MANGOTUS wants to play the game of restricting press access? Fine. The press should not cover any of his appearances. No State of the Union, no rallies, no signing ceremonies, no interviews. Use the time that would be dedicated to showing video of his gruntings to investigative exposes.
Remember when the right consistently complained about Obama was always campaigning? Yeah well now letās see how they spin this President always campaigning and playing golf. Do you think the Trump people will figure out how to merge the two?
This is a perfect example of what defines the tRump era as nothing more than a creeping dictatorship. We, the American people, by way of our government, supposedly own the lease on that building. All the same, tRump finagles ways through the IRS tax code somehow, to stash the profits from hotel receipts through some non-blind trust, unaccountable and opaque as hell, controlled by criminal elements within his own familyās business, using whatever bullshit financial instruments theyāve devised to transfer those profits into their own fucking pockets. As a result of being allowed to continue to slap his name on that renovated Post Office building and collect those receipts, heās attracting high-paying foreign and domestic bureaucrats, wanting to influence and curry favor with this administration through their patronage. Truth be told, this is nothing short of allowing influence peddling without any transparency, as payment for preferential treatment, with all available oversight being denied to the public on a regular basis.
tRump then holds campaign rallies there, where heās able to hire a private security firm, hopefully at his own expense, but fungible nonetheless, on top of what we the taxpayer provide him by way of the Secret Service, and on top of all that, he gets to keep out the press and the general publicā¦because, reasons.
That is how an autocrat is allowed to control all factors, all angles, and get away with this shameful event and outrageous abuse of power. Ethics be damned, especially as the GOP and their cronies sit back and say nothing, and do nothing, allowing this to continue to the detriment of the entire basis for our democratic system of government. One more fundamental principle being eroded without anyone doing a fucking thing about it.
The first Amendment is dying, folksā¦but never mind all that, fix your brain elsewhere, while this Barnum and Bailey Clown President fleeces the country for his own benefit while weāre all reduced to reading about it on a daily basis. It just disgusting. Thereās no excuse for this shit. None.
Quit reporting this crap and lies as anything other thanā¦āin other newsā defiantly excluding his name and tweetsā¦and the lies of his surrogatesā¦STARVE THIS rotten STAIN OUTā¦
HE is a whore for attentionā¦cut off the mic and everything on the back page in small printā¦The World is disgusted with him after a few long monthsā¦
You really think news outlets can just all get together and agree to stop covering the President of the United States? Particularly one whoās insane?
Can we set aside the part where he excluded the press and talk about that 35K per person?
Total contribution limits for 2020 havenāt been set yet, but the primary and general limits are going to total somewhere around $5,400. The Guardian is reporting that Trump will be taking the first tranche for his campaign and spreading the rest around the other GOP organizations for 2018.
But hereās the thing. Do we actually know that, or is this just another example of an assumption of normality being imposed on an abnormal subject again? Do we really know anyone else will get their cut?
Hereās another thing. Heās maxing out donors waaaayyy early. You can bet that a lot of that money will end up in the Trump Organization by the end of this year and then those wells can never be tapped again. That suggests to me a)(i) heās not planning on being around until 2020 or a)(ii) heās that fucking stupid and his need for validation and applause have once again outweighed political reason and b) an awful lot of fat cat donors donāt think heāll be around either.
After someone quotes The Guardian article you just referrenced to Donald Trump, he looks up and asks āWhat the fuck is a tranche?ā
A. Thatās a dangerous game, since despite his desperate need for attention, operating in darkness would provide far more benefits to the Trump fascists than not.
B. This effort would be futile, since the conservative media would fill in those blanks. It would make their propaganda that much more powerful, since there would be no witness accounts other than those friendly to fascist interests.
So while I agree with you in spirit ā and especially your last sentence, which should be happening anyway ā itās still important for the press to try to cover Trump as much as possible.
This is a tough game. The rules of engagement are stacked against decent, truth-respecting people, since the fascists donāt play by any rules other than āwin.ā So they get to lie, cheat and steal while their opponents have to stick to the straight and narrow. This is why we see an administration that lies many times literally every single day raining holy hell on CNN for fudging a single report (and shame on CNN for caving as they did, but thatās a separate issue).
Playing devilās advocate: Who is going to enforce those contribution limits?
I gotta think most people that can afford to donate $35,000 (plus whatever āexpensesā come along with going to a fundraiser at a Trump hotel) can both afford to donate more later, and are well aware of how Trump manages ācontributionsā made to his causes and organizations. Basically, I assume the graft is built in to those figures, because these are people that openly believe that graft is good and the entire point of the political charade.
He knows he going out the door before his term is up. Dumpdoggral is enriching himself now while the getting is goodā¦
At some point we need to accept that the right never has and never will value consistency. Everything they say is meant to immediately benefit them at that moment only, and the value it retains is if it can later be used to say āI told you so.ā Anything they say that is later proven false or contradictory has long been swept into their Memory Holes, and will be discounted or ignored.
Iām sorry but your solution while accurate is too late. The man has power and is not afraid to let it lose upon this country and the world.
Just read an intriguing comment the other day, forget who, saying Trump isnāt planning for 2020, heās looking for a āsoft landing.ā Which I suppose meant get in there, fleece the rubes in traditional flim-flam bunko artist fashion, then get out before they wise up and come back with tar, feathers, and a rail.
And no, I agree you canāt not cover the President, especially in the middle of crisis heās creating. The time for not covering him quite so comprehensively ended long ago.
What I want to know is whether the donors got two scoops of ice cream with their dessert cake for all the money the had to shell out. 
Working on his autobiography tooā¦
It just strains the imagination that this is one, complex grift. But of the explanations for what we have today it is equal to the idea this is a coup to overthrow the country.
What makes it worse is the idea it is both concurrently.
This makes perfect sense. If they waited till later in his term to give piles of money, there wouldnāt be nearly as much time for trump to order his subordinates to do favors for them. Cash in advance.
Oh, and if, by some chance, a republican congress gets around to āreformingā campaign finance rules sometime in the next couple years, these donors wonāt be maxed out after all.
Thereās almost certainly a plot to overthrow or at least subvert and weaken the country. But I might guess Trump to be the figurehead and patsy that people mistakenly believed Hitler was.
Theyāre collecting money to pay for all the lawyers theyāve hired.