Talk:Donald Trump

I know it's our policy to have pictures etc, but I have this pain in the back of my head at the prospect of using our little project here to draw even the slightly bit of attention to Trump. Seriously, fuck that guy. TR (talk) 20:25, October 14, 2015 (UTC)


 * He makes my skin crawl. The prospect of him on a presidential ballot makes me fear for our democracy. He'd be in a three-way tie with Burr and McClellan as the worst candidate in American history. Even if it doesn't come to that, he's already done untold damage to participatory democracy by making such a mockery of an already-flawed electoral process.


 * That being said, I do hate to leave a historical figure template unadorned. I mean, we've got pictures of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim. Drawing the line here would be arbitrary. Maybe we can find a particularly ugly picture? (Wait, what am I saying? The challenge would be finding one that isn't.) Turtle Fan (talk) 21:39, October 14, 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes we have to swallow our own vomit in the name of objectivity. I can understand that there might be lines to draw, though.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 20:44, October 14, 2015 (UTC)

Trump is a funny-looking guy. There are ought to be plenty of laugh-worthy pictures to choose from.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:12, October 14, 2015 (UTC)


 * Should be something around. Maybe one of the Doonesbury caricatures? When I first saw that this was a newly created article, I thought it was spam from a supporter. ML4E (talk) 15:41, October 15, 2015 (UTC)


 * Same. Turtle Fan (talk) 17:58, October 15, 2015 (UTC)


 * Let's go with the ugly picture idea. Perversely, we may have fewer copyright issues with a picture than with the Doonesbury pic.  I mean, I don't think anyone's really going to care about our little project here, but a random publicity shot fits easily into "fair use".  TR (talk) 18:53, October 15, 2015 (UTC)


 * I think I've found one that's unflattering without being over-the-top. (Finding unflattering images of him is easy; ones that aren't over the top, not so much.) Turtle Fan (talk) 03:18, October 16, 2015 (UTC)

2000 Campaign
He talked about it and sent out some feelers, but did not make a serious run for the nomination. He pulled out of his own volition before he had the chance to win or lose. (I wish he'd do that now.) Turtle Fan (talk) 02:30, October 17, 2015 (UTC)

A few of the other entries in our category had similar half-hearted campaigns.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 03:05, October 17, 2015 (UTC)


 * By "half-hearted campaigns," you mean they decided not to run at all? If so we should tighten up the category. I'd suggest limiting it either to people who appeared on a general election ballot or who went into a major party's nominating convention with pledged delegates. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:36, October 17, 2015 (UTC)

It's probably too much trouble to remove those, just like all the Two Georges geography sub sections.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:54, October 17, 2015 (UTC)


 * It's really not. It would only be a handful of articles either way. We've done much larger overhauls either way.


 * So do we want to limit it to people who failed at the convention or on Election Day? Turtle Fan (talk) 14:23, October 17, 2015 (UTC)


 * Convention. HT makes use of several also-rans who didn't get the nod in OTL.  TR (talk) 14:34, October 17, 2015 (UTC)


 * All right, I'll go through later. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:57, October 17, 2015 (UTC)

Gee, wouldn't it be great if he renounced all his worldly goods and interests, entered some remote monastery somewhere, and took a vow of silence?

(Between the hydrogen bomb last week and football returning to LA, I figured it's worth a shot.) Turtle Fan (talk) 05:28, January 14, 2016 (UTC)

2016 Election
The US 2016 Presidential Election is going to be a big and very screwed up election! I don't care who wins, as long as the candidate who wins doesn't screw us all in the ass in the end! What do you guy's think? --75.68.122.13 21:15, February 8, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian


 * They're all bad, but the subject of this article is the worst of the worst, a bona fide threat to our democracy the likes of which we haven't seen in ages. If he's on the ballot, I'll vote for anyone else, anyone at all. If he's not I'll vote for None of the Above.


 * I wish the GOP field would cooperate to force him out. What they should be doing is identifying his strongest challenger in each primary, and then everyone else concedes the state to whomever that might be. That failing, they need to support the Democratic nominee, as the War Democrats supported Lincoln over McClellan (the only major party nominee in US history I like less than Trump; even Goldwater looks good in comparison). Both parties cooperating to neutralize the Trump threat would present an opportunity to heal our broken party system and make politics work again. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:56, February 8, 2016 (UTC)


 * I think I changed my mind! If Trump gets the Republican nominee and Hillary for the Democrats, I'll probably ending up voting for the Independent or Libertarian candidate. It might be a waste of a vote, but it would be worth it in my opinion. I also fear in the near future, that a Second Civil War or possibly a Second American Revolution may occur. The government will probably do something stupid (like take away our Second Amendment rights, for an example) and will piss off a ton of people and they aren't gonna take it anymore and start fighting with the people in the government, police, FBI, SWAT, CIS, ect. All I know is, it's goning to be a blood bath will much of our once great country in ruins and with millions killed and injured. What do you guys think a Second American Civil War/Revolution will be like? --75.68.122.13 21:35, February 9, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian


 * If that many people only need a small excuse to become copkillers, then taking away their "Second Amendment rights" (one right, singular, and that applying only when specific conditions are met that have not prevailed in a lifetime) doesn't sound stupid at all.


 * As far as an independent candidate goes, I was pleased to hear Michael Bloomberg floating the idea a few weeks ago; but if Trump's on the ballot we'd have to employ tactical voting to keep him out. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:41, February 10, 2016 (UTC)


 * You want to know what the "Second American Revolution" will look like? It will be a group of well armed disgruntled white guys who take over undefended and unused Federally owned property in the middle of winter. They'll have their guns, and not a single other useful thing like enough food and water. They'll be forced to get online and beg for help from their alleged supporters in the country to send them the things they need (through the postal service run by the very government they hate), and discover to their horror that all they've received are gummy penises and sex toys. They'll realize that the local community they are using as their causus belli want nothing to do with them. And their attempts at martyrdom will fall apart as they realize they can't even do that right. TR (talk) 05:59, February 10, 2016 (UTC)


 * You know, I didn't follow those weirdos all that closely. People were actually sending them gummy penises? I wish I'd known. I would have happily contributed. Turtle Fan (talk) 07:22, February 10, 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes. They put a up a youtube video whining about it. If it had been a satire, the author would have have been derided for implausibility. TR (talk) 07:25, February 10, 2016 (UTC)


 * Indeed. There are some amusing stories of poorly planned revolutions out there, but--wow. Turtle Fan (talk) 13:38, February 10, 2016 (UTC)


 * Well this sucks elephant balls! Both Ted Cruz and John Kasich have dropped out of the Republican race. Sadly, I guess Trump is going to be the Republican nominee by default. --75.68.122.13 19:00, May 5, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian


 * Yeah. Now our choices are a proven loser or a monster who's wandered into the wrong century by mistake. I feel a strange desire to read Yeats's "The Second Coming." Turtle Fan (talk) 21:53, May 5, 2016 (UTC)


 * You know, we could vote for one of the Independent or third-party candidates instead of voting for a greedy corrupt businessman who probably knows next-to-nothing about politics or a lying former First Lady who will probably continue Obama's mostly failed politics. I don't entirely blame Obama for being a poor president, he just came in at the wrong time. God, I hate both Hillary and Trump for different reasons! I'm just glad I'm going to get registered to vote this summer so I can vote. --75.68.122.13 20:10, May 15, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian


 * If the GOP had gone with anyone else I had planned to go the plague-on-both-your-houses route and written in NOTA. But Trump's a threat to democracy itself. However pathetic HRC may be, she's all that stands between us and a dark age. So voting for her is really the only responsible course of action. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:15, May 15, 2016 (UTC)

Well this sucks donkey balls! Bernie Sanders just dropped out of the Democratic race a few days ago. Now it is 100% certain that Hillary Clinton will get Democratic nomination for sure. Hillary or Trump, this country is gonna flush itself further down the toilet than it has been in the past eight years. The good news is that if either suck at being president, we can either vote them out in 2020 or impeach them. --75.68.122.13 17:00, July 15, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian


 * I'm backing Clinton for all I'm worth for that reason. There's no doubt in my mind she'll go peacefully whenever her time is up. This punk? Not nearly so sure. He's so arrogant, and it's not like winning a presidential election will make him humbler. He's shown such contempt for our democratic culture, and he's got a long-as-the-table history of using all sorts of organizations up and casting them aside when there's nothing of value to him left. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:36, July 15, 2016 (UTC)

Drumpf
As soon as I saw that John Oliver bit earlier, I immediately remembered reading about the last-ditch efforts of the Weimar Republic's pro-democracy parties to mock the Nazis with taunts of "Heil Schicklgruber!" in '32 and '33. Hopefully we'll have better luck than they did. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:58, March 2, 2016 (UTC)

That protection was very, very wise, TR. Hopefully I didn't inspire it in a negative way. As with the only presidential candidate in US history who might have been even worse, I can't quite bring myself to maintain an objective editorial style right now. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:37, March 2, 2016 (UTC)


 * Preemptive. I don't think our project is going to catch much notice, but.... TR (talk) 05:54, March 2, 2016 (UTC)


 * Glad to see you and I are on the same side with this one SJ                   Donut


 * Absolutely! This fascist is the worst we've seen in ages, and I'm telling everyone I run into that he must be stopped at all costs, whether that's Cruz or Sanders or anyone in between. In the past, comparably horrible presidential candidates have been stopped by bipartisan cooperation: Hamilton throwing the weight of the Federalist House caucus behind his archrival Jefferson in order to lock out Burr, Adams and Clay reaching their so-called corrupt bargain (which only stopped Jackson temporarily, alas), War Democrats backing the National Unity ticket over McClellan, Mugwumps going for Cleveland over Blaine, and, though there was no such formal organization, an awful lot of Republicans voted for Johnson rather than Goldwater.


 * Such patriotic and pro-democratic cooperation today could go a long way toward healing our political polarization; but that polarization looks like it will make cooperation impossible. Instead we'll see anti-Trump efforts on the left and the right that refuse to cooperate and take shots at each other as well as the common threat. I so hope it's enough!


 * People forget that the German election in March 1933 produced a hung parliament. If every party in the Reichstag except the Nazis had gone to Hindenburg and said "Whatever our differences, we're all committed to parliamentary democracy as the best venue in which to work them out, and to preserve that, we've agreed to form a coalition to block Hitler," what a different world it would have been! But their divisions ran too deep, and so they unleashed a monster. Soon it was game over for all of their politics (November of that year saw a rigged election in which NSDAP candidates got to run unopposed), and I believe the leaders of every last one of those parties ultimately wound up in a concentration camp.


 * More importantly, history has never forgiven them for standing by while darkness fell. (Winter before last, right after Tsipras's first election, I asked a German acquaintance why his country tolerated having its economy so beholden to demagogues and basket cases like the new Syriza government. He said, very sincerely, "We owe it to Europe because of the war." Voting age in the Weimar Republic was twenty, so in January 2015, the youngest German who ever had the chance to stop Hitler without risking his or her life was just under 102. But the shame runs that deep.) It won't forgive us either. Turtle Fan (talk) 16:37, April 1, 2016 (UTC)

Crosstime Traffic
I'm thinking the subsection should be retitled Crosstime Traffic rather than DSA, since it's about the home timeline and doesn't give insight into the DSA alternate.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 03:23, April 22, 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that is probably correct. TR (talk) 04:42, April 22, 2016 (UTC)


 * I haven't read the novel but it looks that way to me based on the article. ML4E (talk) 21:55, April 22, 2016 (UTC)

Delete?
I'm wondering about this one. The reference boils down to "the name of Donald Trump remained a byword for extravagant luxury" in the late 21st century. It seems to be saying that Trump's image in the story is exactly the same as it was when the book came out (i.e., years before he was considered seriously as a future POTUS) and doesn't enlighten anything about any of the worlds HT has created.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 18:59, July 27, 2016 (UTC)


 * Don't care at this time. ML4E (talk) 20:28, July 28, 2016 (UTC)


 * We can hope that this proves prophetic and he loses the election. They wouldn't remember him as a byword for conspicuous consumption if he were the president whose disastrous policies set the foundation for an America where a C-note barely pays for bus fare. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:05, July 28, 2016 (UTC)


 * Hey, that might be why the C-coin barely pays for a bus fare. But you're right, he would be infamous for more than conspicuous consumption. ML4E (talk) 23:10, July 28, 2016 (UTC)


 * It seems that most people want to see this page go. It should probably be moved to hist refs with the story portion saying "In The Disunited States of America, which is set in 2097, a few characters from the home timeline make jokes about Trump's reputation for luxury and debauchery. As the novel came out a decade before Trump's nomination, his political career is not mentioned." The redundancy of the last sentence might actually be helpful in this case.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 22:31, October 16, 2016 (UTC)


 * Most people? Other than you, who? Turtle Fan (talk) 02:13, October 17, 2016 (UTC)

Presidential Debate Tonight
Well, tonight's the night! At 9 P.M EST, the Presidential Debates begin. I wonder what kind of crap will be coming out of these two piss poor candidates mouths tonight. We'll just have to wait and find out. --75.68.122.13 14:30, September 26, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian


 * I don't think you understand the phrase "piss poor" if you are applying it to both of them. TR (talk) 14:31, September 26, 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah, neither is what you'd call an expert in the lived experience of poverty.


 * I'll watch the highlights tomorrow, but I don't think I can watch the whole thing. Trump makes my skin crawl, I actually become ill after more than a couple minutes. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:57, September 26, 2016 (UTC)


 * I watched the debates with my grandfather last night on the Fox News Channel. My grandparents on my mothers side have different political ideologies. My grandfather is more Conservative while my grandmother is more moderate like myself. Grandpa is in favor of Trump while Grammy wants neither him or Hillary Clinton. Her and I while probably end up throwing away our votes to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who's actually doing quite well this election, getting between 8% and 15 % in the national polls. I know Johnson won't win the election, but I would rather waste my vote on him than vote for either the giant douche or the turd sandwich (at this point, I can't who's which).

As for the debate, both candidates actually did bring up a few good points such as how to bring jobs back to America, dealing with terrorists, the economy, ect. I can't really remember much else from the debate since I when to bed directly after it ended. But from the highlights this morning, I then remembered that Hillary looked like she was trying to hold back something while Trump was sniffling constantly. Don't know why he was doing that. Maybe he has a runny nose or he caught Hillary's pneumonia xD. By the way TR, when I said "piss poor", it meant that both major candidates are god awful. --75.68.122.13 15:00, September 27, 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian


 * Yes. And your comment this morning makes it clear you are holding on the narrative of "they're both terrible" like grim death, rather than actually weighing or measuring anything. TR (talk) 15:34, September 27, 2016 (UTC)


 * A lot of people like that whom I keep meeting. No one seems to understand that the lesser of two evils is preferable to the greater of two evils. Seth Myers of all people summed it up perfectly several months ago: "It's like walking into the break room and discovering that the only snack options are half of a plain donut, or a racist."


 * As that analogy suggests, the "lesser evil" can still be a greater good, something people routinely forget. Myers has shown himself to be surprisingly capable.  TR (talk) 02:54, September 28, 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm impressed with the mainstream attention that James Corden has brought to a franchise whose first three iterations were treated by the network as an afterthought. That being said, it feels like an 11:30 show now, and I always did prefer the 12:30s. I'm glad to see Myers sticking to the time slot's niche roots; those "Closer Looks" feel like something out of Tom Snyder's tenure. I also dare to hope that under his tenure his show can become something of a game preserve for endangered absurdities like masturbating bears and talking rhino heads, gags with an appeal that is narrow but deep. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:21, September 28, 2016 (UTC)


 * In the clips I saw, it looked like the half of a plain donut was trying to respond to the racist by conveying an air of sad bemusement and inviting the audience to share in the feeling. It lacked the deftness of the Gipper's "There you go again," but that did seem to be what she was channeling, and I think she more or less pulled it off. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:19, September 28, 2016 (UTC)


 * Indeed she did. She even gave cogent answers and plausible policy goals while she was at it.  TR (talk) 02:54, September 28, 2016 (UTC)


 * That too, yes. When only one candidate actually has the faintest idea what she's doing, it really isn't any choice at all, is it? Turtle Fan (talk) 04:21, September 28, 2016 (UTC)