Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to More name calling.

Name calling can't bother you- you support Trump, after all....

Tell me, how do you see Trump “destroying” this country?
I honestly want to know what you think.


No...No you don't, but lets pretend you do... Lets also pretend that you are capable of actually reading through this lengthy post...

Why do I think Trump is an existential danger to our country?

There is the flippant way he talks about dismantling the constitution:

Trump: Washington Post, I have to tell you, I have respect for Jeff Bezos, but he bought the Washington Post to have political influence, and I gotta tell you, we have a different country than we used to have. We have a different… he owns Amazon, he want’s political influence so that Amazon will benefit from it, that’s not right. And believe me, if I become president, oh, do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.

And one of the things I’m going to do, and this is only going to make it tougher for me, and I’ve never said this before, but one of the things I’m gonna do, if I win, and I hope I do, and we’re certainly leading, is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles we can sue them and win lots of money. We’ll open up those libel laws so that when the New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they are totally protected. You see, with me they’re not protected because I’m not like other people, but I’m not taking money, I’m not taking their money.

So we’re going to open up those libel laws, folks, and we’re gonna have people sue you like you’ve got sued before. We have many things to do. We have many, many things to do.


AND...

Donald Trump proposed a system of religious discrimination for U.S. immigration policy on Monday, advocating a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” according to a written campaign statement.

The incendiary proposal was swiftly denounced by Trump’s rivals in both parties, and as a policy proposal, it is probably illegal.

“I believe Trump’s unprecedented proposal would violate our Constitution,” said Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, “both the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses and the equality dimension of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.”


AND...

After launching his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants "rapists," Donald Trump is now following up on his nativist rhetoric by taking aim at the Constitution.

On Tuesday, when Bill O'Reilly challenged the presidential hopeful's proposal to end birthright citizenship in light of the 14th Amendment, Trump hit back: "Bill, I think you're wrong about the 14th amendment and frankly the whole thing about anchor babies."

"I can quote it, you want me to quote you the amendment?" O'Reilly responded. "If you're born here you're a citizen. Period!"

But Trump insisted he and his lawyers have found some disturbing holes in the amendment, which unequivocally states that anyone born in the United States is in fact an American citizen.


AND...

Under assault from Democrats and Republicans alike, Donald J. Trump on Friday drew back from his call for a mandatory registry of Muslims in the United States, trying to quell one of the ugliest controversies yet in a presidential campaign like few others.


Or perhaps it his eagerness to abandon the international rules of war, which would make us pariahs:

Donald Trump touted the benefits of waterboarding in a campaign rally on Monday night, telling a crowd that “you bet your ass” he would bring it back into use.

Addressing thousands of people in Columbus, Ohio, the Republican frontrunner praised waterboarding, an interrogation method that has been called torture. “I would approve more than that,” he said.

Trump told supporters: “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works.”

The Republican frontrunner then added “… and if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us”.


AND...

"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families," Trump said on Fox and Friends on Dec. 2, 2015. "They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."

Trump got a challenge on this at the CNN presidential debate in Las Vegas. CNN aired a pre-recorded question from Josh Jacob, a student at Georgia Tech: "Recently Donald Trump mentioned we must kill the families of ISIS members. However, this violates the principle of distinction between civilians and combatants in international law."

Trump doubled down on his position: "I would be very, very firm with families" and repeating his sentiment that even though people think "they may not care much about their lives … they do care, believe it or not, about their families' lives."


Or perhaps I worry that he will nuke Finland because Finnish president Sauli Niinistö makes the mistake of calling Trump's fingers short:

Like so many bullies, Trump has skin of gossamer. He thinks nothing of saying the most hurtful thing about someone else, but when he hears a whisper that runs counter to his own vainglorious self-image, he coils like a caged ferret. Just to drive him a little bit crazy, I took to referring to him as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in the pages of Spy magazine. That was more than a quarter of a century ago. To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a photo of him—generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers. I almost feel sorry for the poor fellow because, to me, the fingers still look abnormally stubby. The most recent offering arrived earlier this year, before his decision to go after the Republican presidential nomination. Like the other packages, this one included a circled hand and the words, also written in gold Sharpie: “See, not so short!” I sent the picture back by return mail with a note attached, saying, “Actually, quite short.” Which I can only assume gave him fits.


Trump is a petty bully that threatens lawsuits as a way to silence critics and to bully folks he believes have slighted him- imagine the abuses he could engage in if president:

Merv Griffin
Ivana Trump
Chuck Jones
Anthony Pozzolano and Joseph Derrico
Rosie O’Donnell
rapper Mac Miller
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell
Miss USA contestant Sheena Monnin
Bill Maher
Angelo Carusone, who had organized a petition to force Macy’s to stop selling Trump-branded products.
...
Chicago Tribune for $500 million after the publication’s architecture critic, Paul Gapp, wrote an item suggesting Chicago’s Sears Tower, then the world’s tallest building, would remain as such, despite Trump’s plan to build a taller structure in downtown Manhattan.
...
Trump threatened to sue ABC in 2005, after he learned the network was planning to produce a two-hour biopic about him and his family.
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In 2006, Trump sued New York Times reporter Timothy L. O’Brien, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, as well as the book’s publisher, Warner Books, for saying Trump is worth $150 million to $250 million when Trump claimed, at the time, he was worth $2.7 billion. Trump said the error was “egregiously false,” according to Agence France Presse.
In 2009, the suit was dismissed.
...
In 1989, Trump threatened to sue Palm Beach County if it couldn’t figure out a way to muffle the loud noises coming from Palm Beach International Airport.
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Trump sued New York State in 1995 when a video game, Quickdraw, based off the casino game Keno, was introduced in New York restaurants and bars. The game presented a rival to Trump’s Atlantic City casinos where Keno was played, but he claimed he was really just worried that the game’s presence in New York would bring “tremendous amounts of crime” and “destroy businesses in New York,” according to CNN, because gambling addiction would render residents unable to pay their rent.
...

In 1997, Trump sued the state of New Jersey. At the time, Trump wanted to prevent Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn from encroaching on his Atlantic City territory with the construction of a $330 million tunnel leading to Wynn’s very own resort.
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In 2002, Trump sued New York City for $500 million, claiming that a tax assessor scandal had forced him to sell apartment in his 72-story Trump World Tower near the United Nations for below market prices.
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Trump sued the town of Palm Beach, Florida. in 2006 for $10 million after he was cited for violating zoning codes by flying a too-big (for non-patriots) American flag over his club, Mar-a-Lago.
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In 2011, Trump sued Scotland.
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Trump purchased Eastern Air Lines’s shuttle service in 1988 for $365 million and planned to relaunch it as “Trump Shuttle.” But a problem arose—a different company, Trading and Finance Corp. Ltd., was already using the name. In 1989, Trump sued for the rights to the name.
...

Trump purchased Eastern Air Lines’s shuttle service in 1988 for $365 million and planned to relaunch it as “Trump Shuttle.” But a problem arose—a different company, Trading and Finance Corp. Ltd., was already using the name. In 1989, Trump sued for the rights to the name.
...
In 2008, Trump sued Crescent Heights Diamond, a real estate developer, because, Trump said, they had licensed his name for a 70-story building in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, and then cut him out of the profits.
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In 2011, Trump sued H. Pixel International Trade Ltd., an Israeli company he discovered was using his name and likeness on vodka bottles without his consent. Trump has over 700 trademarks and as of 2011, his name was commercially protected in 80 countries.
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In 2014, Trump sued Trump Entertainment Resorts, which he holds a 10 percent stake in, to remove his name from the Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza casinos in Atlantic City, which he said did not live up to his standard of quality.
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In 2003, Trump announced that he planned to sue the Eastern Pequots, a Native American tribe of less than 1,000 from southeastern Connecticut.
...
Univision
...
Ted Cruz


Or perhaps I am concerned that our own allies are horrified at the possibility of an america led by a dangerously insecure fascist bully:

London (CNN)For Donald Trump, in politics as in life, it seems the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

But Monday, the Republican presidential candidate is entering unfamiliar territory, even by his larger-than-life standards, as members of the British Parliament hold a debate over a petition calling for the U.S. businessman-turned-politician to be banned from the country.


AND...

If Donald Trump were to become president, he'd be starting off on the wrong foot with many of America's allies.


OR perhaps I am alarmed that he has expressed admiration for the fascist Putin, and that russian fascists feel the same way about Trump:

Donald Trump has collected a lovely bouquet of endorsements in his path to the presidency: Chris Christie, David Duke, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the KKK. It's the kind of praise that would make a mother proud, if your mother happened to be Leni Riefenstahl. And now he can add Russian philosopher, TV personality, and Duck Dynasty lookalike Alexander Dugin.
Dugin is largely unknown in the West. If non-specialists have heard of him, it is either because of exaggerated claims of his influence over Putin, or because of his 2014 suggestion of a final solution to the Ukrainian problem: "To kill, kill, kill. There should be no more conversations." By comparison, Trump's plan for building a border wall looks positively humanitarian.


Or perhaps you would listen to the 85 GOP security experts that also seem to feel that Trump would endanger America:

Sixty Republican national security heavyweights vow in an open letter released late Wednesday to work “energetically” to prevent GOP front-runner Donald Trump from winning the party's nomination.

The experts, who represent vastly divergent GOP ideologies, describe Trump's vision of American influence as “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” They warned that a Trump presidency would “make America less safe” and “diminish our standing in the world.”

Eliot Cohen, a former State Department official, and Bryan McGrath, a former Mitt Romney adviser, organized the letter, published by national security news site War on the Rocks. It was released the day after Trump won seven states on Super Tuesday, stoking his momentum and giving fresh urgency to a NeverTrump movement of Republican officials working against him.

In just 454 words, the letter signatories eviscerated Trump for his “expansive use of torture,” his “hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric,” and his expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. They slammed his proposal to require Mexico to build a wall on its border with the U.S. and accused him of behaving more like a “racketeer” than a dependable ally for suggesting that Japan pay for military protection. They accused Trump of holding an amorphous worldview -- switching from isolationism to interventionism, and refusing to acknowledge his past support for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the 2011 intervention in Libya.

“We accept that views evolve over time, but this is simply misrepresentation,” they wrote in the letter, signed by several people who backed the Iraq war and who favored supporting the opposition fighters in Libya.

Some on Twitter mocked the signatories for taking a stand only after Trump’s Super Tuesday victories. But some signers have long been raising alarm over Trump’s candidacy.

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adviser to rival GOP candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), has been bashing Trump on Twitter long before the #NeverTrump movement made it safe to do so. Former State Department official Robert Kagan wrote a scathing article last week blaming the Republican Party for quietly embracing the same bigoted sentiments that Trump has espoused. Philip D. Zelikow, an attorney who headed the commission charged with uncovering what went wrong in the leadup to the Sept. 11 attacks, shut down Trump’s claim in December that the hijackers sent their wives to Saudi Arabia before the attacks.

The letter represented a rare consensus from a disparate group of people. For example, former Pentagon adviser Matthew Kroenig is an outspoken critic of the Iran nuclear deal and has called for a military attack on Iran again and again. But Tufts University’s Daniel Drezner has long challenged the long-term strategic wisdom of a military strike on Iran and has acknowledged the nonproliferation benefits of the nuclear deal, while expressing skepticism about its regional implications.

The 60 signers pledged not to support the Republican ticket in the November elections if Trump ends up as the nominee, effectively killing any chance of a high-level Trump administration job for any of them. McGrath told The Washington Post this doesn’t mean the signers would defect from the GOP and vote for the Democratic nominee, but some of his colleagues admitted to Politico they felt they had no other choice.

UPDATE: By Thursday afternoon, the number of signatories rose to 85. The letter generated enough traffic to crash the War on the Rocks site. "We are working on fixing it," Editor-in-Chief Ryan Evans said just after 3 p.m.

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