CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.
Trump’s team is worried. Seems they finally figured out they won’t be able to focus Donny at all. Instead of even pretending to do anything presidential, the Angry Tweeter in Chief spent most of his first weekend in office angrily tweeting, and siccing Spicer on the press, to present those alternative facts.
The New York Times said Sunday night that Trump spent a “rocky” first weekend in office as he echoed his campaign trail cycle of “angry Twitter messages, a familiar obsession with slights and a series of meandering and at times untrue statements, all eventually giving way to attempts at damage control.”
“The lack of discipline troubled even senior members of Mr. Trump’s circle,” reported the Times‘ Peter Baker, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, “some of whom had urged him not to indulge his simmering resentment at what he saw as unfair news coverage. Instead, Mr. Trump chose to listen to other aides who shared his outrage and desire to punch back. By the end of the weekend, he and his team were scrambling to get back on script.”
During the inauguration itself, Trump reportedly became “increasingly angry” as Twitter users posted photos of his inauguration crowd next to Pres. Barack Obama’s much larger audience from 2009.
“But he spent his Friday night in a whirlwind of celebration and affirmation,” the Times said. “When he awoke on Saturday morning, after his first night in the executive mansion, the glow was gone, several people close to him said, and the new president was filled anew with a sense of injury.”
Aaaw, the glow was gone. Golly, who could have foreseen that one? You’d think Donny would have at least somewhat prepared himself for the great disappointment, given the months of refusals by performers, and the inability to even give tickets away. Most people would have gotten a hint from that, to say the least.
Even stalwart Trump supporters like L. Lin Wood are concerned that the administration is off to a bad start.
“To someone who believed we might have a good opportunity to change, it’s just a terrible start. Because he’s got a long way to go,” Mr. Wood told the Times. “This is going to go downhill quickly if it’s not changed, and that’s not good for any of us.”
The rest of us had that figured out last year. FFS. Via Raw Story.
Taking a brief break from the Angry Tweeter, Richard Spencer, the wannabe nazi hero, is back to whinging all over the place again.
Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer wants you to know that actually, he’s not a Nazi, but a supporter of “identity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world” and that the ethnic cleansing he and his allies are calling for would be the “peaceful” kind.
Oh, there’s that “peaceful ethnic cleansing” shit again. Right. Because everyone Spencer doesn’t like or deem white enough will just pack up their stuff and leave, no fuss. It never seems to occur to the nazi that this road goes two ways – go buy yourself an island or something, Richard, and you can all set up Naziland. You won’t be missed.
Speaking to the New York Times from on Saturday, the “alt-right” progenitor said he’s deeply worried that video of him getting punched on Friday during Donald Trump’s inauguration is going to become “the meme to end all memes.”
:Snort: Oh gods, almost choked on my tea. Someone certainly thinks highly of themselves. Perhaps the solution to this dilemma, Richard, is for you to never appear in public again. Whatever power you think you may have, you don’t have what it takes to “end” memes. I’m afraid they will be around for a very long time.
Spencer feels that he is misunderstood. He told the Times that he’s not a Nazi per se, he’s just a white nationalist member of the “alt-right” who supports “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”
He prefers to steer clear of the word “Nazi” because it’s “a historical term” that is “not going to resonate today” thanks to unpleasant associations with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
“German National Socialism is a historic movement of the past,” Spencer told the Times. “It arose at a very particular time and had particular motives and ideas and policies and styles, and those aren’t mine.”
You aren’t misunderstood, Richard. You’re a wannabe nazi. For a “historical term”, there are a whole lot of neo-nazis, all over the world, and they don’t seem to think that “historical term” is at all irrelevant. Kind of makes you an idiot, Richard, or a dilettante who is having trouble with that makeover.
In the wake of his pummeling on Friday, Spencer now says he’s reconsidering whether it’s safe to go out in public.
“I don’t think I could go out to an inauguration event without bodyguards or a protest or a conference,” he said. “I am more worried about going out to dinner on an average Tuesday because these kind of people are roaming around.”
Oh FFS. Most people don’t even know who the fuck you are, dude. If you keep your mouth shut while out in public, rather than seeking out reporters to spout nazi rhetoric at, I imagine you’ll be just fine. You’re certainly safer, by magnitudes of order, than any woman or person of colour. All you have to do is shut up. Reflect on how nice it is you don’t have a pussy to be grabbed.
“I’m going to have to start really thinking about operational security,” he said in a Periscope video entitled “The Assault on Me.”
There you go again, flapping your mouth. Close it.
“Right now, I’m in a safe space,” Spencer assured viewers before lamenting that since the fall of 2016, U.S. liberals have turned to “European-style anti-fascism,” which he called, “the kind with baseball bats.”
“We need to take very seriously the notion that anti-fascists aren’t going to just scream at us, they’re going to physically attack us,” he said.
So sweet you’re in your safe space, perhaps you should stay in it. Most anti-fascists did not attack you, and there was not a single baseball bat in evidence. You didn’t even get whacked with a protest sign. Someone couldn’t take anymore of you constantly talking, and decked you. Seriously dude, the way to safety? Shut the fuck up. It will do the trick.
Via Raw Story.
Back to The Angry Tweeter, authorizing the gulping of money to fund his 2020 campaign. Are we still going to be doing campaigns in four years?
On Friday — the day Donald Trump swore in as the 45th president of the U.S. — his campaign committee authorized two joint committees to raise funds for his 2020 presidential bid. Trump, however, said that the paperwork was not a formal announcement of his candidacy for the 2020 election.
The Donald J. Trump For President Committee filed an amendment to their statement with the Federal Election Commission on Friday afternoon, stating that it supported Trump and Vice President Michael Pence. It also authorized two joint fundraising committees — Trump Victory and Trump Make America Great Again.
In a letter to the commission on the same day, Trump said that while he had reached the $5,000 mark required to file an official statement of candidacy, the paperwork “does not constitute a formal announcement of my candidacy for the 2020 election.”
Earlier this month, Trump’s team announced the 70-year-old he would keep his presidential campaign committee alive. Trump’s former deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner, along with Arizona deputy treasurer Sean Dollman and John Pence (Pence’s nephew), will reportedly head the committee. The group is planning to concentrate on fundraising and building data for the newly sworn-in president’s possible re-election in 2020, and will coordinate with the Republican National Committee.
I just don’t have anything, outside one very long, loud scream. Via Raw Story.
Richard Spencer:
Aww, you poor soul.
Now imagine being a person of color and going out on an average Tuesday with a “peaceful ethnic cleansing” going on with your kind of people roaming around.
Fuck your average Tuesday dinners.
Gargh! I agree with you in condemning Spencer’s speech, but I don’t think ‘Shut up if you want to be safe,’ should be a thing said by either side, even in jest. Please don’t do that. Please?
martha, #2
Did Caine really need to explicitly write “Shut up about genocide of non-white people if you want to be safe”?
I think it’s pretty clear that’s what’s meant in this on-going discussion.
I don’t have a problem with ‘shut up to stay safe’ in Spencer’s case, or the case of any other fucking Nazi. He’s a Nazi, and I won’t give so much of a fraction of an inch of quarter to him or any like him. He wants to be able to bloviate in public about how some people are subhuman, and talk about ethnic cleansing as a good, and much worse.
No, I will not make even the slightest attempt to be fair and balanced in such a case. Spencer thinks people like me should not be allowed freedoms, or human rights, or even to live in this country. If he does not want to risk people talking back, then he should stop trying to shout his Nazi rhetoric every time he talks, which is constantly. There are fucking Nazis in the damn white house, and I am extremely concerned about my safety, and the safety of others. Spencer’s? Not so fucking much.
Saad:
Yes, it is. I also noted that most people don’t have the slightest idea of who Spencer is, so his whining about his safety is absolute bullshit. The only reason he has to be concerned is that he won’t shut up, in public, about Nazism.
I have the .gif of Spencer being clocked on my phone.
If he’s afraid to go out, why doesn’t he just get a gun?
Chigau, oh guns came up, a lot, in the tweet stream of Spencer’s little video. Most of them threatening, but saying it wasn’t time for guns yet.
I just… The norm that you don’t threaten people’s physical safety for their speech is a really improtant one right now and it’s the vulnerable people on our side , not Richard Spencer, who need that protection, and I don’t see how the norm survives, if it’s easy to poke holes in it and make exceptions because person X’s speech on the other side is just that egregious. Why isn’t it enough to say that RS is an expletive, expletive special snowflake who will probably be just fine?
Well, martha, you can put that one down to the idiotic idea US Americans have about the absolute freedom of speech.
Where I live propagating nazism and racism is recognized by law as implicit call for violence and is punishable by law.
That does not mean we do not have nazis and racists, but they are at least very, very carefull about what they do/say and where.
Freedom of speech is an important thing, but it should not be unconditional and unlimited.
The USA free speech amendment prevents The Government™ from preventing free speech.
Citizens are allowed to express opinions on anyone’s speech.
The problem with Spencer’s interlocutor is not that vehemently disagreed with Spencer but rather that they committed an assault.
Totally different crime.
Charly:
Freedom of speech in the U.S. is not unconditonal and unlimited. There are limits on it. The classic example is not having the freedom to shout “fire!” in a crowded theatre when there’s no fire.
People here like to pretend there are no limits, but it’s not so. Unfortunately, there are no restrictions on nazi speech, except for those we impose ourselves, as citizens. I’m all for imposing those limits.
Tolerance Is A Peace Treaty And A Social Compact, Nothing More. The only question is when does it make sense to break/suspend it. And that depends on the outcome in each case.
It is neither in the States, and never has been(since the first amendment was ratified). The canonical counterexample is “You cannot falsely shout ‘fire’ in the threatre.”
Anat:
Nazism is a dealbreaker for me. I don’t want any white supremacist to feel comfortable spouting this evil shit anywhere in public.
Heh, I now see Caine@12 made exactly the same point with the same example. And chigau@11’s point is very important.
I know about the “shouting about fire in a theater” thing. I think that it is a laughably low standard to consider something as a restriction of speech.
Charly:
Yes, it is.
martha,
Richard Spencer is a public figure with a platform and an audience consisting of a dangerous section of right-wing Americans. He gets interviewed by and featured in mainstream publications like TIME. We’re not talking about some powerless, voiceless random guy with a 9-5 job who has a racist bumper sticker.
And in this current climate where the presidency has been handed to a white supremacist with a Nazi as his personal ally, Richard Spencer’s vitriol is not just “speech”.
You are wrong. You need to look at exactly what’s happening here and exactly what you’re defending.
The idea that America needs to be a white state and people of color should be eliminated from it does not deserve defense. The only way to combat this is to treat people like him with hostility when they bring their agendas in public. Whether to kill minority people or not is not a topic of debate. Fuck him. May he continue to feel unsafe in public.
Try to make the shouter not feel comfortble ≠ outlawing the shouter’s speech (with exceptions like the “false ‘fire!’ in threatre” example). As previously pointed out, making the bullshiter not feel comfortably by whacking them is, at least technically, probably assault (a crime), but not always (as in the famous example of some years ago when Buzz Aldrin walloped moon lander denier Bart Sibrel, Ex-astronaut escapes assault charge (BBC)).
Therefore a reasonable cause for self defense.
Anyway.
The term ‘nazi’ resonates just fine.
And also *awww* about Donnie’s lost glow. He feels injured? This would be a pitiable thing if it would make him stop think and change his mind about how he’s planning on functioning in the future. Alas… Alas.
It is not a standard, it is an example. There are some standards. What may be a critical one in cases like this could be Chaplinsky v New Hampshire (1942): Fighting words (words that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace) are not protected by the first amendment.
There’s one reason I’m against the punch: it gave Spencer something to milk, and boy, is he ever. That said, no, I don’t advocate going around punching nazis, for one thing, it’s ineffective, no matter how satisfying.
That said, racists do need to be made afraid again. The KKK was defanged back in the day by ridicule, mockery, and protests at which KKK voices were drowned out. I’m all for that, especially as nazism is on the rise once more, all over the world, not just here. We are now a fascist country, and with people on the left crying tears and talking about giving this person, that person a chance, and defending a Nazi’s right to speech, we’re going to burn all the faster. I want zero part in any compromise here. I am anti-fascist. I am anti-nazi. If I could leave this country today, I would. That’s how fucking scared I am. Spencer is a white male, oozing with fucking privilege. He’s not scared, he has no reason to be. That’s the fucking problem.
Last comment: I make a distinction between hostility and violence. I don’t have any desire to make RS comfortable. I think there are people on the other side who are only too willing to respond to speech they object to with violence or threats of violence and I don’t want to see the side I identify with going in the same direction. I don’t see what we have to gain by normalizing threats of violence beyond the temporary relief of our feelings, but I do see what we have to lose.
Maybe it would be a good idea to have laws against Nazi, etc. speech here. A law can be written and adjudicated with some particularity, but a norm can’t. The more you poke holes in it for some, the more it crumbles for everybody.
@blf #22
I was not clear. I know about this, you are not telling me anything new. And I still think USAmerican attitude to free speech and laws regulating it is just as naive as libertarianism is about economy.
martha
Which is “the other side”?
I can’t tell which side you are on.
martha
Who’s going to push that law through, considering the current climate in the US and around the world? It’s nice to wish for these things, but they’re terribly unlikely to happen. Except maybe in California on a state level, but… that’s meager comfort for the other states.
Peaceful ethnic cleansing, heh? That’s a good one. That’s like a non-violent war. Or respectful racism.
“I’m not a racist! White people are the superior race!”
Spencer, keep your filthy identity politics to yourself. You may be insecure about your identity, mot of us are not.
Sincerely,
a European
*most
rietpluim:
I recently read comments by a white supremacist saying that data just supported his idea of black people being “culturally inferior,” and that pointing that out didn’t count as being racist at all, no sir. That irrefutable data, BTW? A graphic from the Pew Research Center showing that black people tended to perform worse at school than other ethnicities. Because the only possible explanation for that data is that black people are inferior, right? Any other possible explanation, like systemic racism, was simply too far-fetched, right? /s
Charly@25, “I know about this, you are not telling me anything new.”
There is no demonstration in this thread of that claim. Redacted. -- That is enough, right now. Charly has already stated he’s aware of these things, more than once. You are not adding to the conversation with this shit. Stop. -- Caine.
Hi-hi!
Or—and this is my pick—you are being Tactically Disingenuous.
You know that ‘Nazi’ comes with this huge package of Negative Publicity, on a world-wide scale…so just call it something different; it’s all the rage, on your side of the political fence.
You know.
Like “alternative facts”.
--
“I want an excuse to have a heavily-armed goon squad with me at all times.”
Can you say, “private army”?
I knew you could!
--
Saas:
*applause*
Other people don’t get to feel safe in public, partly because of people of his stripe. Why should he get to feel safe?
--
rietpluim:
But there’s nothing violent about a shower, ammirite?
A nice, peaceful shower….
--
Kreator:
Or, maybe, unequal quality of education?
Anybody who thinks that all public schools are created equal, has not been paying attention.
--
--
At our local counterinaugural protest on Friday, a handful of Trump Chumps showed up and several of us semi-surrounded them (we left the way away open), raising our signs high to block theirs.
A well-meaning 1st-Amendment advocate came up to criticize us as “being no better” for “not allowing their free speech.”
(Part of) My response: “Yeah, I do tend to get in fascists’ faces. That’s what fascists’ faces are for.”
Pierce:
Good for you! :D
I think I may have mentioned this before; what if Trump’s sheer stupidity and pettiness actually impede his attempts to destroy the country? Hopefully he’ll make a bunch of stupid mistakes that’ll make it easy to legislatively outmaneuver him and expose any shady stuff he tries to pull. Also, a good number of his policies would take a lot of careful planning and logistical considerations to pull off. Hopefully Trump’s idiocy will get in the way of stuff like the wall or the mass deportations from going how he wants them to.
I think that everyone who opposes Trump should keep doing stuff that pisses him off and gets him into Twitter rage mode. Hopefully he’ll be so distracted dealing with feuds and slights against him that he won’t have time to fuck anything up. Even some of Trump’s own team members and supporters are concerned about this. We should make those concerns warranted.
I don’t think it’s going to be Trump’s stupidity that will need to be beat, because I doubt he’ll be drafting any legislation himself (not too much of it, at any rate). That’s what all those other politicians are for -- like Pence, and Congress, and… all they need to do is tell him “this is a great bill, it’s all America first!” and he’ll agree and sign. I don’t think he’ll worry too much about the careful planning and logistical considerations, he’ll lie about all that, too.
I agree with this:
… but not the following sentence, because even with all his angry tweeting, he’s already managed to fuck a lot of things up quite nicely.
@emergence #35
Do not console yourself with that. Hitler was no logistical or military genius either and his team still got some pretty difficult and challenging (and morally horrendous) things done. And the things that were most botched were those he actually tried to meddle with personally and has overriden his advisors.
On this point:
Earlier this month, Trump’s team announced the 70-year-old he would keep his presidential campaign committee alive.
.
Stand by for massive violations of the Hatch Act.
.
Your tax dollars will finance both the Trump 2020 campaign and the GOP congressional midterms.
I don’t think punching Nazis is much of a grey area.
.
Verbally inciting violence against a person or group of people is an act of violence, because it can kill real people. Spencer called for violence, he got violence.
Sorry to be late to this one, but FFS, are we really still debating this shit about Spencer getting decked? The actual dead bodies of minorities are stacking up like cord wood specifically because of assholes like him. He has nearly the entire combined police force of the United States doing his bidding for him, killing minority people all over every day while protecting his lily white ass against any slight threat.
When minorities (especially indigenous people in America) are assaulted and killed, the police not only fail to investigate, but likely just add to the body count. And this is all specifically because of the fascism and racism promoted by assholes like Spencer. It’s so pervasive it has become institutionalized in nearly every corner of the nation.
If carrying Skittles and iced tea while black is an excuse to kill a black person, then promoting the ethnic cleansing of minorities while white is easily an excuse to punch that person in the face. Once the minority body count from such ethnic cleansing is eliminated, then we can start to talk about not punching Nazis in the face.
This is definitely a case of “punching up”. It’s Spencer with the full weight of privilege and institutional protection.
Now I’m going to go buy some Shampoo of Justice. (OK, maybe not. Vidal Sassoon shampoo is expensive and VO5 has always done just fine at 79 cents a bottle. Sorry Vidal…)
Charly @37
I’ll grant you that, but something about Trump seems different. The guy is stupid and immature even by authoritarian asshole standards. I’m not saying that we should let our guard down, but I get the feeling that at some point in the next four years some bone-headed scheme of Trump’s is going to blow up in his face. Trump seems like the kind of guy who would try to meddle in big projects personally and override his advisors. I think he’s already showing signs of that now. It doesn’t help that I’ve read articles about how certain policies like the border wall would be physically and logistically impossible to pull off.
Kengi, #40
Right on.
To quote an image I saw on Facebook recently (forget who to credit for it):
“I do not agree with ethnic cleansing, but I will defend to the death your right to recruit and organize it.”