Strawman

[The Scott]

those aren't my words moron

yet another self owning for you

but then again that's the story of your life isn't it?

You deserve the Hell that you worship...Anarchy will come for your stretched out bunghole and you will squeal like  the bacon you are.  Kobe.

You made your bed and then shit in it.  You are the very personification of filth.

[chaos]

don't blame the messenger dipshit

it's not my fault that THE TRAITOR has so many negative stories about him

btw - these stories are not "coming my way you fucking idiot

they are available for anyone to find and they are usually the FUCKING HEADLINES

You're a fucking loser and a pathetic excuse for a man. You're obsessed with TRUMP and everything TRUMP does, you're TRUMPS biggest fanboy, you soft ass bitch.

[chaos]

Just a hunch but you've never been characterized as passive aggressive, have you?   

He's neither, he's a big mouth running his bitch ass lips on the internet. Guaranteed 100% he's a meek, timid, soft spoken sissy in real life.

[The Scott]

You're a fucking loser and a pathetic excuse for a man. You're obsessed with TRUMP and everything TRUMP does, you're TRUMPS biggest fanboy, you soft ass bitch.

He is a licentious libertine deserving of Hades.  Like I said, put that Straw Cuck, Prime and myself in Purgatory (so that''s what the Catholics did with it) for the next two or three weeks.

Personally, I hope they Covid up and crap out.  Same with my libtard relatives.  Sickass turdles all of them.  They hate success but encourage the faux indigent to suck away at the wang of Biden, aka the US Government.   Crap out is pretty much the same as "Kobe out".  A turd is a turd after all and Kobe  self-flushed.

[AbrahamG]

I don't think that would be considered passive aggressive...do you?

I don't see the passive part

I don't have any patience for traitors and idiots who insist the rest of have to believe their fantasies

I was being sarcastic as hell.  You don't beat around the bush.  No, you are the anti-passive agressive.

[monsterman500]

those aren't my words moron

yet another self owning for you

but then again that's the story of your life isn't it?

Strawman is inbred. he probably can´t help himself

[funk51]

You deserve the Hell that you worship...Anarchy will come for your stretched out bunghole and you will squeal like  the bacon you are.  Kobe.

You made your bed and then shit in it.  You are the very personification of filth.

       

                                                        this is off topic but, that's one of the funniest avatars ever.

[Soul Crusher]

Almost 50 pages! 

 

[funk51]

The Damage Trump Did
In 2016, we thought President Trump would be bad for Oregon. He was a catastrophe. (Jack Kent)
By WW Staff |Published October 28, 2020  Updated October 28, 2020
Four years ago, a sickly orange cloud fell over Oregon. Only now can we fully survey the damage done by Hurricane Trump.

Portland greeted the 2016 election of Donald Trump with revulsion. For a week in November, protesters chanted and marched. Opportunists followed in their wake, destroying property.

THEN: In November 2016, Portlanders began marching against President Donald Trump. (Joe Riedl)THEN: In November 2016, Portlanders began marching against President Donald Trump. (Joe Riedl)
Read More
A week after the election, WW said: "Trump's election doesn't just mean a triumph for Republicans at the far right edge of the party. It means that a boor, admitted sexual predator, and racist will occupy the White House. His victory emboldens white nationalists who would make this country great by silencing anyone who doesn't look like them."

In that issue, we attempted what reporters often don't do well: We tried to predict our future under Trump in several specific categories.


Some readers accused us of being alarmist. "I'm not sure I've ever read a more doom-and-gloom, worst-case-scenario article," one reader wrote.

This week, with hopes that the nation will choose a different president, we decided to revisit our forecast. And we must admit: We were wrong about how bad a Trump presidency would be.

It was worse than we imagined.

In short, we lacked a sufficiently dystopian imagination. In particular, we didn't foresee how Trump and his fans would single out liberal Portland as a target for street brawls and federal policing. We did not predict that the president's attention would turn Portland into a scene of violence, and how his inattention would allow a virus to kill our loved ones and shutter our shops and restaurants.

NOW: This summer, city officials removed an iconic elk statue from downtown after itsbase was set on fire by protesters. (Alex Wittwer)NOW: This summer, city officials removed an iconic elk statue from downtown after itsbase was set on fire by protesters. (Alex Wittwer)
To be sure, some things worked out better than we expected. So in the following pages, we look back on most of the predictions we made in 2016. We've graded ourselves on the following scale: Is today's reality better, worse or the same as we expected?


Many of Oregon's problems are of our own making. And the partisan divisions in this state existed long before 2016. (See this story for a look at a part of Oregon where that divide widened.)

But where possible, we've tried to look at how the decisions of this White House specifically affected Oregonians.

It's a useful lens through which to view one of the strangest and most scarring four years in the history of the republic.

—Nigel Jaquiss, Latisha Jensen, Aaron Mesh, Rachel Monahan and Tess Riski

LONG TALE: Activists dressed as handmaids are common sights at Portland get-out-the-vote rallies. (Chris Nesseth)LONG TALE: Activists dressed as handmaids are common sights at Portland get-out-the-vote rallies. (Chris Nesseth)

In 2016, WW said that under Trump, women were unlikely to lose reproductive rights and the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn't overturn Roe v. Wade.

In 2020, the reality is worse.

It took the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September, but this week Trump delivered what he promised Christian conservatives: A majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices oppose a woman's right to an abortion. Meanwhile, 17 abortion cases in circuit courts of appeals across the country are one step away from reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a Planned Parenthood analysis.

This makes it within the realm of possibility that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, will be overturned in the next few years.

So what does that mean for Oregonians? Abortions will still be legal here, thanks in large part to the Oregon Legislature's 2017 passage of the Reproductive Health Equity Act.

"In Oregon, we are one of the few states without restrictions to access abortion because our state and voters have made it really clear that abortion is health care," says Emily McLain, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon. "It will fall to states like us to be haven states."

Residents of Idaho, where abortion would likely be criminalized should Roe fall, would need to cross the border to Oregon or Washington to access it legally. And some Oregonians, too, will need to travel long distances to access those services. TR.

DREAM ON: Advocates for children who were brought to the U.S. as children rally after the president threatened to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Diego Diaz)DREAM ON: Advocates for children who were brought to the U.S. as children rally after the president threatened to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Diego Diaz)
In 2016, WW predicted many Mexican immigrants would be deported.

By 2020, that prediction came true—and then some.

We gave this policy the highest likelihood of happening—and it did.

But plenty of undocumented immigrants were deported before Trump's election. In fiscal year 2019, Trump deported 267,258 immigrants, up 14 percent from 2015, the end of the Obama administration, though still 40 percent below the peak year of fiscal year 2012.

What no one expected was how ghoulish immigration policy would become.

Most recently, it has become clear that 545 children who were removed from their parents as they crossed the border may never be reunited.

"Four years ago, I would have absolutely said that no administration would deliberately harm children as a policy strategy," says U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). "That's something that evil dictators do in faraway lands, not something that would ever happen in the United States of America. How wrong I was."

Carmen Rubio, a Portland city commissioner-elect and executive director of the nonprofit Latino Network, knew that anti-immigrant policies were coming, because Trump had campaigned on the issue, but she too was caught off guard.

"It was the way they confidently stepped over the line of decency and ethics time and time again that was terrifying," says Rubio. "The cruelty which seemed to root all these policies seems bottomless." RM.

In 2016, WW said that Trump would not place Muslims in internment camps, though we predicted a rise in discrimination.

In 2020, it's clear we were mostly right.

Trump issued no executive order enacting internment camps, the way FDR did with Japanese Americans in the 1940s. (The detention centers on the Mexican border strike many observers as effectively concentration camps.) But he did institute what was effectively a Muslim travel ban in 2018.

Trump's policies and rhetoric fanned the flames of racism that have increased since 2016. No incident was more searing for many Portlanders than the MAX stabbings in 2017, when Jeremy Christian verbally harassed two Black teenage girls, one wearing a hijab, about their faith and then killed two men and wounded another who tried to intervene. (One of the teenagers, Walia Mohamed, said during Christian's murder trial in 2020 that she no longer feels safe wearing her hijab in public.)

"I think [Trump] has caused four years of trauma that's going to be hard to overcome," says Zakir Khan, board chair of Oregon's Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Changing a president doesn't stop the trauma of being discriminated against in a store or from a job." TR.


In 2016, WW said that even Trump and his U.S. Department of Justice couldn't outlaw cannabis where it was legal.

In 2020, it appears we were right.

Trump did take a swipe at our weed stash. In 2018, his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, rescinded the Obama-era Cole Memo, which limited the federal prosecution of crimes in states where cannabis is legal.

But as WW reported in 2018, there was no evidence that U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy Williams had done much with weed other than crack down on Oregon's flower being sold across state lines. All told, 11 states now have legalized recreational use, and 33 legalized medicinal use. Four states—Arizona, Montana, South Dakota and New Jersey—have November ballot measures to legalize recreational use.

Meanwhile, Oregon 3rd District Congressman Earl Blumenauer continues to chip away at legalizing cannabis federally.

"The Trump administration has been no friend. Jeff Sessions at every instance tried to put sand in the gears," Blumenauer says. "But we had a united front that was quite effective We're basically on track to have the most productive four-year period in terms of advancing the cause of eliminating the federal prohibition of cannabis." TR.

In 2016, WW said pay equity and workplace child care were lost causes.

In 2020, the reality is better than we expected.

Here's one example of Oregon pioneering while the nation stalled.

In 2017, Oregon passed a pay equity law, which prohibited employers from asking job applicants about previous compensation and required equal pay for equal work. So, while Trump surrounded himself with Cabinet members and advisers hostile to such policies, Oregon moved forward—although equal pay is still more of a concept than a reality in many workplaces.

As for workplace child care, no one made much progress in the past four years. That's part of why Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has made federally funded universal preschool a key plank in his platform and why Multnomah County placed one of the nation's most aggressive and novel preschool measures on the November ballot. NJ.   the race to 100 is on.

[funk51]

In 2016, WW said any progress on the Portland Harbor Superfund cleanup would be lost.

In 2020, the reality is better than we expected.

In 2000, the federal Environmental Protection Agency declared parts of the Willamette River in Portland a Superfund site because of the industrial waste that had accumulated on the river bottom. Because more than 100 companies—many no longer in business—as well as the city of Portland and the Port of Portland bore some responsibility, getting responsible parties to agree to a billion-dollar cleanup plan has been like herding catfish.

We expected chaos after Trump, famously averse to environmental regulation, took office. But in fact, some useful compromises were forged. The EPA finally released a cleanup plan the month Trump took office, and the agency has now gotten many of the largest actors to agree to pay their share. It did, however, in 2019, downgrade the toxicity of one of the chemicals found on the river bottom, which will save companies $35 million in dredging costs. NJ.

VIRAL PHOTO: A drive-thru COVID-19testing site in North Portland. (Brian Burk)VIRAL PHOTO: A drive-thru COVID-19testing site in North Portland. (Brian Burk)
In 2016, WW said federal agencies would still respond to a natural disaster in Oregon.

In 2020, no one did.

In 2016, we wondered what the Federal Emergency Management Agency would do in the aftermath of a Cascadian megaquake. Would the president withhold aid as retribution to a state that had supported Hillary Clinton? We said that was unlikely because of faith—perhaps naive faith—that even under Trump the rules of politics forbade abandoning a large swath of the country.

Of course, the Big One did not hit in the past four years, but with 225,000 Americans dead, a similar disaster unfolded that Trump failed to address because of his incompetent, overly political response.

COVID-19 behaved like an earthquake the president could pretend didn't happen. He publicly denied the threat of the virus, dismissed mask-wearing, and settled on a "response" of just letting the virus infect more Americans. If enacted in a second term, his plan would kill millions.

Oregon was left to its own devices to set policy, with decent if not extraordinary results.

"Clearly, there have been major shortcomings with the Trump administration's lack of a coherent federal strategy to address the COVID-19 pandemic," says Charles Boyle, a spokesman for Gov. Kate Brown. "And the politically charged statements the president has made on everything from wearing masks to white supremacist groups has caused irreparable harm."

Four years ago, Steve Novick, then the city commissioner in charge of emergency preparedness, predicted incompetence from Trump's FEMA rivaling former President George W. Bush's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina. He was right.

"I certainly stand by my statement that this administration is at least as incompetent as 'heckuva job, Brownie'—although in this case it really seems that the incompetence flows directly from the top," Novick says now. "There have been competent people in the government trying to deal with the pandemic, but Trump only listens to crazy people like [Dr. Scott] Atlas." RM.

Providence Portland Medical Center and Interstate 84. (Henry Cromett)Providence Portland Medical Center and Interstate 84. (Henry Cromett)
In 2016, WW said thousands of Oregonians would lose their health insurance with the elimination of Obamacare.

In 2020, it hasn't happened—yet.

In 2016, the prospect of tens or hundreds of thousands of Oregonians losing health insurance seemed a real possibility, considering Trump wanted to get rid of Obamacare.

But early on, there were clues that Trump didn't really have the attention span, policy chops or legal team required to destroy his predecessor's signature domestic policy achievement. "Nobody knew health care was so complicated," Trump said on Feb. 27, 2017, less than two months after taking office.

Multiple efforts to repeal the law in Congress failed during Trump's tenure, most famously in 2017, when terminally ill U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) crossed the aisle to cast the deciding vote against repeal. Bottom line, says Allyson Hagen, who tracks data for the Oregon Health Authority: no loss. "Coverage has remained fairly stable," Hagen says.

But that could change the week after the election, when the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear another argument for repeal with Trump's newest appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, sitting on the court. NJ.

ALL SMILES: Gordon Sondland testifies to Congress on Nov. 20, 2019.ALL SMILES: Gordon Sondland testifies to Congress on Nov. 20, 2019.
In 2016, we said Trump would award Oregon's top federal legal jobs to far right-wingers and Oregon would lose all influence in Washington, D.C.

In 2020, the reality is better than we expected.

In Oregon, Trump made only one serious effort to put a strident conservative on the federal bench, and it didn't work. Trump nominated a former protégé of U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Assistant U.S. Attorney for Oregon Ryan Bounds, to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's most liberal appellate panel. But a national advocacy group dug up inflammatory op-eds Bounds wrote as an undergraduate, scuttling his nomination. (Former Washington County Circuit Judge Danielle Hunsaker got the job instead.)

Trump left U.S. Attorney for Oregon Billy Williams, an Obama holdover, in place, and the one judge he named to the U.S. District Court of Oregon, Karin Immergut, is a moderate. "We lucked out," says Beth Bernard, executive director of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association. "We got people who put fairness ahead of politics, and that's not what we've seen in the rest of the country."

It's true that Oregon's largely Democratic congressional delegation has been sidelined for much of the Trump era, which doesn't put the state in a good position to score federal pork. And Trump's unpopularity arguably cost Republicans control of the House in 2018, leading to the retirement of Rep. Walden, the only Republican in the state's congressional delegation and one of the senior members of his conference. "I think he retired because he thought they'd be in the minority for a while," says GOP political consultant Jim Pasero.

We'd be remiss not to mention Gordon Sondland, the Portland hotelier whose companies quietly contributed $1 million to Trump's inauguration. He became very influential—with the House committee that tried to impeach the president.

Trump named Sondland ambassador to the European Union, where, according to former national security adviser John Bolton and others, Sondland tried to insert himself into Trump's dealings with Ukraine and later told Congress there was indeed a quid pro quo. "Everybody was in the loop," Sondland testified. "There was no secret."

Trump survived the Portlander's testimony. NJ.

(Brian Burk)(Brian Burk)
In 2016, WW said new light rail projects would be scrapped for decades.

In 2020, the reality is better than we expected.

Mass transit, including trains, is not a priority of the Trump administration. Despite that, major projects around the country have moved forward in the past four years and the feds propose to put more than $4 billion into four new projects next year. Among those: two projects in Washington state, where Trump lost by a bigger margin in 2016 than he did in Oregon.

TriMet, in fact, remains confident that if voters pass Measure 26-218 and provide seed funding for a new light rail line between Portland and Tigard, the feds will kick in $1.3 billion—and perhaps more. "We have shared with the [Federal Transit Administration] that TriMet intends to request a minimum of $1.3 billion, and we believe that amount is feasible," says TriMet spokeswoman Roberta Allstadt. "It is possible that a higher amount could be pursued if Congress moves forward with an infrastructure package and/or the funding for the program increases." NJ.

NEVER TWEET: Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes a social media break during Portland protests. (Alex Wittwer)NEVER TWEET: Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes a social media break during Portland protests. (Alex Wittwer)
In 2016, we said freedom of the press would wither.

In 2020, we admit we misunderstood the threat.

Our worry in 2016 was that Trump would seek to throttle his longtime nemeses—newspapers—by encouraging court restrictions on a free press. In particular, we feared he would (using his words) "open up the libel laws" to allow powerful people to sue their critics and watchdogs out of business.

Flat out: We guessed poorly. Trump not only failed to narrow press freedoms, he didn't even try. Arguably, his overall impact on the media was neutral: He yelled "Fake news!" at the TV reporters in the press pen at his rallies, but he also increased their ratings. Maybe he wanted that result. Clowns need a circus.

However, there's no question the press is in worse condition now than it was four years ago. It's just that the real threats to journalism were digital behemoths like Facebook and Google, and a crumbling business model further ravaged by COVID-19. Trump got the media landscape he wanted, even if he didn't act to create it: Many citizens get their news directly from the president and his toadies, and rarely encounter a newspaper headline. In 2018, the Washington Monthly reported that Trump has more followers on Twitter—53 million—than there are digital subscriptions to all American newspapers combined. AM.

BUSTED: Burgerville union workers and ally go on strike at the Montavilla Burgerville in 2019.BUSTED: Burgerville union workers and ally go on strike at the Montavilla Burgerville in 2019.
In 2016, WW said organized labor would be gutted by right-to-work laws.

In 2020, the reality is much as we predicted.

In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Janus v. AFSCME that union members could not be compelled to pay dues. That 5-4 decision probably happened because Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first appointee, joined the court rather than Obama's last appointee, Merrick Garland.

For foes of organized labor, such as the Oregon-based Freedom Foundation, the court ruling was decades in the making. Jason Dudash, director of Freedom Foundation, says 18,000 Oregon union members have stopped paying dues since the decision. "Oregon has seen some of the most dramatic losses in union membership in the entire country," Dudash says. Among those who've taken hits: the Oregon School Employees Association, the American Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union.

SEIU Local 503 executive director Melissa Unger, who leads the state's largest union, acknowledges many SEIU members stopped paying dues. But she says Dudash's numbers tell only part of the story. Unger says the union has actually grown substantially during Trump's tenure, mostly through new home-care members. "We are a much bigger union today," she says. Most the departures came right after Janus, Unger says."The Freedom Forum wants to say we're a dying breed," she says. "That's definitely not true." NJ.

[funk51]

In 2016, we said Trump would reverse efforts to halt climate change.

In 2020, he has.

Of the many bleak consequences of Trump's presidency, this one is perhaps the most crushing to contemplate.

The planet, like the reporters writing this story, is up against a hard deadline: Cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 or watch much of the globe become uninhabitable. By some estimates, we already blew that chance: The effects of a rapidly warming planet are underway, and the best we can hope for is suffering rather than extinction.

In September, a climate research firm estimated Trump's rollbacks of Obama's climate regulations will result in an additional 1.8 billion tons of carbon emissions pumped into the atmosphere in the next 15 years. Other choices can be reversed. This one can't.

And so Oregon is reaping the whirlwind: weeks on end of unbreathable air, filled with ash from forests turned to kindling. Local attempts to address the problem brought state government to a halt, as Republicans refused to cooperate with bills reducing carbon emissions.

Some activists have simply turned to the task of helping people deal with the inevitable disasters. In 2018, Portland voters passed a Clean Energy Fund to help low-income people of color weatherize their homes to save energy and handle extreme temperatures. Earlier this year, fund champion Oriana Magnera described success: "Having lower energy bills, building resiliency and helping folks stay in their homes." AM.

Nike campus. (Wesley Lapointe)Nike campus. (Wesley Lapointe)
In 2016, WW said Nike would be hampered by trade restrictions.

In 2020, the reality is better than we expected.

Although Trump followed through on threats to place tariffs on Chinese imports, this concern fizzled completely. Nike had already shifted major operations to Vietnam and also sold a lot of product in China—so the amount of Chinese-made goods the company brought to the U.S. was modest. Meanwhile, online sales boomed everywhere, and the sportswear giant saw its revenues grow steadily through Trump's tenure. And like other big corporations, Nike enjoyed a hefty tax cut in 2017, when Trump slashed the top corporate rate from 35% to 21%.

As for the indicator that would matter most to the president, who is famously fixated on stock prices, Nike's shares have risen from about $50 when Trump was elected to about $130 today. "The athletic footwear and apparel markets have been very strong over the last four years," says Matt Powell, a longtime industry analyst at the NPD Group. NJ.

In 2016, we said LGBTQ+ rights would be rolled back and violence against women would spike.

In 2020, it turns out we were right.

President Trump governed as he campaigned. For LGBTQ+ people, that's meant the erasure of their rights.

On his first day in office, his administration erased mentions of LGBTQ+ people from government websites. The White House has banned transgender people from enlisting in the military, allowed health care facilities to deny care based on religious beliefs about gender, and refused to allow LGBTQ people to identify their demographic in the 2020 census.

Kieran Chase, manager of the transgender justice program at Basic Rights Oregon, says LGBTQ people are making decisions to get married and file for adoption now, in fear the new Trump-appointed Supreme Court will roll back more victories.

"There are people taking quiet preparatory steps because they don't know what the future is going to look like," says Chase. "The Trump administration has been holistically antagonistic to the LGBTQ community in a way that's frightening."

Trump's tenure was also marked by a sneering disrespect for women. He mocked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. His often-bewildered secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, succeeded in rolling back Obama-era protections for college sexual assault survivors.

But Rosemary Brewer, executive director of the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center, says one of the most damaging impacts of the Trump administration is what he hasn't done: renew the expired Violence Against Women Act, which provides funding for thousands of organizations.

"A lot of organizations only exist because of government funding. All these victims in Oregon are going to lose out on critical services," Brewer says. "There's clearly a lack of respect for an entire gender that the president shows. It doesn't feel good as a woman that our president doesn't respect women." LJ.

NOT OK: Right-wing protesters have appeared this year in North Portland.NOT OK: Right-wing protesters have appeared this year in North Portland.
In 2016, we said white supremacist groups would flourish.

In 2020, they're flourishing.

In 2016, we had no way of predicting Trump would summon a goon squad of Fred Perry-wearing brawlers who would target Portland for regular fistfights with the locals. Still, we got the gist of it correct: Nationalists, especially those who despise people of color, would be emboldened.

Eric Ward, executive director of Western States Center, a nonprofit that tracks extremism, says Trump performed as he expected.

"What frightens me more is not what Trump is doing, but lack of vigorous response from state and local governments and business leaders," Ward says. "That's what's much more disturbing and surprising to me."

Ward points to three ways white extremist groups gained traction in Oregon through Trump's administration: They've achieved visibility and credibility, making them feel empowered; Trump's rhetoric created a space for belief that political violence is acceptable; and white nationalist groups appear to have cemented intimate connections with law enforcement.

After Election Day, hate crimes spiked. And the Southern Poverty Law Center reported the number of U.S. hate groups increased by 30%.

(Sam Gehrke)(Sam Gehrke)
In this region, extremist groups, such as Patriot Prayer, founded by Joey Gibson in Vancouver, Wash., in 2016, and the Proud Boys, which have three Oregon chapters, gained traction.

Ward says Trump's administration targeted the rights of people of color, the LGBTQ community, and women through budget policy executive orders and rhetoric. All of those gestures signaled to the far right it was OK to go after these marginalized groups.

Even if Joe Biden wins, Trump's followers, such as those who allegedly plotted the kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, will not go quietly into the night.

"When paramilitary say they will use violence, we should believe them," Ward says. "When these paramilitary groups say they believe civil war is coming, we should believe that that is what they will be attempting to do. We have to be smart enough to know there will be folks there to intimidate us." LJ.

ON THE WATERFRONT: Shipping containers on Swan Island. (Brian Burk)ON THE WATERFRONT: Shipping containers on Swan Island. (Brian Burk)
In 2016, WW said that the Columbia River could become a freeway for fossil fuels.

In 2020, it appears we were half-right.

Oregon doesn't produce fossil fuels, but the companies that mine coal in Wyoming and pump crude oil in North Dakota and Canada were hoping the Trump administration would turn the Columbia River and adjacent rail lines into a giant energy export facility.

Results have been mixed. Washington regulators blocked both what was supposed to be the largest coal export facility in the U.S. at Longview, Wash., and a huge crude oil export terminal at Vancouver.

But crude oil trains continued to roll along both sides of the Columbia to terminals in the region.

During Trump's tenure, U.S. crude oil production increased significantly and state figures show the volumes shipped to Oregon increased 250 percent from 2016 to 2019, to 24,639 rail cars.

Columbia Riverkeeper executive director Brett VandenHeuvel says Trump succeeded in placing energy industry lobbyists or supporters in key federal regulatory positions, but adds that opposition in the courts and by state regulators has staved off major threats. "There's been an all-out assault on the climate and our environment by the federal government for the past four years," VandenHeuvel says. "Its been one problem after another. Fortunately, in Oregon, we've been able to push back on a lot of the worst projects by challenging them in court or pushing local and state officials to deny permits. There's been real important contributions to pick up the slack." NJ.

QUASHING AN UPRISING: Portland protesters of police violence were met by federal agents deployed by Trump. (Kody Whittiker)QUASHING AN UPRISING: Portland protesters of police violence were met by federal agents deployed by Trump. (Kody Whittiker)
In 2016, we said the Portland Police Bureau's settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice would be gutted.

In 2020, the reality is worse than we thought.

Policing in Portland turned out to be of far more interest to President Trump than we ever could have imagined.

The feds were monitoring Portland police already—to make sure they were complying with a 2014 settlement to correct a "pattern or practice of using excessive force" against people with mental illness. Observers say the White House and its Department of Justice haven't paid much attention to that.

"I think DOJ has been largely hands off since the Trump administration took office," says J. Ashlee Albies, a Portland attorney representing the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform in the settlement agreement. "I don't see tremendous outcome changes."

[funk51]

What Trump has cared about is Portlanders protesting (and sometimes rioting) against police brutality. He deployed hundreds of federal officers to Portland this summer, some of whom yanked demonstrators off the street in unmarked vans. He used Portland as a testing ground for how he might quash civil unrest nationwide.

Even though Trump cares only about a show of strength, the protests this summer also matter because they grew out of years of broken promises to Portlanders that policing would change. Instead, Portland police continue to fatally shoot people with mental illness. Between 2015 and 2019, the Portland Police Bureau shot and killed six people who were in mental health crises, according to The Washington Post's police shooting database.

Juan Chavez is a lawyer with the Oregon Justice Resource Center who has closely followed the agreement for years. "It didn't even need to gut itself. This wasn't a tree that was going to flower," Chavez says. "The only metric that we can really hold ourselves to is, has the life of people experiencing mental illness as it relates to how they interact with PPB improved? And it hasn't." TR.

We’d like to tell you everything will work out. But we have doubts. (Alex Wittwer)We’d like to tell you everything will work out. But we have doubts. (Alex Wittwer)
In 2016, WW said gun control might be abandoned, and gun violence might increase.

In 2020, the reality is about as we expected.

WW predicted correctly that the only hope for gun control legislation was on the state level. Oregon lawmakers delivered, yet gun violence has not abated.

In 2017, the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 941 with bipartisan support. The bill was effectively a "red flag law," based on the principle that people who want to harm themselves or others with firearms tend to show signs beforehand, i.e., "red flags." The law allows family members or law enforcement to petition the court for an "extreme risk protection order" to temporarily restrict a person's access to firearms. It also revokes a gun license if that person currently has one. The petition is usually granted within 24 hours.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that between Jan. 1, 2018, when the law went into effect, and Oct. 31, 2019, 166 petitions for extreme risk protection orders were filed. Judges granted 122 of those and denied 44. The majority of petitions filed were for people at risk of suicide.

That's the good news. The bad news? Gun violence in Portland reached a historic peak this summer, with 103 instances of gun violence in July, 121 in August, and 118 in September (a 243% increase from 32 shootings in September 2019), according to data from the Portland Police Bureau. The reason behind the spike in shootings is unclear, though the mayor's office told KGW-TV it may be related to "economic conditions and COVID-19." TR.

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DONALD TRUMP, A RETROSPECTIVE: A LOOK BACK AT THE 1,462 WORST DAYS IN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY
Let us never forget all the ways, big and small, that Trump was the worst president ever.

BY BESS LEVIN

JANUARY 20, 2021
U.S. President Donald Trump left speaks to members of the media next to U.S. First Lady Melania Trump before boarding...
BY AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES.
By Wednesday afternoon, January 20, 2021, Donald Trump will be 992 miles from the White House, ensconced at his Palm Beach resort where his neighbors hate his guts. Joe Biden will have taken the oath of office and Americans will no longer have to worry about the possibility that the president of the United States is a crook, or trying to get them killed, or a friend of neo-Nazis, or an ugly racist, or paying off porn stars, or putting his idiot children in charge of national emergencies, or hiring a dog breeder to head up a coronavirus task force. Oh, did you forget about that last one? Or about the time the Trump administration threatened to economically cripple Ecuador for promoting breastfeeding? Or when Trump went on an unhinged rant in front of 35,000 children? Or when he hired an acting Attorney General who worked for a company that marketed “masculine toilets”? It’s understandable that, with all the impeachment and extortion and coronavirus and sedition, you might have forgotten. But as a reminder, and so grade school students hundreds of years from now are told, here’s a look back at the the worst president in American history, through the headlines.

Investors Panic as Trump Begins Doing All the Crazy Things He Said He’d Do

January 31, 2017

During the period between the 2016 election and the inauguration, Wall Street investors, a portion of whom were appropriately shocked and terrified by Donald Trump being elected, comforted themselves with the hope that the reality-TV show host probably wouldn’t end up doing all the crazy, racist shit he talked about on the campaign trail, and would merely stick to cutting their taxes and running the country like a businessman. Of course, that notion turned out to be horribly misplaced and extremely stupid. To prove it, Trump spent his first Monday in office claiming 3 to 5 million illegal ballots cost him the popular vote; his first Wednesday signing an executive order to start construction on the wall (and insisting Mexico would reimburse the U.S. for the cost); and for his big finish on Friday, banning travel from seven majority-Muslim nations. Turns out we were supposed to take him literally!

Trump’s Sons Insist “Papa Bear” Is Conflict-of-Interest Proof

February 13, 2017

Some people might have been uncomfortable with the sight of the president of the United States hosting the prime minister of another country at his for-profit Palm Beach resort, as Trump did the second weekend in February 2017, but the president’s big-boy adult sons were not among them. To The New York Times, Eric Trump dismissed the question of whether or not Trump charged Japan for Shinzo Abe to stay at Mar-a-Lago when the White House would’ve been free as meaningless, while an incensed Don Jr., practically shrieking, flew off the handle when asked about the prospect that his father was using the presidency to line the Trump family’s pockets. “Who in their right mind would try to enrich themselves by spending a fortune to run against 17 seasoned politicians on the Republican side, to then go up against the Clinton machine, Wall Street, Hollywood, P.C. culture?” Don Jr. asked. “To use that as the way to enrich yourself is laughable.” This would be several years before we learned Mar-a-Lago charged taxpayers for the glasses of water Trump drank while at the club.

Trump Was Set to Kill NAFTA Until an Adviser Showed Him a Map

April 28, 2017

He still ended up killing NAFTA, but he briefly kept it going after his Agriculture Secretary “brought along a prop to the Oval Office” displaying the parts of the country that would be hardest hit by the move and highlighting that many of them had voted for him in November. “It shows that I do have a very big farmer base, which is good,” Trump told The Washington Post. “They like Trump, but I like them, and I’m going to help them.” (He would end up f--king them in other ways.)

Trump Thinks He Invented a Phrase That’s Been Used Since 1932

May 11, 2017

It was on this day in history that we learned the 45th president claimed to have invented the phrase “prime the pump.”

Trump Drops the Mic on Train Wreck NATO Meeting by Calling Germans “Very Evil”

May 25, 2017

During his first big trip abroad, and his first NATO meeting, Trump shamelessly shoved Montenegro’s prime minister out of the way so he could be front and center for a group photo; accused fellow members of the alliance of not paying their bills; and proclaimed “The Germans are evil, very evil.” It is truly a wonder that when he lost his bid for reelection, other countries celebrated “like we defeated the mothership in Independence Day.”

Trump Tells Local Iowans Why He Prefers the Rich

June 22, 2017

During a campaign-style rally in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to discuss agriculture and vocational training for farmers, Trump decided to get frank about his decision to exclusively fill his Cabinet with cartoonishly rich robber baron-types. “Somebody said, ‘Why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy?’” he told the crowd. And he explained, “‘Because that’s the kind of thinking we want. I love all people. Rich or poor. But in those particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?‘”

His Presidency in Crisis, Trump Takes a Break to Play Fireman

July 17, 2017

Things were not going so well for Trump on this July day in 2017—questions surrounding his campaign’s attempt to team up with the Russian government during the 2016 election had reached a fever pitch—but there was one bright spot in his world: the White House’s “Made in America Week,” which gave the leader of the free world the opportunity to pretend to be a cowboy, a baseball player, and a fireman.

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/887094229717012482

This experience came only second to the time he got to sit in a big rig and pretend to be a truck driver.

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/845242368882327553

Trump Goes on Unhinged Rant in Front of Thousands of Children

July 25, 2017

In late July 2017, Trump treated tens of thousands of Boy Scouts to a 35-minute campaign rally-style screed that touched on everything from killing Obamacare to musing about firing a member of his Cabinet. He also hyped up the stock market and went on an extended aside about all the really hot parties he was invited to in the 1980s. He later claimed that the head of the Boy Scouts called him to say “it was the greatest speech that was ever made,” a call that a spokesperson for the group said never happened.

Trump Manages to Say Another Cringeworthy Thing About Charlottesville

September 14, 2017

Maybe you thought it couldn’t get much worse than refusing to condemn neo-Nazis and claiming there were “very fine people on both sides”—then Trump made up a story about “a lot of people” saying “Gee, Trump might have had a point.”

Trump Tells Puerto Ricans Their Hurricane Wasn’t “a Real Catastrophe Like Katrina”

October 3, 2017

After saying nothing about the humanitarian disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria for days, only to attack the mayor of San Juan via Twitter, the president made it down to Puerto Rico. There, he complained that the territory, which had been without electricity and water for days, was costing him a lot of money. Later, he said that Maria wasn’t a “real catastrophe like Katrina” and then tossed paper towels into the crowd like it was Friday night at Madison Square Garden and he was shooting T-shirts into the stands with an air cannon. The following September, he claimed the 3,000-person death count was a Democratic hoax to make him look bad.

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Trump Gives Himself a “10 Out of 10” on Puerto Rico Recovery

October 19, 2017

Yes, he did (at the time 28% of residents didn’t have potable water and 78% of the island didn’t have power).

Trump Can’t Believe No One’s Thrown a Parade in His Honor

December 20, 2017

Can you? Honestly, with everything he’d done for the country, this was the thanks he got? In this particular instance, Trump was reportedly “ranting and raving” that his tax bill—the one that slashed the corporate rate and effectively did jack shit for the middle class—wasn’t being touted “as the biggest accomplishment of any president” in the history of the United States. Where were the monuments in his honor? Where were the ticker-tape parades?? (In the end, Trump’s tax cuts resulted in, drum roll please…one cent bonuses for workers. But did anyone send him a personal thank-you letter or petition to have the Lincoln Memorial replaced with a statue of Trump based on this? Nooooo.)

Trump Is the “Least Racist” Person Ever, Insists His Shortest-Tenured Employee

January 12, 2018

Anthony Scaramucci, late of being fired from the White House after 11 days, made this claim after Trump reportedly asked advisers why he had to let immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa and Haiti come to the U.S. “.@potus is not a racist,” the Mooch tweeted. “He is far from it. Perhaps the least racist.” But of course, he was and is racist, and we know this because of all the racist stuff he’d done previously like:

Allegedly claiming that 15,000 Haitians who had obtained visas to live in the U.S. “all have AIDS” and that 40,000 Nigerian visa holders would never “go back to their huts”
Kicking off his candidacy for president by calling Mexicans “drug dealers,” “rapists,” and “criminals”
Calling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the KKK “some very fine people”
Asking a Black reporter to set up a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, because he apparently thinks all Black people are friends
Describing minority communities as “ghettos” where “gangs [roam] the streets”
Calling for the execution of the five Black, wrongfully accused teenagers
Spending a good portion of “executive time” targeting Black athletes and retweeting anti-Muslim hate videos from white nationalist accounts
Spending half a decade spreading a conspiracy theory that America’s first Black president was not born in the United States\
Legendary Legal Mind Rudy Giuliani Comes Out of Semi-Retirement to Save Donald Trump

April 19, 2018

With Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia kicking into high-gear, and Trump losing attorneys by the hour, the president decided his best bet was to contract the legal services of the former mayor of New York City. It did not go well.

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Trump’s Prayer-Day Benediction: Paying Off Porn Stars Totally Normal for “People of Wealth”

May 3, 2018

On the National Day of Prayer—a day of observance designated by Congress when people are asked to “turn to God in prayer and meditation”—Trump took to Twitter to explain that while it may have looked bad that his personal attorney paid off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair he swore never happened, it was actually pretty standard for people in his tax bracket. “Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” the president of the United States wrote. “These agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case, it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms. Clifford (Daniels). The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair, despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms. Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction.”

Trump’s Limo Driver of 25 Years Confirms He’s an Unrepentant Asshole

July 9, 2018

All of America now knows what it’s like to be Trump’s chauffeur.

The White House Threatened to Economically Cripple Ecuador for Promoting Breastfeeding

July 9, 2018

What the fuck was this—which you might have missed among all the other corruption and batshittery from Team Trump—about? Oh nothing, the Trump administration just didn’t want to upset Big Formula, and flew off the handle over an anodyne resolution introduced by Ecuador encouraging breastfeeding, having “embrac[ed] the interests of infant formula manufacturers.” After Ecuador wouldn’t comply with the U.S.’s demand that language asking governments to “restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children” be removed, U.S. officials reportedly threatened to “unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid.” Ultimately, Russia stepped in to introduce the measure—and, naturally, was not threatened with sanctions.

Trump Casually Suggests He Could Blackmail a U.S. Senator but Will Save It for His Next Book

October 1, 2018

During a press conference in the Rose Garden, the topic of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh came up. Asked if he would empower the FBI to widen its investigation into allegations against the judge, Trump initially responded that “the FBI should interview anybody that they want within reason.” Then he added that if Kavanaugh was really guilty, the accusations would have come up years ago and it’s really unfair that people were “going back to high school and…saying he drank a lot one evening” (they actually said he spent most of high school and college blackout drunk and engaged in sexual assault). Then the president told the press he had much worse dirt on an unnamed Democratic congressman that he’d maybe have to air if Democrats didn’t lay off his nominee. “I happen to know some United States senators,” Trump said, “one who is on the other side, who is pretty aggressive. I’ve seen that person in very bad situations. Okay? I’ve seen that person in very, very bad situations. Somewhat compromising. And you know, I think it’s very unfair to bring up things like this.” Asked who this senator was, the leader of the free world responded: “I think I’ll save it for a book like everybody else.”

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Trump Endorses Violent Assault Against Reporters

October 19, 2018

Trump: “I don’t condone violence.”

Also Trump:

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1053097692098904064

Trump’s New A.G. Worked for Scam Firm That Threatened Victims With Krav Maga–Style Beatdowns

November 8, 2018

After Trump shoved Jeff Sessions out the door for recusing himself from the Russia probe, Trump appointed an interim attorney general named Matthew Whitaker. Continuing in Trump’s grand tradition of only hiring “the best” people, Whitaker’s previous work experience included serving on the advisory board of a company called World Patent Marketing, which bilked inventors out of millions they believed were going toward patents and licensing deals and was shut down by the Federal Trade Commission. Perhaps more importantly, WPM, for which Whitaker also appeared in promotional videos and photos, “cultivate[d] a threatening atmosphere” in which customers were sent emails warning them that they would be visited by a “security team” of “ex-Israeli Special Ops…trained in Krav Maga, one of the most deadly of the martial arts,” comprised of “the kind of guys who are trained to knockout first and ask questions later.” Oh, and one of the products the company marketed was a “masculine toilet,” which was specially designed for “well-endowed men” hoping to avoid unwanted contact with porcelain or water. WPM, which reportedly paid Whitaker $9,375 in advisory fees between 2014 and 2016 and owed him $7,500 more at the time the FTC got involved, said in its marketing material that “The average male genitalia is between 5” and 6.” However, this invention is designed for those of us who measure longer than that.”

President Bone Spurs Thinks He Would’ve Caught Bin Laden Faster Than Navy Seals

November 19, 2018

On November 19, 2018, after attacking retired Adm. William H. McRaven, who oversaw the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Osama bin Laden during his near-40 years in the U.S. military, Trump had this exchange with Fox’s Chris Wallace:

Trump: “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama Bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice? You know, living—think of this—living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan in what I guess they considered a nice mansion, I don’t know, I’ve seen nicer. But living in Pakistan right next to the military academy, everybody in Pakistan knew he was there.

Wallace: “You’re not even going to give them credit…for taking down bin Laden?”

Trump: “They took him down but—look, look, there’s news right there, he lived in Pakistan, we’re supporting Pakistan, we’re giving them $1.3 billion a year, which we don’t give them anymore, by the way, I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us.”

Trump to America: Aren’t You Glad We Let The Saudis Kill That Guy?

November 21, 2018

Days after the CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump tweeted that it was totally worth letting the guy get away with it because of the cheap oil prices we got in return.

Trump: I’m Thankful for Myself

November 23, 2018

The day after Thanksgiving 2018, Trump was asked by reporters what he was thankful for that year. To which he responded: “[I’m thankful]…for having made a tremendous difference in this country. I’ve made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn’t believe it. I mean, you see, but so much stronger people can’t even believe it. When I see foreign leaders they say we cannot believe the difference in strength between the United States now and the United States two years ago.” To date, he had:

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Eased restrictions on loan sharks;
Passed gigantic, regressive tax cuts designed to allow CEOs and shareholders to pay a lower rate on their passive income than workers did on their wages;
Exploded the deficit
Sabotaged Obamacare
Put a man on the Supreme Court who claimed accusations of sexual assault against him were engineered as “revenge on behalf of the Clintons,” and another who said it should be legal to fire a trucker for abandoning his broken-down truck to get help rather than freezing to death;
Alienated foreign allies while cozying up to murderous autocrats;
Dragged the U.S. into a self-defeating trade war with China that caused layoffs and losses at American companies and was paid for by American taxpayers
Used the armed forces for a $200 million election stunt;
Proposed a plan to let coal plants regulate themselves that would kill up to 1,400 Americans annually;
Presided over a 17% rise in hate crimes in the year prior, including a 37% increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes;
Let Puerto Rico implode and smeared its dead
Ceded any moral high ground whatsoever when it came to condemning human rights abuses—not that he’d ever do anything like that—by letting his Saudi pals get away with killing a U.S. resident\

Government Tells Furloughed Workers to Unclog Toilets for Rent as Trump Rants and Raves Over Border

December 28, 2018

In December 2018, presidential man-child Donald Trump shut down the government for 35 days because lawmakers wouldn’t give him $5 billion for his wall. In that time, some 800,000 federal workers went unpaid, leaving those living paycheck to paycheck with very real concerns about having money for food and housing. So the Trump administration came up with some suggestions, which included but were not limited to trading janitorial services for rent; taking out a loan; and approaching the whole thing like an (unpaid) vacation.

Jared Kushner: Blackmail and Witness Tampering Are “Family Matters”

January 15, 2019

To understand why the Trump administration was such an epic disaster, you need to know that Trump handled the transition “more or less by himself,” and having no relevant experience whatsoever, did an extremely bad job. It didn’t have to be this way, though—Chris Christie, a comparatively competent manager who had served as both a federal prosecutor and in an executive role, was originally handling the whole thing, but apparently Jared Kushner convinced Trump to fire him. And, according to Christie, Kushner did that because years prior, Christie had prosecuted Kushner’s dad for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. The witness tampering charge, to which Charles Kushner pleaded guilty, particularly rankled young Jared because even though Kushner the Elder admitted to retaliating against his sister’s husband, William Schulder, who was cooperating with the feds, by hiring a sex worker to seduce him, filming the encounter, and sending the tape to his sister, Kushner thought such things were “family matter, matter to be handled by the family or the rabbis.” And then America got to pay for this unique interpretation of the law!


MOST POPULAR

Report: Trump’s Inner Circle Is Terrified the Feds Are Coming for Them Next

BY BESS LEVIN

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) listens during a Senate Armed Services nominations hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill July 28, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Josh Hawley Proudly Declares Himself Pro-Hate Crimes

BY BESS LEVIN


Evan Peters Needed a Hug After This Week’s Mare of Easttown

BY JOANNA ROBINSON

Trump Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, Taking Dictators’ Words for It

February 28, 2019

The president loved to side with authoritarians over his own intelligence agencies. In this case, he told reporters that while everyone else believed North Korea was responsible for the death of Otto Warmbier—the American student imprisoned in the country for more than a year who died days after being sent back to the U.S. with brain damage—he spoke to Kim Jong Un about it and decided the brutal dictator didn’t deserve any of the blame. “He felt badly about it,” Trump said of the world’s foremost human rights abusers, who has also had members of his own family killed. Trump’s comments didn’t go over great Stateside, but of course, this wasn’t the first time he sided with a maniacal despot over officials from his own country. The previous July, he told reporters in Helsinki that he believed Vladimir Putin when the Russian president said the Kremlin did not interfere in the 2016 election, and several months later he explained that while it certainly looked like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi via bone saw, he’d spoken to MBS on the phone, and the guy “totally denied any knowledge of what took place,” which was good enough for Trump.

Certified Moron Donald Trump Thinks Wind Turbines “Cause Cancer”

April 3, 2019

“They say the noise causes cancer,” Trump claimed of wind turbines during a fundraiser in D.C. “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations—your house just went down 75% in value.”

Trump Asks His Lawyer to Look Into Buying Greenland

April 15, 2019

And then when he was told no he threw a fit and canceled a trip to Denmark because the prime minister was mean to him and said he couldn’t buy an autonomous country.

Mueller Confirms: Don Jr. Was Too Stupid to Collude

April 18, 2019

Did the president’s eldest son set up the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 with Jared Kushner, then campaign manager Paul Manafort, a trio of Russians, and a translator after having been promised dirt on Hillary Clinton? Yes. Did he make a big show of telling everyone the Russians were coming, announcing it in the regular morning meeting of senior campaign staff and Trump family members, saying he had  “a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation” that he was taking a meeting to investigate? Yes. Was the whole thing so sketchy that the special counsel’s office “considered whether to charge Trump campaign officials with crimes in connection with the June 9 meeting”? Also yes. Nevertheless, Don Jr. ended up getting off scot-free not because he hadn’t done anything wrong, but because Mueller concluded he was too stupid to know what he was doing—a stupidity that was memorialized in the Russia report with Mueller writing: “The Office determined that the government would not be likely to obtain and sustain a conviction [because]…the Office did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals acted ‘willfully,’ i.e. with general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct.” Later, Don Jr. did a victory dance about the news that he was too dumb to be charged:

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1118911951067910144

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Trump Demands Apology From Congresswomen He Told to “Go Back” to Third World Hellholes

July 15, 2019

After attacking freshman congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, falsely claiming that all four women “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe,” and telling them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” Trump demanded the four women say sorry to America, tweeting: “When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said.”


MOST POPULAR

Report: Trump’s Inner Circle Is Terrified the Feds Are

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Ivanka Trump: Let’s Focus on the Shootings My Dad Isn’t Responsible For

August 6, 2019

The first daughter really didn’t like it when people blamed her father for a mass shooting in El Paso by a perpetrator who wrote of an immigrant “invasion,” having stoked violence through his racist, anti-immigrant, misogynist rhetoric, which literally included lamenting that the government couldn’t stop migrants from crossing the border by shooting them.

Trump Displays Doctored Hurricane Map to Hit Alabama, Cover His Own Ass

September 4, 2019

Hey, remember when the president of the United States claimed a hurricane was going to hit Alabama, even though the government’s own forecasters never predicted such a thing, and after it failed to do so he used what looks to be a Sharpie to doctor a map in an attempt to claim he wasn’t the only one warning the state was going to get hit hard, even though he was? And then it came out that scientists and meteorologists were told not to correct him and just let him decide the weather?

“Is This Real?”: Trump Sends Third-Grade Reading-Level Letter to Erdogan

October 16, 2019

Days after greenlighting an invasion by Turkey into northern Syria, Trump apparently sort of changed his mind—which maybe had something to do with the House overwhelmingly voting to condemn his troop withdrawal from the area—and sent this letter to a world leader:

Dear Mr. President,

Let’s work out a good deal! You don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy—and I will. I’ve already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Brunson.

I have worked hard to solve some of your problems. Don’t let the world down. You can make a great deal. General Mazloum is willing to negotiate with you, and he is willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past. I am confidentially enclosing a copy of his letter to me, just received.

History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don’t happen. Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool!

I will call you later.

Sincerely,

Donald Trump

According to reports, Erdogan promptly threw the letter in the trash.

Trump Leans Into Corruption, Decides to Host G7 at Trump Doral

October 17, 2019

In the midst of an escalating impeachment inquiry, Trump said f--k it and announced that the next G7 summit, an event drawing hundreds of diplomats, security personnel, and reporters, would be held at his for-profit Miami golf resort, Trump Doral. Later, he tweeted that the White House had decided to look for another venue, based on the “Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility” he’d received in response to the news. According to his then chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Trump was “honestly surprised at the level of pushback.”

Trump Boldly and Insanely Claims Ivanka Created 14 Million Jobs

November 12, 2019

Two of the most dominant features of the failed human experiment known as Donald Trump: his pathological inability to tell the truth, and his creepy obsession with his eldest daughter. On November 12, 2019, those two attributes collided when the president claimed that Ivanka has personally created 14 million jobs during her time in Washington, despite the fact that total U.S. employment has only grown by roughly 6 million in the last three years. “14 million and going up,” he said.

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Trump Goes Full Anti-Semite in a Room Full of Jewish People

December 9, 2019

https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated/status/1203676537352007680

A few days later, his White House Hanukkah party featured a pastor who once said: “Not only do religions like Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, not only do they lead people away from the true God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in hell. You know, Jesus was very clear. Hell is not only going to be populated by murderers and drug dealers and child abusers. Hell is going to be filled with good religious people who have rejected the truth of Christ.”

Trump Claims Coronavirus Will “Miraculously” Go Away by April

February 11, 2020

It did not go away by April.

Stock Markets Crash as Trump Insists Coronavirus Fears Are “Fake News”

March 9, 2020

The Dow Jones dropped more than 1,800 points at the open while the S&P 500 fell more than 7%, a massive sell-off that triggered a circuit breaker and halted trading for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, Trump was still insisting this coronavirus business was much ado about nothing, although we now know that a month prior, he’d told Bob Woodward, “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

Great News: Jared Kushner Doesn’t Think the Coronavirus Is a “Health Reality”

March 13, 2020

It was not great news. Particularly given Boy Wonder’s decision to “take on a more expansive role for himself despite his lack of knowledge on the topic,” and to do so “without talking to most of the task force members or public health experts.“ (On the other hand, he did consult Karlie Kloss’s father, who conferred with a Facebook group and got back to Jared.)

Trump Uses Coronavirus Press Conference to Confirm He’s an Actual Sociopath

March 20, 2020

During a press conference at the White House, NBC reporter Peter Alexander asked Trump, “What do you say to the Americans who are scared, though? Nearly 200 dead, 14,000 who are sick, millions, as you’ve witnessed, who are scared right now. What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?” It was a softball question that anyone with a semblance of a soul could’ve answered with something like, “That’s an understandable feeling. I would tell them we’re in this together and we’re doing everything we can, as fast as we can.” Instead, Trump told Alexander: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question, and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people. The American people are looking for answers and they’re looking for hope, and you’re doing sensationalism and the same with NBC and con-cast. I don’t call it Comcast, I call it ‘con-cast.’ Let me just tell you something. That’s really bad reporting, and you ought to get back to reporting instead of sensationalism.”

Lysol Manufacturer Warns Trump Is a Dangerous Moron, “Under No Circumstance” Should Disinfectant Be Injected in Body

April 24, 2020

This is a thing that actually had to be said after Trump, upon hearing that research had shown bleach and isopropyl alcohol could kill the virus, mused: “The disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. One minute. Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside?” It would be, he mused, “almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs,” adding “It’d be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me.”

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Trump Two Weeks Away From Claiming He Saw Biden Selling Drugs Outside the Washington Monument

September 11, 2020

In the weeks leading up to the first presidential debate, Trump started claiming that Biden was using performance-enhancing drugs, demanding that his opponent pee in a cup before they took to the stage. Yes, people reading this in the year 2121, that actually happened!

Donald Trump, Worst Person on Earth, Says Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Dying Wish Is a Democratic Hoax

September 21, 2020

Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg really say, as dictated to and reported by her granddaughter, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed”? Donald Trump, human parasite, wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and Schumer and Pelosi,” he told Fox just days after RBG died. “I would be more inclined to the second…But that sounds like a Schumer deal or maybe a Pelosi or Shifty Schiff.”

“Steroid-Induced Psychosis”: Donald Trump Follows Up Sunday Night Joyride With Extra-Crazy Monday (Even for Him)

October 5, 2020

The president followed up a weekend in which he forced Secret Service agents to drive his COVID-19–riddled body around the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center by making people extra worried about his mental state (which, at its baseline, is rabies-addled raccoon). “If @realDonaldTrump were my patient…I’d call security to restrain him then perform a psychiatric evaluation to examine his decision-making capacity,” one doctor tweeted. “Sounds like steroid induced psychosis is setting in,” said another. Not for the first time, concerns were raised about him having access to the nuclear codes.

Trump Insists It’s Entirely Possible Democrats Are Running a Satanic Pedophile Cult

October 16, 2020

This was Trump’s big pitch to the American people in the run-up to the election:

https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1316915656827305985

Report: Jared Kushner an Even Bigger Idiot Than Previously Thought (And Yes, That’s Saying Something)

October 28, 2020

Thanks to the recordings made by Bob Woodward while he was researching his second book on the Trump administration, we know that the first son-in-law bragged that he was taking “the country back from the doctors” at the height of the pandemic, and believed that the U.S. was at the start of its “comeback” in April. Oops, Jared! Swing and a miss!

Donald Trump, Colossal Asshole, Says Doctors Get Extra Cash If People Die of COVID-19

October 30, 2020

“You know, in Germany,” he told a crowd in Waterford Township, Michigan, “if you have a bad heart and you’re ready to die, or if you have cancer and you’re going to be dying soon, and you catch COVID, that happens, we mark it down to COVID. You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people...In Germany and other places, if you have a heart attack or you have cancer, you’re terminally ill, you catch COVID, they say you died of cancer, you died of a heart attack. With us, when in doubt, choose COVID. It’s true. No, it’s true. No, they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s terrible what he said,’ but it’s true. It’s, like, $2,000 more. So you get more money. This could only happen to us.”

Trump Insists He’s Still Going to Be President as White House Landlord Asks For Forwarding Address for Security Deposit

November 24, 2020

The transition was officially underway, and Trump was online retweeting an image saying, “I concede NOTHING!!!!!”

Donald Trump Hits Feces-Flinging Stage of Election “Fraud” Fight

December 22, 2020

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On day 46 of the Donald Trump Attempts to Overthrow Democracy Show, the president continued to refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election, despite zero evidence of voter fraud and having been humiliated in court dozens of times. According to contemporaneous reports, he believed everyone around him was “weak, stupid, or disloyal.” Top officials desperately tried to avoid the West Wing, where Trump was “lashing out” and everyone was “in the blast zone.” Anyone not in the “use the Department of Homeland Security or the military to impound voting machines” camp was dead to him.

Donald Trump, Dealmaker in Chief, Turned Down “Multiple” Offers to Buy More Pfizer Vaccine

December 8, 2020

This one didn’t turn out to be a great idea. More on that later.

Trump Unleashes Fascist Mob on Capitol Hill to Overthrow Democracy

January 6, 2021

Days after he unsuccessfully pressured a Georgia election official to “find” him 11,780 votes, the president of the United States whipped his supporters into a violent frenzy, inciting them to lay siege on Capitol Hill in an attempt to block the certification of Biden’s win and possibly declare him president for life. As they attacked the building, and lawmakers went into hiding, Trump and Giuliani called a lawmaker and tried to convince him to delay the counting of the Electoral College votes. (While trying to reach Senator Tommy Tuberville, the dynamic duo accidentally called Mike Lee.)

Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr. Are in Furious Damage Control Mode Following Capitol Hill Siege

January 6, 2021

The president’s adult children would like it to be known that when they threatened lawmakers and called the violent mob “American patriots,” they didn’t mean it in the sense that makes them culpable for the riot or results in their shunning by polite society.

Hope Hicks Is Resigning From the White House but Not Because People Broke Into the Capitol and Smeared S--t Through the Halls, Which She’s Fine With

January 8, 2021

Like many Trump administration officials, Hicks, or “Hopey,” as Trump called her, decided to cut her time in the White House a little short. But unlike other people, who put out statements saying the insurrection incited by Trump was the cause, Hicks wanted to make it clear her departure had nothing to do with the violent riot, or Trump’s followers smearing shit through the halls, and that she was not taking a stand.

Melania Trump: Has No One Stopped to Think How the Capitol Hill Attack Affected ME?

January 11, 2021

After five days of silence surrounding the violent attack on Capitol Hill, first lady Melania Trump issued a statement saying she was “disappointed and disheartened with what happened last week,” though she wasn’t talking about her husband inciting a violent mob. She was talking about “unwarranted personal attacks” against her from people “who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda.” If we didn’t know better, we’d have thought Donald Trump wrote it himself, but there was no mention of the election having been stolen from him, so apparently this was all Melania.

Trump Thought He Could Convince Pence to Overthrow the Election by Calling Him a Pussy

January 13, 2021

When that didn’t work out, he turned to plan B: incite an angry mob that wanted to kill the V.P.

Report: Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Made Their Secret Service Detail Go to Extreme Lengths “to Find a Bathroom”

January 14, 2021

Centuries from now it’s important that history students are taught that the first daughter and her husband refused to let the Secret Service agents guarding their lives use any of their 6.5 toilets, forcing the security detail to use the Obamas’ bathroom, Pence’s bathroom, and the bathrooms of local businesses, until they ultimately rented an apartment across the street for access to its toilet, costing taxpayers more than $100,000.

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The Trump Administration Was Just Kidding When It Said It Had Tons More Vaccine Doses to Ship Out (It Has Zero)

January 15, 2021

Stop us if you’ve heard this hilarious gag before.

Mitch McConnell, Senate Ghoul, Will Let Trump Finish His Full Term After Being Impeached Twice

January 14, 2021

In the end Trump was not forcibly removed from the White House despite posing a clear and present danger to society, but he was the first president in history to be impeached twice. He may also become the first president to both actually be convicted by the Senate and perhaps a court of law. Also the first one to kill 400,000 people and, separately, incite an act of sedition! Can’t forget that.

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair       
— Jared and Ivanka’s Final Chapter in Washington Demolished Their Future
— After a Day of Violence, Trump’s Allies Are Jumping Ship
— The Unbearable Whiteness of Storming the Capitol
— Gary Cohn Is a Test Case for Trying to Wash Off the Trump Stink
— The Deeply Unsettling, Not Entirely Surprising Images of Trump’s Capitol Hill Mob
— Twitter Finally Muzzling Trump Is Too Little, Too Late
— The Eerie Charlottesville Echoes of Trump Supporters’ Capitol Coup
— From the Archive: Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies Are Church and He Is the Gospel

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[Soul Crusher]

Full blown TDS meltdown.