I see that "You can't fire me! I quit" is getting to be routine in the Trump administration.

Bolton, you're fired!

https://s31242.pcdn.co/wp-content/up...onaldtrump.png

Could not happen to a nicer turd.

:eye-poppi
How the **** has she managed to be the daughter of a wannabe POTUS and so successfully stay ouf of the spotlight? Mind blown.

Bolton might be screwed in one way;The "Never Trump" conservatives are not going to welcome him with open arms because BOlton joined the Trump Administration so late in the game.after Trump had revealed what he was.

He's 70 years old. This was almost certainly his last meaningful government job no matter how he came in or went out.

Trump is older.

Just sayin'...

More like this...

I was right. Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin two of the biggest conservative critics of Trump, are more or less saying Bolton got what he deserved by agreeing to work with Trump. Their columns had zero sympathy for Bolton.

I'm guessing Bolton and The Mooch are going to find that they have a lot to talk about.

And just yesterday Trump was insisting that there is no turmoil in the White House.

Turmoil is BAU for Trump.

Which means there is a lot of turmoil.

Quite. They're both determined to stay "in the game", and pulling together is their best hope of doing so.

I have the feeling that it's more likely the other way around. "You can't quit, you're fired!" is more like a Trump thing to say.

More like "You can't quit until I say you are fired!"

Well, the best authority* on the subject of Bolton says that he got fired for being too left-wing.


*Tucker Carlson

I saw that!

Besides that "Bolton is a leftwinger" stuff, I thought it was a good (and extremely funny) Tucker segment.

Link, in case anyone wants to see it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=8-1-iz80u6s

Is Tucker under the impression that the socialist left appoints government officials, and poor Trump has to suffer them? :confused:

Some people are disappointed that Bolton was sacked. The reason is that even if he was a right wing nut at least he was consistent and predictable so he was a stabilising force on trump. I didn't know if that makes him any better.

I think the idea is that "To a rightwing anarchocapitalist, all government is leftwing, so everything bad any government could ever do is "the left" behaving badly."

lol

It's incredibly similar to political purges in totalitarian regimes: a trusted ally will be re-designated as a long-time enemy the moment the guy at the top wants to get rid of them.
It takes a special kind of amnesia to accept that.

I think it's worse than that. Everything bad is leftwing to Trumpanzees.

Periodically I ask my friends who stumped for Obama if they can name something Trump has done right, and vice-versa. Most of them cannot come up with anything at all, and I've inferred that negative partisanship has altered their perception and memory of events.

I'm Canadian. I usually vote for the local conservative party, but I can easily point out things that the Liberal government has done right.

If I were American, I probably would have voted for Obama, but I can pick out things that he did wrong.

On the other hand, I can't think of anything Trump has done right. Maybe that's partisanship, but with other politicians I can easily find things they did right/wrong. Maybe Trump is such a toxic individual that nothing he has done has been right.

Ok, then: What do YOU think he has done right?

Well, everyone of the people he hired and later fired was incompetent, a security risk, corrupt and/or downright dangerous.
Thanks for that Trump!

I actually can't really think of anything, either. There have been moments where I heard of some idea of his and thought, hey, that's actually a great idea, but they are overshadowed by his clown/wannabe dictator antics and so I couldn't tell you what they were. His own fault, really.

Had it not been so long ago, I could probably have listed some policies I supported from Bush, though.

Thankfully Bolton only brought Trump coffee.

1) Sacking John Bolton, who has often pushed for new (endless) wars in SW Asia.

2) Targeting "rust belt" states once thought to be part of an unscalable "blue wall" by electoral strategists/pundits in 2016.

3) Defeating ISIS.

4) Longest economic expansion in U.S. history.

Those last two are continuations of trends & policies which started under Obama, but I'm pleasantly surprised he didn't muck it up.

The Criminal Justice Reform was better than nothing.

He hired him in the first place. Why should we say he did something right when he was fixing a problem he created in the first place?

That was something that occurred during the election, and says nothing about anything he's done since he was sworn in.

I don't know if "he didn't muck it up" should count as something he did right.

As for the economy.... It is true... GDP, employment, stock markets, etc. have continued to increase during Trump's term (a trend started under Obama). But he has also greatly increased the deficit (so at least part of that economic success is based on borrowed money), and there are definitely signs of an economic slowdown (and perhaps a recession) in the next year... manufacturing is already slipping into a recession, job grown has slowed, and the stock market is fluctuating/stagnating.

https://www.marketplace.org/2019/09/...o-a-recession/

I've got something: he dropped the TPP.

In hindsight I'm certain he didn't actually know or care about anything in it, he just opposed it because Clinton supported it, and he wouldn't have personally made any money off it. But still, it was a terrible agreement completely beholden to corporate interests and we're better off without it.

He has at least twice called for universal background checks.

That he later retracted those thoughts after meeting with his masters from Russia's NRA would be a balancing negative.

Whether that is something "good" or not is debatable.

Yes, trade deals would have benefitted corporations. But Trade in general is good.

And think about some of the things the U.S. lost out on by withdrawing from the deal:

- Remember Trump's complaints about access to Canadian dairy markets? The TPP would have given them some of that (rather than having to wait for a re-negotiated NAFTA)

- You know how Trump has his little trade spat with China? Well, the TPP didn't involve china. Being part of the TPP would have given the U.S. more leverage in dealing with them.

I think the deal would have been of benefit to the U.S., but thanks to Trump we'll never know.

I'm familiar with the leaked part of the deal that had to do with copyright law. It was a pile of crap literally written by copyright lobbying groups. I remember the absurd secrecy surrounding it, such that even the people who were to vote on it were not allowed to see the whole thing. It was not an honest or open creation process. Trade is good, but just because this had "trade" in the name did not mean it was similarly good.

If his presidency ends up bringing the GOP crashing down in flames, leaving nothing but a pile of sodden ashes, then I'll certainly concede that that was something good he did.

Of course it is, but my original point was that hardcore (negative) partisans have trouble recognizing whenever the opposite side does anything which comports with their own fundamental goals and values.

It certainly was a step in the right direction, as was the bipartisan bill designed to address the opioid epidemic.

For the same reason we should encourage anyone to change their minds and lives for the better.

The criminal justice reform is the one that really comes to mind for me when I think of things Trump has done that actually are good.
I think he's handled ISIS/Syria better, too.

1. He promoted the US Cyber Command to full combatant command. This is the one movie I will actually say I fully "Like." The government has been far too long in seeing our nation's cyber defense structure as a valid, integrated part of national defense and getting rid of the US Cyber Command's weird half structure dual hat setup that made doing anything impossible because you had two completely separate chains of command is a huge step in fixing that.

2. The lifetime ban on White House employees lobbying for foreign powers was... I won't like a sort of "Holy **** you mean they could do that before?" thing for me.

3. It's silly and stupid... but I don't hate the way he decorated the White House for Christmas. I've said before that The White House being perpetually stuck in a limbo state of never changing "Quaint Americana on top of Classic Greco-Roman" look that's never allowed to evolve beyond "What if Norman Rockwell threw up on chiseled marble" never set well for me. I won't say I personally liked it on an aesthetic level but seeing a weird, sorta post-modern, almost avante garde look... I didn't hate it.

I do wonder if, even if the stars align and it actually happens, Trump will let himself be impeached or pull a Nixon.