It's sort of remarkable how many of Donald Trump's former aides now oppose his reelection. Here's a list. These are only principal officers, not the dozens of deputies and assistants who have also turned on him, and all of them were initially appointed by Trump himself:
1. Vice President Mike Pence
2, 3. Chiefs of Staff John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney
4, 5. Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo
6, 7. Secretaries of Defense Mike Esper, Jim Mattis
8. Attorney General Bill Barr
9. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
10. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao
11. HHS Secretary Alex Azar
12, 13. National Security Advisors John Bolton, H.R. McMaster
14. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley
15. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats
16, 17, 18. Directors of Communications Stephanie Grisham, Anthony Scaramucci, Alyssa Farah Griffin
UN Representative Nicky Haley?
slander against The Tribune will be dealt with on day one
... aaand let's not forget his long-time fixer/attorney Michael Cohen, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and his Trade Advisor / co-conspirator Peter Navarro, all of whom have been, are in, or are going to PRISON.
And then of course there were the contractors whom he stiffed on bills, his "students" at Trump University ($25M settlement for fraud), and his mom-and-pop casino investors in 2014 (somewhere between $100M and $500M loss). And just wait 'til the RNC does its post-mortem.
"Everything Trump Touches Dies."
None of this matters a bit to his cultists, of course. Mere facts do not trouble their deep and unbounded faith.
Trump pardoned Manafort and is apparently considering hiring him again according to today’s WaPo.
However I have never heard that Betsy DeVoss has turned against Trump. I guess I missed the part where she resigned over the insurrection. Bet her brother Erik Prince was all for it.
Alexander Vindman
Fiona Hill
Euro-foreginer sociamalist SPIES trying to WEAKEN America's Greatness.
I doubt Trump had much first-hand knowledge about either of these two when they came on board as WH advisers. They were probably McMaster and/or Kelly picks. Big mistake not making sure they were unqualified MAGA hacks first.
Pompeo has bailed on Trump? When did that happen?
unlrelated but the mention of chao reminded me about the story of her sister's recent death. she was killed when she accidentally backed her tesla over an embankment of some sort and into a lake, then for reasons that aren't totally clear was unable to get out of the car. she had time to call friends inside the house she was leaving who came to help and also were unable to get her out or break the windows. i'm surprised this hasn't been a much bigger news story and wonder if it will lead to criminal or civil cases against tesla. apparently the shifting interface (via touch screen) is notoriously error prone, the emergency manual door release difficult, and the windows intentionally difficult to break. her husband seems to be some kind of musk fanboi who proactively declared tesla was not to blame at all, but maybe the rest of her very rich and very powerful family won't agree. having your family member slowly drown in a car they can't escape is horrifying and the kind of thing that would make me very, very angry.
Since you can't kill him--I know--the next best thing is to take as much of his money as you can, which they're probably doing.
Tesla doors have two ways to open, the somewhat cool press a button and it opens electronically, and a standard mechanical pull which is like 90% of the doors in every other car I have owned. Its not like its a hidden secret switch or anything, its part of the arm rest.
When I take friends out I would say if I don't tell them (and I usually don't think about it) half the time they open doors with the mechanical pull and don't even try/ask about the cool electronic button.
If someone could not open the door, it would be due to the whole "water pressure outside makes opening hard unless you are calm enough to let the inside of the car fill up with water thing" and would have nothing at all to do with the fact that its a Tesla.
And it would have really, really nothing to do with the fact that a Tesla is an EV, since getting out of the car does not depend on the electronics of the car.
Or that you actually should just try to get out as quickly as possible. Not wait.
Or that she probably thought the gas was the brake. This is virtually always the case.
But easier to just blame Tesla, right?
Um, no "gas". Did you mean "accelerator"?
No, you can't get out quickly - you must wait until the pressure equalizes to open the door.
To equalize pressure on both sides of the door your best chance is open windows. Of course that's completely counter-intuitive, especially to someone in a panic (which would be everybody whose car just dove into water and started sinking). Further, almost all cars these days, not just Teslas, have electric window lifts that can be expected to short out quickly in water. So what's needed is one of those carbide-tipped escape hammers with a seat belt cutter. And a degree of cool-headedness that has to be very rare.
An open sunroof would be the best option of all, of course, and maybe they should be designed to let go if there's too much interior pressure. Not that sunroofs are anywhere near universal.
So I agree that not being able to get out was necessarily a Tesla thing.
That said, I've always thought Tesla would benefit from a few really punishing liability losses. They did wonders to tame the Big Three's appetite for endangering customers and the general public, and Tesla has long needed a serious injection of caution.
"If someone could not open the door, it would be due to the whole "water pressure outside makes opening hard unless you are calm enough to let the inside of the car fill up with water thing"
In that case you would have to roll down the windows to let in the "water thing". That did not work either in this case.
It has nothing to do with the fact that a Tesla is an EV. It has to do with Musk's carelessness when it comes to exposing people other than Musk to serious risk. There are numerous examples of this in the history of Tesla and his other companies.
And no one at all wonders where Melania's been for the last few weeks, much less years. No speculation there. She's probably got a clock counting down the hours until the pre-nup ends, and she's fielding offers for a tell-all that will pay better than the divorce settlement--which given the state of TFG's finances, will be a semi of freeze-dried Trump steaks.
I guess it’s a cliché to say “Trump can’t fail, he can only be failed” but for his supporters that’s the case. These people are failures in MAGA World but Trump will not be blamed for picking them nor will any anyone believe their stories individually or collectively. I guess I can understand this with regard to the “deplorables”, but I remain baffled by his support from people who don’t fit that category. Perhaps more of this country is “deplorable” than I thought.
Some idiot who was introducing Lara Trump at the RNC said to the crowd that her lack of experience or qualifications of any kind were irrelevant because she had something she had something better she had been chosen by God.
And that's the point, I think. They're a psychotic cult.
not my typo, that's God's typo.
"God doesn't choose the qualified, He qualifies the chosen" was the exact quote, I think. Why God has such a perverse dislike for qualified people is a mystery.
He likes them young and dumb.
Cassidy Hutchison
I haven't seen any of these folks except possibly Bolton saying that they aren't going to vote for Trump. Barr in particular says that he will vote for Trump as the alternative is Biden's "woke" agenda which will destroy America. Of course Bolton's primary objection to Trump is that he was too reluctant to kill Iranians.
It's a tribute to President Trump's courage and love of America that he persists in the face of such vile disloyalty. Even Our Lord only had to deal with ONE Judas.
Did you forget the "/snark" tag or are you just barking bonkers?
I would expect anybody that can read English to realize it is sarcasm without needing to think about it.
You'd think so, but there's a hell of a lot of literal minded folks who don't recognize sarcasm unless they can see you roll your eyes or hear your tone of voice. There's also plenty of people online who know you're being sarcastic but couch their reply as if you aren't.
* I'm not being sarcastic, just so everyone knows
Without Judas, no christian would be saved.
Excuse me. None of them oppose Trump unless they vote for Biden. They just want to pretend their hands aren't dirty. They can't truly oppose Trump unless they can learn to put country over party.
👍👍👍👍👍
+1776
Exactly, anybody who is not committed to voting for Biden (voting nothing or third party instead) is still giving Trump half a vote. In a narrow election those half votes could be enough for Tump to win.
These people are nearly all fake opponents of Trump. Pence obviously thinks Biden is more dangerous than the man who almost got him killed. But then Pence was never an intellectual standout.
These people are absurd. I believe some of the more junior ones will vote for Biden (Hutchinson for example, as far as I know she has not said anything about that in public but her opposition to Trump sounds honest to me. Many others just try to salvage there reputation for the history books and don't really care for America or democracy.
So what's going on with people named "Steve"?
The force field of ignorance, stupidity, self-centeredness, and malevolence that amazes even the quasi-normal when they encounter it. At first they're almost all sure it's an act. As they hang around him longer they see that's what he genuinely is, clean clear through. And even then many of them still can't believe that an adult human being can actually be like that.
I can only guess that his rabid maga followers are going with the "act" part, and believe that the Defendant is actually a super-competent, brilliant individual who will work tirelessly for their benefit while in office.
While at the same time believing his role on the scripted, heavily edited teevie program "The Apprentice" was somehow NOT an act. A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.
Mark Burnett was sent to us as George III's revenge. If he had half a gram of regard for humanity he'd release the damn outtakes and stop protecting the Great Malefactor.
One of my all-time favorite song lines, thanks for slipping it in.
It would, I think, be enormously valuable is some of these folks are quietly working with the Biden campaign to put together "Republicans for Biden", to be launched at a showy event this summer, followed by a well-orchestrated campaign of ads, speeches, appearances, op-ed columns, additional endorsements, etc. focused on swing states and voters, and continuing straight through Election Day.
We are all allowed to dream--so long as we don't believe on the dreams.