Trump: Presidency Has Been Mean And Filled With Horrible People
He also said he found the U.S. to be the most difficult country to deal with in the world.
11/03/2020 09:31 AM EST
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered a bitter assessment of his tenure in the White House, saying the experience has been mean and marked by horrible people.
The comments came in an Election Day interview on Fox & Friends, after co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Trump whether he has enjoyed being president and if the job has been worth it.
Well, its been mean. Its been youve dealt with horrible people, Trump replied, adding: You deal with people that are very deceptive.
Trump, who participated in five campaign rallies Monday, sounded noticeably hoarse throughout his phone interview Tuesday, and seemed relatively despondent compared with his previous appearances on his preferred cable morning news show.
Quid Pro Quo: What It Means
Quid pro quo: A Latin term meaning something for something.
Its come up this week in connection to President Donald Trumps July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to a White House transcript of the call, Trump asked for a favor help from Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a 2020 contender.
The quid pro quo is in the Presidents words, Democratic Rep. John Garamendi of California argued on CNNs New Day Friday, telling John Berman that Trumps phone call with Zelensky makes it very clear.
CNN has confirmed that Trump ordered a hold on millions in military aid to Ukraine roughly one week before the call with Zelensky, which was first reported by The Washington Post. Trump claimed he withheld the aid because he was waiting for European nations to contribute their fair share and that the delay wasnt related to the investigation request.
That together with withholding the funds, which preceded the phone call. All of these things are there. And thats not circumstantial, Garamendi said.
CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin argued on CNN Wednesday that theres very strong evidence that there was a quid pro quo here in Trumps phone call.
Toobin pointed to the section of the White House transcript in which Zelensky mentioned that Ukraine was ready to buy more Javelin missiles from the US. Trump replied, I would like you to do us a favor.
Where Will The Catholic Vote Fall
The Biden/Harris ticket has essentially gone all-in for the pro-choice vote, despite Mr. Bidens public show of his Catholic faith. Mr. Trump will surely benefit from some traditionally Democratic Catholic voters who will feel they cannot vote for the Biden/Harris ticket in good conscience, even if Mr. Trump does not prioritize any pro-life goals beyond appointing justices likely to overturn Roe.
As a wedge issue, abortion may be less important than in previous presidential races, thanks to the all-encompassing chaos caused by Covid-19 and the widespread disapproval of Mr. Trumps response to the pandemic. In a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month, 40 percent of all registered voters said abortion was a very important issue for them, down from 45 percent at the same time four years ago. Only 35 percent of Biden supporters said abortion was very important, down from 50 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters in 2016 but among Trump supporters the share saying that abortion is very imporant rose from 41 percent to 46 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has remained stalwart in prioritizing opposition to legal abortion in its guidance to Catholic voters.
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Havent There Always Been Far
Its true that much of QAnons subject matter is recycled from earlier conspiracy theories, and is rooted in anti-Semitic tropes that date back centuries. But QAnon is fundamentally an internet-based movement that operates in a different way, and at a different scale, than anything weve seen before.
For starters, QAnon is deeply participatory, in a way that few other popular conspiracy theories have been. Followers congregate online to decode the latest Q posts, discuss their theories about the news of the day, and bond with their fellow believers. The Atlantic has called it the birth of a new religion.
Theres also the basic danger of what QAnon followers actually believe. Its one thing to have a polarized political discourse with heated disagreements its another to have millions of Americans who think, with complete sincerity, that the leaders of the opposition party are kidnapping and cannibalizing innocent children.
Combine those violent, paranoid fantasies with the fact that QAnon followers have been charged with committing serious crimes in Qs name, and its no wonder people are worried.
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How Anyone Could Believe This
The Storms believers cite several flimsy pieces of evidence that Q is actually a member of the Trump administration, and not a random troll. One is that a clue mentioned Saturday, and then a few days later Trump tweeted about Small Business Saturday.
Another is that Q posted a picture of some islands right as Trump was flying over some islands, maybe! The evidence is not very convincing:
This is clearly just some guy messing with people. But the flimsiness of The Storm hasnt stopped QAnon culture from blowing up on the right-wing internet, where it has been embraced by the same self-investigators who flocked to Pizzagate and the Seth Rich murder.
InfoWars correspondent Jerome Corsi, who made his name as one of the Obama eras leading birthers, is now working with 8Chan moderators to decipher Qs tips. YouTube videos deciphering Qs breadcrumbs regularly earn more than a hundred thousand views.
A host of prominent Pizzagaters have jumped on board, with leading Pizzagater Liz Crokin claiming that Hannity himself is on board. Pizzagate promoter David Seaman declared in a recent video that The Storm means that the second revolution is upon us, and the Deep State is being taken out.
In maybe the best sign that a conspiracy is taking hold on the internet, The Storms adherents splitting into different factions. Q recently blasted the moderators of an 8Chan forum devoted to the crumbs, accusing them of self-promotion and moving the messages to another board.
What Should Define Pro
The writer is director of MEPIN . He regularly briefs members of Congress and their foreign policy aides, as well White House advisers. He is the senior security editor for The Jerusalem Report/Jerusalem Post, and has written in The Hill, JNS, JTA, RealClearWorld, The Forward, i24, Israel Hayom and Defense News.
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Why Are Some People Attracted To The Qanon Movement
A common misconception is that QAnon is purely a political movement. But it functions, for people who believe in it, as both a social community and a source of entertainment.
Some people have compared QAnon to a massive multiplayer online game, because of the way it invites participants to cocreate a kind of shared reality filled with recurring characters, shifting story lines and intricate puzzle-solving quests. QAnon has also been compared to a church, in that it provides its followers with a social support structure as well as an organizing narrative for their everyday lives.
Adrian Hon, a game designer who has written about QAnons similarity to alternate-reality games, says that believers open a fascinating fantasy world of secret wars and cabals and Hillary Clinton controlling things, and it offers convenient explanations for things that feel inexplicable or wrong about the world.
Nonpartisan Redistricting Reform Efforts Meet Reality
Redistricting was supposed to look different this year.
In the 10 years since the nations congressional and state legislative maps were last redrawn, a record-breaking number of states passed ballot measures intended to make the process more bipartisan and transparent. The citizen-led efforts were cheered by reform advocates as a win for American democracy, a sign that voters from both parties wanted to end partisan gerrymandering, or the drawing of lines for political advantage.
But with map-drawing now underway, the rubber of those reforms is meeting a very bumpy road.
In Virginia, the first attempt to draw a fair legislative map collapsed in acrimony last week and now appears headed for the state Supreme Court. The states new bipartisan redistricting commission which was created in 2020 with support from two-thirds of Virginia voters has been dogged by partisanship from the outset, with Democrats and Republicans working with separate consultants to produce separate maps and so far failing to merge them.
A similar process is playing out in New York, where 58% of voters approved a measure in 2014 to create a bipartisan redistricting commission, and the commissions Democrats and the Republicans have also come up with separate maps, not yet agreeing on a compromise.
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How Did This All Start
In October 2017, a post appeared on 4chan, the notoriously toxic message board, from an anonymous account calling itself Q Clearance Patriot. This poster, who became known simply as Q, claimed to be a high-ranking government insider with access to classified information about Mr. Trumps war against the global cabal.
Q predicted that this war would soon culminate in The Storm an appointed time when Mr. Trump would finally unmask the cabal, punish its members for their crimes and restore America to greatness.
Donald Trump Impeached For A Second Time
President Donald Trump has been impeached by the US House of Representatives over the deadly riots at the nations Capitol earlier in January.
The historic impeachment means that he is now the first ever US president to be impeached twice.
It comes after Trump was impeached in 2019 over allegations he had improperly pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate his then rival, now President-elect, Joe Biden .
This time, Trump was charged with incitement of insurrection for his remarks that were widely seen to have provoked the violent attack on the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
At least 10 Republicans, including senior leader Liz Cheney, were among the 232 members of the House who voted to impeach Trump, while 197 members opposed.
So, what does this all mean?
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All The Key Moments From Election Day
Reflecting further on his time in office, Trump said that his friends used to call me Donald, now they call me president, and he argued that the United States itself was more difficult to deal with than Americas international adversaries.
Theyll go, Mr. President, tell me, whos the country thats most difficult to deal with? Is it Russia? Is it China? Is it North Korea? Sir, is it North Korea? Trump said.
And I go, No. Well, by far, the most difficult country to deal with is the U.S. Its not even close, he continued. And they all say, Youve got to be kidding. And I say, No, Im actually probably not kidding. We have very, very deceptive people.
Legal Affairs And Bankruptcies
FixerRoy Cohn served as Trump’s lawyer and mentor for 13 years in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Trump, Cohn sometimes waived fees due to their friendship. In 1973, Cohn helped Trump countersue the United States government for $100 million over its charges that Trump’s properties had racial discriminatory practices. Trump and Cohn lost that case when the countersuit was dismissed and the government’s case went forward. In 1975, an agreement was struck requiring Trump’s properties to furnish the New York Urban League with a list of all apartment vacancies, every week for two years, among other things. Cohn introduced political consultant Roger Stone to Trump, who enlisted Stone’s services to deal with the federal government.
As of April 2018, Trump and his businesses had been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, according to a running tally by USA Today.
While Trump has not filed for personal bankruptcy, his over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009. They continued to operate while the banks restructured debt and reduced Trump’s shares in the properties.
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