At the NBC Town Hall, the President Demonstrated That He Is Completely Insane
Also, that he has no plan for any issue facing the United States at this time. He has no second-term agenda.
_By Jack Holmes
Oct 16, 2020
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a343889...nl21792147
trump town hall
Twitter
NBC was kind enough to broadcast to the world, yet again, that the President of the United States is completely insane. At one point during a town hall in Miami on Thursday night, Donald Trump explained that he shared a conspiracy theory with his 87 million Twitter followers alleging Joe Biden helped orchestrate the killing of Seal Team 6 members—to cover up that the Osama bin Laden assassination was, in this formulation, faked—on the following basis:
TRUMP: That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody. And that was a retweet. I put it out there, people can decide for themselves.
Sure! Just send it out there to millions of people. Who cares whether it has any relationship to reality? Who cares how many lives get ground up and discarded along the way? It might, in this deeply depressing view of the human race, get you a few votes.
Moderator Savannah Guthrie, doing what she could with a poisoned chalice of an assignment, had an apt response.
GUTHRIE: You're the president. You're not, like, someone's crazy uncle who can retweet whatever.
Which he absof'inglutely is.
Elsewhere here, the president was able to simply denounce white supremacy this time, having kicked off a flurry of excitement and activity among the right-wing paramilitary set with his inability to do so two weeks ago. It's a low bar, sure, but he failed to clear one of similar height when it came to a question on QAnon.
To be clear, this a cult whose members say the president's political opponents—Democrats, members of the media, anybody they see as an enemy—are all members of a Satanic pedophile cabal. They openly dream of the day that these enemies are rounded up, arrested, and executed.
The President refuses to denounce QAnon. pic.twitter.com/RboqRrknck
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 16, 2020
As NBC News reporter Ben Collins, who tracks disinformation and extremism online, put it on Twitter: "Outside of a straight up endorsement, this is about as about as close to a dream scenario for QAnon followers as is humanly possible." Collins has also pointed out that, contrary to the president's suggestion, the QAnon types are not at all helpful for actually fighting pedophilia, as organizations dedicated to doing so have made abundantly clear.
But even beyond the nutso elements—on whether he got tested before the last presidential debate, the president offered, I test quite a bit, I test all the time, I don't even remember, I probably did, I possibly didn't—there is the more basic element that the president does not have any goals or plans for the country he's asking to lead for four more years.
He demonstrated here that he has no healthcare plan. He has no plan to suppress the coronavirus. He has no infrastructure plan. He has no climate plan. He has no plan to address wealth inequality. He has no plan for racial justice in policing and the criminal justice system. He has no plan for rural America. He has no housing plan. He has no plan for Native communities. He has no plan to counter China beyond the tariff tit-for-tat. He has no plan to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon now that he blew up the agreement that his predecessor made. He has no plan to provide people a way out of crippling student-loan debt, or to make college more affordable.
On spreading the conspiracy that Obama had SEAL Team 6 killed.
TRUMP: "That was a retweet! People can decide for themselves!"
GUTHRIE: "You're the president, you're not someone's crazy uncle."
Wild. pic.twitter.com/ClPNgBYe2Z
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) October 16, 2020
He has no second-term agenda. When he's asked about it, he cannot articulate one. On his website, there is only a "Promises Kept" tab. There's nothing about the future. There is no future, only the snarling madness of his permanent present. (This is not normal: Joe Biden has many specific plans for what he would do in office on his website.)
The Republican Party adopted no platform at its convention this year. They basically just pledged to do whatever Trump wants to do. That's a fairly honest admission about the state of the party, but it also signals we'd have another four years of the national agenda being whatever an addled and paranoid old man saw on Fox News that morning and decided to tweet about. Oh, and strengthening and consolidating corporate power, through the conservative-stacked courts if need be.
Surely we've had enough. Surely it's time for someone to govern the country again, not just use it as a backdrop for his reverse-Truman Show—and as an escape pod to flee his definitely real career as a Business Man who makes Business Deals.
The president is the greatest con artist of all time, even with this country's rich history of snake oil and Ponzi schemes. He's deep into One Last Job, but surely we know the trick by now. We all know Mexico ain't paying for that wall. Surely this country has had enough of this ugly bullshit. Good God almighty, enough.
Also, that he has no plan for any issue facing the United States at this time. He has no second-term agenda.
_By Jack Holmes
Oct 16, 2020
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a343889...nl21792147
trump town hall
NBC was kind enough to broadcast to the world, yet again, that the President of the United States is completely insane. At one point during a town hall in Miami on Thursday night, Donald Trump explained that he shared a conspiracy theory with his 87 million Twitter followers alleging Joe Biden helped orchestrate the killing of Seal Team 6 members—to cover up that the Osama bin Laden assassination was, in this formulation, faked—on the following basis:
TRUMP: That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody. And that was a retweet. I put it out there, people can decide for themselves.
Sure! Just send it out there to millions of people. Who cares whether it has any relationship to reality? Who cares how many lives get ground up and discarded along the way? It might, in this deeply depressing view of the human race, get you a few votes.
Moderator Savannah Guthrie, doing what she could with a poisoned chalice of an assignment, had an apt response.
GUTHRIE: You're the president. You're not, like, someone's crazy uncle who can retweet whatever.
Which he absof'inglutely is.
Elsewhere here, the president was able to simply denounce white supremacy this time, having kicked off a flurry of excitement and activity among the right-wing paramilitary set with his inability to do so two weeks ago. It's a low bar, sure, but he failed to clear one of similar height when it came to a question on QAnon.
To be clear, this a cult whose members say the president's political opponents—Democrats, members of the media, anybody they see as an enemy—are all members of a Satanic pedophile cabal. They openly dream of the day that these enemies are rounded up, arrested, and executed.
The President refuses to denounce QAnon. pic.twitter.com/RboqRrknck
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 16, 2020
As NBC News reporter Ben Collins, who tracks disinformation and extremism online, put it on Twitter: "Outside of a straight up endorsement, this is about as about as close to a dream scenario for QAnon followers as is humanly possible." Collins has also pointed out that, contrary to the president's suggestion, the QAnon types are not at all helpful for actually fighting pedophilia, as organizations dedicated to doing so have made abundantly clear.
But even beyond the nutso elements—on whether he got tested before the last presidential debate, the president offered, I test quite a bit, I test all the time, I don't even remember, I probably did, I possibly didn't—there is the more basic element that the president does not have any goals or plans for the country he's asking to lead for four more years.
He demonstrated here that he has no healthcare plan. He has no plan to suppress the coronavirus. He has no infrastructure plan. He has no climate plan. He has no plan to address wealth inequality. He has no plan for racial justice in policing and the criminal justice system. He has no plan for rural America. He has no housing plan. He has no plan for Native communities. He has no plan to counter China beyond the tariff tit-for-tat. He has no plan to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon now that he blew up the agreement that his predecessor made. He has no plan to provide people a way out of crippling student-loan debt, or to make college more affordable.
On spreading the conspiracy that Obama had SEAL Team 6 killed.
TRUMP: "That was a retweet! People can decide for themselves!"
GUTHRIE: "You're the president, you're not someone's crazy uncle."
Wild. pic.twitter.com/ClPNgBYe2Z
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) October 16, 2020
He has no second-term agenda. When he's asked about it, he cannot articulate one. On his website, there is only a "Promises Kept" tab. There's nothing about the future. There is no future, only the snarling madness of his permanent present. (This is not normal: Joe Biden has many specific plans for what he would do in office on his website.)
The Republican Party adopted no platform at its convention this year. They basically just pledged to do whatever Trump wants to do. That's a fairly honest admission about the state of the party, but it also signals we'd have another four years of the national agenda being whatever an addled and paranoid old man saw on Fox News that morning and decided to tweet about. Oh, and strengthening and consolidating corporate power, through the conservative-stacked courts if need be.
Surely we've had enough. Surely it's time for someone to govern the country again, not just use it as a backdrop for his reverse-Truman Show—and as an escape pod to flee his definitely real career as a Business Man who makes Business Deals.
The president is the greatest con artist of all time, even with this country's rich history of snake oil and Ponzi schemes. He's deep into One Last Job, but surely we know the trick by now. We all know Mexico ain't paying for that wall. Surely this country has had enough of this ugly bullshit. Good God almighty, enough.
