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bruh come on your own link says he has a few former lobbyists (it's illegal for lobbyists to serve within a year of when they were active) on his transition team. Those are the people who advise Trump when making the thousands of appointments he has to make between now and January, they're not members of the Cabinet.

There are rumors that he's considering some Washington insiders/establishment guys so the media is like HA U REGRET UR VOTE NOW REDNECKS??? but half of those insiders (none are active or former lobbyists) already said they're not interested.

Even Slate admits they're reaching: { Mind you, these are just names being floated around; he may go with different people. }

So if Pence is Trump's assassination insurance what is stopping the RNC from impeaching trump who they already don't like? Not many democrats to stop the plan if they try.

The milliins of trump supporters who'd march on Washington if they try.

All they need is for Trump to say something stupid enough or do something stupid enough and they could simply do it under the guise of Trump being dangerous. One slip up at the wrong time and they could slip him out of office while the outrage is still going on.

Christie appears to be on his way out. Bridgegate was just too damaging it seems--even for Trump.

lisalombs said:

Tell me this is not the most surreal thing you’ve ever read.

It would have been, if the New York Times hadn't run an opinion piece talking about the coloring books and play doh safe spaces over a year ago. I really have to wonder how these people will function in the real world. Their boss won't give them the day off because they got triggered by hearing someone road rage at them on the way to work and say the n word.

Ryumaru Borike said:

I would also like to remind Trump supporters that we have the right to protest the president…

Sure they can (just as long as they don't burn down Oakland or Portland in the process), but I do have wonder how long they're gonna keep it up for. 1,500 days is a long time to protest and chant "hey, hey, ho, ho. Donald Trump has got to go."

I also wonder if they're actually go to do anything meaningful. Midterms always murder Democrats and 2018 is shaping up to be absolutely brutal for them (there's ten Dem senators up for reelection in states Trump won by >5%). Will they actually take their anger and energy and direct it toward actual change, or is this going to be Occupy Wall Street Part 2?

Basilius said:

Not many democrats to stop the plan if they try.

Sure they can. Impeachment itself requires just a simple majority in the House, but the House's Republicans are much more right wing than the Senate and class with Ryan quite often--sometimes even preventing him from passing measures the GOP establishment supports. 11 House members endorsed Trump in the primary. It's unlikely Ryan would get enough GOP support to do impeachment and would need Dem help.

As for the trial. A 2/3 majority is needed to convict and no nuclear option can change that. McConnell would have to have Dems supporting impeachment for it to happen.

Given how close the RNC is to Trump (they practically ran his ground game for him), I find it very unlikely the #nevertrump folks have anywhere near enough support to even get an impeachment proceeding out of a subcommittee. An impeachment would be devastating to the Republican Party. It's not something they're going to self inflict just so Pence can rule a ruined term.

@God Emperor Donald Trump
Reminder that shitposting is not allowed in General. Take it to Riff Raff please.

What do you all believe the biggest reason Clinton lost?
I think the biggest reason has to be passion.
This is bernie sanders when he speaks

This is Joe Biden when he speaks

They have passion, you know they truly care. They show real emotion.
When has Clinton ever done this?

{ Not many democrats to stop the plan if they try. }

Why would Democrats impeach Trump to get to Pence? Especially since he's immediately backing down from all of his extremist stances and wants to compromise? We've been looking for someone to make Congress actually do something for us for decades, now we've put a babysitter in charge. Well, we've strapped bombs to the babysitter and we're letting him walk around, they're actually the ones who are hostage. Send Trump some genuinely give-and-take legislation created through compromise to sign, it will be popular with the country, what reason would he have to try and go rogue? Stall, get into arguments, refuse to work together and you force Trump to make moves a la Obama ¯\(ツ)/¯

Stall, get into arguments, refuse to work together and you force Trump to make moves a la Obama

I said there isn't many democrats who could stop them if they tried to get rid of Trump. The republicans try to get rid of Trump for Pence and the only ones who might stand up would be the democrats. that is what I was arguing. I think you got it mixed up.

I did in fact, I thought you meant some Dems would team up with GOP to impeach him. They don't have the votes to do it alone. It's a sound insurance policy!

You aren't funny.

This vid's gone pretty viral, but there's no mutation, so meme status is yet unconfirmed.

This is exactly why Clinton lost

"Seemingly trying to maintain relevance and keep the public’s attention on herself, she devised a plan to look like she just happened to run into a somber Hillary supporter on a hike in the woods and took a picture together like a couple of smiling gal pals. If the purpose was to make people miss her, it backfired big time when the truth about the person in the picture only reminded us what a liars Hillary and CNN are.

The news network, that shilled hard for Hillary during her run, reported that Margot Gerster was walking with her daughters when out of nowhere her path crossed with Hillary and Bill. Not only do the logistics of that make no sense since Secret Service would never let events go down like this, but Gerster wasn’t a random citizen at all, she’s a Democrat operative, American Lookout reported."

poochyena said:

What do you all believe the biggest reason Clinton lost?

She took her base for granted and got complacent. The rust belt's her "firewall." Even if something goes wrong in Florida or North Carolina, the northern midwest will lock things down. Why wouldn't they? They've voted Democratic for two decades. We don't even have to go there or throw them that many bones. Let's just focus on independents and boosting minority turnout.

Micheal Moore summed things up pretty well:

I think there was a certain level of hubris as well, which dampened enthusiasm. We're guaranteed 240 electoral college votes. Why worry? Especially since that great new Hispanic base will lock in the Democratic Party for decades to come while Republicans flounder. Just put things on cruise control and get that victory speech spellchecked.

Apparently the rest of that quote was taken out of context to make it seem like he endorsed Trump. Though Moore is known to do that himself so fuck it.

He didn't say it in support of Trump at all, he was just talking about how Trump is resonating on a personal level around the country but nobody is paying attention to it. Just like Ann Coulter was laughed off every show when she said Trump would win, liberals laughed at their own Michael Moore for taking Trump and his band of merry racists seriously. He's pissed because people took it as an endorsement instead of a warning aaaand here we are lol.

Did we go over this already?

Priebus (RNC Chair) is in as Chief of Staff and Bannon (Breitbart's former editor) is in as Chief Strategist. I think it's a nice blending of establishment and outsider. Keeps up that "screw Washington" image while still giving an olive branch to Congress. Hopefully it won't lead to an internal civil war.

Trump also says he'll be deporting 2-3 million illegals who 'have criminal records,' then secure the border, then figure out what to do with the rest.

Also, given the election's now over, will the thread shift to a "General US Politics" theme or is it going to be locked and a new "Trump Presidency" one started?

I'd prefer a lock and make a new thread for Trump

Am I too late to give my thoughts on why trump won? Because to me it's a very simple reason. Hillary Clinton was supported by the entire establishment that people on every level of US politics have come to hate. For some, that's washington. For others, that's the intellectual elite. For more, it's the media. For more still, it's just the loud-mouths of the internet who control most of the information dissemination and spread.

But basically, every organized front that people wanted changed, shut down, burnt down, and built from the ground up, supported Hillary Clinton, and her message was one of constant preservation and maintenance. Additionally, there were like, no one around, who could actually say they liked Hillary or would willingly vote for her if anyone else was in the running.

That's how low things were, the people who made up her "base" had fear as their primary tool to vote with. Fear of change, fear of something worse, fear of returning to bad times, basically fear was the entire platform of the democrates this election. Fear, and Keeping in a safe space, and never moving from that safe space because of fear of the move being worse then the status quo.

Americans, I don't know why, seem to have an aversion to stagnation or keeping things the same for too long. Culturally, Technologically, Sometimes Societal, people like it when things change, just on their time. This election many people were ready for change, and because hillary wouldn't give it, they turned to Trump.

But in all honesty, that accounts for the hardline and a bit of the independents, but for the rest of the middle voters, the choice was even simpler. Hillary was described as the lesser of two evils, the better of two bads, and generally a horrible person and horrible candidate who they were told they had to vote for by people who often annoyed or belittled them because it was the obvious choice.

People don't like to be told what to do. People don't like feeling they are forced into something. And they especially don't like being told to do something bad because someone else told them to. So when you have the choice between two evils, suddenly it doesn't really matter which choice you make. It becomes a question of which side wasn't as annoying, or pushy, or smug. And that side, for most of the election, has been Trumps.

I can't believe no one else posted this yet.
Anyone remember the person who said he'd eat a bug if Trump got over 240 electoral votes?

DOW last 3 months

DOW last 5 days

CNN's Symone Sanders is extremely offended that white people 'have the audacity' to question supposedly election-related hate crimes because so many have been false reports.

{ Trump supporter Carl Higbie retorted that there was violence on both sides, and that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hadn’t bothered to denounce the violence at anti-Trump rallies. “I’m sorry, hate crimes and protesting are not the same things…” Sanders responded.

“What do you say to the people who dragged a poor white guy out of a car and beat him?” asked Higbie.

“Oh my goodness, poor white people! Please!” she responded. “Oh my– stop. Stop, Carl.”

“That’s not protesting!” Higbie said. “Dragging someone out of their car are beating them is not protesting.”

“There has never been an acceptable form of protest…” she responded. “We can’t call for people to be peaceful when the rhetoric that has been used is not peaceful, when people don’t feel peaceful in their home.” }

@Locking the thread

Discussion is still on topic and consistently going. It'll probably stay open until the electoral college votes, as the election is then literally over, and no later than the inauguration. If people are about done with it before then, sure, it can be locked.

I'll lock it, if any forum mod didn't get that. This is my baby.

@Guy who ate a bug

He was the head of the Princeton Election Consortium, which gave Clinton the most optimistic view out of all of the models – >99% chance of winning. It never seemed to dip below 98%, when I was watching it. It appears he didn't account for polling error, like 538 did.

Do you want Trump to be a 2 term persident? Because this is how you make Trump a 2 term president.

2015: Trump will never actually run a serious campaign
Summer 2016: Trump will never win the nomination
Fall 2016: Trump will never defeat Clinton
2017-2020: Trump will never win a second term

MFW Trump wins 46 states: [Insert reaction face from one of the three JonTron videos released between now and then]

Seriously though, does the professional left still not realize this behavior is a large part of why Trump won and that it only affirms his supporters' believe about the state of the country? I knew they were out of touch, but not this out of touch.

This is the organization whose representatives Chris Hayes just brought onto MSNBC to say how Breitbart should not be accepted in the public sphere of debate.

I think it is a bit too early to be thinking about term 2 for Trump. He isn't even in office yet. Lets at least wait to see how he does. I mean if he managed to fuck everything up chances are he won't get a second term.

Not saying he will but lets not count our chickens before they hatch.

Also yes the left needs to purge the establishment and bring in more people like Bernie.

John Oliver is not happy about the election result:

^ I've hated him for a while. Use to like his videos, but his bias is so incredible that I just couldn't watch anymore.

Seriously, look at the thread on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/5cu5t2/presidentelect_trump_last_week_tonight_with_john/
When even reddit is calling out someone for being too left wing bias, you know you have gone too far.

1st half of post: not serious
2nd half of post: serious

I can't remember if it was in this thread or not, but I pointed out that both parties have an opportunity to clean out their halves of the establishment. I believe it's more important for the Democrats at this point, since they've lost a massive amount of local, state, and Congressional offices since 2010 and the party seems to be more out touch with the American electorate than Republicans at this point.

I like how he's bitching about how America elected a "racist grandpa" instead of "letting girls know that they can become President as well."

"Forget about Hillary's unlikable, untrustworthy reputation! It's the current year and we still haven't had a female president!

Like, sorry DNC, but maybe you shouldn't have sabotaged Bernie's run from the start, opting to support a woman whose career as Secretary of State was a long and bloody path. Try to give young girls an actual role model.

Now that she's lost, can the left stop pretending she wasn’t a fucked-up neocon warhawk who used political influence to amass a personal fortune?

{ the [Democrat] party seems to be more out touch with the American electorate than Republicans at this point. }

well well well, how the turntables

It may yet destroy the Democratic Party as we know it. Hopefully enough to lock the Progressives in a death spiral.

If the democratic party doesn't manage to get its shit together and distance itself, like actively work to distance itself, from the nutters hijacking the party then it will fail.

Trump, ironically enough, was a distancing from the usual candidate the stereotypical nut jobs of the right wing tend to vote for. Like, we had candidates who represented the dynastic branch via Jeb Bush, the religious fundamentalist in candidates like Carson and Cruz. The economic extremists like Rand Paul and the questionable racial view candidates like Rubio, at least imo, all of them lost to a man whose message was just "things are broken, lets fix it".

In an odd way Donald Trump is a different vanguard of the republican party, and the attempts to smear his voter base as Racist Bigots kinda masks the fact that the Racist Bigots candidate of choice were all Blown out of the Water by Trump, whom many of these actual bigots called a Shill for the Liberal party to pave the way for Hillary's Presidency.

Yeah. That happened. There was a sizeable faction of the redditors and /pol/ users who claimed Donald Trump was a double agent for the Blue team sent to sabotage the Red teams success. That's where the racist bigot faction sat, while the part of the party who wants less PC culture and Economic programs got to carry this election.

Meanwhile the democrats…well, they doubled down on the voter base being so foolish, they'd ignore everything Hillary Clinton did for "Muh Diversity President".

@Black Graphic T
Things are not gonna change anytime soon. American politics are absurdly polarizing because of the two party system and both parties have nothing to gain by reducing this polarization. What DNC is currently doing is galvanizing its base after a spectacular failure because its the only thing they can do to survive this. Cleaning house would guarantee no success in the mid term elections and if Trump gets a second term their corporate donations are gonna take a hit as the donors move on to the other aisle to court Republican politicians to get political favors.

Their current actions may not be reasonable or sensible but in terms of politics, this is their best bet.

Determining that Facebook and Google had a role to play in electing Donald Trump by allowing "fake" news that supported him to appear on peoples feeds, Facebook has expanded their content ban to include 'fake news' and Google will now block ad serving on websites that they have decided are lying to the public when they present themselves as news sources (they're targeting conservative commentators if you haven't caught on yet).

{ "Moving forward, we will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher's content, or the primary purpose of the web property," Google said in a statement. }

Over 50% of Arrested Portland Protesters Didn't Vote in Oregon

"Portland, Ore.--More than half of the anti-Trump protesters arrested in Portland didn’t vote in Oregon, according to state election records.

At least sixty-nine demonstrators either didn’t turn in a ballot or weren’t registered to vote in the state.

KGW compiled a list of the 112 people arrested by the Portland Police Bureau during recent protests. Those names and ages, provided by police, were then compared to state voter logs by Multnomah County Elections officials.

Records show 34 of the protesters arrested didn’t return a ballot for the November 8 election. Thirty-five of the demonstrators taken into custody weren’t registered to vote in Oregon"

Nearing rock bottom in the salt mines, liberal educators in DC have "walked out" of school and are leading kids who aren't even old enough to vote# down Pennsylvania Avenue to protest Trump's election in front of the Supreme Court.

Using children, or people who can't even legally vote to push your agenda and through an air of authority force them to participate in your agenda pushing is deplorable

But they don't care. They never cared. Academia doesn't ever have to deal with the consequences of their own bullshit.

Trump has defied every expectation throughout this election. Every. Single. One.

At this point, there is nothing unreasonable about the possibility of him being a legitimately good president. It is a very real possibility.

I'm not any less worried. He is still a businessman who lacks tact, thinks bottom line first, and wants to win above all else. Unless he can tone back those inclinations when he needs to, then I'll be worried about his personality traits. It's not my bent, but I have no issue with a politically conservative president as long as social progress isn't revoked with certain communities (ideally, he'll talk down other Republicans who would be more regressive on civil rights issues. That would earn some respect from me.)

But the talk of bending on simply nixing and replacing the ACA is great. Not that the ACA is great and shouldn't be touched but that he can go back on what he said during a heated election and actually consider what's best for the country. "Repeal and replace" of any large piece of legislation is hard to do in practice, because a good chunk of Americans do benefit (e.g., including many of you here who aren't yet 26 and are on their parents' insurance) so hearing that he wants to replace the ACA with something else with good parts of the ACA still intact is promising.

Let's all not get too excited though. Stocks are up, extreme liberals aren't handling a political loss and imminent (hopefully) rebranding well, Trump hasn't been seen grabbing anyone who didn't want to be grabbed…but it's only been a week since the election.

There's a lot of good and bad that can be done. Just because he's not Clinton doesn't mean he's proven himself or that he's done anything yet.

The democrats have been galvanizing their base since 2012. Their base was galvanized when it went into this election, and they doubled down on galvanizing it after forcing the results they wanted onto the voter base. They were as solid as they were ever going to get via the galvanization strategy, compared to their opponents. Just look at the primaries of both sides and see the stark difference, the Reps were scattered with different factions while the Dems had 2 choices to make for the parties future, in actually one given the nature of the DNC's backdoor dealings.

The democrats have hardened, galvanized, and fanaticized their Voter Base to the point where most Fandoms reach the tipping point. Voting bases are a lot like fandoms, just like sports teams have fandoms, cars have fandoms, etc, etc. These fandoms matter more in the real world, but they are fandoms, and much like fandoms, they can get toxic if they are allowed to double down too much and become to insular to outsiders.

The dems have made their base so steadfast in their support of the party that it's actually starting to drive away new voters. It's actually turning independent and middle of the road voters away from the mainstream party. We saw it happen via Bernie Sanders supporters refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton because she wasn't blue enough for them. Not because she was corrupt and a terrible candidate but because "she's just a neocon in disguise". And now with these protests, we're seeing how overly impassioned the democrats have become, to the point that if they don't win, its cause to break other peoples stuff and break the law, or to flee the country like this were 1939 poland.

The democrats, if they keep doing this, are going to put themselves more and more on the fringe of the voter base. If they keep doubling down on supporting this kind of behavior that most americans really don't get behind, then they are setting themselves up for another defeat.

Licking wounds is fine, but this isn't how you lick wounds. This is how you let wounds fester and get infected, by doing the same damn thing and not looking to get some treatment, or to change anything of the present course.

Children-who-can't-vote-but-are-ditching-school-to-protest mimic the adults in their lives and beat a 15 year old who was wearing a Trump hat

I kind of want a President who thinks "bottom line first" and is a business man.
For god's sakes, this entire election has been over economics. People vote with their wallets, always have. It's why it's so bullshit to say that Bernie would have beaten Trump; keep throwing out that socialist policy and see how the job makers in this country feel about it.

I'm not a big fan of Trump's personality. I don't like some of the social positions he has. But a business man and a negotiator is what this country needs.

We need someone with a business know hows, with the ability to understand what the industries want, and need, to come in, and we got that.

Oh and yeah, look into the coal, steel, transportation, building stocks and they have exploded!
an athens shipping company's stock exploded 1400% since Trump won.

Long cinderblocks!

Do you see the issue with prioritizing the ends too much over the means? For me, the issue isn't just that he's a businessman with a one-track mind in achieving his goals (economic or otherwise). But he's one that lacks tact as well. If you disrespect a business or partner that you hold more leverage over than they hold on you, then that approach helps you become dominant.

In politics though, your businesses and partners take affronts personally, whether they should or not. Trump probably could strongarm in a lot of matters, because his "business" is the United States now. It doesn't get much bigger. But say the wrong thing to the wrong country (maybe even a close ally of the wrong country,) and it could cost us all.

…do you think Trump, compared to other potential leaders, is likely to say something to offend another group of people?

I'd think so. Heck, some people voted for him, because they liked that about him.

Should that happen, it won't get Likes on Twitter. It might just piss off people who are already unhappy with the US. I don't think our leverage in the course of the next 4 years will be so great that Trump can strongarm for whatever we need without taking the needs and wants of other countries into account.

That's why I'm concerned with his personality about prioritizing the bottom line too much and being callous to those ends. That's business. It might not work in politics.

About that:

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-transition-team-lobbyists-2016-11
https://archive.is/6eo1X
http://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-expert-mike-rogers-leaves-trump-transition-team-amid-shake-up-1479221847
https://archive.is/etFSG