I've mentioned before that Donald Trump has been remarkably successful at making people fear him. Partly this is because he's focused his attention on things where he has a lot of discretion. I'm not talking about the dumb little stuff like tax on tips, which is never going to happen, but on the big ticket items he seems dead serious about.
Trump has promised, for example, to deport millions of illegal immigrants, and he wields sole executive authority to direct how that happens. If you're not a Trump supporter, you might end up at the top of the list for an ICE raid of your farm or sweatshop.
Tariffs always produce lots of requests for exemptions, many of them from companies that will literally go out of business if they don't get one. And if you don't support Trump you probably won't.
Do you want to drill for oil or gas on federal lands? The president has authority to decide which fields are opened up. If you don't play ball, yours might stay untapped for the duration.
Trump wants to reschedule thousands of civil service workers as political appointees who can be retained or fired at will. It goes without saying that your chances of staying on are considerably greater if you bend the knee.
What these all have in common is that Trump is serious about them and he controls them personally, with no need for pesky congressional approval. Is it any wonder that so many people are afraid of him?
It is not any different than the horse-trading of the LBJ era. If you didnt support him, your district and the legislator behind it would get nothing. The same probably went for big biz and whatever needs he had from them. Different times, same playbook
Sure. LBJ’s horse trading to get civil rights or Great Society legislation enacted is exactly the kind of “playbook” being employed by Donald Trump.
All governments at all times and in all places are equally corrupt. It doesn’t matter who’s in charge. Trump isn’t any better or worse than LBJ or any other president. Seriously?
You are completely ignorant of history. Though a perfectly honest and merit-driven government has of course never existed, it is craven and foolish to claim they are all equally corrupt.
FOH with this bullshit.
These comments are either ignorant or lies. Horse trading in the Senate is one thing. Firing the executive branch and making the U.S. government your mouthpiece and tool is another.
I find the mass deportation thing to be especially scary. With so many people being deported who’s to say many people who are here legally or who are citizens won’t be “accidentally” deported or arrested and placed in a “deportation camp”. It is a recipe for totalitarian control.
They already said they'd deport citizens -- young children -- if their parents are deported.
Remember that Arizona law that allowed cops to pull over anyone who looked like an illegal alien and demand proof of citizenship? They snagged several American citizens on day one. …… This led to one of my all-time fave political cartoons: A cop has pulled over a motorist and is carefully eyeing a paint-store-like color fan of shades of brown to determine whether the motorist was a real American.
Kevin's exaggerating Trump's discretion in the deportation business. Ultimately, he is constrained by the amount of money congress has appropriated for this. And Biden spent every penny he had for deportation. Trump can do splashy raids of business sites, but only at the expense of going after less splashy targets, i.e. violent criminals. The immigration courts are already massively backlogged. So he can't actually increase legal deportations. He will certainly try to increase illegal deportations, but that will run into the same problems he encountered in his first term.
you're not a Trump supporter, you might end up at the top of the list for an ICE raid of your farm or sweatshop
And conveniently, because Trump‘s actions to punish political enemies will coincide with an executive branch constitutional duty (enforcement of immigration law), he’s bulletproof given the recent Supreme Court ruling.
Rescheduling thousands of Federal employees to be political appointee's is probably the scariest outcome, since it will impact those civil service jobs for decades and imbed the current administration's political biases onto how the Federal government enforces the law (or ignores the law) as implemented by all the Federal Agencies. I suppose if you believe that the so called "non political" civil service jobs are run by the liberal "deep state" (whatever the fuck that means) then this is all good.
Afterall, the Pres Elect just wished the a Merry Christmas to "Radical Left Lunatics", you know, anyone who doesn't agree with him, including all the Federal employees who don't swear fealty to his Majesty.
Most of the rest of the stuff is what the nation clearly voted for on Nov 5th, so it those folks don't like it, then tough shit on them.
He is going to run his administration like he runs his corrupt businesses. Corruption and grift will be rampant.
Corruption and grift are the whole point. It's going to be a giant protection racket.
"Nice business you have here. It would be a shame if all your workers got deported."
"You say tariffs are destroying your business? Hmm...it is possible to get an exemption for...umm...national security reasons."
" Is it any wonder that so many people are afraid of him?"
Trump is running an enhanced political Ponzi scheme that is fraudulent and incorporates both greed and fear. The fear is directed at his enemies, the greed at his own party. The Supreme Court had a chance to declare this illegal, but ended up supporting it. Republicans probably realize that it will fail in the end, but, like in all Ponzi schemes, the early entrants profit enormously. They figure they will share in the profit and, like Bill Barr, quit before things turn sour.
"Republicans" are a dying breed since most of the office holders in Congress (and SCOTUS) are MAGA, who believe that Trump is their new orange deity, who after finishing his work on earth, will ascend to his rightful place (right next to JC).
He will of course kick a whole lot of them to the curb and under the bus in the nex 4+ years, but that is the price that must be paid to complete his holy work.
The Apprentice of Fred Trump and Roy Cohn sometime in the last eight years has become their Frankenstein.
It's spelled maggot.
So things are going to be totally f'd up for at least 2 years if not 4 years. Then after the dead are buried we will see who survives. Why?
My thought for awhile has been that the Supreme Court has been undercutting anti-corruption laws because they are setting up the country for a patronage system that runs solely through the Republican party. Wanna play, you gotta pay, and only one party will be allowed to play because the enforcement will be in the executive branch and/or conducted by law enforcement that leans heavily towards the right. It's the playbook of dictators.