Donald Trump running for President.

Discussion relating to current events, politics, religion, etc
Message
Author
User avatar
Artemis
Posts: 10344
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm
Location: Toronto

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#581 Post by Artemis » Sun Jun 04, 2017 5:53 pm

perkana wrote:Didn't know where to put this...so sad, but so true.
That was creepy to watch.. :scared:

Whoever made that vid did a god job.

User avatar
perkana
Posts: 5394
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:28 pm

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#582 Post by perkana » Wed Jun 07, 2017 12:20 pm

Hi there, I’m reading Comey Testimony 060817 on Scribd and thought you might like it. Comey Testimony 060817 by The Guardian http://www.scribd.com/book/350651822/Co ... ony-060817
James Comey reveals concerns about Trump in devastating account to Congress
Image

The fired FBI chief, James Comey, has publicly revealed how Donald Trump put pressure on him to shut down an investigation into a senior adviser’s links to Russia.
Trump asked Comey to drop his investigation into the former national security adviser Gen Michael Flynn, Comey’s first written account of his interactions says.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” the president is alleged to have told Comey in the White House in February. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Comey, subsequently dismissed by Trump, writes that he understood the president to be asking him to drop the investigation into Flynn, an intervention he found “very concerning”.
Comey’s statement for the record was released on Wednesday ahead of his eagerly awaited appearance before the Senate intelligence committee on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Over seven pages, he provides intriguing detail about his private conversations with Trump, including a 30 March phone call in which Trump asked what Comey could do to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation.
The document appears certain to become the focus of an investigation into whether Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice, an offence for which he could be impeached.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017 ... -statement

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#583 Post by chaos » Mon Jun 12, 2017 5:56 pm

:no: :confused: :scared: :drink:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/tru ... l-counsel/

Trump confidant: ‘I think he’s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel’
BY ERICA R. HENDRY June 12, 2017 at 7:49 PM EDT


President Donald Trump could be weighing the termination of special counsel Robert Mueller from his oversight of the federal Russia investigation, Christopher Ruddy, CEO of the conservative Newsmax Media and a friend of President Trump, told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff on Monday.

“I think he’s considering perhaps terminating the special counsel. I think he’s weighing that option,” Ruddy said when asked by Woodruff whether the president was prepared to let the special counsel pursue the Russia investigation. “I think it’s pretty clear by what one of his lawyers said on television recently.”

“I personally think it would be a very significant mistake,” Ruddy added.

The comments come the day before Attorney General Jeff Sessions is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the same panel before which former FBI director James Comey appeared last week.

In his testimony June 8, Comey detailed his meetings with Trump before he was fired May 9, including conversations in which the president referred to the Russia investigations as a cloud over his presidency. Comey also detailed conversations in which he said the president told him he hoped the director could “let go” of investigations into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russia.

Ruddy told Woodruff that Trump was optimistic after the Comey hearing and “generally felt he had won a victory.”

“Director Comey’s testimony once again proved that there was no obstruction” of the Russia investigations, Ruddy said, adding the president and his top aides felt that some people in Washington were trying to undermine Trump’s agenda by focusing on the investigations.

Ruddy also said Mueller was under consideration for the director of the FBI before he was appointed special counsel, as reported earlier by NPR.

“The president did talk with him in the days before he was named special counsel. I think there’s a conflict there,” Ruddy said.

“There’s some real conflicts,” Ruddy continued. “He comes from a law firm that represents members of the Trump family. He interviewed the day before, a few days before, he was appointed special counsel, with the president, who was looking at him potentially to become the next FBI Director. That hasn’t been published, but it’s true. And I think it would be strange that he would have a confidential conversation and then a few days later become the prosecutor of the person he may be investigating.”

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#584 Post by chaos » Mon Jun 12, 2017 6:04 pm

Parody of Trump's Cabinet meeting today:

User avatar
Artemis
Posts: 10344
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm
Location: Toronto

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#585 Post by Artemis » Fri Jun 30, 2017 2:02 pm

Image


:lol:

User avatar
perkana
Posts: 5394
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:28 pm

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#586 Post by perkana » Fri Jun 30, 2017 8:24 pm

To be honest, I was a bit anxious coming to D.C. But I'm glad to hear that 98% are democrat/liberal, so nobody has told me yet to go home or not to speak in Spanish.

User avatar
kv
Posts: 8743
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:08 pm
Location: South Bay, SoCal

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#587 Post by kv » Sat Jul 01, 2017 8:07 pm

If anyone does punch them in the face please :nod:

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#588 Post by chaos » Sun Jul 09, 2017 7:07 pm

Props to Lindsay Graham. :lol: John McCain, however, is becoming more senile with each passing day.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN19U0P4

TECHNOLOGY NEWS | Sun Jul 9, 2017 | 6:08pm EDT
Republicans deride Trump's idea for cyber security unit with Russia
By Valerie Volcovici and Yasmeen Abutaleb | WASHINGTON

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he and Russia's president had discussed forming a cyber security unit, an idea harshly criticized by Republicans who said Moscow could not be trusted after its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

Tweeting after his first meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Friday, Trump said now was the time to work constructively with Moscow, pointing to a ceasefire deal in southwest Syria that came into effect on Sunday.

"Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe," he said following their talks at a summit of the Group of 20 nations in Hamburg, Germany.

Three Republican senators - Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida - blasted the idea.

"It's not the dumbest idea I have ever heard but it's pretty close," Graham told NBC's "Meet the Press" program, saying that Trump's apparent willingness to "forgive and forget" stiffened his resolve to pass legislation imposing sanctions on Russia.

"There has been no penalty," McCain, who chairs the Senate armed services committee, told CBS' "Face the Nation" program according to a CBS transcript. "Vladimir Putin ... got away with literally trying to change the outcome ... of our election."

"Yes, it's time to move forward. But there has to be a price to pay," he added.

Rubio, on Twitter, said: "Partnering with Putin on a 'Cyber Security Unit' is akin to partnering with (Syrian President Bashar al) Assad on a 'Chemical Weapons Unit'."

Trump argued for rapprochement with Moscow in his campaign but has been unable to deliver because his administration has been dogged by investigations into the allegations of Russian interference in the election and ties with his campaign.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the matter, including whether there may have been any collusion on the part of Trump campaign officials, as are congressional committees including both the House and Senate intelligence panels.

Those probes are focused almost exclusively on Moscow’s actions, lawmakers and intelligence officials say, and no evidence has surfaced publicly implicating other countries despite Trump's suggestion that others could have been involved.

Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump says his campaign did not collude with Russia.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN's "State of the Union" program Russia could not be a credible partner in a cyber security unit.

"If that’s our best election defense, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow," Schiff added.

Separately, U.S. government officials said that a recent hack into business systems of U.S. nuclear power and other energy companies was carried out by Russian government hackers, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

...

User avatar
Artemis
Posts: 10344
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm
Location: Toronto

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#589 Post by Artemis » Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:21 am

:lol: :eyes:



User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#590 Post by chaos » Thu Jul 20, 2017 8:02 am

I am loser for my McCain comment above. I didn't know he was ill.

User avatar
Pandemonium
Posts: 5720
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:18 pm

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#591 Post by Pandemonium » Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:17 pm

chaos wrote:I am loser for my McCain comment above. I didn't know he was ill.
Nobody did including McCain himself knew something was wrong until this week. There were signs that he was somewhat mentally impaired though during the Comey hearing however when he seem confused and disoriented during his questioning of Comey. That said, it's almost certain McCain doesn't have a lot of time left on the clock - glioblastoma brain cancer is one of the brutally worst, most aggressive forms of cancer. I think it's the same thing that killed Ted Kennedy. It's what my mom died from, she was diagnosed, had brain surgery to remove the tumor, it came back within weeks, they gave her six months and she died almost six months to the day after the diagnosis.

User avatar
guysmiley
Posts: 1544
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 10:46 pm
Location: PDX/Fukuoka Japan

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#592 Post by guysmiley » Fri Jul 21, 2017 11:10 am

As crazy as he has been in the past decade, I remember a time when he was pretty well liked by both sides. He stood a chance to be the president maybe before Bush W. No chance his last run. Especially after Palin. Sad news. Seems like a good dude, even if he tows the party line a little too much these days. 5 years a POW!? Respect. Not sure any of us would make it. Sad news.

User avatar
perkana
Posts: 5394
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:28 pm

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#593 Post by perkana » Fri Jul 21, 2017 5:14 pm

I just found out today that since Wednesday devices bigger than a smartphone (laptops, tablets) will be checked at the airport if you are traveling from Mexico to the US. People are asked now to arrive 4 hours before their flight :conf:
I am never lucky with airport security, so pretty psyched I didn't have to go through that :cool:

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#594 Post by chaos » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:44 pm

Trump has really ramped up his twitter tirades. They were amusing for awhile. Now someone needs to man up and lock him in the panic room. :lol:

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#595 Post by chaos » Thu Jul 27, 2017 4:36 pm


User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#596 Post by chaos » Thu Aug 03, 2017 10:08 am

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tru ... 48887484be

POLITICS 08/03/2017 10:47 am ET
The Internet Is Having A Dairy Good Time With Trump’s ‘Local Milk People’
The president used the phrase on a call with the Australian prime minister.
By Jenna Amatulli

If President Donald Trump honors a refugee resettlement agreement with Australia, he’s pretty sure the newcomers “are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”

That’s what the president told Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in January, according to reproductions of transcripts published by the Washington Post Thursday morning.

Turnbull had a hard time getting Trump to understand the full parameters surrounding the refugee resettlement deal, which the Obama administration approved. It stipulates that Australia “would transfer up to 1,250 refugees currently held in offshore detention centers on the Pacific Island nation of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to the United States,” with many of these refugees coming from Iran, according to CNN.

During his conversation with the Australian leader, Trump repeatedly insisted that he heard the number was far higher.

Image

Trump then proceeded to say that he hates “taking these people,” in reference to the refugees.

“I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now,” he said. “They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”

But who are these “local milk people”? Trump was likely referencing the many refugees who take jobs in dairy farms. But a lot of Twitter users had their own ideas about the wording and what it meant.
...

The Washington Post also published a reproduced transcript of Trump’s call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. In it, the president remarks that Nieto speaks “beautifully,” adding that he does not think he “can speak that beautifully.”

We’ll let the local milk people be the judge of that.




User avatar
Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#597 Post by Hype » Fri Aug 04, 2017 8:43 am

chaos wrote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tru ... 48887484be

POLITICS 08/03/2017 10:47 am ET
The Internet Is Having A Dairy Good Time With Trump’s ‘Local Milk People’
The president used the phrase on a call with the Australian prime minister.
By Jenna Amatulli

If President Donald Trump honors a refugee resettlement agreement with Australia, he’s pretty sure the newcomers “are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”

That’s what the president told Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in January, according to reproductions of transcripts published by the Washington Post Thursday morning.

Turnbull had a hard time getting Trump to understand the full parameters surrounding the refugee resettlement deal, which the Obama administration approved. It stipulates that Australia “would transfer up to 1,250 refugees currently held in offshore detention centers on the Pacific Island nation of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to the United States,” with many of these refugees coming from Iran, according to CNN.

During his conversation with the Australian leader, Trump repeatedly insisted that he heard the number was far higher.

Image

Trump then proceeded to say that he hates “taking these people,” in reference to the refugees.

“I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now,” he said. “They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.”

But who are these “local milk people”? Trump was likely referencing the many refugees who take jobs in dairy farms. But a lot of Twitter users had their own ideas about the wording and what it meant.
...

The Washington Post also published a reproduced transcript of Trump’s call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. In it, the president remarks that Nieto speaks “beautifully,” adding that he does not think he “can speak that beautifully.”

We’ll let the local milk people be the judge of that.



This seems bizarre, but there was some speculation a while ago that Trump's way of speaking is caused by the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer's. He seems to have difficulty using specific words/names, often defaulting to vague descriptions like 'thing', 'guy', 'people'. He also seems to lose coherence in the middle of sentences in a way that may not be intentional. I think there was an article comparing the way he speaks now with the way he spoke 20+ years ago, and there appear to be some serious changes.

If he does have a neurological issue, like Reagan, at least it would help humanize him (or at least make more sense of the shit he says).
"My father . . . floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with notes, uncharacteristically lost for words," the president's son Ron Reagan Jr., said of a 1984 debate with Walter Mondale. "He looked tired, bewildered."

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#598 Post by chaos » Sat Aug 05, 2017 6:49 am

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/34 ... ump-tweets

Amazon selling toilet paper printed with Trump tweets
BY ROBIN EBERHARDT - 08/04/17 09:44 AM EDT

Amazon is selling toilet paper with President Trump’s tweets printed on it.

A single roll of the two-ply paper goes for $11.99 on Amazon, slightly less than the $12.95 that it costs for a role of toilet paper with pictures of Trump’s face.

Some of the tweets included on the paper highlight controversial statements that Trump has made that seem ironic or funny given events that have happened since he has taken office.

“Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow — if so, will he become my new best friend?” reads one tweet from 2013.

“The electoral college is a disaster for democracy,” according to one tweet from 2012.

“Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?” Trump tweeted in 2014.

Recently, Amazon has joined the subjects of Trump's Twitter ire. He has slammed CEO Jeff Bezos over his ownership of The Washington Post, which the president calls "fakes news," and accused Amazon itself of having a "no-tax monopoly" on internet sales.


Image

User avatar
perkana
Posts: 5394
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 9:28 pm

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#599 Post by perkana » Sat Aug 05, 2017 10:18 pm

I thought this was funny...

User avatar
Bandit72
Posts: 2963
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:04 am
Location: Birmingham, England

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#600 Post by Bandit72 » Thu Aug 17, 2017 7:34 am

Steve Bannon's latest interview given to some left-leaning paper reminded me of puppetmastering of Putin's Russia.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03 ... s-playbook
"Putin goes out and lies in your face in order to say, ‘Facts don’t exist, which means you can’t argue with me,’
At the heart of this mind-set is the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth or even facts, because everything is spun or disguised to reflect advantageously on one group or another. “The whole idea of values has been thoroughly debased [in Russia], to the extent that if you talk about Western values you’ll just get a laugh,” says Ben Nimmo, a research fellow at the Atlantic Council. This environment of toxic cynicism allows Putin’s word to be as good as anyone else’s, because according to Moscow’s worldview everyone, including and especially westerners, is a self-righteous hypocrite and a liar. “There is definitely the approach by the Kremlin-funded media that everybody is equally bad; therefore there is no such thing as bad anymore,” Nimmo says. This dark internal logic allows for the Kremlin propaganda machine’s single greatest achievement: to rub out all distinctions between truth and lies, so that facts, conspiracies, reality, and fabrications are all pulled down into the same indistinguishable muck. “In that unknowability, when you can’t say what’s wrong or right, or truth or not truth, then it becomes all right to invade Ukraine, or to not show your taxes,” Pomerantsev says."
:ax:

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#601 Post by chaos » Wed Oct 11, 2017 12:33 pm

I can't make it through the 3+ years until the end of his term. :drink:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/p ... .html?_r=0

Trump Threatens NBC Over Nuclear Weapons Report
By PETER BAKER and CECILIA KANGOCT. 11, 2017

WASHINGTON — President Trump threatened on Wednesday to use the federal government’s power to license television airwaves to target NBC in response to a report by the network’s news division that he contemplated a dramatic increase in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

In a story aired and posted online Wednesday morning, NBC reported that Mr. Trump said during a meeting last summer that he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, stunning some members of his national security team. It was after this meeting that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson reportedly said Mr. Trump was a “moron.”

Mr. Trump objected to the report in two messages on Twitter later Wednesday and threatened to use the authority of the federal government to retaliate.
He repeated his complaint later in the day when reporters arrived to cover his meeting with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau. “It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,” Mr. Trump said.

The comments immediately drew criticism that the president was using his office to undermine First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free press. And, in fact, the networks themselves — and their news departments — do not hold federal licenses, though individual affiliates do.

“Broadcast licenses are a public trust,” said Tom Wheeler, who until January was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by President Barack Obama. “They’re not a political toy, which is what he’s trying to do here.”

In suggesting that a broadcast network’s license be targeted because of its coverage, Mr. Trump once again evoked the Watergate era when President Richard M. Nixon told advisers to make it difficult for The Washington Post to renew the F.C.C. license for a Florida television station it owned. A businessman with ties to Mr. Nixon filed paperwork to challenge The Post’s ownership of the station. The Justice Department under Mr. Nixon also filed antitrust charges against the three major television networks.

In Mr. Trump’s case, it may just be an idle threat, the sort of bluster that he has regularly used to keep news organizations and other individuals and institutions he perceives to be rivals off balance. Just a day earlier, he went on Twitter to suggest using federal tax law to punish the National Football League as part of his campaign against players who kneel during the national anthem, only to have a spokeswoman later say he was only making a point.

But Mr. Wheeler said it could also be taken as instruction by his supporters who could act on his behalf. “This sounds to me like another dog whistle for folks to file against the license renewals,” he said. “Clearly it would be a bridge too far for the Trump F.C.C. to move on their own initiative. But if some conservative groups were to take this as their marching orders, it would be an interesting situation to see what the Trump F.C.C. did.”

...

While its members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the F.C.C. is a separate agency mandated to act independently from the White House. Mr. Trump’s tweet suggested a potential misunderstanding of how television licenses work.

NBC, like ABC, CBS, Fox and CNN, are television networks that do not license spectrum. Therefore, there are no licenses held directly by networks that create programs, which are then pushed out to television stations to run over airwaves and into American homes.

But NBC’s parent company, Comcast, does own television stations that do license airwaves from the F.C.C., as do CBS and ABC’s parent company, Walt Disney. But the networks themselves, and NBC News in particular, do not license airwaves.

The president’s tweets stoked strong pushback from consumer groups that said the threat to NBC was clear.

“This is not just a huge issue from a First Amendment standpoint, it is at best a weird way to go at it and nonetheless very problematic,” said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, an advocacy group on communications issues before the F.C.C. “The message is clear, you don’t have to work hard to see how those words are chilling.”

...

Mr. Trump’s threat was hardly the first time a president has sought to stifle the media. “Trump is following in one of our more sordid presidential traditions,” said John A. Farrell, author of “Richard Nixon: The Life.”

He noted that President John F. Kennedy pressured The New York Times to pull its reporter, David Halberstam, out of Vietnam because of his critical reporting on the war, and President Lyndon B. Johnson harassed Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, over the network’s reporting from that war zone.

The Nixon White House “carried the campaign against the press to considerable length,” Mr. Farrell said, including bugging reporters and infiltrating the press corps with dirty tricksters.

He cited a 1971 discussion, captured on Mr. Nixon’s secret tapes, in which Charles Colson tells the president that the threat of an antitrust suit “gives us one hell of a club” to hold over the networks. “Our game here is solely political,” Mr. Nixon replied. “As far as screwing them is concerned, I am very glad to do it.”


User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#602 Post by chaos » Wed Oct 11, 2017 4:37 pm

:lol:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10 ... e-advisers

...

...Trump vented to his longtime security chief, Keith Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House! There are a few exceptions, but I hate them!” (A White House official denies this.) Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision. Today, speculation about Kelly’s future increased after Politico reported that Kelly’s deputy Kirstjen Nielsen is likely to be named Homeland Security Secretary—the theory among some Republicans is that Kelly wanted to give her a soft landing before his departure.

One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said. Even Trump’s most loyal backers are sowing public doubts. This morning, The Washington Post quoted longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack saying he has been “shocked” and “stunned” by Trump’s behavior.

...

Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment—the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment, Trump said, “What’s that?” According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term.
...

User avatar
Pandemonium
Posts: 5720
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 3:18 pm

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#603 Post by Pandemonium » Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:10 pm

chaos wrote: (snip)

"He repeated his complaint later in the day when reporters arrived to cover his meeting with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau. “It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,” Mr. Trump said.

The comments immediately drew criticism that the president was using his office to undermine First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free press. And, in fact, the networks themselves — and their news departments — do not hold federal licenses, though individual affiliates do.

“Broadcast licenses are a public trust,” said Tom Wheeler, who until January was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by President Barack Obama. “They’re not a political toy, which is what he’s trying to do here.”

In suggesting that a broadcast network’s license be targeted because of its coverage, Mr. Trump once again evoked the Watergate era when President Richard M. Nixon told advisers to make it difficult for The Washington Post to renew the F.C.C. license for a Florida television station it owned. A businessman with ties to Mr. Nixon filed paperwork to challenge The Post’s ownership of the station. The Justice Department under Mr. Nixon also filed antitrust charges against the three major television networks."
This all brings up an interesting point.... If removing their broadcast license means the Trump administration aka our government are suppressing freedom of the press, does that mean the government is actually *granting* us the ability to have a free press by issuing licenses, rather than the Constitution? If so, it isn't free to begin with, is it?

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#604 Post by chaos » Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:01 am

^Although freedom of speech is an constitutional right, the vehicle by which that speech is presented is not.

The FCC grants licenses to individual broadcast stations not networks. It is up to the networks to determine what gets aired.

With regard to your point on the inherent subjectiveness in granting individuals licenses (which therefore raises the question of if/how individuals' rights are being suppressed), there are supposed to be mechanisms in place to prevent this. I don't know if applications sit in some sort of que and are reviewed in the order they are received, wherein at that point the "character policy" could come into play. The bar is not set very high with that regard, but you raise an important point: Freedom of speech is nevertheless being manipulated and suppressed by limiting an individual's means of expression.

Keep in mind the licensing requirements to stream on the internet are not addressed in the Telecommunications Act (1994), but who knows how this will eventually change.

User avatar
chaos
Posts: 5024
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:23 pm
Location: Boston

Re: Donald Trump running for President.

#605 Post by chaos » Fri Oct 13, 2017 1:51 pm

:lol:

Post Reply