is it really possible that Donald trump could be president????? [Part 3]

[Lweji]

Continuing the thread, and in reply to the two last posts of thread 2

Today 08:15 OhYouBadBadKitten

I don't think it is about Trump taking risks, its more that he is a narcisstic sociopath. He feels untouchable in what he says and has no regard for the consequences.

Today 06:53 fourmummy

To be fair, voters know that all political rhetoric mostly comes to nothing (rhetoric = argumentation and persuasion, elevated to an art from in Ancient Greece). Why do you imagine Labour want to introduce votes for 16 year olds? They know that people don't become "more conservative" as they get older-they become wiser to the political process and its lies rhetoric. So what's different with Trump? Why hasn't his unbelievably unlikeable public and private persona sunk him?

Answer=risk

He is not a ready-rolled, ready-prepped and ready-to-go politician (think Blair's son parachuted into a constituency; MIliband brothers, Clintons). These are not risking much because they were cast in the role when they were made. We know that this is the case with, certainly, Clinton (numerous interviews with aides attest to this; ditto for the others). Voters are doing a risk assessment of his risks and have decided that he is worth something. It's not as simple as suggesting that if someone votes for him then they must be racist or sexist, as I've seen journos assert. Voters are effectively doing a risk assessment and deciding that given the enormous costs both to him (energy, health, time away from family, reputation, financial, career, historical implications, ) and to his voters (risk of being viewed as sexist, racist, intolerant, asshole), the benefits must outweigh these costs. Very unwise to dismiss ordinary voters as simplistically sexist and racists, as many, many journalists have (shortsightedly) done. Even non-experts are very good at performing cost/benefit analyses

As I said I don't see anything of what he says as taking a risk. Because he is saying what many people want to hear.
As for personal cost, he is clearly someone who enjoys the power, the limelight, the adoration. All that is missing for him is the ultimate power, particularly as he sees other true billionaires taking central stage.
But he doesn't have the heart to be Gates.
So, he's going for the highest office, and on the back of American voters most primal fears.

But...
He's not averse to risk. He's built his empire on it. He's had four bankruptcies. Anyone should be worried about the way he manages risk.

'(in France, it would boost his ratings'

Yes

I think it will harm him either way although the mainstream media are not mentioning it much so it may go away. There are some articles mentioning rumours that there may be a tape or something like that. Apparently lots of the media have been told of these stories for months now and did not run with them due to lack of evidence or possibly other reasons. Some people are saying that the National Enquirer risks being sued if it is incorrect, but no one has said they will sue them.

Blistering typical Trump interview on TV today. Trump says he thinks that Cruz's campaign may have paid for the rights of the Melania photo and given it to the super PAC. He also says that "Nato is obsolete". Earthshaking stuff that has elites in meltdown worldwide. Media trying to catch him out at numerous points, but Trump doesn't fall for any of it.

claig, just so I can be clear, who are the 'elites' to whom you frequently refer? Sometimes it seems like you're talking about US politicians and sometimes it seems more a worldwide reference.

I have been expecting some version of "I did not have sex with these women" but afaik Cruz hasn't said this yet.
In the law journal lawnewz (founded by an ABC journalist specialisimg in legal analysis) they think that Cruz is being deceptive in his response to the allegations and state he has never actually denied the affairs just attacked the source.

They have an interesting legal opinion on the situation if the allegations are at least partly true: apparently Cruz would be guilty of defamation for claiming Trump is spreading lies, if Cruz knows they are not lies.

No, the elites are a worldwide club made up of certain US elites and their "bought and paid for" political class and the "bought and paid for" political classes across most of the world. They share a common worldview - globalism, globalisation, free trade, global warming, open borders etc etc

Trump is America First, the direct opposite of the elite world class and they are panicking over Trump because he will take America back off them and put America and Americans first by scrapping their free trade deals, ending open borders and illegal immigration, bringing manufacturing and jobs back to America, ending globalism and putting America first, ending their neocon wars and foreign policy positions, ending their political correctness control mechanism and liberating the American people and scrapping their global warming agreements which have shut down coal and steel plants and have increased energy prices etc. Trump petrifies the global elite because America is the most powerful country on the planet and Trump is taking it back for the people and that means that the global elite's dreams and schemes are all over, their game is up. That is why this is the most amazing election in modern history. Trump says he will audit the Fed and he is being compared to the legendary American President and populist, Andrew Jackson, who shut down the National Bank and put the bankers' noses out of joint for at least 70 years until they regained control once again. Trump is not mucking about, fasten your seatbelts because he is taking the global elite on and intends to take them down.

'they think that Cruz is being deceptive in his response to the allegations and state he has never actually denied the affairs just attacked the source.'

Yes that could be and also one of the women's denials is not very emphatic either. There may well be more to come. The mainstream media does not want to go there but it is still being discussed in alternative media and on social media.

There has been a real revolution in media, just as Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's former Labor Secretary, said that "the establishment is dying", so too is the mainstream media dying with alternative media getting bigger viewership in some cases and social media bypassing the mainstream.

Trump is all over alternative media, social media and mainstream media. He is bypassing the Establishment's control mechanism and outplaying them at every stage. It is an amazing operation, how an outsider can beat all the exert professional teams of spinners.

Multinationals and billionaire oligarchs in many countries have used their money & power to change national and international laws / treaties for their own benefit. This enables them to hoover up even more wealth, at the expense of 90% of the population in those countries.

We can see the results of this particularly in the UK and the US, with the obscene inequality, that is increasing relentlessly. It is largely responsible for the rising tide of angry populism in the US, UK and other European countries. Terrorism just helps fan the flames.

This is no organised conspiracy by lizard people - the upper 0.01 % just shove their snouts so deeply in the trough that there is not enough left for the rest of us.

Capitalism is only beneficial for the wider population when it is restrained and made civilised by law. Currently, there are far too few restraints on the oligarchs and the multinationals. So, they are fleeding us.

fleecing us

I agree Choc.

There's no need for a big conspiracy.

And OTOH, many people are prepared to vote for a millionaire whose proposals are more likely to benefit him than the voters.

This is a British Sky News documentary called Trump: America's Next President?

Quotes from it are:

"This is no ordinary election ... 2016 is proving to be a showstopper"
"What began as a joke has become the most extraordinary political campaign of modern times, baffling politicians and enthralling his supporters"

A woman in the crowd says "we possibly have a chance to bring the America our forefathers wanted us to have, the freedom, so much freedom has been taken away from us"

It is all over, Trump will end it all.

It is slanted as all of the media reporting on Trump is because the entire elite and media and political class fear Trump, but for Trump fans it is still good to watch because as Stacy Herbert said on the Max Keiser Show

"it has certainly been a joy watching the world melt down about Trump"

They play "Sympathy for the Devil" while showing Trump.

The media and political class are in meltdown over him and they use their best spinners to try and stop the people voting for him, but it is not fooling the American people. Trump's rallies are the largest of any candidate and he has a loyal following that their best minds can't shake.

As Trump says "in the history of politics in the United States, there has never been anything like this, they call it a phenomenon"

It's Trump 2016 and there has never been so much panic among the elites.

You know, with regard to the modeling photo of Melania Trump, I'm not that sure it would matter to the electorate. Laura Bush, wife of George the Younger, caused a traffic accident resulting in a death (she blew through a stop sign), and it was brought up a couple of times in the runup to the election but ended up having not much if any effect. Certainly negligent homicide (she wasn't charged but that's unsurprising considering she grew up in very wealthy Midland, TX and was the daughter of one of the town's leading businessmen) trumps, if you'll pardon my pun, nude modelling in which neither nipples nor ladybusiness are on actual display.

I'm pretty sure what Trump is talking about re: Heidi Cruz is an incident in 2005 where, having just undergone a major career change and moving from Washington D.C. back to Texas, she had a bout of major depression and was found by police sitting on the side of a busy road. She was coaxed into the back of a police car and that was essentially that. She received counseling (Christian counseling, of course!) and the family put the incident behind them.

Suffering as I do, from Major Depressive Disorder along with several other related MH issues, I think if those are the "beans" Donald Trump is threatening to spill, he is a pigfucker, an unreconstructed peckerwood whose tiny insignificant babyhands are gigantic compared to his intelligence, not to mention his essential humanity. If anyone is a Lizard Person, it'd be him.

Yes, this what always baffles me about Trump voters: they are voting for one of the billionaires who has been fleecing them
I totally understand voting for Bernie and am envious they have him. US voters have one great candidate to make up for the Goodmann Sachs stooges and the religious crazies.

Modelling is a profession, nothing to do with having affairs - which wouldn't hurt Trump anyway since he's never touted sexual abstinence - he may be crazy, but not that crazy.

I've no idea why that should be a scandal for Heidi Cruz, more likely to cause sympathy than censure.

I do wonder if he does have anything on her. It looks to me like he's just making it up, but still leaving people to think there is something when there isn't.

I don't think Trump is that stupid to expose mental illness as being a weakness. If anything it would be from the angle that he didn't support his wife or his actions caused her mental illness. Trump would be dead in the water to go after the wife having a mental health issue. Here in NJ our ex govenor had a homosexual affair and left his wife high and dry. She had really suffered with PND and worked hard to put checks in place for all mothers to raise awareness and make help accessible. When the couple were divorcing and the ex came out with some nasty details about her mental health it totally finished him. While he was a democrat I saw it as being an unwritten rule in politics that you don't go there.

And, about income inequality, I wonder if part of the problem is that working-class jobs are being lost to events such as automation. Items previously assembled in US factories by human hands on assembly lines are now assembled by a chain of robots and only a few humans are needed to monitor and repair - and also to inexpensive overseas labour like manufacturers moving operations out of the country as well as lower-level IT jobs being contracted out to firms in India (there's a phrase in use here, don't know if it's used in the UK, but if an IT worker loses his/her job due to this outsourcing it's referred to as one's job having been 'Bangalored').

Thinking about this, I can see the reason for a LOT of anger because in all three cases it's not as though the employee didn't perform to spec and was let go, or because the company was losing money and had to layoff employees but would bring them back on in better times (common less than a generation ago). No, these jobs were taken away and there is nothing the worker can do, no improvement in performance or doing well in interviews or extra training to get their job back. Especially as in a LOT of cases where IT jobs are lost to overseas contractors, the US employees being laid off are required, under threat of lack of an enticing severance pay packet, to train the people who will be taking their job.

I'm not sure if the narrative is the same in the U.K., but I know that here, most especially in "Middle America" where I grew up, we learned at our parents' and grandparents' knee that the working class, the people who made, and repaired, and created, were the backbone of not only the American economy but the American ethos. It was seen as completely normal for a young man to finish high school, find a factory job or enter a trade like plumbing, electrical, etc. and remain in that job or line of work until retirement, and a high school diploma was all that was ever retired. Now we have a shrinking job market and 'working-class' isn't used with a sense of pride anymore; it's nearly an epithet. Jobs such as clerical or secretarial work, when I was in high school, required a high school diploma. Soon after I left high school, the ads would note that an associates' degree (2-year degree, usually in Business Administration or similar) was required, and now it's nearly impossible to get a job as an entry level secretary/admin without a four-year college degree.

And the sick part of it is that the media, fed by corporate interests, is doing a great job convincing the unemployed workers that it's "those foreigners" that took their jobs, rather than the C-suite number crunchers deciding it would be cheaper and easier to automate operations or to move them overseas.

a high school diploma was all that was ever retired

Ugh, sorry, that should be required at the end there.

I audit companies. Manual jobs have been moved offshore and not automated. Yes you can find examples where there has been automation but nearly always a manual job is moved offshore.

The whole of the Western world is facing the same issue with service sector jobs not creating wealth for the vast majority. To get a good income in the service sector you need excellent training (where you get minimal pay), a good education and be born with brains. What we see today is that people are working way more hours compared to those retiring. I know I work on average 60 hours a week if FT whereas 30-40 years ago hours were 40-45 hours a week.

My old workplace called outsourcing of jobs as 'being Bangalwhored'

What we see today is that people are working way more hours compared to those retiring. I know I work on average 60 hours a week if FT whereas 30-40 years ago hours were 40-45 hours a week.

Yes, this. And also, people of my parents' and grandparents' generation could generally rely on a pension from their company if they worked there long enough. Now the very idea is laughable - companies feel no loyalty whatsoever to their employees.

'I do wonder if he does have anything on her.'

No I don't think he has anything or there is anything. I think it is as Proginoskes said about the depression, but also that she worked for Goldman Sachs and was on the Council on Foreign Relations and advised Condoleeza Rice under Bush etc. So there is nothing really there apart from she (and by extension) Cruz himself are part of the Establishment class.

I think Trump was just angry after the super PAC had a go at his wife in the Utah election.

'The whole of the Western world is facing the same issue with service sector jobs not creating wealth for the vast majority.'

'companies feel no loyalty whatsoever to their employees'

Yes, that is what Trump will change because he cares about the American people and will create jobs and force companies to come back and manufacture in the States, he will regenerate Michigan and give jobs to all communities.

Globalisation is the deliberate policy of the elite and metropolitan elites who do not care about the fate of ordinary working people who are left with low-paid service jobs as companies and jobs are off-shored to cheaper labour locations with the free movement of capital.

Elite groups like the Council on Foreign Relations and the European Council on Foreign Relations and the banking elites and the EU bureaucrats etc are all on the same page over globalism and globalisation. Power is being removed from the people, the nation state is considered obsolete by them, national sovereignty is passe and they want to "pool" sovereignty as in the EU.

Trump opposes the whole lot of them and is America First. No other country can really take them on and beat them. If Italy tried it, it would lose, but they can't beat America and Trump is going to take them on and that is why they are petrified of him and all they have left to challenge him is their usual political correctness of racism, sexism, bigotry and calling him a bully. But it won't fool the American people because they understand what is at stake - America First or America going under through continued globalism.

Yes, that is what Trump will change because he cares about the American people and will create jobs and force companies to come back and manufacture in the States, he will regenerate Michigan and give jobs to all communities.

You cannot possibly be serious. Uh, other thread contributors, is claig serious or am I tilting at windmills?

claig, you do realise don't you that Trump not only sells merchandise (hats and ties from China, suits from Mexico, among many other things) not made in the US by US workers, but also has a history of "importing" seasonal labour to work at his Mar-a-lago country club in Florida where they earn less than the US minimum wage? Anyone who thinks he will honestly do those things...if he cared SO much about the American people that he thinks companies should be forced to return their manufacturing to US soil, why has he not begun using US-only labour for his clothing lines and to run his country club(s)? Why is he waiting? Why not set an example and do it right now? Or, better, have done it years ago...or NEVER OFFSHORED IN THE FIRST G.D. PLACE?

None of this is a secret, the Trilateral Commission etc and the servants of the elite have written and said what they want to do. Here is Jimmy Carter's adviser, Brzezinski writing years and years ago

"This regionalization is in keeping with the Tri-Lateral Plan which calls for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward the goal of one world government. National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept."

They want a globalised one world government with an end to national sovereignty. America has been put into huge debt and is practically bankrupt with a $19 trillion debt which will be extremely difficult to repay. And still, the elites engage America in expensive trillion dollar wars in the Middle East which as Trump says "we never win".

Trump says he will make America great again, he will make it win again and he blames the "losers" who run it for what has happened to the jobs and wealth and power of America where supposedly as Trump says "we can't even beat Isis".

Of course America can beat Isis and under Trump it will be done very, very quickly. Trump will turn America around, slash its deficit, restore its sovereignty and prosperity, jail the elite crooks who robbed it, force the rest of the world to pay for American support, rewrite all of the trade deals where America is currently losing which were negotiated by the "losers" and globalists who did it deliberately, end political correctness and end the elite's dreams of their one world government where American sovereignty no longer exists.

It is over for them, Trump is their worst nightmare. This is the most historic election of the past 100 years. If Trump wins, they lose and the people win. If they win, there will never be another Trump to challenge them.