2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.

[Beantown Express 2.0 6,559]

Long and frustrating post incoming.  I am starting to really question how broken the minds of the citizens of America really are.  The link below is an article about CNN's recent polling.  Yeah, yeah, I know polling doesn't mean shit anymore and saying Trump has a lead over Biden doesn't really matter unless you are looking at the 5-6 key swing states that really matter but when you look at the way this poll reads it baffles me.  55% of poll responders feel Trumps presidency was a success while 61% say Biden's presidency thus far is a failure.  In general, 58% have an unfavorable view of Biden compared to 55% having an unfavorable view of Trump.  70% say economic conditions in the US are poor.  I mean, is the economy that bad for everyone on this board?  Every indicator shows the economy is doing great.  I would hate to see Biden's polling on the economy if we actually had a recession or shitty stock market or inflation that was still high due to Covid.  Can someone explain these types of numbers logically?  

On another note, I spent the last few days on a business golf trip with a bunch of my clients who are uber Trumpers (these aren't ignorant people but really intelligent successful guys) and they all kept telling me Biden is the real criminal and he is senile and won't live through the next term anyways, so you are just electing Kamala to be President.  I feel like while they are super smart guys, they have been brain washed by Fox News and the right-wing pundits to point where they can't think correctly when it comes to politics.  The way the media has warped the minds of the public really should be studied as a scientific experiment because it is truly amazing what has happened to the citizens of this country.  Everyone on here saw the Kristi Noem puppy killing story but I can't wait until Fox News spends the next 12 months telling its viewers that killing your dog is really good for America and a year from now you will have half the country killing their dogs and being proud of it.  

 

CNN Poll: Trump maintains lead over Biden in 2024 matchup as views on their presidencies diverge | CNN Politics

[David Dennison 18,856]

Americans are ignorant and ill-informed.

And so it goes.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11,669]

42 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

Long and frustrating post incoming.  I am starting to really question how broken the minds of the citizens of America really are.  The link below is an article about CNN's recent polling.  Yeah, yeah, I know polling doesn't mean shit anymore and saying Trump has a lead over Biden doesn't really matter unless you are looking at the 5-6 key swing states that really matter but when you look at the way this poll reads it baffles me.  55% of poll responders feel Trumps presidency was a success while 61% say Biden's presidency thus far is a failure.  In general, 58% have an unfavorable view of Biden compared to 55% having an unfavorable view of Trump.  70% say economic conditions in the US are poor.  I mean, is the economy that bad for everyone on this board?  Every indicator shows the economy is doing great.  I would hate to see Biden's polling on the economy if we actually had a recession or shitty stock market or inflation that was still high due to Covid.  Can someone explain these types of numbers logically?  

On another note, I spent the last few days on a business golf trip with a bunch of my clients who are uber Trumpers (these aren't ignorant people but really intelligent successful guys) and they all kept telling me Biden is the real criminal and he is senile and won't live through the next term anyways, so you are just electing Kamala to be President.  I feel like while they are super smart guys, they have been brain washed by Fox News and the right-wing pundits to point where they can't think correctly when it comes to politics.  The way the media has warped the minds of the public really should be studied as a scientific experiment because it is truly amazing what has happened to the citizens of this country.  Everyone on here saw the Kristi Noem puppy killing story but I can't wait until Fox News spends the next 12 months telling its viewers that killing your dog is really good for America and a year from now you will have half the country killing their dogs and being proud of it.  

 

CNN Poll: Trump maintains lead over Biden in 2024 matchup as views on their presidencies diverge | CNN Politics

Conversations like that are power plays.  They know the dynamic there is you have to kiss their ass because of business reasons.  Likely know you disagree with them. They enjoy saying that stuff in front of you because the economic leverage they have. 

[BevoAbyss 2,058]

51 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

a bunch of my clients who are uber Trumpers (these aren't ignorant people but really intelligent successful guys) and they all kept telling me Biden is the real criminal … they are super smart guys

Guess what? Your clients are fascists (or fascist adjacent). 

And, yes, they are brainwashed… so maybe they are not that “super smart" after all.

[Beantown Express 2.0 6,559]

9 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

Conversations like that are power plays.  They know the dynamic there is you have to kiss their ass because of business reasons.  Likely know you disagree with them. They enjoy saying that stuff in front of you because the economic leverage they have. 

I get what you are saying but I don’t think that is the dynamic.  I am pretty sure they think I am a Trumper also.  I refuse to talk about politics or religion with anybody.  When I say these guys are Trumpers I mean they are showing me pictures from New Years Eve at Mar o lago with Trumps family.  What’s frustrating is I’ve known these guys and many others for years and they are really good people and have helped me many times over the years and I do consider them friends but their views with Trump and Biden are warped.  

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11,669]

15 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

I get what you are saying but I don’t think that is the dynamic.  I am pretty sure they think I am a Trumper also.  I refuse to talk about politics or religion with anybody.  When I say these guys are Trumpers I mean they are showing me pictures from New Years Eve at Mar o lago with Trumps family.  What’s frustrating is I’ve known these guys and many others for years and they are really good people and have helped me many times over the years and I do consider them friends but their views with Trump and Biden are warped.  

If they are maralago level trumpers, then that’s less concerning.  It’s the average joe I’m worried about.  

[HenryJames 66,048]

Elections over polling.

[Dahobbs 17,534]

1 hour ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

Long and frustrating post incoming.  I am starting to really question how broken the minds of the citizens of America really are.  The link below is an article about CNN's recent polling.  Yeah, yeah, I know polling doesn't mean shit anymore and saying Trump has a lead over Biden doesn't really matter unless you are looking at the 5-6 key swing states that really matter but when you look at the way this poll reads it baffles me.  55% of poll responders feel Trumps presidency was a success while 61% say Biden's presidency thus far is a failure.  In general, 58% have an unfavorable view of Biden compared to 55% having an unfavorable view of Trump.  70% say economic conditions in the US are poor.  I mean, is the economy that bad for everyone on this board?  Every indicator shows the economy is doing great.  I would hate to see Biden's polling on the economy if we actually had a recession or shitty stock market or inflation that was still high due to Covid.  Can someone explain these types of numbers logically?  

On another note, I spent the last few days on a business golf trip with a bunch of my clients who are uber Trumpers (these aren't ignorant people but really intelligent successful guys) and they all kept telling me Biden is the real criminal and he is senile and won't live through the next term anyways, so you are just electing Kamala to be President.  I feel like while they are super smart guys, they have been brain washed by Fox News and the right-wing pundits to point where they can't think correctly when it comes to politics.  The way the media has warped the minds of the public really should be studied as a scientific experiment because it is truly amazing what has happened to the citizens of this country.  Everyone on here saw the Kristi Noem puppy killing story but I can't wait until Fox News spends the next 12 months telling its viewers that killing your dog is really good for America and a year from now you will have half the country killing their dogs and being proud of it.  

 

CNN Poll: Trump maintains lead over Biden in 2024 matchup as views on their presidencies diverge | CNN Politics

Being successful and ignorant are not mutually exclusive. 

[BrickHorn 18,230]

46 minutes ago, BevoAbyss said:

Guess what? Your clients are fascists (or fascist adjacent). 

This. I think many wrongly assume that fascists are all goose-stepping, cos playing foot soldiers obsessed with genocide. The real engines of fascism are run-of-the-mill assholes. The substantial portion of the population who believe they are entitled to special status and who enjoy feeling superior to others. They may be otherwise intelligent or pleasant. But they are all too willing to overestimate their own accomplishments and wrongly attribute the rewards of good luck and a stacked deck to Hard Work or Ingenuity or some other mark of personal superiority over the unwashed masses. 

Those are the dicks who truly drive fascism. The casual racists who go about their business every day in the private sector, along the way supporting any con artist who confirms their delusions of grandeur and protects the fantasy by oppressing the less fortunate. They talk politics on the golf course or around the water cooler, convincing each other that they are special, that they earned their presumed elevated status, and that they are the rightful masters of the universe. 

We all know these types. Sounds like Beantown has the ill fortune of working for some of them. 

[Brisketexan 105,123]

This. I think many wrongly assume that fascists are all goose-stepping, cos playing foot soldiers obsessed with genocide. The real engines of fascism are run-of-the-mill assholes. The substantial portion of the population who believe they are entitled to special status and who enjoy feeling superior to others. They may be otherwise intelligent or pleasant. But they are all too willing to overestimate their own accomplishments and wrongly attribute the rewards of good luck and a stacked deck to Hard Work or Ingenuity or some other mark of personal superiority over the unwashed masses. 
Those are the dicks who truly drive fascism. The casual racists who go about their business every day in the private sector, along the way supporting any con artist who confirms their delusions of grandeur and protects the fantasy by oppressing the less fortunate. They talk politics on the golf course or around the water cooler, convincing each other that they are special, that they earned their presumed elevated status, and that they are the rightful masters of the universe. 
We all know these types. Sounds like Beantown has the ill fortune of working for some of them. 

This. It’s all this. It’s how the fascists have taken power, every time - thanks to people like this. They don’t necessarily WANT their enemies tortured and disappeared, but ultimately…they’re ok with it.

[Chuckie Finster 22,694]

Most of us would get fired from our jobs if we did the equivalent of publishing a national poll that showed Trump winning women.

It’s absurd that they are asking us to take shit like that seriously.

[Make em eat Taco Bell 1,549]

3 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Americans are ignorant and ill-informed.

And so it goes.

arrogant, and most importantly, globally powerful.  It's a deadly mix. 

12 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

Good lines for Uncle Joe.   He 100% needs to be re-elected, but comedy isn't his thing. 

Fucking Obama worked that shit like Chris Rock. 

Chris Rock would have been a better POTUS

[Red Five 40,857]

They just showed a poll on MSNBC that said half of republicans think Trump did nothing wrong re: the 2020 election.

[Make em eat Taco Bell 1,549]

5 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

70% say economic conditions in the US are poor.  I mean, is the economy that bad for everyone on this board?  Every indicator shows the economy is doing great.  I would hate to see Biden's polling on the economy if we actually had a recession or shitty stock market or inflation that was still high due to Covid.  Can someone explain these types of numbers logically?  

Inflation spells D-O-O-M for Joe and the Democrats.  I'm shocked at the brazen greed of corporations, making record profits, at the expense of common people who have no choice but pay 2X for essentials, otherwise life ceases.  I'm sensing a lot of poors will vote for Trump. Then when inflation still isn't solved by 2028, will revert to the Dems.  Working 80 hours a week takes a toll, frustration at the polls. I think this explains why blacks and latinos are going for Trump much more.  As Covid killed Trump, Inflation will Biden. 

[Js1 85,321]

54 minutes ago, Red Five said:

They just showed a poll on MSNBC that said half of republicans think Trump did nothing wrong re: the 2020 election.

Seems low 

[Gatorubet 30,234]

3 hours ago, Dahobbs said:

Being successful and ignorant are not mutually exclusive. 

[Sawbonz 27,548]

1 hour ago, Red Five said:

They just showed a poll on MSNBC that said half of republicans think Trump did nothing wrong re: the 2020 election.

I thought it was around 80%. 50% is an improvement no?

[David Dennison 18,856]

3 hours ago, Make em eat Taco Bell said:

Inflation spells D-O-O-M for Joe and the Democrats.  I'm shocked at the brazen greed of corporations, making record profits, at the expense of common people who have no choice but pay 2X for essentials, otherwise life ceases.  I'm sensing a lot of poors will vote for Trump. Then when inflation still isn't solved by 2028, will revert to the Dems.  Working 80 hours a week takes a toll, frustration at the polls. I think this explains why blacks and latinos are going for Trump much more.  As Covid killed Trump, Inflation will Biden. 

You might want to check the results of actual elections since inflation began.

 

[Make em eat Taco Bell 1,549]

1 minute ago, David Dennison said:

You might want to check the results of actual elections since inflation began.

 

that's not POTUS though and that gargoyle Mike Johnson is SPOH

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

8 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Americans are ignorant and ill-informed.

And so it goes.

4 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Most of us would get fired from our jobs if we did the equivalent of publishing a national poll that showed Trump winning women.

It’s absurd that they are asking us to take shit like that seriously.

4 hours ago, Red Five said:

They just showed a poll on MSNBC that said half of republicans think Trump did nothing wrong re: the 2020 election.

The people they are polling are dumb enough to answer phone calls from people they don’t know.

[Fudge Nuggets 19,190]

9 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

I am pretty sure they think I am a Trumper also.

This is where I am and agree with you that it's not a power play.  Being a middle-aged white dude working in O&G everyone assumes I'm a fascist magat like they are.  I get the same kind of talk from contractors that work for me, not the other way around.  I wonder if they would tone it down if I started refusing to sign off on their invoices?

[Js1 85,321]

[The Dog 44,042]

3 hours ago, Js1 said:

There's stuff like this and then all of the polls showing Trump ahead.

Somebody is lying.

[YGIFS 19,450]

14 minutes ago, The Dog said:

There's stuff like this and then all of the polls showing Trump ahead.

Somebody is lying.

Well, I was gonna suggest that the polling services favorable to Trump (one of which is based here in Austin), bought customer lists from Cricket Wireless.  The cell phone provider that is 90% seniors who don't want complicated phones.  And is polling them to "appear" to be polling people with mobile phones, and not just land lines.  But I can't prove it because Gov. Noem took the Cricket outside and shot it in the head and buried the phones in a gravel pit.  

[wildcat09 29,353]

On 4/28/2024 at 9:33 AM, BrickHorn said:

This. I think many wrongly assume that fascists are all goose-stepping, cos playing foot soldiers obsessed with genocide. The real engines of fascism are run-of-the-mill assholes. The substantial portion of the population who believe they are entitled to special status and who enjoy feeling superior to others. They may be otherwise intelligent or pleasant. But they are all too willing to overestimate their own accomplishments and wrongly attribute the rewards of good luck and a stacked deck to Hard Work or Ingenuity or some other mark of personal superiority over the unwashed masses. 

Those are the dicks who truly drive fascism. The casual racists who go about their business every day in the private sector, along the way supporting any con artist who confirms their delusions of grandeur and protects the fantasy by oppressing the less fortunate. They talk politics on the golf course or around the water cooler, convincing each other that they are special, that they earned their presumed elevated status, and that they are the rightful masters of the universe. 

We all know these types. Sounds like Beantown has the ill fortune of working for some of them. 

BrickHorn gets it.

[Sawbonz 27,548]

38 minutes ago, The Dog said:

There's stuff like this and then all of the polls showing Trump ahead.

Somebody is lying.

Sampling error is not a lie. But in general 

lies, damn lies, and statistics 

[Stringer 1,438]

On 4/28/2024 at 8:28 AM, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

I get what you are saying but I don’t think that is the dynamic.  I am pretty sure they think I am a Trumper also.  I refuse to talk about politics or religion with anybody.  When I say these guys are Trumpers I mean they are showing me pictures from New Years Eve at Mar o lago with Trumps family.  What’s frustrating is I’ve known these guys and many others for years and they are really good people and have helped me many times over the years and I do consider them friends but their views with Trump and Biden are warped.  

See, but the bold part is not the test.  The test is not how they treat friends or people they view as their equal, or near equal.  The test is how they treat and view those who are marginalized or they see as below them.  I bet in those cases, the answer is different.

[safe sex 11,722]

On 4/28/2024 at 9:33 AM, BrickHorn said:

This. I think many wrongly assume that fascists are all goose-stepping, cos playing foot soldiers obsessed with genocide. The real engines of fascism are run-of-the-mill assholes. The substantial portion of the population who believe they are entitled to special status and who enjoy feeling superior to others. They may be otherwise intelligent or pleasant. But they are all too willing to overestimate their own accomplishments and wrongly attribute the rewards of good luck and a stacked deck to Hard Work or Ingenuity or some other mark of personal superiority over the unwashed masses. 

Those are the dicks who truly drive fascism. The casual racists who go about their business every day in the private sector, along the way supporting any con artist who confirms their delusions of grandeur and protects the fantasy by oppressing the less fortunate. They talk politics on the golf course or around the water cooler, convincing each other that they are special, that they earned their presumed elevated status, and that they are the rightful masters of the universe. 

We all know these types. Sounds like Beantown has the ill fortune of working for some of them. 

I can't remember if this has been shared on Surly before or not, but it's one of my favorite pieces of anti-fascist writing so I'm not at all sorry about posting it again.

Who Goes Nazi? - By Dorothy Thompson

Quote

Harper's Weekly, August 1941

It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.

It is preposterous to think that they are divided by any racial characteristics. Germans may be more susceptible to Nazism than most people, but I doubt it. Jews are barred out, but it is an arbitrary ruling. I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis and many others who would heil Hitler tomorrow morning if given a chance. There are Jews who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become “Honorary Aryans and Nazis”; there are full-blooded Jews who have enthusiastically entered Hitler’s secret service. Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind.

It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation—the generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war. This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans. It is the disease of the so-called “lost generation.”

Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work—a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature. He has been fed vitamins and filled with energies that are beyond the capacity of his intellect to discipline. He has been treated to forms of education which have released him from inhibitions. His body is vigorous. His mind is childish. His soul has been almost completely neglected.

At any rate, let us look round the room.

The gentleman standing beside the fireplace with an almost untouched glass of whiskey beside him on the mantelpiece is Mr. A, a descendant of one of the great American families. There has never been an American Blue Book without several persons of his surname in it. He is poor and earns his living as an editor. He has had a classical education, has a sound and cultivated taste in literature, painting, and music; has not a touch of snobbery in him; is full of humor, courtesy, and wit. He was a lieutenant in the World War, is a Republican in politics, but voted twice for Roosevelt, last time for Willkie. He is modest, not particularly brilliant, a staunch friend, and a man who greatly enjoys the company of pretty and witty women. His wife, whom he adored, is dead, and he will never remarry.

He has never attracted any attention because of outstanding bravery. But I will put my hand in the fire that nothing on earth could ever make him a Nazi. He would greatly dislike fighting them, but they could never convert him. . . . Why not?

Beside him stands Mr. B, a man of his own class, graduate of the same preparatory school and university, rich, a sportsman, owner of a famous racing stable, vice-president of a bank, married to a well-known society belle. He is a good fellow and extremely popular. But if America were going Nazi he would certainly join up, and early. Why? . . . Why the one and not the other?

Mr. A has a life that is established according to a certain form of personal behavior. Although he has no money, his unostentatious distinction and education have always assured him a position. He has never been engaged in sharp competition. He is a free man. I doubt whether ever in his life he has done anything he did not want to do or anything that was against his code. Nazism wouldn’t fit in with his standards and he has never become accustomed to making concessions.

Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He married for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class—no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value—success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would.

The saturnine man over there talking with a lovely French emigree is already a Nazi. Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual. He was a poor white-trash Southern boy, a scholarship student at two universities where he took all the scholastic honors but was never invited to join a fraternity. His brilliant gifts won for him successively government positions, partnership in a prominent law firm, and eventually a highly paid job as a Wall Street adviser. He has always moved among important people and always been socially on the periphery. His colleagues have admired his brains and exploited them, but they have seldom invited him—or his wife—to dinner.

He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery. He despises the men about him—he despises, for instance, Mr. B—because he knows that what he has had to achieve by relentless work men like B have won by knowing the right people. But his contempt is inextricably mingled with envy. Even more than he hates the class into which he has insecurely risen, does he hate the people from whom he came. He hates his mother and his father for being his parents. He loathes everything that reminds him of his origins and his humiliations. He is bitterly anti-Semitic because the social insecurity of the Jews reminds him of his own psychological insecurity.

Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known. He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him. Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains. Already some of them are talking his language—though they have never met him.

There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him—intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll.

I think young D over there is the only born Nazi in the room. Young D is the spoiled only son of a doting mother. He has never been crossed in his life. He spends his time at the game of seeing what he can get away with. He is constantly arrested for speeding and his mother pays the fines. He has been ruthless toward two wives and his mother pays the alimony. His life is spent in sensation-seeking and theatricality. He is utterly inconsiderate of everybody. He is very good-looking, in a vacuous, cavalier way, and inordinately vain. He would certainly fancy himself in a uniform that gave him a chance to swagger and lord it over others.

Mrs. E would go Nazi as sure as you are born. That statement surprises you? Mrs. E seems so sweet, so clinging, so cowed. She is. She is a masochist. She is married to a man who never ceases to humiliate her, to lord it over her, to treat her with less consideration than he does his dogs. He is a prominent scientist, and Mrs. E, who married him very young, has persuaded herself that he is a genius, and that there is something of superior womanliness in her utter lack of pride, in her doglike devotion. She speaks disapprovingly of other “masculine” or insufficiently devoted wives. Her husband, however, is bored to death with her. He neglects her completely and she is looking for someone else before whom to pour her ecstatic self-abasement. She will titillate with pleased excitement to the first popular hero who proclaims the basic subordination of women.

On the other hand, Mrs. F would never go Nazi. She is the most popular woman in the room, handsome, gay, witty, and full of the warmest emotion. She was a popular actress ten years ago; married very happily; promptly had four children in a row; has a charming house, is not rich but has no money cares, has never cut herself off from her own happy-go-lucky profession, and is full of sound health and sound common sense. All men try to make love to her; she laughs at them all, and her husband is amused. She has stood on her own feet since she was a child, she has enormously helped her husband’s career (he is a lawyer), she would ornament any drawing-room in any capital, and she is as American as ice cream and cake.

II

How about the butler who is passing the drinks? I look at James with amused eyes. James is safe. James has been butler to the ‘ighest aristocracy, considers all Nazis parvenus and communists, and has a very good sense for “people of quality.” He serves the quiet editor with that friendly air of equality which good servants always show toward those they consider good enough to serve, and he serves the horsy gent stiffly and coldly.

Bill, the grandson of the chauffeur, is helping serve to-night. He is a product of a Bronx public school and high school, and works at night like this to help himself through City College, where he is studying engineering. He is a “proletarian,” though you’d never guess it if you saw him without that white coat. He plays a crack game of tennis—has been a tennis tutor in summer resorts—swims superbly, gets straight A’s in his classes, and thinks America is okay and don’t let anybody say it isn’t. He had a brief period of Youth Congress communism, but it was like the measles. He was not taken in the draft because his eyes are not good enough, but he wants to design airplanes, “like Sikorsky.” He thinks Lindbergh is “just another pilot with a build-up and a rich wife” and that he is “always talking down America, like how we couldn’t lick Hitler if we wanted to.” At this point Bill snorts.

Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged.

H is an historian and biographer. He is American of Dutch ancestry born and reared in the Middle West. He has been in love with America all his life. He can recite whole chapters of Thoreau and volumes of American poetry, from Emerson to Steve Benet. He knows Jefferson’s letters, Hamilton’s papers, Lincoln’s speeches. He is a collector of early American furniture, lives in New England, runs a farm for a hobby and doesn’t lose much money on it, and loathes parties like this one. He has a ribald and manly sense of humor, is unconventional and lost a college professorship because of a love affair. Afterward he married the lady and has lived happily ever afterward as the wages of sin.

H has never doubted his own authentic Americanism for one instant. This is his country, and he knows it from Acadia to Zenith. His ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War and in all the wars since. He is certainly an intellectual, but an intellectual smelling slightly of cow barns and damp tweeds. He is the most good-natured and genial man alive, but if anyone ever tries to make this country over into an imitation of Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, or Petain’s systems H will grab a gun and fight. Though H’s liberalism will not permit him to say it, it is his secret conviction that nobody whose ancestors have not been in this country since before the Civil War really understands America or would really fight for it against Nazism or any other foreign ism in a showdown.

But H is wrong. There is one other person in the room who would fight alongside H and he is not even an American citizen. He is a young German emigre, whom I brought along to the party. The people in the room look at him rather askance because he is so Germanic, so very blond-haired, so very blue-eyed, so tanned that somehow you expect him to be wearing shorts. He looks like the model of a Nazi. His English is flawed—he learned it only five years ago. He comes from an old East Prussian family; he was a member of the post-war Youth Movement and afterward of the Republican “Reichsbanner.” All his German friends went Nazi—without exception. He hiked to Switzerland penniless, there pursued his studies in New Testament Greek, sat under the great Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, came to America through the assistance of an American friend whom he had met in a university, got a job teaching the classics in a fashionable private school; quit, and is working now in an airplane factory—working on the night shift to make planes to send to Britain to defeat Germany. He has devoured volumes of American history, knows Whitman by heart, wonders why so few Americans have ever really read the Federalist papers, believes in the United States of Europe, the Union of the English-speaking world, and the coming democratic revolution all over the earth. He believes that America is the country of Creative Evolution once it shakes off its middle-class complacency, its bureaucratized industry, its tentacle-like and spreading government, and sets itself innerly free.

The people in the room think he is not an American, but he is more American than almost any of them. He has discovered America and his spirit is the spirit of the pioneers. He is furious with America because it does not realize its strength and beauty and power. He talks about the workmen in the factory where he is employed. . . . He took the job “in order to understand the real America.” He thinks the men are wonderful. “Why don’t you American intellectuals ever get to them; talk to them?”

I grin bitterly to myself, thinking that if we ever got into war with the Nazis he would probably be interned, while Mr. B and Mr. G and Mrs. E would be spreading defeatism at all such parties as this one. “Of course I don’t like Hitler but . . .”

Mr. J over there is a Jew. Mr. J is a very important man. He is immensely rich—he has made a fortune through a dozen directorates in various companies, through a fabulous marriage, through a speculative flair, and through a native gift for money and a native love of power. He is intelligent and arrogant. He seldom associates with Jews. He deplores any mention of the “Jewish question.” He believes that Hitler “should not be judged from the standpoint of anti-Semitism.” He thinks that “the Jews should be reserved on all political questions.” He considers Roosevelt “an enemy of business.” He thinks “It was a serious blow to the Jews that Frankfurter should have been appointed to the Supreme Court.”

The saturnine Mr. C—the real Nazi in the room—engages him in a flatteringly attentive conversation. Mr. J agrees with Mr. C wholly. Mr. J is definitely attracted by Mr. C. He goes out of his way to ask his name—they have never met before. “A very intelligent man.”

Mr. K contemplates the scene with a sad humor in his expressive eyes. Mr. K is also a Jew. Mr. K is a Jew from the South. He speaks with a Southern drawl. He tells inimitable stories. Ten years ago he owned a very successful business that he had built up from scratch. He sold it for a handsome price, settled his indigent relatives in business, and now enjoys an income for himself of about fifty dollars a week. At forty he began to write articles about odd and out-of-the-way places in American life. A bachelor, and a sad man who makes everybody laugh, he travels continually, knows America from a thousand different facets, and loves it in a quiet, deep, unostentatious way. He is a great friend of H, the biographer. Like H, his ancestors have been in this country since long before the Civil War. He is attracted to the young German. By and by they are together in the drawing-room. The impeccable gentleman of New England, the country-man—intellectual of the Middle West, the happy woman whom the gods love, the young German, the quiet, poised Jew from the South. And over on the other side are the others.

Mr. L has just come in. Mr. L is a lion these days. My hostess was all of a dither when she told me on the telephone, “ . . . and L is coming. You know it’s dreadfully hard to get him.” L is a very powerful labor leader. “My dear, he is a man of the people, but really fascinating.“ L is a man of the people and just exactly as fascinating as my horsy, bank vice-president, on-the-make acquaintance over there, and for the same reasons and in the same way. L makes speeches about the “third of the nation,” and L has made a darned good thing for himself out of championing the oppressed. He has the best car of anyone in this room; salary means nothing to him because he lives on an expense account. He agrees with the very largest and most powerful industrialists in the country that it is the business of the strong to boss the weak, and he has made collective bargaining into a legal compulsion to appoint him or his henchmen as “labor’s” agents, with the power to tax pay envelopes and do what they please with the money. L is the strongest natural-born Nazi in this room. Mr. B regards him with contempt tempered by hatred. Mr. B will use him. L is already parroting B’s speeches. He has the brains of Neanderthal man, but he has an infallible instinct for power. In private conversation he denounces the Jews as “parasites.” No one has ever asked him what are the creative functions of a highly paid agent, who takes a percentage off the labor of millions of men, and distributes it where and as it may add to his own political power.

III

It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes Nazi?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific personalities.

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.

 

[C-Man 27,222]

This fucking fat fuck: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/26/politics/video/bill-barr-vote-trump-intv-sot-collins-src-digvid

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

 

[YGIFS 19,450]

While I agree with his attitude and message, one thing during these weeks of college/young people protests and the response evades him. 

This is all a beta-test.  So much as one college campus has protests about election access/fairness/etc., any other college can use this month's precedence as an excuse to close off campus polling stations in the name of "campus safety."  Any Governor or University President can claim, "Well, we don't a repeat of what happened during those Spring riots over Palestine/Israel, so before this gets outta hand we are going to shut these polling site protests down and close down the voting centers for the student/faculty's own safety."  That'll be kind of a big deal in some swing states.  Charlie Kirk telegraphed all of this 10+ years ago.  I thought he was crazy, and I certainly don't hold him in high regard now, but everything he told me has come to fruition.  You lock down polling centers for 250k+ college voters in some crucial states, it's game over.  What we're seeing unfold right now is the beta test.  

[tx 3 putt 76,933]

Run this ad …..

 

[Red Five 40,857]

He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress.

Hey cool, he’s already been impeached for that once.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,869]

3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Run this ad …..

 

but Biden stutters!

[Satchel 6,938]

On 4/28/2024 at 7:56 AM, David Dennison said:

Americans are ignorant and ill-informed.

And so it goes.

If you really want to know how bad it is, listen to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal in the morning. It will make you wanna crawl back in bed and pull the cover over your head.

[GopherRock 1,765]

Another thing the White House needs to be pounding the drums on.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-administration-plans-reclassify-marijuana-easing-restrictions-na-rcna149424

The DEA signed off on it. Exact timing is unclear, but the wheels are moving.

[Red Five 40,857]

but Biden stutters!

Also, Israel and Palestine aren’t getting along. Unfit for office, imo.

[tx 3 putt 76,933]

49 minutes ago, GopherRock said:

Another thing the White House needs to be pounding the drums on.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-administration-plans-reclassify-marijuana-easing-restrictions-na-rcna149424

The DEA signed off on it. Exact timing is unclear, but the wheels are moving.

Texas and maga states will fight this 

[Js1 85,321]

2 hours ago, GopherRock said:

Another thing the White House needs to be pounding the drums on.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-administration-plans-reclassify-marijuana-easing-restrictions-na-rcna149424

The DEA signed off on it. Exact timing is unclear, but the wheels are moving.

Think it needs a 90 day comment period once the rule is finalized by OMB, so that would put it at around September or October. 

[mchookem 16,330]

5 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Think it needs a 90 day comment period once the rule is finalized by OMB, so that would put it at around September or October. 

 

[Huckleberry 32,859]

I'm not the messaging guru but someone needs to help young Americans understand that you have to defeat fascism so there's still a democracy to fix. 

[C-Man 27,222]

7 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Run this ad …..

 

Here's the article in full: https://time.com/6972021/donald-trump-2024-election-interview/

Quote

In exclusive interviews, the former President lays out a second-term agenda that would reshape America and its role in the world.

Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.

We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?

As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.” 

Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

Read More: Read the Full Transcripts of Donald Trump’s Interviews With TIME

The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.”

Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

Trump steps onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago near dusk. The well-heeled crowd eating Wagyu steaks and grilled branzino pauses to applaud as he takes his seat. On this gorgeous evening, the club is a MAGA mecca. Billionaire donor Steve Wynn is here. So is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is dining with the former President after a joint press conference proposing legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting. Their voting in federal elections is already illegal, and extremely rare, but remains a Trumpian fixation that the embattled Speaker appeared happy to co-sign in exchange for the political cover that standing with Trump provides.

At the moment, though, Trump’s attention is elsewhere. With an index finger, he swipes through an iPad on the table to curate the restaurant’s soundtrack. The playlist veers from Sinead O’Connor to James Brown to The Phantom of the Opera. And there’s a uniquely Trump choice: a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a choir of defendants imprisoned for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, interspersed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This has become a staple of his rallies, converting the ultimate symbol of national unity into a weapon of factional devotion. 

The spectacle picks up where his first term left off. The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely.” As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor.

In a second term, Trump’s influence on American democracy would extend far beyond pardoning powers. Allies are laying the groundwork to restructure the presidency in line with a doctrine called the unitary executive theory, which holds that many of the constraints imposed on the White House by legislators and the courts should be swept away in favor of a more powerful Commander in Chief.

Read More: Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said In His Interviews With TIME

Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.

[video id=FlgFv0Ze autostart="viewable"]

In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Trump says he might fire U.S. Attorneys who refuse his orders to prosecute someone: “It would depend on the situation.” He’s told supporters he would seek retribution against his enemies in a second term. Would that include Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged him with election interference, or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA in the Stormy Daniels case, who Trump has previously said should be prosecuted? Trump demurs but offers no promises. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he says, before adding, “We’re gonna look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”

Trump has also vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” he tells me. “I have too much respect for the office.” Seconds later, though, he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” (Biden has not been charged with any, and a House Republican effort to impeach him has failed to unearth evidence of any crimes or misdemeanors, high or low.)

Read More: Trump Says ‘Anti-White Feeling’ Is a Problem in the U.S.

Such moves would be potentially catastrophic for the credibility of American law enforcement, scholars and former Justice Department leaders from both parties say. “If he ordered an improper prosecution, I would expect any respectable U.S. Attorney to say no,” says Michael McConnell, a former U.S. appellate judge appointed by President George W. Bush. “If the President fired the U.S. Attorney, it would be an enormous firestorm.” McConnell, now a Stanford law professor, says the dismissal could have a cascading effect similar to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered top DOJ officials to remove the special counsel investigating Watergate. Presidents have the constitutional right to fire U.S. Attorneys, and typically replace their predecessors’ appointees upon taking office. But discharging one specifically for refusing a President’s order would be all but unprecedented.

Trump’s radical designs for presidential power would be felt throughout the country. A main focus is the southern border. Trump says he plans to sign orders to reinstall many of the same policies from his first term, such as the Remain in Mexico program, which requires that non-Mexican asylum seekers be sent south of the border until their court dates, and Title 42, which allows border officials to expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum. Advisers say he plans to cite record border crossings and fentanyl- and child-trafficking as justification for reimposing the emergency measures. He would direct federal funding to resume construction of the border wall, likely by allocating money from the military budget without congressional approval. The capstone of this program, advisers say, would be a massive deportation operation that would target millions of people. Trump made similar pledges in his first term, but says he plans to be more aggressive in a second. “People need to be deported,” says Tom Homan, a top Trump adviser and former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “No one should be off the table.”

Read More: The Story Behind TIME’s ‘If He Wins’ Trump Cover

For an operation of that scale, Trump says he would rely mostly on the National Guard to round up and remove undocumented migrants throughout the country. “If they weren’t able to, then I’d use [other parts of] the military,” he says. When I ask if that means he would override the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 law that prohibits the use of military force on civilians—Trump seems unmoved by the weight of the statute. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he says. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country.” He would also seek help from local police and says he would deny funding for jurisdictions that decline to adopt his policies. “There’s a possibility that some won’t want to participate,” Trump says, “and they won’t partake in the riches.”

As President, Trump nominated three Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he claims credit for his role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, he has sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. “I think they might do that,” he says. When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation.

Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to “the moment of fertilization.” I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. “I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,” Trump says, “because we now have it back in the states.”

Presidents typically have a narrow window to pass major legislation. Trump’s team is eyeing two bills to kick off a second term: a border-security and immigration package, and an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Many of the latter’s provisions expire early in 2025: the tax cuts on individual income brackets, 100% business expensing, the doubling of the estate-tax deduction. Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand. His advisers argue that the average yearly inflation rate in his first term—under 2%—is evidence that his tariffs won’t raise prices.

Since leaving office, Trump has tried to engineer a caucus of the compliant, clearing primary fields in Senate and House races. His hope is that GOP majorities replete with MAGA diehards could rubber-stamp his legislative agenda and nominees. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, a former RSC chairman and the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, recalls an August 2022 RSC planning meeting with Trump at his residence in Bedminster, N.J. As the group arrived, Banks recalls, news broke that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by the FBI. Banks was sure the meeting would be canceled. Moments later, Trump walked through the doors, defiant and pledging to run again. “I need allies there when I’m elected,” Banks recalls Trump saying. The difference in a second Trump term, Banks says now, “is he’s going to have the backup in Congress that he didn’t have before.”

Trump’s intention to remake America’s relations abroad may be just as consequential. Since its founding, the U.S. has sought to build and sustain alliances based on the shared values of political and economic freedom. Trump takes a much more transactional approach to international relations than his predecessors, expressing disdain for what he views as free-riding friends and appreciation for authoritarian leaders like President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, or former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

That’s one reason America’s traditional allies were horrified when Trump recently said at a campaign rally that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country he believes doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. That wasn’t idle bluster, Trump tells me. “If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own,” he says. Trump has long said the alliance is ripping the U.S. off. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg credited Trump’s first-term threat to pull out of the alliance with spurring other members to add more than $100 billion to their defense budgets.

But an insecure NATO is as likely to accrue to Russia’s benefit as it is to America’s. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks to many in Europe and the U.S. like a test of his broader vision to reconstruct the Soviet empire. Under Biden and a bipartisan Congress, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine to defend itself. It’s unlikely Trump would extend the same support to Kyiv. After Orban visited Mar-a-Lago in March, he said Trump “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine. “I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump hedges in our interview. “If Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay? They’re much more greatly affected. We have an ocean in between us. They don’t.” (E.U. nations have given more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine as well.)

Read More: Read the Full Transcripts of Donald Trump’s Interviews With TIME

Trump has historically been reluctant to criticize or confront Putin. He sided with the Russian autocrat over his own intelligence community when it asserted that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even now, Trump uses Putin as a foil for his own political purposes. When I asked Trump why he has not called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been unjustly held on spurious charges in a Moscow prison for a year, Trump says, “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.” Gershkovich should be freed, he adds, but he doubts it will happen before the election. “The reporter should be released and he will be released,” Trump tells me. “I don’t know if he’s going to be released under Biden. I would get him released.”

America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense. 

Trump is less cryptic on current U.S. troop deployments in Asia. If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he tells TIME. (The number is actually 28,500.) “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”

Transactional isolationism may be the main strain of Trump’s foreign policy, but there are limits. Trump says he would join Israel’s side in a confrontation with Iran. “If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” he tells me. He says he has come around to the now widespread belief in Israel that a Palestinian state existing side by side in peace is increasingly unlikely. “There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he says. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”

Yet even his support for Israel is not absolute. He’s criticized Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has called for the nation to “get it over with.” When I ask whether he would consider withholding U.S. military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war, he doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t rule it out, either. He is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once a close ally. “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump says. In his telling, a January 2020 U.S. operation to assassinate a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last moment. “That was something I never forgot,” he says. He blames Netanyahu for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people amid acts of brutality including burning entire families alive and raping women and girls. “It happened on his watch,” Trump says.

On the second day of Trump’s New York trial on April 17, I stand behind the packed counter of the Sanaa Convenience Store on 139th Street and Broadway, waiting for Trump to drop in for a postcourt campaign stop. He chose the bodega for its history. In 2022, one of the store’s clerks fatally stabbed a customer who attacked him. Bragg, the Manhattan DA, charged the clerk with second-degree murder. (The charges were later dropped amid public outrage over video footage that appeared to show the clerk acting in self-defense.) A baseball bat behind the counter alludes to lingering security concerns. When Trump arrives, he asks the store’s co-owner, Maad Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, about safety. “You should be allowed to have a gun,” Trump tells Ahmed. “If you had a gun, you’d never get robbed.”

On the campaign trail, Trump uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI. When I point this out, Trump tells me he thinks the data, which is collected by state and local police departments, is rigged. “It’s a lie,” he says. He has pledged to send the National Guard into cities struggling with crime in a second term—possibly without the request of governors—and plans to approve Justice Department grants only to cities that adopt his preferred policing methods like stop-and-frisk.

To critics, Trump’s preoccupation with crime is a racial dog whistle. In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that antiwhite racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans. When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.

Trump’s ability to campaign for the White House in the midst of an unprecedented criminal trial is the product of a more professional campaign operation that has avoided the infighting that plagued past versions. “He has a very disciplined team around him,” says Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. “That is an indicator of how disciplined and focused a second term will be.” That control now extends to the party writ large. In 2016, the GOP establishment, having failed to derail Trump’s campaign, surrounded him with staff who sought to temper him. Today the party’s permanent class have either devoted themselves to the gospel of MAGA or given up. Trump has cleaned house at the Republican National Committee, installing handpicked leaders—including his daughter-in-law—who have reportedly imposed loyalty tests on prospective job applicants, asking whether they believe the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. (The RNC has denied there is a litmus test.) Trump tells me he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits Biden won: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”

Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration. 

The goal of these groups is to put Trump’s vision into action on day one. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted and campaigned on,” says Vought. “[We are] sorting through the legal authorities, the mechanics, and providing the momentum for a future Administration.” That includes a litany of boundary-pushing right-wing policies, including slashing Department of Justice funding and cutting climate and environmental regulations.

Read More: Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said in His 2024 Interviews With TIME

Trump’s campaign says he would be the final decision-maker on which policies suggested by these organizations would get implemented. But at the least, these advisers could form the front lines of a planned march against what Trump dubs the Deep State, marrying bureaucratic savvy to their leader’s anti-bureaucratic zeal. One weapon in Trump’s second-term “War on Washington” is a wonky one: restoring the power of impoundment, which allowed Presidents to withhold congressionally appropriated funds. Impoundment was a favorite maneuver of Nixon, who used his authority to freeze funding for subsidized housing and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump and his allies plan to challenge a 1974 law that prohibits use of the measure, according to campaign policy advisers.

Another inside move is the enforcement of Schedule F, which allows the President to fire nonpolitical government officials and which Trump says he would embrace. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he says. A senior U.S. judge offers an example of how consequential such a move could be. Suppose there’s another pandemic, and President Trump wants to push the use of an untested drug, much as he did with hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19. Under Schedule F, if the drug’s medical reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration refuses to sign off on its use, Trump could fire them, and anyone else who doesn’t approve it. The Trump team says the President needs the power to hold bureaucrats accountable to voters. “The mere mention of Schedule F,” says Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”

It can be hard at times to discern Trump’s true intentions. In his interviews with TIME, he often sidestepped questions or answered them in contradictory ways. There’s no telling how his ego and self-destructive behavior might hinder his objectives. And for all his norm-breaking, there are lines he says he won’t cross. When asked if he would comply with all orders upheld by the Supreme Court, Trump says he would. 

But his policy preoccupations are clear and consistent. If Trump is able to carry out a fraction of his goals, the impact could prove as transformative as any presidency in more than a century. “He’s in full war mode,” says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is “quite apocalyptic,” Bannon says. “That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.”

These obsessions could once again push the nation to the brink of crisis. Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.” When I ask what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump responded by denying he had said it. He then complained about the “Biden-inspired” court case he faces in New York and suggested that the “fascists” in America’s government were its greatest threat. “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others,” he tells me.

Toward the end of our conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I ask Trump to explain another troubling comment he made: that he wants to be dictator for a day. It came during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, who gave Trump an opportunity to allay concerns that he would abuse power in office or seek retribution against political opponents. Trump said he would not be a dictator—“except for day one,” he added. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Trump says that the remark “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.” He compares it to an infamous moment from the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s emails. In Trump’s mind, the media sensationalized those remarks too. But the Russians weren’t joking: among many other efforts to influence the core exercise of American democracy that year, they hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and disseminated its emails through WikiLeaks.

Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah, and Julia Zorthian

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

 

[Pancho 44,774]

 

[Js1 85,321]

4 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

Emerson is bad (Memerson) but those don’t make sense or smell right. 

[Pancho 44,774]

9 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Emerson is bad (Memerson) but those don’t make sense or smell right. 

I can’t find it anywhere but CNN had some poll this morning that was 47-46 trump. The puzzling part was trump was +11 on young voters. 

[Js1 85,321]

It’s just too convenient that there’s so much consistent ticket splitting. It doesn’t smell right 

[atomheartbevo 89,659]

26 minutes ago, Js1 said:

It’s just too convenient that there’s so much consistent ticket splitting. It doesn’t smell right 

All comes back to them polling people too fucking stupid to not answer every unknown phone call.

[The Original Greaser Bob 2,830]

44 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Emerson is bad.

Should have stuck to television sets.

 

[SydneyCarton 48,091]

2 hours ago, Pancho said:

I can’t find it anywhere but CNN had some poll this morning that was 47-46 trump. The puzzling part was trump was +11 on young voters. 

Hayden Horn participated in that poll.