According to a report from the Washington Post, Donald Trump's inner circle grew increasingly alarmed at his complacency during the Democratic National Convention and had to convince him to hit the road instead of spending his days playing golf and complaining.With the Democrats sucking up all the m...
Factually, that's what he did during his time in office as well. I'm not sure what they thought had changed.
Ever play an arcade video game from the 1980s? I'm talking about the ones in the arcades where you had to pop a quarter into the machine to play.
Here's the thing about those games. The first 2 levels or so were usually pretty easy. Weak AI opponents. Easily distinguishable patterns. But then you hit level 3 or 4. And the difficultly skyrockets. With absolutely no warning. You go from "Hey, this game ain't so bad" to regretting all of your life choices. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to get owned, hard. Only a few people could get past a couple of levels, and only the best of the best were skilled enough to be able to play as long as they wanted until they clocked the game.
That's where we're at now. Trump played those first couple of levels. Clinton was a divisive figure in her own right and treated the 2016 race like she could skate to victory too. Biden had weaknesses that Trump could easily exploit. The real game has begun and Trump has absolutely no idea how to actually play. So Trump wants to start the game over. He doesn't want to make it to level 3 because he knows he'll never beat level 3. He's looking for a reset switch like on the Atari 2600 so he could keep playing the first two levels over and over and over. Because he knows how to beat those.
But he can't. So he's essentially stopped playing the game. He's telling everybody in the arcade how rigged that machine is, the joystick's broken, and you need to hit the fire button 10, 12, 15 times for it to fire. And he's getting jealous that all the cool kids in the mall aren't listening to him, and are circling around the new girl who popped her quarter in and has gotten to levels Trump hasn't even seen before, while he goes to the corner of the arcade, pops a quarter into the dusty, old Pong machine, and wonders why nobody fucking cares.
Hunter S. Thompson took great pains to speak in sports metaphors, because that's the language of "middle America."
I've thought that, for a while now, video games have become the language of "middle America" and whoever can speak to the gamers in their language will capture their minds.
Steve Bannon also understood this, and that's why he succeeded in capturing many young men's minds through Gamergate.
We need people better than Steve Bannon speaking this language and leaving gamers with positive, healthy understanding of the world around them.
Anyway, I write this because I think your video game metaphor really works here, and I think that's the way to speak to a large portion of our populace now.
Anyway, I write this because I think your video game metaphor really works here, and I think that’s the way to speak to a large portion of our populace now.
I don't know that arcade metaphors really work for most of the population now, though. Even when I was young they were dying.
while he goes to the corner of the arcade, pops a quarter into the dusty, old Pong machine
Correction, he puts a quarter into a pinball machine in the corner, then shortly after gets the tilt warning because he once again tries to cheat instead of having skill.
Tilts are perfectly valid in pinball tournaments, though. As long as the machine's setup only warns you instead of stopping the game, it's OK in most leagues. And if it does stop you, then you can continue to the next ball.
He lost the first time. Then he inserted another quarter to continue and (essentially) beat him the 2nd time.
And after the brief intermission cutscene, he played level 3. He doesn't like level 3. He even tried to call the attendant over so he could play level 2 again. And when the attendant said "Um...you're on level 3 now, what's the problem?", he stopped playing. Because level 3 is fucking hard.
Trump is the kid who got good at PacMan. Then the arcade brought in MrsPacMan and no matter how high he scores and tries to get attention, the kid who scores well in Mrs PacMan is stealing his thunder because it's harder. And he's mad no one is paying attention to his New High Score because it's irrelevant in the face of the new game. But he can't get good enough at MrsPacMan, so he's sulking on PacMan setting new scores and slowly filling the board while his friends try to give him the new Guide for how to score better or get farther in MrsPacMan. Trying to get him to take on the new kid. But he's just broken from constantly being the loser every time he 2 players. He's scared of it because it's a new age where it's not a solved game, the enemies react to you, and he's not fast enough anymore to handle that and it scares him - no matter how much his friends try to get him to get good.
Excuse me, but Trump would never play Pac Man. He can't handle Kamala Harris alone. He'd be complaining about having to go up against 4 non-white opponents at once.
And he'd certainly never play Ms. Pac Man. Sure, it's one thing playing an unidentifiable yellow mass that runs around popping pills and doing the same thing over and over while trying to avoid all the non-white people in town, but there's no chance in hell he'd play as a female.
Wonderful metaphor. Although it's hard to suspend disbelief in a story about Trump wanting to / knowing how to play video games. He strikes me as the type that'll buy an arcade but never set foot in it. And then remove all that is good about it and fill it with ticket games.
Although it’s hard to suspend disbelief in a story about Trump wanting to / knowing how to play video games.
Have you played those old games? Usually, the first level is easy. Easy enough where you actively have to try to lose. I mean, you get 3 lives. That means you have to make not just bad decisions, but the worst possible decisions, over and over and.......oh.
Once games started developing storylines, plots, etc. it was like that. It was an intentional strategy developed to keep you playing. But early developers weren't thinking that far ahead. The idea was to give you a couple of easy levels so you feel you got your 5 minutes worth of entertainment worth, then start punishing you at level 3 or 4 so you'd lose and the next person would play.
And some were made by simple oversight. Space invaders' increasing difficulty was solely the result of hardware limitations of the time that just happened to result in the exact difficulty spikes they were looking for. As a programmer, I could, for example, set level 1 vs. an opponent that was slow as festering dog shit, but be lazy and just double his speed with every level. As long as the player's speed stays the same, it would become nearly impossible to win in a couple of levels.
Either way, the results were the same: 25 cents for about 5 minutes worth of entertainment. That was the goal of the day. As you mentioned, they fine tuned it by the mid 80s with games like Mario and the like. but those early games were meant to get you off the cabinet as quickly as possible so soneone else could pop in their quarter.
This is an interesting article - thanks for sharing! I found this snippet noteworthy:
According to one former aide who served in the White House under the former president, Trump has lost the plot.
“The stakes for Trump this election are arguably the highest they’ve ever been. His criminal cases don’t go away if he loses. Yet he seems to be phoning it in, running a remarkably low-energy, undisciplined campaign,” explained Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump spokesperson. “From spending days off the campaign trail golfing to coming up with frankly weak nicknames like ‘Kamabala,’ it feels like he’s lost his mojo.”
That is a good point about the criminal cases not going away if he loses, right? It's interesting how it's openly stated by the former aide.
I'm unable to muster any sympathy for the felon's perpetual state of stewing.
He must think that "his" SC will protect him regardless, so he has an out if he loses. Or, he knows about the plan to ratfuck the election regardless of the outcome.
B. Steal it. Most of the fake electors are still in place, they've had four years to hire a new sleepers
C. Coup 2.0 historically the Democrats haven't been very smart about things and it'll totally blindside when you pull it again only this time with more people. All those people that got locked up in serious consequences we'll just tell them that we'll pardon them again
D. Civil War 2.0. if he doesn't win it, and can't steal it, and if there's actually military protection around the Capital for 2.0. he'll just openly call for the south to rise again. Only this time it's not the south, it's the rural areas, hell plan a Vietnam style offensive where the rural armed people lay siege everywhere.
My real actual best guess is he's tired. He's old, he's out of shape, he's stressed to the nines and he's just trying to blow off the stress, he probably does have a plan b in a plan c. His actual plan d is probably two take a flight to Russia.
If he loses, I'm very curious to see if people in power still support him. I don't think he will be very viable again in 4 years, physically or mentally.
He may become more useful if they let him get eaten by the legal machine. Then they're able to invoke his image like they do with Reagan all the time, but with some martyrdom thrown in about how those mean libs kicked a former president when he was down, nevermind he got away with the crimes he'd be charged with for about a decade by then.
He might not ever serve time, but having everyone ignore him as useless as he sunsets might be an almost fitting punishment. We know the right struggles with empathy, so he could be facing some very frosty cold shoulders.
The best thing that could have happened for Republicans was trump got assassinated and Biden refused to step down.
Now they're stuck with trump and Dems cut all their baggage by dropping their elderly infirm candidate.
trumps only real shot is stepping down to. Letting someone else run, and counting on them to pardon everything possible and the SC to take care of the rest.
That has a chance at least, but he can't beat Kamala.
If he loses, there will be another Jan 6 with both sides being more ready for it, maybe even the supreme court tries to forcefully install him, then the cognitive decline will be so severe he no longer needed for the GOP, then global fascism goes from moderate decline to steep decline, with currently far-right parties pulling the "let's pretend we're moderates" game like Fidesz and many others will actually have to become moderate.
What worries me is we'll have a repeat of 2016 where everyone just assumed Hillary was going to win so they didn't vote. Hopefully people will go out and vote regardless.
Absolutely. When I saw the headline I thought the same thing. Bad actors will try to sew exactly that thought in liberal circles as long as Dems have the momentum.
We can't buy into it and need to resolve ourselves to fight like hell until election day, regardless of what "the polls" or "the experts" say. We need to make Kamala win in an indisputable landslide. We need to send a message that will make Trump and his acolytes political pariahs from now on.
thats not entirely accurate. Yes there was not as much enthusiasm behind Hillary as there was behind Obama, and she had a lot of (mostly invented) baggage, but she lost beacause she didnt campaign in a meaningful way lost a few swing states by a small margin (because yes, most reasonable people assumed she’d be the next president—and so many reasonable people assumed that eventuality that she won the popular vote by a wide margin).
Trump is noise and makes money for media outlets so they give him a massive and constant boost of brand recognition. They could’ve all been even mildly responsible in 2020 and just stop talking about the out of office former president but instead they kept him in the zietgeist which allowed him to run again this year.
I am still finding hope in the fact he did not win reelection the first time against a walking corpse elder statesman, and has not won elections for most of his endorsed down-ballot candidates in the past X years.
Anyway, people who do not want him in office should go and vote against him.
(and people who do want to see him in office again, sorry you shouldn’t vote for a lot of reasons but the biggest one being they’ll know who you are and that’s how they get you and also vaccines are mandatory for the polls so you should stay away and they’ll also forcibly swap your genitals and ITS REALLY TRUE FOLLOW ME ON FACETUBE)
The possibility worries me, but this situation seems closer to Obama's campaign than Hillary's. Somewhere inbetween for sure, but people are enthusiastic.
Young people need to get enthusiastic to vote; and Hillary didn't do that for them. Hillary didn't do that for me-- because she's best buds with Jamie Dimon and his ilk, and would only be joining a picket line when hell froze over-- but I still got out and made the only realistic vote against Trump because I'm a grownup.
It's different this time because Democrats are finally being convincing that they're not aligned with the billionaires, and because we've seen what a Trump presidency was actually like now. I think that will get more of the youth vote (with lots of GOTV effort, of course).
That's because he only cares about when the election happens. He has plans in place to deny the results and to send his chud army out to terrorize. That's all he is waiting for.
Yeah… this feels right. He seems to have checked out because the real campaign starts once he has lost. They’d rather use their dollars shielding him from further judicial consequence and preparing to set the country on fire once he loses.
Yeah, the whole "Dems cheated by pulling a switcheroo with candidates" line seemed to feed into that, but I also feel like there was a bit of slack-jawed "well we didn't see this coming" panic in the Republican party as well
Thing is though, if that's his plan, he still needs to keep his base energised. If all they see him do now is slack off and visibly not care, they may just think he's given up, and not turn up on election day. Fraud will be harder to argue with meagre turnout of his voters. They may also be harder to mobilise in November if they got disenchanted with him in September.
So in a way, by stewing, sulking and slacking off, he may just not be doing himself any favours.
Bullshit. They're going to keep pumping out "Trump is losing so horribly no one has to vote anymore" propaganda so then we'll have another 2016. Our rights are at stake and life is going to be harder for everyone except the elites if Project 2025 happens. All I know is I'm showing up to vote regardless of who's "winning".
The thing is, whether Harris would win without your vote or not, you still have to vote for all the other offices too, so we can have a Dem majority in the House and Senate, and more Dems at your State level in the legislature, governor's office, AG, election board, school board, etc. Those things are just as important as POTUS. Not to mention that even in states Harris winds up losing, the margins need to be made as small as possible to show how much support she really has in all states (very important for both parties to see this--it impacts what policies get implemented, what they think they can get away with), also for future funding allocation of candidates by the parties, etc.
Bottom line is that voting is tremendously important to do, no matter what! Not voting just has too many negative consequences.
Also treating voting as optional decreases your sense of obligation to democracy. Voting and political participation are rights, but they carry with them duties. Even if I feel the need to turn in a blank ballot I see it as a responsibility to turn in a ballot of some kind. To let myself not do so is to take the first step towards only voting if I feel like it. So no, every two years non negotiable, every major primary, and usually even off year elections. On the Tuesday following the first Monday in November I’m busy unless I voted early.
I know that the Republican party made this happen, but Democrats are absolutely complicit in letting it happen.
Obama promised to codify Roe v Wade when he had a super majority, and he just didn't. Why didn't he?
Ruth Bader Ginsberg could have retired and let us set a better judge into the Supreme Court, and yet the Dems somehow couldn't look one presidential term into the future and try to have a contingency plan. Why?
He didnt codify roe because he didn't have the votes. There were several "conservatives" democrat senators in the 2 yr span when they had a super majority, and they would not have voted for abortion protections at that time.
He instead focused on something he could do, which was give 100s of millions of Americans a chance at healthcare. Even that had single payer attached until it was scuttled last minute by Joe Liberman, an independent that cacused with dems that refused to cast the deciding vote for the ACA with single payer attached because his state of Connecticut had several large insurers HQ'ed there. Obama wouldn't have needed Liberman, but Ted Kennedy died, and his replacement was a Republican.
RGB held on because she saw McConnel ratfuck Obama out of his Scalia replacement posting. She knew he would either get screwed again, or have to appoint someone conservative like Garland. So she waited for Hilary, who had a 70% of winning, but who didn't.
The only things Obama did wrong was try to bridge the partisan divide. He was doing politics like it used to be, with compromise at its core. He didn't realize, or at least didn't want to realize, that the GOP had made politics a game of winner takes all. If he had, he could have placed two supreme court justices and got single payer.
The voters are complicit too then. Too many people didn't vote in 2016. Maybe you're complicit too! Let's all finger point at everyone other than the people that did the bad things!
Or maybe we should just say the people doing the bad things are responsible for the bad things. Yeah I know taking things to a meta extremes is fashionable among intellectual types, but it's really silly and doesn't accomplish anything.
Trump since the 80s has gotten away with deplorable crimes and was still liked. He doesn't know how to handle hate and reality that only freaks like him. Then you add a black women kicking his ass, chief kiss.
As President, he spent a lot of time doing rallies and fundraisers for other GOP candidates. He was a perfect little spokes model who could open wallets and hype candidates.
Now he's just in full on burnout. He's got no faith left in his campaign and doesn't want to admit he's fading.
Respectfully, fuck this noise and take the thing seriously. The election is not decided until the votes are counted and the secessionists (if any) are shot or incarcerated.
Trump is being told by his donors that the voting isn't important because they'll litigate the shit out of the election if they lose.
What's important to understand is that Trump isn't the one in charge. He's a useful idiot.
Trump's motivation isn't Project 2025, or abortion bans, or anything at all for that matter. He has no principles. He agrees with the last person who spoke with him. That's how his brain works. What Trump cares about is having the power to pardon himself and make all of his criminal charges go away.
So a bunch of fundies see an opportunity. THEY have an agenda. THEY have a plan. THEY tell Trump, WE WILL get you into power by hook or by crook. We'll pay for your campaign because we know you're broke. We'll get our people in place everywhere we can. From a vote perspective, you're going to lose this election...WE are your only chance to avoid prison and (potentially worse) no longer being useful to Putin and falling out a high window.
Trump is golfing not because he's given up. But because a) he's miserable and has no interest in being the president, but he has no choice if he wants to avoid prison. and b) He honestly believes he doesn't need the votes because his "people" (who he's stupid and egotistical enough to think that HE controls rather than the other way around) have it wrapped up for him.
Either it's a demotivated Trump, or it's a Trump who figures that if he's going on the offensive now, then the Harris campaign will still have time for a comeback.
Friends don't let friends get lazy, remind everyone to vote!
We have to take the election fraud seriously. The only reason a felon like trump, facing jailtime, would take it easy is if he knew he was guaranteed the presidency in November. Either he got assurances from the Supreme Court or he knows something we dont.
These are probably new people who, like the old aides, can't say anything honestly to anyone surrounding the campaign for fear of being fired, or outed (they've done this to their own people expect fanatic followers to do them harm). So these new folks realized this pretty quickly, and now just leak to the press like the entire old group of aides and confidants did. It's pretty fucking pathetic.
I mean, that's literally how he operated when he was in the White House, how would this be a surprise to anybody? He's where he is because of a vast propaganda network that's working tirelessly to put him into power because he's an incredibly useful idiot that can get people riled up. He's not given up, he's just getting complacent because he doesn't believe elections or democracy matters at all.
He's also known to have people cheat FOR him. There was some pictures a long time ago of a secret service agent (maybe just a security guard) with an obvious pocket full of golf balls he got called on, and then tried to hide from view of photographers.
He is expecting a house contingency vote after his 70+ swing state sycophants deny Harris the 270 threshhold when he's under by delaying to certify. that's why he doesn't care
I can imagine that this is a combination of his mental decline, his thoughts of grandeur that the people vote for him regardless and the knowledge that they won't accept any negative election results and they have a better, bigger plan in place invalidating the results and a Jan. 62
I really hope officials are better prepared this time for the GOPs shady business. Because they basically publicly announced it several times. Believe them when they say they'll fight the results, you don't have to vote anymore and they'll make the US an autocracy.
I really hope officials are better prepared this time for the GOPs shady business.
They have a bunch of poll workers to gum up the works. People who think that 2020 was stolen, so they're volunteering for "election integrity". They really think they have an ace in the hole with this. Be prepared for reports of "anomalies" in swing states.
His advisors keep trying different approaches and new sales pitches. But the problem with Trump isn't the marketing- they are selling an outdated, inferior and defective product.
Trump’s greatest weakness is women. They always have been. He can’t talk too tough about them because this dude is a momma’s boy larping as a bully. His reaction to every woman who sued him has been lame and weak or nothing at all. Kamala was a slam dunk against this guy because they figured out his weakness and are exploiting it. Doesn’t mean you should sit back and not vote. VOTE and make it a huge landslide for funsies.
He was running against a woman in the only election he won.
His real weakness is having people be dismissive towards him. Harris' message of "It's the same disrespect as always, we're moving on from that" and Walz's message of "he's a weirdo" is working great. Used to be he'd say something batshit insane, Democrats would be understandably outraged, Trump would dominate the news cycle, his base would see it as him "owning the libs." Low information voters would only hear about Trump and hear nothing from the Dems other them talking about Trump and not show up on voting day.
I don't quite agree with you because of Clinton. If I were picking your grade this weakness, I would say it's his narcissism, which has also been his strength at various times in his life.
Sounds about right. The guy is just lazy and petty. And yet, due to the outdated, slavery-era EC and the fact that 30-some percent of this country thinks this dumbphuck is the best choice for office, we just might have him in office anyway, no matter how lazy, inept and stupid he is.
Two things that are just so indictive of the Republican party are 1) the aid said trump hasnt come up with a good nickname for Harris and that's really hurting him, like the future of democracy comes down to being able to call someone a funny name. It's so childish and so accurate to conservative voters. 2) the blatant admitting that him getting elected is the only way he can get out of his legal troubles, admitting that he's guilty and only if he gets special treatment by being president will he be able to avoid consequences.
concerned family member shows up - "oh my God, is he ok??"
Aide, visibly shaken - "I honestly don't know, I've never seen him like this.."
concerned family member - "is..is he out there right now?*
Aide - yes... I'm so worried, he is out there right now, just.. playing golf, all day, every day... he needs to stop and confront his feelings and all he can do is golf sob"
CFM "earlier you said 27 holes... he must be exhausted just trying to cope..this is really bad"
Aide - "IT IS SO BAD PLEASE HELP HIM!!"
CFM - "God be with me, I will get him to come inside and drink a diet coke. Hopefully he will snap out of this madness....."
Aide - "..please...go with God!"
CFM - "God will guide me to him. Wish me luck!"
removes leather shoes, hops in cart, and speeds away through the green grass, nary a thought to use the given path... this is the most important rescue in the world. People say that it was the most important, maybe, probably, the most important, ever.
I honestly didn't know who to write down, maybe Barron? He's heard of Trump, maybe he would actually want to give a hand to such a wretched soggy being? Or, imagine he might be invited to caddy the clubs behind the cart?
He knows his best shot is cheating and maybe just enough tactically deployed violence. The bigger the gap of his popular vote defeat, the more their cheating has to overcome.
Haha! You have Trump confused with Dementia Joe. He’s only awake for 6 hours a day. Trump works round the clock. And he gets things done. Only a fool and an idiot would deny this fact.
Remember "Infrastructure Week"? Or his "beautiful medical plan" that never existed? Or his wall that Mexico never paid for, and never got built? Or his dozen other things he was supposed to be working on as President and never did?
You are quite mistaken. The fact you even created this comment is pretty damn sad, because it signals you have faith that THIS TIME, it will be different. You are in an abusive relationship you need to remove your self from.
Trump and Harris have been very close to 50-50 on prediction markets for the past week. Harris was slightly ahead before that, and has lost that lead. It doesn't mean Trump is winning, but Harris doesn't seem to have gotten a convention bounce.
I saw some of the Dem convention on TV and thought it was terrible. I'm not surprised if it didn't go over well.
hypothetically, if he manages to lose the election by a massive margin it'll start looking more like Putin's numbers, which will undermine the legitimacy of a democratic government
That's not likely. There are a significant number of people that vote R every time (just as there are also those who vote D everytime ). Do some phone banking, you'll quickly find out how many people vote a certain way because they're a Republican/Democrat family.
Because of this, neither the Dems nor the GOP will ever be below 30% no matter how bad their candidate is.
I remember a time when journalists were impartial and reported the truth. Great newsmen like Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite delivered the news and and it was always unvarnished truth.
Today just about every news person is only a mouthpiece with no integrity and no allegiance to the truth. It’s as though they all graduated from the school of Pravda. The corporate media is just an arm of the Democrat Party and they are as believable as the concept of Santa Claus. It’s a sad state of affairs that the gullible American people are being spoon fed a diet of propaganda every minute of the day. All that to say that this is a bogus story about President Trump.