The Supreme Court will soon decide if banning TikTok violates the First Amendment. Donald Trump has no opinion about that,¹ but he weighed in today with an amicus brief anyway. It's...... unusual:
President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history.... Further, President Trump is the founder of another resoundingly successful social-media platform, Truth Social.... On September 4, 2024, President Trump posted on Truth Social, “FOR ALL THOSE THAT WANT TO SAVE TIK TOK IN AMERICA, VOTE TRUMP!”
Furthermore, President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform.... Indeed, President Trump’s first Term was highlighted by a series of policy triumphs achieved through historic deals, and he has a great prospect of success in this latest national security and foreign policy endeavor.
I have no comment on this. I just wanted to share.
¹Page 4, Summary of Argument: "President Trump takes no position on the merits of the dispute."
I will never cease to wonder how did we elect this vacuous gasbag president - twice!
Hacker and Pierson in “Winner Take All Politics” note that there a deep, dark secret all Political Scientists know, but no one wants to say - the electorate are woefully ignorant.
Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
~Bertold Brecht
Looked it up. (I have a Hacker/Pierson book, but not that one.) They gave these, uh, nice examples.
Roughly half of Americans think that foreign aid is one of the two top expenditures in the federal budget (in reality, it consumes about 1 percent of the budget). In 1980, in the midst of the Cold War, 38 percent of Americans surveyed believed that the Soviet Union was a member of NATO —the anti-Soviet defense alliance. Two years after the huge 2001 tax cuts, half of Americans were unable to recall that there had been tax cuts at all.
‘Two years after the huge 2001 tax cuts, half of Americans were unable to recall that there had been tax cuts at all.“
This is one reason Trump is so successful. He constantly reminds people of things he did and how great he was in doing it and also gaslights people by saying how great things were even when they weren’t. Because they don’t really remember they believe him.
(to Stephanie Grisham, as quoted by her)
"It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie — say it enough and people will believe you.”
(to Billy Bush, as quoted by him)
"Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That's it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do."
These quotes seem like a Trump interpretation of the big lie. I wonder if someone explained the idea to him.
After eight years, I fear 2024 voters didn’t pull the red lever from ignorance
I think "vacuous gasbag" will stick in my memory along with e.g.
"bumptious fraud"
(Joe Conason)
"mountebank of the very first order"
(Andrew Bacevich)
But isn't "vacuous gasbag" an oxymoron?
Well, maybe the opposite (a tautology).
Idiocracy is in full bloom.
But this is a nation that elected Nixon—twice, Reagan—twice, and even an incompetent boob like W. Bush—twice!
I suppose he is reminding the court that he (actually Elon) will make life difficult if they don't obey orders.
I,
for one,
appreciate that he's laid down in print,
quoting his idiosyncratic, simplistic language,
and for whom a craven appeal to his idiosyncratic egotism in included,
for the historical record,
a trail of evidence of the demise of our liberal democracy,
for which the conservative Supreme Court will likely oblige,
under a most hypocritical, contradictory reasoning.
A century from now, people will point to this trail and ask, "WTF?"
WTF???
See, you didn't have to wait.
It’s the Supreme Court. He could file, “ I want this now!”, and he’d get 5 votes to overturn. Hell, he could appoint ElonMusk as his vice President, the Senate would confirm it and the resulting suit would be dismissed by the SC.
Wait til he nominates a horse for the next Supreme Court justice.
At some point, Mike Judge will make Idiocracy II, The Trump Years based on real life material. He'll have to retire outside the US to avoid being hunted down by MAGA goons, but it will be worth it.
Idiocracy II - The Documentary!
It reads like Stephen Miller talks. Over the top and weird.
Point of pride in Trump 2.0
Shouldn't the lawyer be severely sanctioned for deliberately and intentionally lying to the court. And then disbarred for committing the felony of perjury.
Trump sees a heck of an opportunity to hold up TikTok for a bribe so he told his lawyers to file a case. They get paid for filing a case, not for explaining it’s a lousy case.
Trump didn't file a case. This wouldn't have been an amicus brief if he had. It was filed by attorneys within the Department of Justice.
It's not his Dept of Justice yet. This was filed by personal attorneys.
Too wordy. Keep it short and straightforward:
President Trump is the greatest human being in history, and always will be.
If it's too wordy you can be guaranteed that Trump didn't write it.
Welcome to MAGA. Please leave your intelligence, compassion and judgement at the door.
Follow the Money. Behind any change of heart in TikTok doubters, I'll bey you'll find considerable "surges" in :
Donations to PACS of congressional doubters
Sales of Trump's sneakers, bibles, watches, etc
Best Administration and congress money can buy!
Not sure about SCOTUS since Thomas already has a new RV. Maybe a makeover?
Yeah, it is billionaire Jeffrey Yass who owns 15% of ByteDance and is a major Republican donor. Kellyann Conway is getting paid to do the leg work on the lobbying side.
Pre purchased ads on Truth Social at substantially inflated prices for the next decade?
This leaves political satirists and comedians with nothing more to do.
I've been saying this for some time: TikTok is not going anywhere.
All they have to do is throw a few $$$ Trump's way and he'll call off the dogs. I'm not sure what the actual price is, but it should be peanuts for ByteDance.
Publicly - VERY PUBLICLY - accepting bribes is part of the brand at this point. It puts everyone on notice about how business is done, and reassures potential participants that no trouble will occur if they participate.
🎯- Kiss the Ring
Just a reminder, Trump doesn't "make deals". He takes hostages.
I think this is how the Mafia operates
Pretty much. Al Capone was brought down by being convicted of tax evasion. Unfortunately for him he wasn't POTUS at the time.
Let the sane washing commence. This time with triple strength sane remover!!!
Calling TruthSocial "resoundingly successful" is probably grounds enough to stop reading and throw in the frivolous pile for an intern to later find a more formal reason to dismiss.
This is making a mockery of the law and self-respecting practitioners should be insulted, and respond accordingly (and still reasonably of course).
Recalls the quotes and review of this:
https://archive.clivejames.com/books/brezhnev.htm
"Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead. There is no author’s name on the title page, merely a modest line of italic type advising us that Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s ‘short biography’ has been composed ‘by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee’. This is the one statement in the entire opus which is undeniably true. Only an Institute could write like this:
'Monumental progress in building communism has been made by the Soviet people under the leadership of the Communist Party, its Central Committee and Politburo headed by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Central Committee, LEONID ILYICH BREZHNEV.'
Monumental progress in probing the outer limits of tedium has been made by the time the hypnotised reader has slogged through more than two hundred pages of ideological prose at its most glutinous. Unable to believe that the Institute could keep down the pace, I read the whole thing from start to finish, waiting for the inevitable slip-up which would result in a living sentence. It never happened. That the book could be read from any other motive seems highly unlikely. Even the most rabid Brezhnev fan would be catatonic by the end of the first chapter."
The self glorifying language is on its face ridiculous, yes. It's also relentless to the point of inevitability in its saturation of our society, which then leads to what? A permanent shift in expectations in public discourse, normalization to be sure, perhaps at first with a shrug and an eye roll but then, what? Godwin's law and all, but I just finished Vollamann's "Europe Central" and the parallels between his characterizations of period figures and the quotation above are notable. Trump is clownish; his retinue, acolytes, and sycophants are ridiculous, sure. He's also the most powerful man in the world. His every word, movement, shrug, is breathlessly broadcast throughout the empire by media desperate for relevance, captured by one of the most effective manipulators of all time. So, sure, ridiculous. Clownish even. And more and more he's the oxygen this country breathes. Like global warming, each year a little bit worse, nothing you can't handle, just a little bad weather. Sure.