Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Paul May]

Trump's " friendships " are always strictly transactional.
So what transaction is Trump engaged in with Ms. Maxwell?

We know that Trump - " Mr. Grab 'em by the P$%&y" - has a history of aggressive behavior towards women, and also a history of infidelity - Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and Marla Maples.

Mika Brezinski this morning:

The president giving a hat tip to Ghislaine Maxwell, saying he wishes her well, a woman who is accused of abusing children by his Justice Department. When this president has in the past sent those little messages through his public orations, saying something that then ends up to somebody getting out of jail or being pardoned, or whatever. Okay, Congressional Republicans? I’m just wondering, if I slow down and deliver to you these facts, which are basic, and which would just require you to use your brain and your moral compass and say something and do something. Do you see what is happening? Can you still not see it? Are you going to wait even longer? It will be on you.

[Paul May]

The US election polls and the betting odds are now saying the same thing – punters aren’t backing Donald Trump anymore
James Moore

Donald Trump’s odds of winning the US election are sliding at the rate of a horse found lame in the run up to the Kentucky Derby.

The President’s troubled campaign, his misreading of America’s mood and dismal polling data suggest its only a matter of time before one of the leading bookies offers odds of 2-1, giving him an implied probability of victory of just 33 per cent.

According to Oddschecker, which looks across the market, his Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s price has shortened to 8/13 from 8/11 in just the last week, with his implied probability moving from 57.9 per cent to 61.9 per cent. Trump has drifted from a best price 13/8 (38.1 per cent ) to 7/4 (36.4 per cent).

Until recently the odds have, arguably, been lagging the polls. Biden’s lead has barely shifted in a month, during which time it has been within spitting distance of double digits, per FiveThirtyEight’s tracker.

Such chunky leads are usually subject to erosion over time, but there’s been scant sign of it happening so far. A Dallas Morning News-UT Tyler poll last week even gave the Democrat a five point lead in Texas, a Republican firewall that Trump carried by 9 points last time.

Now they’ve been talking for years about Texas – a state which Trump simply has to win given the 38 votes it carries in the electoral college – turning Democrat blue. Demographically it’s becoming more diverse, with a rapidly-rising Hispanic population. But even though the hard Republican red has been softening, it remains to be seen whether Texas is quite as purple (that is, up for grabs) as the polling suggests.

Numbers like that nonetheless suggest Trump has a mountain to climb.

So far he has taken most of the bets: 54 per cent according to Oddschecker, compared to just 15.8 per cent for Biden. It’s worth noting that the market was open before Biden was locked in as the challenger, yet he’s barely secured more supporters than have “others”. Meanwhile, Paddy Power’s regular biweekly bet count last week showed Trump with 36 per cent of the bets by number and 84 per cent of the volume of money. Kanye West’s 34 per cent bet count indicates a lot of people staking small amounts of money at big prices in the wake of the publicity generated by the rapper’s quixotic entry into the race. Biden, by contrast, was friendless.

Things were different on the Betfair exchange, where punters set the odds and can play bookie by laying other people’s selections. Trump has 59 per cent of its market against Biden’s 31 per cent, with £48.5m matched. But Biden’s market was the more active in July, which is the first time that’s been the case. This suggests that the money is gearing up to move in favour of the Democrat. Wealthy punters have long had a yen for putting very big bets on “sure things” at odds on.

They did that with Hillary Clinton and got badly bruised as a result (including one British MP, who must remain nameless). This time around, however, it may be different.

[John Iacoletti]

   Stop your Crying and take your beating like a Man. You babble around here far more than anyone else and then cry when you get your hat handed to you. Either get better or get used to it.

All of this grandstanding and still not a single citation of Biden ever calling for the defunding of police.

[Paul May]

An assault on our democracy as we’ve never seen before. The GOP remains silent.

The most blatant example of the Trump presidency is happening right now — with the Department of Homeland Security deploying on the streets of American cities (Portland in recent days, perhaps Chicago and elsewhere by next weekend) what The New York Times calls "officials from a group known as BORTAC, the Border Patrol's equivalent of a SWAT team, a highly trained group that normally is tasked with investigating drug smuggling organizations." These federal agents — driving unmarked vans, wearing battle fatigues without badges, lacking training in crowd control, sometimes responding to protesters with violence — sweep up people on the street and lock them in vehicles without arrest or explanation.

It would be one thing if local elected officials had asked for federal help in restoring order. But they haven't. In fact, they've said the opposite — that actions that look an awful lot like the imposition of martial law are making the disorder worse, as more protesters show up to demonstrate against police-state tactics by the feds. But this isn't something that concerns either the president or Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, both of whom have declared their intent to continue deploying a quasi-military force against American citizens on the streets of American cities. As Wolf said on Fox News on Monday, "I don't need invitations by the state, state mayors, or state governors to do our job. We're going to do that, whether they like us there or not."

Those words — spoken by an unelected official who, like so many members of the Trump administration, has been appointed by the president in an "acting" capacity in order to circumvent the process of Senate confirmation — should send chills down the spines of every American. But they should also be seen as cover for the true intent of the policy.

One possibility is that the Trump campaign has decided that the president's base will be thrilled by the sight of federal officers dressed in combat fatigues messing with dirty hippies in deep-blue cities like Portland (now a "right-wing boogeyman") and Chicago. But there's another possibility as well — that Trump and his advisers think that provoking protesters to more radical acts of disorder will make the left look more dangerous and thereby enhance the president's re-election prospects.

Which would mean that recent actions by federal agents are intended to provoke the very unrest they've supposedly been deployed to quash.

Trump's problem is that in order to look tough and seem justified in deploying armed agents of the state, he needs a threatening antagonist. He needs the protests to appear out of control. He needs them to be highly disruptive, chaotic, and violent. Yet most of the protests, especially after the riots that faded in late May, have been peaceful. That's why Trump's boldest attempt so far to portray himself as a paragon of law and order — the use of force against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park outside the White House on June 1 so that the president could stage a photo op and deliver a combative speech on national television — failed so miserably. (Trump’s ongoing polling collapse picked up speed and intensity with that ham-handed stunt.)

Trump's solution to this problem is to provoke the protesters by harassing them lawlessly. It's the real-world equivalent of online trolling — an act intended to bring out the worst in one's opponent in order to get him to act out in a self-defeating way.

The act of deploying military forces trained to combat drug smugglers against citizens exercising their constitutionally protected right to protest would be tyrannical enough. But what makes Trump's actions especially toxic is their intentionally escalatory aim — his effort to drive his opponents to deeds that will necessitate even more drastic measures in response.

Politicians have always known that it's possible to bait the opposition, causing it to overreact and make an unforced error. But such jujitsu is usually a staple of the campaign trail, not something that fundamentally shapes public policy. FDR didn't seek to enact the New Deal to get Republicans to go to the mat for big business during the Great Depression. Ronald Reagan didn't favor cutting upper-income-tax rates so that Democrats would come out in favor of sticking it to entrepreneurs. George W. Bush didn't invade Iraq to get the left to defend the legitimacy of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Barack Obama didn't work to pass the Affordable Care Act to make the GOP look like heartless plutocrats.

But Donald Trump is sending federal agents into American cities in order to spark a conflagration with protesters in the hope that the resulting brutal crackdown will make him look like a hero, enable him to win re-election, and allow him to grab even more power in a second term.

It's up to the rest of us to ensure the Trump's bid to spark a crisis that turns him into real-life tyrant ends in failure — like everything else about his appalling presidency.

[Royell Storing]

   Snowballs chance. Behind by 15 pts. Gonna lose inna landslide. Won't leave the White House.  "Judge a pitcher based on the reaction of the hitter" is Repeatedly Exhibited throughout this thread.
   Trump "Untouchables" Heading into Chicago. Another Dem run city Soon to be Liberated. Another Dem STATE morphs into the "toss up" column. Where's Fuzzy? Trump 2020 Rolls On!

[Martin Weidmann]

   Snowballs chance. Behind by 15 pts. Gonna lose inna landslide. Won't leave the White House.  "Judge a pitcher based on the reaction of the hitter" is Repeatedly Exhibited throughout this thread.
   Trump "Untouchables" Heading into Chicago. Another Dem run city Soon to be Liberated. Another Dem STATE morphs into the "toss up" column. Where's Fuzzy? Trump 2020 Rolls On!

You are losing it. Get help.... quickly

[Martin Weidmann]

I'm watching that hypocrite in the White House whining about people being shot, as if he cares about any of it, but not a word about the 143.000 + covid deaths and even less about gun control measures. What a pathetic loser.....

Let's not forget that all this is happening on his watch.

[Royell Storing]

  Trump Liberates the Ma & Pa Kettle's that are trapped inside these Crime Ridden Dem Run cities and receives HATE in return. "Fuzzy" Joe continues doing Claude Rains with his "Invisible Man" routine and these Dem Cronies say Squat. Trump 2020 Rolls On!