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Donald Trump has promised MORE than he can EVER Deliever…Open Thread for Dec. 10. 2024….

By 101 Comments

Come On?

ANYONE think this guy is gonna do ALL,  or even MOST what he sold to thru the media?

The REALITY IS gonna be VERY much LOWER then the entertainment level stuff peddled….

The Guy lives in a Alternate Universe and even he KNOWS his Bull Shit IS Just That….

Don’t believe this?

Read your history on this guy….

He’s been selling and getting over on his lies and embellishment’s for decades….

He just deflects on responsibility that most judges do NOT let him get away with….

 

In his own telling, President-elect Donald J. Trump wields magical powers to shape world events in ways others never could. The other day, during his first broadcast television network interview since his re-election, he even claimed to have prevented wars that no one knew were about to break out.

“I have stopped wars with tariffs by saying, ‘You guys want to fight, it’s great. But both of you are going to pay tariffs to the United States at 100 percent,’” Mr. Trump said on “Meet the Press” on NBC.

What wars, between which countries, and when? He did not say. Nor did his office identify any when asked afterward. Hyperbole, or perhaps fantasy, has long characterized Mr. Trump’s public career, of course. But as he prepares to move back into the White House, his penchant for extravagant ungrounded claims will challenge his ability to translate bravado into reality.

Mr. Trump has made some of the most expansive, some would say outlandish, campaign promises that any president has ever made, promises that policymakers across the spectrum take seriously in their intent but not in their specifics. While he may make substantial progress on his priorities, few other than committed Trump allies think he will be able to meet his maximalist goals on immigration, federal spending and foreign policy….

…

This goes to the old saying about taking Mr. Trump seriously but not literally. Ever since his debut on the national political stage nearly a decade ago, he has made sweeping claims that few held him to precisely, like promising that Mexico would pay for the border wall he wanted to build. (It never did.)

But even supporters of Mr. Trump’s stated aspirations fear that by overinflating what he can accomplish, he could undermine his position…

…

“Trump’s claim that he could end the war in 24 hours suggests he does not understand the complexities of the war or how dug in Ukrainians and Putin are on their respective positions,” said Steven Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine who is now at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. “At some point, there will be a negotiation between Kyiv and Moscow, but it remains unclear when that will begin, and the negotiation will take time.”

Mr. Trump’s promised mass deportation is not tied to the clock, but it would prove difficult nonetheless. During his entire first term, Mr. Trump deported only 936,000 people — fewer, at an annual rate, than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush did.

To deport 11 million people in four years would require an extraordinary investment of resources toward immigration enforcement never before seen in the United States. Mr. Trump and Congress would have to come up with $88 billion a year over roughly 10 years and hire at least 31,000 immigration agents…

…

Mr. Trump has never been a budget cutter. During his first campaign for president, he boasted that he could eliminate the entire national debt — not just the annual deficit, but all the debt accumulated over the history of the country — in just eight years.

Not only did he make no serious effort to reduce the debt, much less wipe it out, he added $8.4 trillion in new borrowing over 10 years, even more than President Biden has since, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan advocacy group….

…

Two-thirds of the federal budget is made up of Social Security and Medicare, military spending and interest on the debt. Mr. Trump has vowed not to touch Social Security or Medicare, a promise he repeated on “Meet the Press,” and has boasted of bolstering rather than cutting the military….

…

Any other president might worry about laying out goals that cannot be met. But Mr. Trump bulls ahead, confident that his supporters will see that at least he is trying, and that they will find someone else to blame if he does not meet his targets.

“For most Trump supporters, he’s always going to be faultless,”….

More…

image…The Atlantic

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        • Actually?

          He ain’t that popular at all

          And Yea

          There ARE A LOT of fucked up people that didn’t vote at all and those who voted for the convicted felon….

          Ain’t saying much, eh?

          • Well you’re the one who is always throwing poll numbers around.

            CNN Poll says 54% think Trump will do a “ good” job and about the same number approve of his transition implicitly being ok with his appointments.

            Look you can “ blame” this on the “ media” as you do daily here, the plain fact is as of now?

            Trump has a significant amount of good will with “ the American people.”

            How long that will last? Well,that is the question.

            • Jack?

              U KNOW BETTER….

              They ALL start out with a ‘Honeymoon’ as noted ….

              Trump WILL quickly hit a brick wall like he and others do when the friction of Reality asserts itself…..

              Wait…:

                • He’s the incoming President of the United States.

                  Of course the “ media” is going to report what he says and does.

                  That’s elementary.

                  And why your obsession with Keith not posting?

                  He’s always been a sporadic poster,often going months without appearing.Besides usually,when he does?He kicks you around for one of your well known foolish statements.

                  Maybe you’re a masochist?

                  • Undignified would be putting it quite mildly. I myself have had no need to post here, since we now live in the brave new world of “everything you say can and will be used against you by your government and its pet kiss-asses in society.”

                    Nor will I feel that need going forward, not that it will stop the begging on James’ part(A “sage” he is not, contrary to popular belief). More additional time I can use for other pursuits. Just got back from the hurricane ravaged Asheville area dropping off Christmas toys at various places across the area, and will hit Winder, GA, later in the week. They had a school shooting a few months ago.

                    A few comments. Democrats need to ditch their long held strategy of employing these overpaid professional losers(like the guy to whom James grovels) and make way for better strategies that actually get voters where they are. I don’t know how they do it, as I’m not exactly optimistic about the American people and their “values” the way I was late into the afternoon of the election. Nor am I confident in where we will be in under two years’ time.

                    But the tried and failed strategy of the last 25 years(which Obama revamped from its previous losing form, but has been outdated ever since) is a definite no go. If we are in an existential crisis as the overpaid professional losers like to say we are, hire people who act on it and think outside the box, versus throwing money at the problem and knocking on Republican doors seeking out the nigh non existent “Never Trump” voter.

                    And the charitable comments about me after I’d left were surprising, certainly welcomed, especially considering my own uncharitable comments towards you. I’m not sure what my role is in politics going forward. Especially if Biden actually takes up Clyburn on his destructive idea of pardoning Trump. Though at least we didn’t, writ large, embrace election conspiracies after we lost. Hollow consolation.

                    • Good to hear from ya SE….

                      And YES….

                      The Trump WIN HAS knocked us ALL off stride….

                      We CANNOT just give up and walk away for too long….

    • I’d tend to agree…..

      He actually IS qualifierd to operate on the level of the FBI Director….

      He has held High Level Govt. Security jobs previously….

      Like Hegseth….

      In talking to Senator’s he has BACKED AWAY from most of his BS looking outside -in…

      He and if Hegseth gets the spot will probably be captured by the ACTUAL job of managing their agency/department…

      Same thing goes on ALL the time…..

  5. Finally, Joe Biden has to be judged as the man Democrats turned to for the purpose of getting rid of Trump. This was done just before Covid, a point at which Trump was riding high post-Senate acquittal, and would have certainly won by a similar or slightly larger margin against Biden and most of the rest of the field. We got lucky, in the most perverse of ways, that Trump’s mishandling of a situation that cost millions of lives and counting dominated the public perception in the latter months of 2020. And it almost wasn’t enough back then.

    Now, it was Biden who misjudged and mishandled the situations surrounding age and inflation concerns. And even after his long overdue bowing out of the race, Democrats didn’t do nearly enough to separate themselves from him. To the extent they even could have. By this point, the die was cast, and ultimately no one else put in Harris’ position could have won. And all because Biden’s messaging on the economy was somewhere between out of touch and non existent. A high stakes playing of Charades in a Grand Theft Auto generation. Plus, the enduring fact that the American people don’t know what they want and are quite certain of it. The age concerns were just icing on the cake.

    Ultimately, the guy chosen to beat Trump was also the man who ushered him right back in. He will be remembered as a tragic figure, like Neville Chamberlain. Hopefully, now that the torch has unquestionably been passed to a younger generation, we may now find our Winston Churchill. For now, Biden is remembered as being somehow a bigger failure than the right wing said he was. Guy lost the country to the man right wingers have meme-christened “Forrest Trump.” And all this before considering the dreck idea Biden ally Jim Clyburn posited this week of the President pardoning Trump, essentially rolling out the red carpet upon which he can commit all new crimes.

    It’s a hell of a life we face, and I can’t help but sympathize with 99 year old actor Dick Van Dyke’s recent statement that he doesn’t intend to be around to see all that Trump’s got in store. For me, it’s off to whatever all I’m going to do next. This whole charade may have been all fun or nothing to all else. It was neither fun nor nothing to me.

    • Great readout on ole Joe Biden…..

      ….”Ultimately, the guy chosen to beat Trump was also the man who ushered him right back in.’….

      Nails it….

      Clyburn is how old?

      Yes well who care ARE disenchanted…..

      You have any issue with me posting this later or tomorrow?

      Again….

      Do NOT give up….

      For me?

      I KNOW Trump WILL mostly be a FAILURE like he has been his whole life….

      We just have to be patient….

      This IS a lesson for a 300 year old country that IS of different places ….

      That seems to only REALLY come together when challenged…..

  6. A Florida woman was arrested after a call about her health insurance denial ended with her saying “deny, defend depose. You people are next”.

    Now this was a poor choice of words but as someone who worked in customer service I heard far more threatening calls and there were no arrests.

    Seems like when a CEO gets murdered the rules change. Maybe all calls should end with “I’m frustrated but your corporate overlord deserves another tax cut” just to be sure one won’t be put on a list.

  9. SC kook Congresswoman Nancy Mace says former SC congressman and present FoxNews blabbermouth Trey Gowdy is transgender.

    Mace is well versed in making up garbage ,usually of a sexual nature, that Republicans eat up.

  10. More sexual stuff from Mace…

    Apparently today she got into a back and forth with fellow Republican kook Jack Prosobiec over her voting against Trump during this Republican created federal shutdown stuff.

    Finally Mace commented” would not.”

    Knowing of Maces proclivity to turning everything into some sexual situation,her comment apparently referred to the “ fact” that she wouldn’t have sex with Prosobiec.He immediately verbally retaliated against Maces sexual innuendo.Then his wife joined in.The whole thing makes a mockery of ( like any more is needed) the “ conservative values” foolishness

    People like these two used to be known as what they are, two pieces of White Trash.To me?

    That’s what they still are!

      • Republican strategist WesleyDonahue says that Mace is an “embarrassment “ and that he fired her as a client.

        Referring to her “egotistical bullshit and drama,”Donahue further stated that he was “ worried”about her and urged her to seek mental health treatment.

        • Here’s the Pwire piece….

          Former Adviser Calls Nancy Mace a ‘Pitiful Embarrassment’

          A Republican strategist is lashing out at Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) months after he says he fired her as a client, dubbing the far-right lawmaker a “pitiful embarrassment,” the Daily Beast reports.

          Said Wesley Donehue: “I fired Nancy Mace as client a few months back because I’m a political consultant and not a babysitter, a sex therapist or a doctor who can prescribe fixes for chemical imbalances. I don’t have time for her constant egotistical bullshit and drama in my life.”

          He added: “I’ve been worried about Nancy Mace for a while now. Mental health is a serious issue. I want her to get better and seek treatment.”

      • GOP Lawmaker Found Living in Nursing Home

        Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) has been missing votes in Washington because she’s been living in a nursing home for dementia patients for the past six months, the Daily Mail reports.

        The current longest-serving GOP representative had not been on record voting for or against anything since July.

        Dallas Express: Where is Kay Granger?

        Pwire

  13. For Four Years We Have Had a Ghost for a President, and We Were Lied to about It All Along

    By Jeffrey Blehar
    National Review
    December 19, 2024 4:14 PM

    The Wall Street Journal is out today with a toweringly important story documenting how President Joe Biden’s close-knit circle of advisers sought to swindle the public, the press, and even Biden’s legislative allies and cabinet appointees about the rapidly deteriorating state of the president’s mental health. It’s a 3,800-word, deeply sourced blockbuster that takes the story from summer 2021 — keep that date in your back pocket for a moment — all the way to the last desperate month after Biden’s debate meltdown. It is the first in what I anticipate will be a series of deeply reported “what went wrong” stories on the Biden White House emerging from the mainstream media — “Now the real story can be told!” — since the race is over and Trump won. (Keep that thought in your back pocket as well, while we’re at it.)

    Jim, Charlie, and Dan have already written about this — we more or less carved out our separate angles this morning, because it’s such a major story — but I want to emphasize one thing most of all, and I want to do it by quoting Kingsley Amis’s response to being proven right about Stalinist Russia: “We told you so, you f***ing fools.” It is important for me to point this out, and not because I am vain (though I am) or because I want to praise the incredible prescience and big brains of NR’s staff (though they are indeed beguilingly large), but rather for a far more sobering reason.

    Before we get there, however, I advise you to read every word of the WSJ piece, because the enormity of it all should not be lost upon Americans: Even if you think you knew this story, you really didn’t know anything at all about the details until today. To excerpt it at length would be to do it an injustice; there are so many anecdotes, piling up chronologically in escalating despair as the lengthy exposé proceeds, that by the end you are left reeling with anger at the near-criminal irresponsibility of Biden and his staff. I will quote but one paragraph:

    If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.

    I read this with a clenched fist. In spring 2021 — that is to say, only a month or two after Biden took office — our commander in chief was already having “good days” and “bad days.” I want to say that again: Already, at the beginning of his presidency, Joe Biden was showing visible signs of major mental decline. All of this was concealed from the world. And this man ran for reelection.

    After reading through the Journal’s report twice I have provisionally concluded that, despite all the various financial scandals, crony corruption, authoritarian overreach, and third-rate burglaries in American politics, this is the biggest scandal the presidency has ever seen, because it runs to the core of what the presidency is supposed to be. For practically his entire term, Joe Biden has been, if not non compos mentis — on a rare “good day” — then at least severely mentally diminished or periodically incapacitated. At no point during his time in office has he been fit for the presidency.

    The only other American scandal this elemental — one that risks the entire premise of executive government, that the president and not some shadowy cabal is the sole elected decision-maker — is the eeriest historical parallel of them all: Edith Wilson’s concealment from the public of her husband Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 stroke. She acted as de facto president for the rest of his term, and her imperious incompetence destroyed the effort to ratify Versailles in the Senate, ensuring the failure of Wilson’s internationalist legacy. Much the same could be said about the historically disastrous economic, immigration, and international policy drift of the Biden Era — as might well be expected from a president who began his term already asleep at the wheel.

    I will have more to say about this later on tonight — I asked you hold those thoughts at the top of this piece in your back pocket for a reason. For now, however, there is no getting around the revolting fact that we have been subjected to four years of a farcical semi-presidency, one whose drift is now so easily explained by the simple fact that Biden was little better than a front for an unelected committee of “top men” who sent us careening from one international and domestic disaster to another. We now discover that Biden was all along a mere shell of a president, a babbling Lear whose shameful dotage was kept in more carefully guarded secrecy.

    And the most shameful aspect of it all was Biden’s acquiescence to this: Detached and unable to remember details, unaware of what his administration was doing, unable to speak without minders to anyone for more than a few minutes, he allowed his staff to run the world and weave a cynical campaign of deception as he sought another four years in office. Don’t feel an ounce of pity for Joe Biden in his advanced senescence as he fades into disgrace; he made love to this employment. He is not near my conscience, nor should he be yours

    • DSD?

      I would ask the author’s of the piece to go back and check on Ronald Reagan’s last year in office…

      THEN?

      I would ask that they check the views on the incoming President from 2016 to 2021…IN OFFICE

      AND?

      From 2021 to the present with emphases on the 2024 campiagn mutterings, rants and incoherencies ….

      These guys don’t know their Presidential history….

      Prersidential health issues are actually NORMAL…..

      Some of us DO……

        • I’d forgotten about Reagan’s dementia and the cover-up.

          They were quite as serious as Wilson’s and [apparently] Biden’s, with equally grave implications for government and diplomacy. It’s unclear how much command of the crucially-important situation FDR had in his last year (1944-45)

          JFK’s and LBJ’s situations were I thaink more physical than mental and thus less grave. Eight presidents have died in
          office: Tippecanoe & Taylor, too; Lincoln, Garfield & McKinley (all shot); Harding, FDR & JFK.

  15. The sort of issues in relation to declining health that Biden has dealt with as President, while likely exaggerated by his political opponents, seem pretty unique. We will learn more about this in retrospect, but the whole thing is definitely an additional stain on his legacy and especially of the people around him.

    Ronald Reagan was accessible during his final year as President and one look at videos and compare the differences between 77 year old Reagan in 1988 and Biden as he aged between 77 and 81 and we were told he was fine to serve two terms

  17. Trying to leave a post that is not going through. There was never any evidence that Reagan had dementia as President. He was pretty accessible and gave a lot of press conferences, interviews, etc, as compared to Biden.

    One can go to YouTube and watch videos of 77 year old Reagan in 1988 and compare them to Biden between the ages of 77 and 81.

    • Ronald Reagan’s personal diaries as President have also been published. He was clearly writing and thinking very lucidly in 1988. He was somewhat always bad with recalling names, going back to when he was very young.

      It definitely would have been a problem had Reagan had Reagan been able to seek another term in 1988. It definitely appears he could have won such an election at age 77 but his dementia started to show itself in the four years after he left office. Many believe his post-Presidential fall off a horse accelerated it.

      • Reagan died in 2004, ten years after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. It has been said to be near medically impossible to live that long if he started to have Alzheimers in the 1980s.

        I have no reason to believe that Biden has Alzheimer’s but he has clearly declined physically and mentally as President. In spite of that, he attempted to seek another term that would have kept him in office up until age 86. His family and staff attacked anybody who questioned that, until the debate with Trump happened, and then it was too late.

        Frankly, had Biden resigned after the two year mark of his Presidency, Kamala Harris, as an incumbent, would have had a much better chance of winning against Trump, as compared to what went down in 2024. She would have been eligible run again in 2028 also as an incumbent.

  18. The Kay Granger story is disturbing. Apparently, people had no idea what was going on. I saw her on television several times in 2023 and she seemed fine. It is a bit of a difference when someone is one of 435 and was not running for reelection anyway. Had she resigned this year, she would not have been replaced since the election. The situation sounds most similar recently to Dianne Feinstein who remained in the Senate for a few years after she had notable dementia until she passed away.

    The crazy aspect though is that Granger’s social media account was still putting out messages, which of course usually comes from staff for many members of Congress, and earlier this month were posting photos of her at a Capitol Hill event that was presented as having had taken place that same day. If the photos were actually from an event that took place months earlier and presented falsely, it was definitely a huge disservice to the public.

    • There was a well known anecdote about how when Don Regan got fired as White House Chief of Staff, after clashing with Nancy Reagan, he dealt with it very badly and started saying that Reagan was controlled by Nancy and others and was declining, etc.

      Howard Baker, who was brought in as Chief of Staff, decided that he had to make this determination for himself, and after watching President Reagan, decided there was nothing to Regan’s claim.

      Don Regan had sour grapes. He should never have hung up on his boss’s wife.

    • Ok…

      I looked at this...

      He DID write the entries…

      They where NOT policy driven…

      They where written as simple readbacks of Reagan’s daily feelings…

      He uses ‘We’ a lot….

      He did have dementia …

      I remember Don Regan getting into trouble with his boss due to Nancy

      • He knew what was going on in 1988. There are plenty of writings and videos to prove that. You are just trying to make Biden look better, even as I have said that people on the right have exaggerated about Biden’s problems. I think everyone should just be honest. Reagan did not have dementia as President. Full stop.

          • The president was acting strangely. In the wake of a scandal about his illegal dealings with foreign powers, White House aides felt he was so “inattentive and inept” that a memo sent to the chief of staff raised the prospect of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

            The president was Ronald Reagan, who was dealing with fallout from the Iran-Contra scandal. His chief of staff ultimately dismissed the possibility of using the 25th Amendment to remove him, but the incident is one of the few cases in American history in which White House staff seriously suggested it as an option for removing a president from office, based on his ability to perform the job…..

            More…

            • This has long since been debunked. We know that Don Regan had a grudge after being fired. Maybe you were a big Don Regan fan.

              Ronald Reagan was completely capable of being President during the eight years that he was. Based on everything we know, I also do not think the 25th Amendment should apply to Biden. See, I can look at this from a non-partisan perspective. The big problem with Biden though is that he attempted to run for reelection, when was already four years older than Reagan was on the day that he left. That was a tragic mistake and will haunt Biden’s legacy forever.

              Also, the only person who picked up on this Reagan story years later was Bill O’Reilly. Maybe you are a big O’Reilly fan.

          • Even before Ronald Reagan became the oldest elected president, his mental state was a political issue. His adversaries often suggested his penchant for contradictory statements, forgetting names and seeming absent-mindedness could be linked to dementia.

            In 1980, Mr. Reagan told me that he would resign the presidency if White House doctors found him mentally unfit. Years later, those doctors and key aides told me they had not detected any changes in his mental abilities while in office.

            …
            In 1984, Mr. Reagan’s poor performance in his first presidential debate with Vice President Walter Mondale renewed questions about his mental capacity. A study published in 1988 suggested that Mr. Reagan had some cognitive impairment during his debates with President Jimmy Carter and Mr. Mondale, but the authors said that their findings were insufficient to conclude that the changes affected Mr. Reagan’s policy judgments and ability to make decisions…

            More…

            • Democrats spent decades saying Republicans were too old.

              They said Eisenhower was too old.
              They said Reagan was too old
              They said Bob Dole was too old
              They said John McCain was too old.

              Then, when Joe Biden came along, and he was older than all of them, they said “how dare anybody bring up age.”

              I even remember in 2000 when Dick Cheney was picked to run for Vice President, Nancy Pelosi of all people said Cheney was too old for the job. Joe Lieberman was only a year younger than Cheney and Cheney himself was younger than Pelosi.

              I do not think anybody suggested anything was wrong with Reagan in the 1980 debate. He was clearly judged the winner of that one.

              There were questions raised by Reagan’s first debate with Mondale that were put to rest after the second debate.

              We know that incumbent Presidents tend to not do so great in their first debate against a challenger. However, Biden’s 2024 debate performance blew all previous observations out of the water.

  22. We know what is going on physically with McConnell and Fetterman. McConnell would be wise to not seek reelection next year due to age, as many people would be. Joe Biden clearly was not one of those people initially. There is nothing mentally wrong with Mitch McConnell.

    • Let us not (esp. sports nuts CG and JBF) forget the legendary star pitcher Jim Bunning, later Rand Paul’s predecessor as Republican Senator from Kentucky, who was clearly losing his powers before retiring in 2010.

  25. Hopefully, my one post that is in moderation can be published.

    But to sum up two important things that really cannot be argued

    1. There is no evidence to suggest Reagan’s Alzheimer’s which he was diagnosed with in the 1990s had begun in the 1980s.
    2. Rudy Giuliani would have easily been given a third term by New York City voters in 2001 had his name been on the ballot.

  30. There’s a story on Politicalwire this afternoon about how 50% of voters in families making less than 50k voted for Trump while 48% voted for Harris.

    It mentions testimony of these voters are nos worried about government programs being cut.

    I’m sorry but all this was laid out by co-Pres Musk in late October when he stated that there would be “temporary hardship” as a result of imposing tariffs and budget cuts.

    These people voted for this. It’s a shame those who didn’t have to suffer as well but listen to what is actually being said next time.

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