There are three themes emerging since Trump won the election:
(1) His embrace of people with rather unpleasant views. That’s being covered plenty by others, so let’s concentrate on the other two.
(2) Loyalty and a disorganized transition. Some folks are beginning to understand how much loyalty matters to Trump. Many of his early appointments and advisors are easy to understand in those terms. Kushner, his son-in-law, was always there for him. Bannon was there during the nastiest of it (i.e., the tape fiasco). He didn’t back down, he didn’t cavil. He doubled down on supporting Trump. Sessions was loyal all the way through. Flynn was loyal all the way through, even when other retired generals suggested he shut it.
Ex-Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney once said, “You dances with them that brought you.” Trump is dancing with people who were loyal through the worst of it.
This is not unreasonable. He’s going to be under constant attack, and he needs people he can trust. I may not like the politics of some of these people, but they did prove they could be trusted to handle the absolute worst and not abandon Trump.
(3) All sorts of wailing about the notion that Trump and Putin talked before Trump talked to State and Defense, or how he met with Japanese PM Abe without going through State.
So?
This sort of stuff shows clearly that the usual suspects don’t get it. Trump ran as an actual outsider, despite his wealth. He said, “These people are fuckups. All the people who run the country are incompetent.”
So, people wailing that the Pentagon thinks Trump cozying up to Russia is wrong are missing the point. Trump ran on the premise that we should be friends with Russia. He proposed that people who think we should be enemies with Russia are wrong.
I agree with him, as it happens, but that’s irrelevant. He ran against the prevailing foreign policy consensus on Russia and he won.
Trump doesn’t think that State or Defense or whoever have been giving the right advice or doing the right thing. He thinks they have group-think, and this group-think’s conclusions are incorrect, and he ran against them.
Trump is doing what he said he would do. He has a mandate for being buddies with Putin. You may not like it (I do), but who gives a damn. He ran on it.
He ran on cutting DC elites out of decision-making, because they’ve run the country into the ground (yes, yes they have).
I make no claims that all of this mess isn’t partially incompetence. The team clearly did not have a good transition plan read (or much of one at all).
But hey, he fired the person who didn’t have a transition plan ready. That was Christie’s job, Christie did not do it. People are focusing on this as Kushner ousting Christie (because Christie prosecuted his father) and that’s part of it, but Kushner wouldn’t have been able to stop Trump giving him the job in the first place: He could only get rid of Christie after Christie completely screwed up the job.
There are a lot of issues about which I don’t agree with Trump, but whether you like it or not (and no, the popular vote count doesn’t change this) he’s actually running his transition in line with his campaign promises, in line with his mandate.
As for Kushner, we better hope he keeps winning his intra-Trump battles, because he’s one of the only powerful figures in the administration who doesn’t want to, say, deport Muslims.
Until people wrap their heads around why so many people (in the right places) voted for Trump, they aren’t going to be able to predict his moves or fight him properly.
Trump had a critique of how the country is run. His critique was essentially correct (I don’t agree with many of his solutions). He won on that critique, and so far he is doing what someone in his position should do: He is acting in accordance with what he said he’d do on the campaign trail.
What people are whining about, so far, are actual signs of integrity on Trump’s part. Integrity for a cause many disagree with, but integrity, nonetheless.
Like all candidates, even the best and most honest, Trump won’t fulfill all his promises. But he is acting in line with his meta-narrative: “DC is broken; those people don’t know how to run the country.”
Whether he can run the country is another matter, but it’s clear that DC elites can’t, because they’ve fucked it up for four decades, which culminated in a Trump presidency.
If Trump wasn’t right that DC elites are fuckups, Trump wouldn’t be President-elect.
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Peter
Pretty good analysis, Ian but you did drop a stinking Clintonite lie in the middle of your otherwise sound post. The only powerful figure in this administration that really matters is Trump and he has never even hinted he would deport Muslims, that is unless some individuals might be illegal alien criminal Muslims.
Ron Showalter
Great, loyalty.
‘Member the good ole days of W. who also placed a really high-level of importance on loyalty to his idiocy? Man, that made for A LOT of great appointments.
Good times, good times.
Also, I’m sure HRC would’ve gotten no flack whatsoever even hinting that 1) she would dodge the blind trust laws by giving Chelsea reins of the her affairs and 2) Chelsea should be getting security clearances for national security, right?
Nope, I’m sure everyone would have been cool with that, huh?
But people enabling Trump seem to be. Why is that?
Let’s see:
whining = lodging complaints against a man who the majority of voters did not vote for and who is a proven racist, sexist, pig, scum-bag, POS.
mandate = shoving Reconstruction-era racists down said throats of people the majority of which did not vote for him whether they like it or not (see #1). Again, just like the good ole W. years.
Ian, seriously ask yourself why you and so many others are being active enablers of this man?
HRC is gone. The Clintons are done.
Why are you carrying on?
Notice, I also didn’t mention again how this election was stolen again due to minority disenfranchisement.
I believe it’s more important we wrap our heads around that fact instead of pondering how people who have been voting in right-wingers for the last 30+ years “somehow” have lost their jobs and schools in their red states.
Pity the poor wittle white babies in Indiana who keep electing right-wingers that move more and more of their jobs out of the state and cut aid programs. Wow, my heart really bleeds for them.
Ron Showalter
And what Trump narrative does this fall under? The part where I have to respect him? Give him a chance? NOT think that he is a miserable POS?
Trump settles Trump University fraud lawsuit for $25 million
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-trump-nears-settlement-in-trump-university-lawsuit-cnbc-2016-11?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=referral
“U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has agreed to settle lawsuits relating to his Trump University series of real estate seminars for $25 million, a source familiar with the situation said on Friday.
Claims brought by New York’s attorney general will represent roughly $4 million of that amount, the source said. ”
Funny, seems to be a bit of silence about this is the MSM, huh?
That’s cool. The POTUS elect just had to shell out $25M for fraud. I’m sure if it was HRC there might have been a little bit more of a hullabulloo, don’t you?
But in the new Trump-era, once you’ve been caught being a fraud/racist/sexual predator it means that no one can ever accuse you of doing that again.
markfromireland
@Ian:
And knowing that is why I routinely tell my political enemies here what they’re doing wrong and why conservatives such as myself and people on the right keeping on winning mandates to govern.
For entertainment purposes I routinely tell my political enemies here what they’re doing wrong knowing as I do so that they’re constitutionally incapable of even considering other peoples’ points of view. Success in politics requires empathy, until you can get inside your enemies’ heads, as well as the heads of those who are best neutral towards you you are never going to be anything other than a miserable and abject political failure.
All the current squealing on this site – and others, boils down to two words “not fair!” the cry of the loser throughout the history of mankind.
par4
Here you go, Ron.
Max
So hiring a fuckton of lobbyists is now “draining” the swamp?
Trump is a fraud and an evil fraud. I’ll be laughing at you when he becomes Reagon 2.0.
batalos
“As for Kushner, better hope he keeps winning his intra-Trump battles, because he’s one of the only powerful figures in the administration who doesn’t want to, say, deport Muslims.”
– I’m afraid you r very wrong about Kushner – and i mean much more than almost harmless deportations…
Anon
These religious clowns are going to start WW III. You either don’t seem to understand that or you don’t care. Which one is it?
mc
anon–more details please. how? with whom? where? why?
Weapons of Mass Destruction!!! Crack Babies!!! Satanic Day Care Centers!!! Y2K!!!!!!!!!!!!!
batalos
” These religious clowns are going to start WW III”
– nope. they r not clowns. they r going to start the Final Battle and to help THEIR Messiah win this round of the Game…
Stirling S Newberry
I do not agree with this – Because he is not running what he promised.
1. he is not bringing back coal
2. he is not bringing back job to the rust belt
3. he is not putting Hillary in jail
4. he did not donate 100 million to is campaign
these are promises not kept. one does not get to run on some of the promises, except those made late in the campaign.
Robert
You may think Donald Trump was a better choice than Hillary Clinton. From your perspective as a member of the master race, that may be so. for me, not so much. I see the difference between a normal Tammany hall politician and a Nazi or Fascist. I voted accordingly. Hillary was way better than Trump and as for the jobs coming back, that isn’t going to happen. So the people who live in the town’s that time and the economy forgot voted for a Nazi and will get less than nothing. The only thing they get is to drag us into hell. I have no sympathy for that decision.
Tom W Harris
They’re not fuckups, they’re whores. Think “Washington Generals.” They’re well paid to fuck up.
osian
an extensive an serious argument as to why trump is not racist and how cavalierly this label has been applied:http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
pig,scum bag, POS are not useful as descriptions.
since the US republic was founded with the president selected on an electoral system, and would require 2/3 of states to agree to revoke this system,(not going to happen) blame the founders if you like for minority disenfranchisement. why blame trump? although the electoral system was designed to overweight the less populated states, ie to enfranchise minorities.
Anon
Re: my comment about about WW III. Read a little about the Christian Zionist movement and you’ll see that what I am saying is not hysterical. They are hardcore evangelical Christians who pledge support to Israel because they want to make sure that they can watch it be destroyed and usher in Armageddon. This is per their religious beliefs. I am not making this up and these people I am talking about are the ones now running the US government. Mock me all you want, but the jokes on you.
Ian Welsh
I do not think Trump is a better choice.
I think they were both shit sandwiches, but the shit was differently seasoned.
Peter
@Osian
Thanks for the link but I doubt if these Clintonites can be reached with logic and persuasion. What we are seeing is the collapse of a very large and deeply conditioned cult that cannot tolerate being denied. I expected the reports of suicide and they may increase especially with the more vocal cultists doubling down on the hate and fear mongering. This is especially disgusting because children are being targeted and terrorized by these warped minds.
I have no problem with sincere. logical and truth based attacks on the Trump regime but what we are seeing is something else from very dark place.
Some Guy
Definitely a bad sign when the only way (per anon.) to avoid WWIII is to vote for the US candidate literally promising to directly attack Russia (and for what?).
Things are moving with their own momentum, as they almost always do. Trump is a little bit outside the standard establishment lane, but he’s no Mule.
Max
>both of them are shit sandwiches.
South Park did an edgy episode 12 years ago and you brought it as gospel truth?
There is literally 0 things that are positive about Trump, unless you’re bought by Russia.
cripes
Sure, Trump ran on the meta-idea that the governing elites, at least in government, are total fuckups, and he was elected by a lessor-popular vote squeaker on that platform. His criticism is true, which is not hard to do in this corrupt system. At least he wasn’t defending the status quo like Crooked Hillary, the dope.
The people who voted for him hoping he’d actually improve health care (and trust me, they believe this), employment policy, trade policy, etc., will be sorely disappointed and betrayed by what happens when his wrecking crew gets to work and two houses of republicans pass crazy shit that the clueless Trump will sign into law.
However, Ian isn’t actually saying that what Trump is doing is wise or smart or good. Would you prefer that he stamps his feet and calls Trump a racist, misogynist, etc? You can find that all over the TV and the interwebz. Go there.
He does seem to be saying that the total contempt for protocol and precedent and procedure displayed during his campaign is consistent with his conduct a now as pResident-elect. It’s still a giant fuck-you to the system, which he will soon putatively, lead. Weird and strangely Reagan-ish in that way. It’s been working for republicans for years; even Obama tried a modified wimpy democrat version of it that didn’t even last until his inauguration.
Integrity is a bit shiny a description for what Trump does, but okay.
That Trump inverted the insipid identity politics of feckless toady democrats and combined it with nativist right populism and succeeded is very fucking significant, and we ignore and sneer at it at our peril. Never forget Sanders nearly ran with it (the mounting rage against globalist hyper financialized capitalism) in the other direction to the White House. Blame your precious Clinton democrats for that. Hillary, on the other hand, dwells in a losing dead-end cesspool. Not a parade I’m gonna march in.
Trump is as much the creation of Clintonism as he is of whiny white Indiana babies, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Just say rednecks or deplorables and stop equivocating about it
cripes
Sure, Trump ran on the meta-idea that the governing elites, at least in government, are total fuckups, and he was elected by a lessor-popular vote squeaker on that platform. His criticism is true, which is not hard to do in this corrupt system. At least he wasn’t defending the status quo like Crooked Hillary, the dope.
The people who voted for him hoping he’d actually improve health care (and trust me, they believe this), employment policy, trade policy, etc., will be sorely disappointed and betrayed by what happens when his wrecking crew gets to work and two houses of republicans pass crazy shit that the clueless Trump will sign into law.
However, Ian isn’t actually saying that what Trump is doing is wise or smart or good. Would you prefer that he stamps his feet and calls Trump a racist, misogynist, etc? You can find that all over the TV and the interwebz. Go there.
He does seem to be saying that the total contempt for protocol and precedent and procedure displayed during his campaign is consistent with his conduct a now as pResident-elect. It’s still a giant fuck-you to the system, which he will soon putatively, lead. Weird and strangely Reagan-ish in that way. It’s been working for republicans for years; even Obama tried a modified wimpy democrat version of it that didn’t even last until his inauguration.
Integrity is a bit shiny a description for what Trump does, but okay.
Trump inverted the insipid identity politics of feckless toady democrats and combined it with nativist right populism. That he succeeded is very fucking significant, and we ignore and sneer at it at our peril. Never forget Sanders nearly ran with it (the mounting rage against globalist hyper financialized capitalism) in the other direction to the White House. Blame your precious Clinton democrats for that. Hillary, on the other hand, dwells in a losing dead-end cesspool. Not a parade I’m gonna march in.
Trump is as much the creation of Clintonism as he is of whiny white Indiana babies, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Just say rednecks or deplorables and stop equivocating about it
cripes
Oops, error message confusion caused me to post twice.
Please delete one.
Ché Pasa
He’s a conman.
Not up to the standard of Obama, far from it. But way in advance of Hillary, who seemed incapable of conning more than her core loyalists.
He’s not so much shaking up or undoing the status quo as he is replacing one faction of it with his own loyalists. Gee, politics as usual — with a mean twist. Who couldn’t see that coming? It was plain as day for those who weren’t conned by him.
Those he successfully conned couldn’t see it, though some of them seem to be slowly waking up to the reality that he’s as crooked as most of those he accused, likely more so.
He has no mandate. That’s simply enabling. He barely got the numbers to achieve an EC victory, but he lacks a popular mandate, and there will be resistance. How effective it is remains to be seen. I doubt the political class will try to mount an effective resistance, they seem to be mostly content with him and (most of) his loyalists in office, but the people who never wanted him in the presidency — ie: the majority of the voters and potentially the majority of the population — will resist.
However, in the immortal words of GWBush, “Who cares what you think?”
We’ll see. It’s still a very unstable situation.
Those of us who weren’t conned by this mountebank-fraud are rightfully appalled at his elevation to the presidency. It has nothing to do with Hillary. It has everything to do with him.
Ron Showalter
Wow, the civility police are out to help tell us how we can and cannot think/speak of a man who just paid out $25M for defrauding people seeking an education and who likes to rape teenagers.
Enabling? Nah.
Ron Showalter
Again, going back to 2000, that might have been the most sickening aspect of the whole charade: the insipid calls for civility.
As if magically somehow just because they’ve been elected to office the scum no longer are same despicable POS that they were throughout their lives.
Is it the evangelical notion of “quick grace” that we are witnessing? Say JC is your savior and all is forgiven?
Um, no.
someofparts
This post is a good example of why I spend time at this website. Just as I start to notice something, I drop in here and see than Ian has already spotted it, and has insightful, helpful things to say about it.
In this case, yes, I’ve started to understand that Trump is using a playbook, so to speak, all his own, and it is not the playbook any American president in my lifetime has used. So it’s gratifying to come here and see that, once again, Ian is helping me to understand more about something I have already noticed and started to wonder about.
So, as I realize that Trump will be using his own playbook, relative to other presidents in my lifetime, I’m wondering what his set of rules tell him about leaving when his term(s) are over. If he doesn’t operate according to standards that have constrained previous presidents, will he begin abiding by those rules when it is time to leave office?
someofparts
This needs to be shared. This is the real end game. This is what we really should fear and do what we can to stop. I wish I could say that I am hopeful that we won’t let things go so far off the rails.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/17/13626514/trump-systemic-corruption
Stirling S Newberry
With Hillary we were going to screw up things slowly, with Trump we have to face the consequences immediately. If you read the quotes from Washington, the elites do not seem to get this – and therefore have to be removed. Go to it, there is work to be done.
Peter
@SP
The Clinton crime family has been stopped by enough democrats refusing to vote for that corruption and the rest of the faithful corruption supporters could learn a lesson from their more ethical party members. That’s probably way too much to expect from these wankers and they are already reducing themselves to frightened monkeys throwing feces at the Enemy which includes many of their own ilk.
The Clintonites complete lack of self awareness or correction will speed their reduction to a meaningless, powerless, declining annoyance while the winners move forward with their agenda and rule.
nihil obstet
And news from Wonderland — as we discuss the unprecedented nazi speech of a president-elect, our current president’s government was one of three countries on Thursday to vote against a resolution of the UN’s human rights committee condemning the glorification of Nazism. The U.S. says, “This resolution’s recommendations to limit freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the right to peaceful assembly contravene the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and must be opposed”. The other two countries opposed were Ukraine and Palau. Most of the European countries abstained. The U.S. has opposed such resolutions in the past because Russia uses them as propaganda, and that’s really inconvenient given that we helped foment a revolution in Ukraine that overthrew an elected government and installed a neo-Nazi government.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government is protecting the freedoms of expression, association, and right to violent assembly of various public and private “security” forces at the DAPL protests. The DAPL protestors somehow seem to be missing out on freedoms of expression, association, and right to peaceful assembly. Glad we don’t yet have a nazi like Trump in the White House.
Peter
@NO
The government often meets supposedly protected demonstrations on public property with force while these DAPL demos are exclusively taking place on private land where no such protections are found. Obama will probably have to allow the pipeline to be rammed through the resistance soon which may set off more violence from both sides. Children have been evacuated from the camps already because of the aggressive/violent tactics already employed by the young warriors against the wishes of the older peaceful demonstrators.
Ron Showalter
“Glad we don’t yet have a nazi like Trump in the White House.”
Hey, genius, who do you think the personnel in the US Government who are protecting said violent demonstrators voted for? Do ya maybe think they voted for Trump? Gee, I wonder, huh?
Furthermore, that means we can expect there to be ABSOLUTELY ZERO pretense as to respecting the rule of law now that there will be absolutely no accountability – no matter how tame/superficial – in the years to come, huh? I’m sure Trump will be sure to rein in the dance-partners that brought him, huh? AG Sessions will be on the case I’m sure, aren’t you?
So, while your dig at HRC and your enabling of Trump was a lame attempt at being clever, it belies the fact that you really DON’T understand what you’re saying and what we will be witnessing in the near future. But that’s cool.
Hey, I know, let’s see what will be the more winning strategy going forward, shall we?
Join w/ the many populations – e.g., women, minorities, etc – in the US and across the planet who can clearly see where all this Trump crap is headed and that are immediately going to be affected by the Trump presidency and with said groups MAYBE resurrect the left from the fake-left.
OR
Continue to listen to the placating/admonishing calls of white, bourgeois, smarmy fake-left mandarins who have no real skin in the game vis a vis a Trump reign but who just can’t stop telling everyone how freaking smart they all are and how we should be thanking them for helping usher in the Trump years?
I mean, the most HILARIOUS PART of all this commentary is listening to the fake-left mandarins complain about the Democrats corporateness when said mandarins just happen to comprise the segments of the population – upper middle class urbanites/suburbanites – that benefited MOST from the DLC-izing of the Democratic Party over the last 2 decades.
But I thought the fake-left just hated themselves Trotsky et al b/c they couldn’t stand the idea of an elite vanguard telling their unwashed comrades just what the eff they should be pissed about and why, huh?
Oh well, in times of Trump, irony is the first casualty.
Peter
Another tribe of hostiles is making news today as the Clintonites organize their snowflake warriors to attack the Electoral College members. Electronic slings and arrows, pleas and threats, are flying demanding, in some cases illegal, action to sooth their stinging loser butt-hurt.
The AP is cluelessly or more likely knowingly promoting this Soros Astroturf as grassroots resistance.
Ron Showalter
Oh, I get it, people protesting the ascension of a POS that didn’t win the popular vote just must be astroturf , huh?
Instead, we should rally around the the POS Trump who drew the majority of his support from disaffected Tea-Partiers – now listen up, Peter – a movement that was ENTIRELY ASTROTURFED from the beginning by the Kock Brothers and other billionaires, right?
Dang, that’s gotta hurt. (drops the mic)
“The Tea Party Movement Is Alive and Well—And We Saw Trump Coming”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/the-tea-party-movement-is-alive-and-well-and-we-saw-trump-coming-214469
“There Is No Such Thing as the Tea Party; There Is Only a Collection of Billionaires”
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19199-there-is-no-such-thing-as-the-tea-party-there-is-only-a-collection-of-billionaires
Exclusive: The Astroturf Lobbyists Behind The New ‘Tea Party’ Group Pushing To Repeal Wall Street Reform
https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-the-astroturf-lobbyists-behind-the-new-tea-party-group-pushing-to-repeal-wall-street-2a0b41524065#.zhxuougqv
Larry Beck
I don’t think anyone suggested that sociopaths don’t have a method to their madness Ian.
Hugh
There is a different between understanding and condoning. It is important to try to understand Trump. Trump won an election and will claim a mandate. Such claims are usually horse hockey because a mandate presupposes that a candidate won a large majority of the votes, not just of those voting but of the whole electorate both voting and non-voting, and that the votes cast were actually FOR the candidate and not against his/her opponent.
Loyalty is important to Trump but it is also that he doesn’t have much choice. Trump ran against the Establishments of both parties, and won. So he can’t trust most of the usual suspects who would normally fill positions in an incoming Administration. At the same time, he never created a movement from which he could recruit new people into these positions. What he is left with is a small group of marginalized has-been pols, decades past their sell by dates, who signed on to Trump’s campaign because they had nowhere else to go and had their own axes to grind. That is people so grotesque that even the grotesques who form the Establishment of the Republican party couldn’t stomach them.
I should also note that loyalty is important to Trump because it feeds into his own endless egotism. But loyalty is not a two-way street for Trump. He may demand loyalty from others, but this is the man who turned “You’re fired!” into a commonplace of our throwaway society.
I do not like to apply words like “integrity” to any member of our rich and elites because their wealth and privilege come from their betrayal of the rest of us.
I view Trump as a series of often contradictory images superimposed on to a single person. He is the spoiled egotistical billionaire born rich and who grew his fortune by catering to the rich. He is the self-promoting real estate developer who screwed over workers and litigated into oblivion subcontractors left and right. He is the reality television celebrity, capricious, arbitrary, and unfailingly superficial. He is the fairly typical entitled rich conservative. He is the attention craving egoist who would drive down twelve nuns, without a second thought, if they stood between him and either an open mic or TV camera. And now he is the accidental mouthpiece of one expression of the popular discontent. And through that he is now able to take on the Establishment and elites who dissed and dismissed him for so long.
For a while it will be enough for his supporters that Trump throws some bricks at and rattles some cages of the elites and status quo. But ultimately, unless he can deliver in ways that make real changes for the better in their lives, they are going to tire of him. And as has happened so often in American politics, even if they do not reject him outright, they will breathe a sigh of relief once he’s gone.
Ian Welsh
The idea that Trump is a sociopath, and say Clinton and Obama aren’t is laughable to me.
One of the first things Obama did on taking office was an executive order saying that all males of military age in Yemen were legitimate military targets.
Until people learn basic ethics and morality I just can’t take this stuff seriously.
Clinton celebrated after Qaddafi was sodomized with a knife before being killed and still thinks it was better to do something than nothing in Libya.
You can’t make this shit up.
I also think sociopaths get a bad name. A sociopath can’t feel other people’s emotions, but they aren’t all bad people. You can completely be a monster and not be a sociopath.
My guess, for the record, is that George W. Bush is and was a psychopath. That’s based on shit like torturing animals as a kid. As for Trump, Clinton and Obama, I don’t know. If one wants to psychologize this stuff (which I’m not sure is useful), they’re probably are narcissists but even there I’m not sure that’s true, and I’m not sure it’s particularly useful in predicting their behaviour.
Bottom line, for all these people, mass murder doesn’t bother them (well, I’m guessing on Trump, but I’d be awfully surprised.) These people aren’t even at an LBJ level of morality: he genuinely lost sleep over the Vietnam war.
LBJ could feel guilt. I am unaware of any evidence that Clinton, Obama or Trump are able to do that.
nobody
On the matter of understanding Trump, here is Max Forte\’s piece \”To Understand Donald Trump is to Not Explain Donald Trump\”:
https://zeroanthropology.net/2016/02/26/to-understand-donald-trump-is-to-not-explain-donald-trump/
V. Arnold
Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
Smoke and mirrors; shuck and jive; there’s a sucker born every 5 minutes, etc., etc., etc..
Horse shit, bull shit, chicken shit; which is better fertilizer?
Depends…
V. Arnold
…which is to say; I’m not buying any of “IT”…