.

[geo]

But what specifically did Trump do? He went after the other candidates' spouses and attacked Fiorina's looks. For instance, he accused Bush of being soft on immigration and then told him, "Maybe because your wife is brown." .

I believe what Trump actually said is that Jeb was soft on immigration because of his wife. He never used the word "brown" although it is entirely believable that he would say something like that.

But I think you're right, it may have changed the trajectory of the race if Bush had shown something more than he did. Perhaps not an actual physical assault. None if the candidates quite knew how to respond to Trump, whose own actions and speech advertised loud and clear that he was unfit for the office.

[DB Roy]

The RNC and GOP should have told Trump to step down and give a full-throated condemnation of his behavior but they didn't because they were SO desperate to win the White House that they were perfectly willing to ride his coattails. Trump knew it which is why he kept promising war in the streets if they bumped him off the platform. Trump is, behind it all, a gangster, a mob boss. And make no mistake--it's totally intentional. He admires that kind of thing. Only mob bosses threaten war if they don't get their way. Only mob bosses judge everyone around him by how much loyalty they show him. Only mob bosses take over operations and put family in charge of them. Only a mob boss pays hush money and performs shady transactions in cash. Only mob bosses send in henchmen to intimidate and threaten those whose loyalties they doubt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTsofoVDJk

The tactics described in the clip totally validate the claims of Stormy Daniels when she said a total stranger threatened her life in a parking lot. Donnie revels in the idea of being a don. Don Donnie. Donnie-Don-Don.

Funny, he seems to have his way with male opponents but women score big damage points. Karen MacDougal, Stormy Daniels and now Omarosa Manigault-Newman. Omarosa is especially damaging because she's an insider. She knows exactly what is going on in the White House. While she hasn't told us anything we don't already know or suspect, she confirms it. Yes, Trump used the N-word on tape. Yes, Trump's marriage is loveless and in turmoil. Yes, his mental health is deteriorating. Her tapes, to give her credit, are excellently recorded. No fuzziness, no verbal lacuna going on. You can hear who is talking and exactly what they are saying. The one tape that does it for me is Trump feigning concern over Omarosa's firing. He sounds SO phony and disingenuous. Funny, he fired her three times from Apprentice to her face but he can't do it as president. In fact, he doesn't appear to have fired anybody face to face. He's Mr. Badass on Apprentice who actually wanted to trademark the phrase "You're fired" but is totally incapable of uttering those words without tv cameras, directors and scripts to help him along. That's just cowardice.

Bottom line: Omarosa is destroying him bit by bit and she isn't going to stop. She loves what she's doing. Like Stormy, she's at home in the spotlight every bit as much as Donnie is. The one area where Donnie isn't a mob boss is that he can't rub people out. If he could, Mueller, Rosenstein, Comey, Cohen, MacDougal, Daniels and Manigault-Newman at the very least would be dead. Actually, they'd be alive because they would be too scared to go against him. None of this would be happening. Just like Donnie loves to keep everybody in suspense, Omarosa is doing that to him. What other tapes does she have? One by one, little by little, they come out and prove the White House is full of liars. She's killing him. Soon, no one wants to deny anything because they are afraid Omarosa might be able to contradict them. So they have to distance themselves.

Remember when Trump said he would get the best people? Most of them are gone now--some have fled while others left with a "Fuck you" attitude. People once closest to him are now bitter enemies. Shows how stupid Trump is. You NEVER push those people are away because they know too much!! And when were they ever the BEST? Does Betsy DeVos strike you as the best? What about Ben Carson? What about Ivanka?

As for Omarosa, Trump created her. He wanted her, he got her. Why did he want her? Because she said such nice things about him. This is the level that Trump thinks at. This is the guy who thinks he's a master dealmaker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCcfUp-1tCI

[DB Roy]

The end is coming closer. This has been an incredibly disastrous week for Trump. Never in the history of the United States presidency have we ever witnessed anything like this. Paul Manafort was convicted on 8 or 18 counts against him. One lone juror, a fanatical Trump-supporter, refused to convict on the other 10 charges because she says they are only going after Trump (yes, let's protect the man in case he might actually be guilty). If not for her, Manfort would have gone down for all 18. As it stands, he still has another trial to face and he must be retried on the 10 charges that this jury failed to deliver a verdict on. The future is extreme;y bleak for Manafort.

On the very same day, Michael Cohen pleads guilty to 8 counts including making hush money payments to Karen MacDougal and Stormy Daniels AT THE DIRECTION of Trump. No doubt Trump's lawyers will try to make liar out of him but people would have to ask why Cohen, who pled guilty under oath, would perjure himself just to lie about Trump's involvement. In New York, perjury can conclude with 7 years in the slammer, 5 years on probation and a huge fine. Even if Cohen only got half that sentence, why would he want the 4-6 years he is a;ready going to get extended by another 3 with probation once he gets out?

But then David Pecker, owner of the National Enquirer, was granted immunity to reveal the contents of the catch-&-kill safe that contained stories about Trump--one of them being Karen MacDougal's affair and the $150,000 hush money payment he made to her and then had the National Enquirer buy the story in order to bury it. Then by not reporting this payment during his campaign, Trump broke the campaign finance law. The same went for Stormy Daniels. Trump directed Cohen to pay her $130,000 hush money during the campaign and didn't report it even though it was done specifically to aid him in his campaign and therefore broke the campaign finance law.

Trump then tried to say that he only paid Cohen back AFTER finding out that Cohen had made the payment on his own. This is problematic in two ways: 1) He's admitting to an affair he had earlier denied meaning he not only lied but also cheated on Melania shortly after the birth of their son and 2) It's still illegal. Whether he knew about the payment or not, he still has to report it as a campaign expense and he did not.

And now we have just learned that Trump's CFO, Allen Weisselberg, has been granted immunity. This guy has worked with Trump for decades and knows EVERYTHING about Trump's finances and by "everything" I mean EVERYTHING! As in there is NOTHING about Trump's finances this man doesn't know. Every little crooked deal over the years in known by Weisselberg. Trump's MIA tax returns all also known to Weisselberg and I'll bet he is going to reveal what it in those returns and it will be devastating for Trump because you don't hide your returns for nothing. You hide them to hide illegal or highly embarrassing information.

On top of this, Trump actually went on TV and stated that practice of turning people to state's witness aka flipping should be "almost illegal." He also praised Manafort for not taking any deals. The trouble is, Trump is, in his role as president, the top law enforcement officer in the land. HIgher up than the attorney-general. Yet, here he is praising people for fighting against HIS Justice Dept and saying tactics commonly used by HIS Justice Dept should be illegal!! That is impeachable right there! That is impeachable right there! A president cheering on a law-breaker for essentially protecting him and encouraging non-cooperation with the laws it is his job to enforce??? Yes, he can be impeached for that alone.

Then he resumed warring with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russian investigation but he still insists it's a "rigged witch-hunt." Sessions is finally firing back. Maybe he sees Trump on the ropes and figures what the hell. Might as well get my swings in.

And as for the Russian collusion, they are going to go after Junior and Kushner. They are also looking into the dealings of Ivanka.

I think at this point, Trump needs to seriously consider resigning. I think once the Russian collusion thing starts, they will lean on Trump's children and they'll tell him "Resign or we will prosecute them." I think, at that point, he'll resign. The wheels are seriously coming off here. Really, with Weisselberg on their side now, it's really over for Trump. He doesn't have many options. They did to him what has been discussed since he took office: they would strip him of all his closest people and leave him vulnerable and see what he does. There are even rumors that Trump has been contemplating suicide!! That's how bad it is.

[LanDroid]

I think at this point, Trump needs to seriously consider resigning.

Tony Schwartz, author of The Art of the Deal, predicted Trump would resign over a year ago to avoid losing to scandal and turn resignation into a win. I thought that was crazy talk at the time, but it seems to make more sense now.

And now there's talk of a Trump bastard.

Again, let's hold our fire 'til the Mueller findings come out, then we'll deal with it. Acting now is proceeding before all the evidence is presented, like a jury coming to a verdict in the middle of a trial. Focus only on the mid-term elections => VOTE!

[DB Roy]

They impeached Clinton for less than this. We're not only going to hear about the Russians but there are all sorts of shady dealings with the Trump Foundation of which all three of Trump's oldest children were involved. Wrongdoing has already been admitted by Trump, i.e. improper use of the Foundation's funds for political and business reasons, and they need to see how deep it really goes. Mr. Weisselberg is the man who would know.

The thing is, they don't offer immunity because you've done nothing wrong. They offer it to get you to open up about what went on while assuring that you won't face any charges for the role you played. So Weisselberg has definitely done illegal things for Trump but in order to find out what those things were, they have to let him skate in order to nail the bigger fish. So just by offering immunity, you know the law was broken and who broke it.

As for Cohen, as I said, he is not going to commit perjury fingering Trump when he's already looking at jail time. They did to him what they do to any suspect they interrogate--put him in a room and say, "Ok, Michael, we know you did this and this and we are going to nail you for it. You can help yourself by spilling the beans on who else was involved or you can take the rap for all of them. What's it going to be?" They're not just going to take his word. He had to present evidence to make his case. So, again, the idea that this is hot air is believed only by the clueless. The fact that Trump came clean and admitted, "Okay, yes, I DID pay him back but only AFTER I found out that he made the payment in the first place" shows that Trump knows they got him now. That's nothing he would ever have admitted to without extraordinary reasons compelling him to do so. He said it because he had no choice. They got him and he knows it.

Then there's still Omarosa. She allegedly has 200 or so recordings and if that's true, who knows what's she's recorded? I speculate that she has enough by herself to destroy Trump. But the problem is, the White House doesn't know what she has and that by itself makes them very leery about saying anything that might get them caught up in a lie. Before you can make any false official public statement, you have to stop and ask yourself, "Was there any time when I said anything to the contrary with Omarosa standing around?" If you're not sure, you have back off making those kinds of statements. The Trump people have to do something utterly foreign to their nature--tell the truth. A statement as "President Trump never said anything like that" has now morphed into, "President Trump has never said anything like that to my my knowledge" or "If the president said anything like that in front of me, I don't remember it." These subtle shifts in language are a death knell to any presidency. Remember when Bush said Iraq had WMD but when they failed to find any, it turned into "WMD programs" and then "WMD-related activities." It went from, "They did it" to "They were going to do it" to "They were thinking about doing it." It's the same thing now for Trump: "I did not break the law!" "I did not break the law knowingly." "I broke the law but that's not a crime." "You can't indict a sitting president."

So this is done. Trump is finished and he needs to start looking at ways to resign and I'll bet his people are already looking into it.

[Harry Marks]

I think at this point, Trump needs to seriously consider resigning. I think once the Russian collusion thing starts, they will lean on Trump's children and they'll tell him "Resign or we will prosecute them." I think, at that point, he'll resign. The wheels are seriously coming off here. Really, with Weisselberg on their side now, it's really over for Trump.

That's an astute observation about his kids. But a deal like that can't come from the prosecutors: holding his kids hostage? Political poison. It has to be Trump's idea. And he would have to admit to some wrongdoing and make some commitments, like maybe promising no deals with foreigners, as part of the deal.

All the prosecutors can do is pursue the law. They can threaten to prosecute him for state crimes, such as tax evasion (which we can be 95% sure he is guilty of without anyone even saying it), but no state official is going to cut a deal "in exchange for resignation from the Presidency." Rather some go-between would have to broker it.

They impeached Clinton for less than this.

Yeah but that's exactly the point. It was all politics, and the Republicans actually came off looking pretty dumb. Even if the Dems take both houses, which I seriously doubt will happen, they won't have the votes to convict and would need a lot more stuff than this to make it worth the political cost. Let's face it, Trump was guilty his first week in office, with the emoluments clause, but impeachment is a political decision and the Red State voters are in no mood to hold him accountable for his misdeeds.

We're not only going to hear about the Russians but there are all sorts of shady dealings with the Trump Foundation of which all three of Trump's oldest children were involved. Wrongdoing has already been admitted by Trump, i.e. improper use of the Foundation's funds for political and business reasons, and they need to see how deep it really goes. Mr. Weisselberg is the man who would know.

Unless there is really more dirt than I would guess (like, maybe a copy of the pee tape shows up), the Republicans are going to be left with this doppelganger for two more years.

I suspect that #MeToo and the hurricane and fire seasons will cost them even more. Florida is turning blue quickly, and even Texas may go for a Democrat.

So this is done. Trump is finished and he needs to start looking at ways to resign and I'll bet his people are already looking into it.

We can be fairly confident that he didn't expect to win the election in the first place. But I think he might hang on in the vain belief (vain in both senses) that the trade war with China will pay off. It's the one thing he stood for that has any respectability politically. And of course China is not about to give up with their nemesis on the ropes. So we have a game of chicken, with the stakes being the Chinese economy and the follow-on effects around the world if they go into a deep crisis. This is the one scenario in which his trade war really could turn into a repeat of the 2008 crash.

[LanDroid]

Wish I could remember which pundit wrote this, but consider that it's 2020 and we have the following situations.

• The Mueller investigation had some huge revelations, but they did not quite reach the level of high crimes and misdemeanors plus the Democrats did not have sufficient votes in the legislative branch. Although there may be some legal manuevers against Trump, no impeachment proceedings or resignation.
• The economy continues to chug along well, we avoided major trade wars and a recession.
• Trump manages NOT to start a war with China, North Korea, Iran, or anyone else. Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan cool off slightly.

Yes he could win. It must be considered. Trump has been underestimated at every step. I hope this is wrong, but prepare yourselves for the long haul.