What the hell is possible presidential candidate Donald Trump talking about?
“Even worse than China is OPEC.: They are truly criminals. Yet we have no one that can call them and say prices better get lower fast.”
[….]Getting back to his non-campaign campaign, “If I run and get elected, this country will be respected again.”
What he stands for: “I’m pro life. I’m anti-gun control. And I oppose ObamaCare and will replace it with something that makes sense. I won’t raise taxes because we’ll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us.”
The plan is to shake down China and OPEC somehow?
joe from Lowell
Though I don’t agree with Donald Trump on every issue, I do have to respect the way he committed to passing the Do You Know Who The Fuck I Am? Act in his first term.
BGinCHI
Trump is like Berlusconi but with even less class.
Mark S.
I think Ron Paul would have a better chance of getting elected than Donald Trump.
Hell, after reading that, I would vote for Sarah Palin over this asshole.
El Cid
The GOP’s most brilliant leaders spar in their traditional Oxford debate style.
That may be the only thing Palin has ever screeched that I liked.
dmsilev
Sarah Palin vs. Donald Trump in the GOP primaries. Please, oh please, oh please…
dms
cathyx
But the real question is, is it a toupee or a combover?
BGinCHI
@Mark S.: He could have added: “And I know what being unelectable is all about, because I’m also unelectable.”
Scott
Clearly, what this country needs is a candidate who supports heterosexual marriage by committing his life to one woman. Or rather, one woman, then another woman, then another woman, then another woman, then another woman…
Ash Can
There, see, Barack? Why didn’t you think of that? Huh, smart guy?
Scott
@dmsilev:
Sarah Palin vs. Donald Trump in the GOP primaries. Please, oh please, oh please…
Heck, maybe the GOP should aim for getting an all-reality-show slate of candidates…
Chyron HR
Why, our wars will pay for themselves!
Ailuridae
Can someone give a definitive number of bankruptcies for Trump as an individual and companies he headed? Is it 3? 5?
I can’t wait to here him lecture the US on fiscal responsibility
El Cid
@BGinCHI:
Trump ain’t in Berlusconi’s time zone. You want to talk someone who works with full dedication to being a sleazy lying rich corrupting publicly lecherous dick-wad committing crimes each split second, Berlusconi can award a PhD.
Quaker in a Basement
Spy Magazine, where are you now when we need you?
Suffern ACE
@Ash Can: Will we be giving said countries representation before we tax them or afterwards?
PurpleGirl
@Ailuridae: There are the personal bankruptcies and the business ones.
And that bad color job on his hair can’t disguise the very weird combover.
PurpleGirl
@Quaker in a Basement: Yes, Spy is badly missed.
Suffern ACE
I remember arguing with someone once about whether Donald would make a good president and whether he should run. It was 1985 and I was in 9th grade.
Good lord. I must do something to save the country from the horrible rut it is in.
shortstop
@joe from Lowell: Hilarious.
morzer
Trump is Palin with a touch more testosterone and an even less convincing syrup.
Nerull
…are we going to beat up other countries and steal their lunch money? Is this his economic plan?
Bulworth
The perfect know-nothing plan. Bring It On.
shortstop
Sarah Palin
Rick:why down on strong women?sassy combo: lib’ty,patrtsm,red pumps beats ur frothy mixture;whthr 4 man or dog.
about 2 minutes ago via web
Gravenstone
No, the plan is to renew “The Donald’s” 15 minutes of fame. He’s an inveterate attention whore, and this is simply his latest way of shouting “look at me! I think I’m important!”
morzer
If Trump did become president, at least we’d be able to enjoy the spectacle of the House solemnly debating a bill to grant any incumbent president a supply of p*nis pills for the rest of his natural life.
BGinCHI
@shortstop: Win.
Ash Can
@cathyx:
Neither; it’s a guinea pig with mange.
shortstop
@cathyx: Paging Mr. Mohver. Mr. Co Mohver.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Ponies!! I’m for ponies AND unicorns!!!!
Cat Lady
@Quaker in a Basement:
I recall that they invented the term fat fingered vulgarian for him. Win.
frankdawg
GOOD NEWS: The Dumbald is never going to run, this is all ego enrichment for him.
BAD NEWS: This is exactly the type of magical thinking that will win the Batshit Insane Party Nomination. It would almost be funny to see someone try to get money from “countrys that are screwing us”. OPEC and China would hand us our asses.
Calouste
@El Cid:
__
Give the man the respect he’s due.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Quaker in a Basement: Short fingered vulgarian, Donald Trump…
Kirbster
I would prefer to have Trump resume his hosting duties for Celebrity Apprentice: GOP Presidential Hopefuls’ Edition. That would be some awesomely hilarious “reality” television.
Bill Murray
@Scott: I’d rather have serial monogamy than monogamy cereal
racrecir
Ayn Rand on the Phil Donahue show:
She explains why Middle East oil is ours because without our technology and know-how that oil would still be in the ground.
Ayn Rand on the American Indian:
“They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.”
And then there’s Robert Kaplan’s book Imperial Grunts:
“Kaplan sees large parts of the world where the US military is operating as ‘injun country’ which must be civilized by the same methods used to subdue the American Frontier in the 1800s.”
I think President Trump will get us some scalps.
Citizen_X
Did this moron somehow miss the recent news that Saudi Arabia’s been lying about their oil reserves, and cannot increase their output (and thus lower prices)? Did he miss the last ten years of news that other OPEC member were producing at full capacity, and thus could not control prices the way Saudi Arabia could? (That’s could. No longer can.)
Hey, The Donald: you’re not hired.
Citizen_X
@racrecir: In other news, Ayn Rand is still dead.
Benjamin Cisco
@Ash Can: Nominated for Comment Of The Year.
AxelFoley
Donald, Donald, Donald…
SMH
Please shut the fuck up, you old douche bag.
mclaren
Trump cuts to the chase. Use our military to threaten China and OPEC — give us price breaks or we’ll nuke you.
It’s an insane policy, but then, America’s military expenditures at 1.4 trillion per year are certifiably insane, so as long as you’ve gone around the bend, you might as well go all the way.
If I were China or OPEC, incidentally, I wouldn’t be scared of a military that can’t even win a war in a third-world hellhole against barefoot teenagers who are armed with bolt-action rifles. America’s military is an impotent laughingstock, armed with hyperexpensive superweapons that don’t work, run by incompetent cowards like McChrystal and Petraeus, and manned by rapists and gang members.
Dick Weathers
Fuck yes! Time to give it to the Chineses. Send me over there, I’ll fuck them up and show them who is boss. Except Jackie Chan and Jet Lee, I’m not down with that Kung-fu shit.
Nerull
Wow. Just…wow. I hadn’t heard about this:
Fiscal responsibility, indeed.
JamesKPolkEsq
This is 10x as amusing as
Ronald ReaganJesse VenturaArnold Schwarzenegger running for governor.Please shoot me.
eric
“we’ll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us.”
Whoring is good business.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Trump cuts to the chase. Use our military to threaten China and OPEC —give us price breaks or we’ll nuke you.
The Chinese stop loading goods into ships at Chinese ports. Walmart runs out of stuff and closes down. America revolts.
What’s President Trump gonna do – threaten to nuke the ports until they, uh, start working again?
Glen Tomkins
A tributary empire
The idea is that you charge the world, or at least, those nations in the world that can afford it, protection money. Of course you don’t call it that, “protection money”, because the scheme is too exactly like the Mafia racket of that name.
The way you rationalize it is that we have all of these countries that are getting free ride protection from global terrorism, while the US of A bankrupts itself paying for the armed forces that alone stand between the world and utter destruction at the hands of the terrorists. So the US arrives at a fair assessment of what every country owes us for the service of protecting them from global terrorism, and they pay up or face the consequences of stiffing the world’s sole remaining hyperpower.
Now, it’s possible that that scheme, stated that baldly, is a mite too morally lax even for these troubled times. But fear not, we could be backed into such an outcome were creditor nations to ever get testy with us over the huge debt we owe them. This tribute scheme might end up being the best cover story available if it ever came to the US at, or even near, default. What the people pushing the scheme would be able to do would be to recast the fact of our country welching on debts, into the creditor nations actually being the ones at fault in the transaction, as welchers on their obligations towards defending the world from terrorism. And if the electorate were to accede to such a scheme, they could be promised the end of all taxes. Those defense welcher nations would pick up the tab for our military, and once that principle is in place operationally, and we’re doing the accounting… Well, the sky’s the limit on what they would end up paying for, and , more ot the point, what the US ex-taxpayer would no longer have to pay for.
The idea is that a protection racket might be a bit much to expect the US electorate to spring for if it were our idea out of the blue, if we were the aggressors. But in the context of a default crisis, the scheme might very well be packaged successfully as a response to aggression. Under those conditions, as a response to a default crisis, I don’t think it at all unrealistic to imagine such a scheme proving popular. To look at it another way, if we really were under pressure to get our govt spending in the black, the incredible, and completely beyond what we actually need for defense, amounts we spend on “defense”, will really be the only thing to slash.
Now, it’s not unreasonable to imagine the US, 60 years after it should have, as it had following all of our earlier wars, finally disarming after the crisis of WWII has passed. But we haven’t done that wholly reasonable thing, and in the face of one of the lowest levels of foreign threat ever enjoyed by any nation in the history of the planet. Even in the midst of a profound lack of foreign threat we have been willing to spend ourselves into huge debt for military capacity we have no conceivable need for. Do you think we’re really going to take that reasonable step of disarming only at the very hour when we actually are being pushed around, for the first time in 60 years, by foreign powers, these creditor nations? Wouldn’t we be much more likely to keep the bloated military, and finally get some profit out of it, by using it to enforce the protection racket on the creditors? Put this in business terms, that the protection racket would transform our military from a huge loss center, into USA, Inc’s biggest profit center, and you can see how it would be irresistable to a certain type of US business person.
Don’t imagine that these people haven’t thought this through. Maybe there’s not enough of them in the House crazy enough to actually go for it, but refusing to raise the debt ceiling could get us to that default crisis that this scheme needs to take off. Get that default crisis, and the scheme sells itself.
Just saying.
Glen Tomkins
@mclaren: We don’t have to invade China. We certainly would do no such thing if we were actually using military force for some rational, if morally questionable, end such as economic coercion.
We just have to threaten its shipping. China is heavily dependent on imported commodities and exported manufactured goods. The US Navy could easily shut all of that down, to nearly 100%
Elia
Honestly think I would enjoy an extended Trump candidacy more than a Palin one.
Just thinking about Trump doing debates with Giuliani on one side, John Bolton on the other…
Or Trump on MTP? A Trump-Gregory tete-a-tete would be an epic showdown of ugly mugs, pompous attempts at Seriousness, and some remarkable hair.
I’m giddy. Sadly, I think the chances of him actually running (ditto Bolton) are pretty low. America weeps.