Missiles away

[AUChizad]

To be fair, you used the term puppet in this context.  As far as Ivanka and Kushner go.

Call it what you want but If you don't see how much ivanka (and by proxy Kushner) influences him you aren't watching close. This isn't a hair brain leftist theory. Most reputable political analysts see it.

The uber objective Chris Stirewalt did a write up on foxnews a day ago detailing out that influence and the downfall of Bannon and how they are intertwined with each other and the policy shifts we have seen the last two weeks.

Another similar write up here on politico. Drop the trumpism for just one sec and read it in its entirety with an open mind. I defend trump when I think it's needed. But I also like to call a spade a spade. This is a bad move for trump. Approval ratings are being favored over real change which is what he got elected on.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/when-jared-wins-215021

Honestly, I welcome the Kushners' influence on Trump. Especially in a binary choice between them and Bannon.

[GH2001]

Honestly, I welcome the Kushners' influence on Trump. Especially in a binary choice between them and Bannon.

It's not about ideology. It's about what "is" versus what was supposed to be. The Kushner influence has taken us to the brink of war with Russia. He keeps following Kushner down this path and he will be a one term president.

[War Eagle!!!]

Honestly, I welcome the Kushners' influence on Trump. Especially in a binary choice between them and Bannon.

Me too. Influence is different than being a puppet for someone.

[War Eagle!!!]

The Kushner influence has taken us to the brink of war with Russia.

How? By bombing Syria?

I agree that things are not good with Russia which was my original point about Trump being put in office by the Kremlin.

And you are starting to pull a Prowler by telling to push away my "Trumpism"...

[War Eagle!!!]

Another similar write up here on politico. Drop the trumpism for just one sec and read it in its entirety with an open mind. I defend trump when I think it's needed. But I also like to call a spade a spade. This is a bad move for trump. Approval ratings are being favored over real change which is what he got elected on.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/when-jared-wins-215021

I see where you got the "Trumpism" term now. I pretty much read everything with an open mind, apparently contrary to your belief, but don't see this piece as an eye opening revelation that Trump's ideas are vastly changing and he is being drug around by his dick by the Kushners.

[GH2001]

I see where you got the "Trumpism" term now. I pretty much read everything with an open mind, apparently contrary to your belief, but don't see this piece as an eye opening revelation that Trump's ideas are vastly changing and he is being drug around by his dick by the Kushners.

I'm just saying a drastic change in policy stance has occurred and it's not a coincidence. Some things I agree with trump on. Some I don't.

Prowler isn't gonna like trump no matter what he does or says. That's the difference. My stance is I don't think it's a good idea to get away from what got him here. That's all.

[War Eagle!!!]

I'm just saying a drastic change in policy stance has occurred and it's not a coincidence. Some things I agree with trump on. Some I don't.

Prowler isn't gonna like trump no matter what he does or says. That's the difference. My stance is I don't think it's a good idea to get away from what got him here. That's all.

I assume that you are talking mostly about bombing Syria and before him saying we need to stay out of conflict? I tend to agree. But I also tend to agree that using chemical weapons is a conflict with the Geneva Protocol and shouldn't have gone unpunished in some way.

I don't think Trump wants to get into anything over there, but firing a few missiles over there gave a clear warning signal IMO. Plus, Trump is now holding other countries accountable in NATO which is what he ran on. He is also holding China accountable for N. Korea, which he said he would do. And he is still focused on jobs and securing the border which were the top two issues he won with. I guess I just don't see where this is some radical transformation of policy that others are trying to spin this as. Trumpism aside and all...

[AUChizad]

Just bombed Afghanistan with the "Mother of all Bombs".

[War Eagle!!!]

Just bombed Afghanistan with the "Mother of all Bombs".

Well, he also ran that we would destroy ISIS...

But...I don't know...

It will be interesting how it all plays out. More fireworks scheduled in N. Korea this weekend...

[The Prowler]

Just bombed Afghanistan with the "Mother of all Bombs".

Funny thing...Trump didn't make the call to bomb them. You'd think that if you're going to use the biggest non-nuclear bomb in America you'd at least get the go ahead from the Commander Cheeto. I'm thinking that if it's a success he'll blab about how great of a job he did in making the call (years down the road), if it's a failure he'll blame someone else (Obama, Hillary, Spicer, his daughter that he doesn't fawn all over, some kitchen manager at his golf resort, etc.).

[chinook]

Funny thing...Trump didn't make the call to bomb them. You'd think that if you're going to use the biggest non-nuclear bomb in America you'd at least get the go ahead from the Commander Cheeto. I'm thinking that if it's a success he'll blab about how great of a job he did in making the call (years down the road), if it's a failure he'll blame someone else (Obama, Hillary, Spicer, his daughter that he doesn't fawn all over, some kitchen manager at his golf resort, etc.).

Why bring Jumbo in this conversation?

[Pell City Tiger]

Funny thing...Trump didn't make the call to bomb them. You'd think that if you're going to use the biggest non-nuclear bomb in America you'd at least get the go ahead from the Commander Cheeto. I'm thinking that if it's a success he'll blab about how great of a job he did in making the call (years down the road), if it's a failure he'll blame someone else (Obama, Hillary, Spicer, his daughter that he doesn't fawn all over, some kitchen manager at his golf resort, etc.).

God forbid a U.S. president do something radical like give the military commanders the authority to make the call. 

Just when folks come to the conclusion that you can't say anything dumber than some all the shit you posted during the election, you make this idiotic statement and raise the bar of ignorance even higher.

[Snaggletiger]

God forbid a U.S. president do something radical like give the military commanders the authority to make the call. 

Just when folks come to the conclusion that you can't say anything dumber than some all the shit you posted during the election, you make this idiotic statement and raise the bar of ignorance even higher.

This is what I was thinking, PCT.  We're already involved in Asscrackastan and have been for years.  If the military leaders making the decisions decided to use drones or Marines or a MOAB or 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from Navy ships....why is this suddenly a Trump thing?  Maybe The Donald loosened the leash.  Maybe he said, "You're the experts, the professionals.  Go do that voodoo that you do so well."  I have no idea.  But right now, the story is we used a bad ass bomb to root out ISIS bitches that decided to tunnel up and go underground.  Why is this a point of contention?

[Kaos]

God forbid a U.S. president do something radical like give the military commanders the authority to make the call. 

Just when folks come to the conclusion that you can't say anything dumber than some all the shit you posted during the election, you make this idiotic statement and raise the bar of ignorance even higher.

We're gonna need a bigger bomb.

[Token]

This is what I was thinking, PCT.  We're already involved in Asscrackastan and have been for years.  If the military leaders making the decisions decided to use drones or Marines or a MOAB or 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from Navy ships....why is this suddenly a Trump thing?  Maybe The Donald loosened the leash.  Maybe he said, "You're the experts, the professionals.  Go do that voodoo that you do so well."  I have no idea.  But right now, the story is we used a bad ass bomb to root out ISIS bitches that decided to tunnel up and go underground.  Why is this a point of contention?

Because Trump. 

[Saniflush]

Just bombed Afghanistan with the "Mother of all Bombs".

[War Eagle!!!]

I'm just saying a drastic change in policy stance has occurred and it's not a coincidence. Some things I agree with trump on. Some I don't.

Saw this article and thought of you. I think it's pretty fair of the learning curve Trump has had in has first three months.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/us/politics/donald-trump-policy-reversals.html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — For President Trump, the road to changing his mind on China included a discussion with corporate executives in the State Dining Room of the White House in February. When the conversation turned to China’s currency, the executives had a simple message for the president: You’re wrong.

Mr. Trump had long insisted that China was devaluing its currency and should be punished, but the executives pushed back and told him Beijing had actually stopped. And while Mr. Trump at first resisted — as late as this month calling the Chinese “world champions” of currency manipulation — after many talks like the one in February he reversed himself, declaring this week that “they’re not currency manipulators” after all.

For any new occupant of the White House, the early months are like a graduate seminar in policy crammed into every half-hour meeting. What made sense on the campaign trail may have little bearing on reality in the Oval Office, and the education of a president can be rocky even for former governors or senators. For Mr. Trump, the first president in American history never to have served in government or the military, the learning curve is especially steep.

The past week has made that abundantly clear. He discovered that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may not be the “best friend” he imagined and that staying out of the civil war in Syria was harder than he assumed. He acknowledged that 10 minutes of listening to China’s president made him realize he did not fully understand the complexity of North Korea. He dropped his opposition to the Export-Import Bank after learning more about it. And he said he no longer thought NATO was “obsolete.”

Just weeks ago, in the midst of failed efforts to scrap President Barack Obama’s health care program, he acknowledged that the issue was more involved than the repeal-and-replace mantra of a campaign rally. “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated,” he said with amazement. Nobody except anyone who had spent any time in Washington policy making. But for Mr. Trump, never much of a policy wonk, it was an eye opener.

“As he governs, he is realizing that the campaign talk doesn’t fit neatly into governing and he needs a different approach, one that gets results,” said Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and a friend of the president’s. “So he will discard things and people that don’t work out, and those that do work, he will magnify. That’s how he became successful in business and entertainment.”

One person’s education, of course, may be another’s betrayal. To some of his supporters, the pivots suggest that Mr. Trump the outsider may have been captured by Wall Street veterans in his White House, while Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist, is sidelined.

It got to the point that Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist radio show host, focused his Thursday program on defending the president against his own base. “Is Trump selling us out?” Mr. Jones asked. “And the answer is no. In fact, Trump is attempting to co-opt the establishment.”
Trump’s Policy Reversals, in His Own Words

President Trump has reversed himself on several longstanding positions over the past week.

To be sure, Mr. Trump remains a historically unpredictable president, given to impulse, still tilting at the Washington establishment and supporting ideological measures popular with his conservative base, including legislation he signed on Thursday targeting Planned Parenthood. Even as establishment figures seek to influence him, he has not given up on his most polarizing priorities, and few can forecast where he will take his presidency. Mr. Trump is still Mr. Trump, and he believes he got to the White House by following instinct.

But he arrived at the White House surrounded by advisers who, like him, were neophytes to governing. His White House chief of staff, chief strategist, senior adviser, counselor and national economics adviser have no prior government experience of consequence. Nor do his secretaries of state, Treasury, commerce, housing or education.

At first, Mr. Trump dismissed the importance of receiving his intelligence briefing every day, arguing that he did not learn much. He figured it would be easy to ban visitors from several predominantly Muslim countries and build a border wall while forcing Mexico to pay for it. He had never heard of the congressional procedures that forced him to push for health care changes before overhauling the tax code.

But as seasoned hands got access to him, he retreated from some of his provocative promises. He delayed his vow to move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem after King Abdullah II of Jordan rushed to Washington to warn him of a violent backlash among Arabs. He abandoned his intention to bring back torture in terrorism interrogations after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told him it was ineffective.

He has not appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton, ripped up or renegotiated the nuclear agreement with Iran, reversed Mr. Obama’s Cuba policy or terminated his predecessor’s program permitting younger unauthorized immigrants to stay.

So much of this is new to Mr. Trump that only after he publicly accused Mr. Obama of having wiretapped his telephones last year did he ask aides how the system of obtaining eavesdropping warrants from a special foreign intelligence court worked.

The Export-Import Bank, which helps finance purchases of American exports, is a telling example. During the campaign, Mr. Trump sided with conservatives who wanted to eliminate it because the government should not finance large corporations and effectively pick winners and losers in a free-market economy. But on Wednesday, Mr. Trump embraced the bank.

“I was very much opposed to Ex-Im Bank because I said what do we need that for IBM and General Electric,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “It turns out that, first of all, lots of small companies will really be helped, the vendor companies. But also maybe more importantly, other countries give” such aid, and so “we lose a tremendous amount of business.”

Fred P. Hochberg, who just stepped down as chairman of the bank, said he was heartened by Mr. Trump’s reversal, noting that Ronald Reagan and Mr. Obama had also opposed the bank only to rethink their positions.

“I’ve probably never met a chief executive who didn’t have a different perspective when they occupy that chair than when they’re on the outside, whether you’re a mayor or you’re running a company,” Mr. Hochberg said. “And we ought to applaud people when they learn and they change their minds.”

In the same Journal interview, Mr. Trump described his learning process on North Korea, which is developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. When he invited President Xi Jinping of China to his Mar-a-Lago estate, Mr. Trump said he believed Beijing could simply pressure North Korea to stop its activities. Then, he said, Mr. Xi reviewed the history of China and Korea for him.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized that it’s not so easy,” Mr. Trump said. “You know, I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power over” North Korea, he added. “But it’s not what you would think.”

Mr. Trump sometimes cloaks his evolving positions by declaring victory before retreating. For instance, he had criticized NATO for not fighting terrorism and leaving the financial burden to the United States. As he met with NATO’s secretary general on Wednesday, Mr. Trump asserted that the alliance had changed.

“You look at the president’s position, where he wanted to see NATO, in particular, evolve to, and it’s moving exactly in the direction that he said,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday.

But the alliance has hardly changed in three months. Just three more members out of 28 have committed to raise military spending to target levels by next year, and the only shift in NATO’s approach to terrorism was to create a new intelligence office before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Karen Hughes, who was White House counselor to President George W. Bush, said no president can be fully informed about all the issues that will confront him.

“Obviously, most presidents aren’t nuclear scientists,” she said. “What is important is that the White House provide a disciplined process for the experts to present their views, which are often differing. The president’s role as the chief executive and decision maker is to listen to, question and probe the expert recommendations, then apply informed judgment to the decision.”

[AUChizad]

Funny thing...Trump didn't make the call to bomb them. You'd think that if you're going to use the biggest non-nuclear bomb in America you'd at least get the go ahead from the Commander Cheeto. I'm thinking that if it's a success he'll blab about how great of a job he did in making the call (years down the road), if it's a failure he'll blame someone else (Obama, Hillary, Spicer, his daughter that he doesn't fawn all over, some kitchen manager at his golf resort, etc.).

Prowler, I give you the benefit of the doubt more than anyone here. But WTF are you blabbing about here? So now you're saying it's a bad thing that Trump himself didn't press the button? That he went through proper channels and consulted with military intel whose expert opinion it was to make the call to drop the bomb? What exactly is the problem here? I'm 100% positive that if it was being reported that this was 100% his idea and he did this in spite of what military intelligence and the Secretary of Defense was telling him, you'd be bitching JUST as loudly if not even more so (and would be justified in that case).

Maybe you just like to bitch just to bitch? You are the equal and opposite Kaos. Zero thought. Zero nuance. Whatever the "other side" does it's 100% wrong 100% of the time, no questions asked.

[Kaos]

Prowler, I give you the benefit of the doubt more than anyone here. But WTF are you blabbing about here? So now you're saying it's a bad thing that Trump himself didn't press the button? That he went through proper channels and consulted with military intel whose expert opinion it was to make the call to drop the bomb? What exactly is the problem here? I'm 100% positive that if it was being reported that this was 100% his idea and he did this in spite of what military intelligence and the Secretary of Defense was telling him, you'd be bitching JUST as loudly if not even more so (and would be justified in that case).

Maybe you just like to bitch just to bitch? You are the equal and opposite Kaos. Zero thought. Zero nuance. Whatever the "other side" does it's 100% wrong 100% of the time, no questions asked.

You were okay until you got here. 

There's a "go fuck yourself" element to that bolded part.  It's not a matter of "no nuance or thought."  It's simply a matter of me knowing more and knowing better than you while you battle futilely against that raw fact.   

[AUChizad]

You were okay until you got here. 

There's a "go fuck yourself" element to that bolded part.  It's not a matter of "no nuance or thought."  It's simply a matter of me knowing more and knowing better than you while you battle futilely against that raw fact.

I had to double check the avatar to remember who I was responding to. The two of you are indistinguishable.