Based on everything we've seen so far, what are the odds of WH press briefings continuing when they get back from this trip?

Sure, but it's also pretty clear that Ivanka's "feminism" is extremely shallow, like a person who browsed the wikipedia page for feminism and adopted some of the nicer sounding elements to use as marketing slogans. It's possibly sincere but shallow, derived from her completely sheltered life where she's be immune from the challenges that most women face on life, or it's completely insincere and derived from her own callous self interest and intentionally manipulative. In either case, she has no business being on a stage giving advice to women along with Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde, legit titans of accomplishment in areas where they would have faced significant sexist headwinds. **** Ivanka Trump, basically.

great post Dvaut. You succinctly put into words what I'm thinking when I hear "Ivanka is a feminist" but wasn't quite able to articulate out loud or concretely. It def is approaching a much more mainstream kind of way that is like a 'feminist-lite' way, vs what it really means in it's full vigor & in complete dedication. Like you said, for many can be simply holding or embracing now more commonly accepted views a la "It's OK for women to be ambitious" or "women can be powerful business leaders" but not really 'bout 'bout it in the nitty gritty deeper sense of the movement

Dvaut I'm sure you've heard it before quite a bit but you should start a blog man. Or do you already have one that I'm not aware of?

I can def imagine wanting to share some of those posts, organized by specific topic, with certain friends who love reading analytical politics type stuff.

Curious to hear opinions. If Trump and everyone around him didn't say another incriminating word in public, would there be enough to take him down?

Take everything else into account: current + future evidence from all 7-10 investigations, further obstruction & cover-ups, Grand Juries, subpoenas, arrests of staff and GOP, witness testimony, 2018 elections, loss of base or conservative media support, etc.

Oh I agree wholeheartedly that Ivanka was born with the silver spoon and she's not really accomplished or credible in the way Merkel or Lagarde is. Co-signed.

My only point is that as the movement became part of the mainstream, the inevitable feedback loop began impacting the movement and the nomenclature such that more and more people sought to embrace elements of the movement and co-opt it. Including the unscrupulous, people looking to turn it into a commodity, people interested in ala carte elements of it, or the naive-but-ultimately-well-meaning.

In other words, even if subconscious and collectively driven, part of taking a political and social movement like feminism and making it mainstream is moderating and adapting and ensnaring people like Ivanka Trump into its midst. Like many paradoxical things in life, it's both a testament to the success of the feminist movement that it has broad appeals and goals, but also a liability to its vitality, common-understanding and its ability to adapt and enact further changes that are more revolutionary or drastic.

What a terrible tweet. No grieving for the victims, or condolences for the families of those lost. Just a little quip followed by an image of the same ****ing quip.

I don't have a blog.

Isn't that more or less what this forum provides?

I'm surprised he bothered to acknowledge it at all.

Donald Trump! Go!

Give it some time, he'll use this to try and get some heat off him and blame liberals and talk more about how he's doing tremendous things to eliminate ISIS. Sadly his approval ratings will probably go back up.

Yeah he's doing tremendous things to eliminate ISIS like leaking highly classified Israeli intel on ISIS to the Russians. This is great! This is great!

a) Uh, that's not what 'quip' means

b) He's just made a full statement:

Think the bolded bit is actually pretty good tbh

I really like calling them losers tbh

Not in the organized fashion a blog provides. The posts are often commentary on a topic that we are discussing at the time, so that can make it more difficult to follow/understand for those lacking the greater context because they aren't following the thread. Blogs provide a platform to expand into certain topics at greater length and with deeper context development to allow them to standalone, much like opinion pieces for newspapers.

spoiler, he's not getting impeached

I'll guess I would rather have this tweet than "I told you so"

Marketing - what he's best at doing.
Compassion - what he's not.

If this is a typical Trump moment, that sensible, reasonable statement will be followed by a tweetstorm of anti-Islam rhetoric and an attempt to revive the Muslim ban.

The real problem is his statement about completely eliminating terrorism. His plan to do it is less effective than the war on drugs and is the rhetoric of perpetual and expanding war.

And everyone knows this. All the people who will cheer every military action knows that most of it makes terrorism worse. They are just ok as long as we are killing people too. It's like in the Vietnam war and for a while afterwards, Americans boasting about our kill ratio.

So you're saying, with 100% confidence, that there will never be enough of a problem for the worst president we've ever had* to leave office before 2021? Or are you just thinking about impeachment? Either way, interesting take.

*After only 4 months, this shouldn't even be an opinion anymore. I mean, out loud and to the public, there's still plenty of denials. But even most of those people, especially the rich selfish ones, know inside their souls (the ones who have souls, if souls were a real thing) that the lies have gotten too big to hold water.

It turns out that after FINALLY getting a guy who really knows how to handle ISIS the social strategy is................................................ ... exactly the same as the guy who was a wuss and was letting terrorists walk all over him by not saying magical three words or being tough on them or whatever. I like the losers statement, like the article says it's very similar to what Obama was doing.

Trump has become such a threat to national security, is damaging the intelligence community world wide, and he knows too much but won't talk.

He's right. Bring back waterboarding.

I think the point of the 'he will never be impeached' thing is that while he may have committed impeachment-worthy acts, he may 'deserve' to be impeached in the view of any sane person looking at the facts and the law, for it to actually happen 19 Republican senators need to vote to kick out the Republican president. And that isn't going to happen.

For it to happen things need to get really extreme for Republicans, like Trump's approval tanking to like 20%, the base turns on him, they start losing safe seats in the house. Given how stable his 40% support has been despite all the insanity so far this year, seems very unlikely.

I actually really like the idea of calling them losers. Pretty good statement by Trump, hopefully he ruins it with stupid tweets later.