Trump "Press Conference" Game Thread

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HeelYeah2012 said:
Off the top of my head:

-Self-governance rather than government dependence. Significantly cut the fat in various governmental agencies
-Merit based society with EQUALITY (i.e equal opportunity), instead of DEI/affirmative action/equity-based (i.e. equal outcomes) society
-Secure the southern border. To enter the country you must receive consent, and consent is based on people who will be productive members of society and share American values.
-No senseless wars
-America first. Make our allies pay their fair share in our alliances.
-Ban gender “care” for minors
-Make the USA the dominant energy producer in the world
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Thanks for that. I have a few follow-up questions, if you don't mind.
-Where do you see fat that needs to be cut? Which agencies? I can tell you from experience that the military-industrial complex has become WAY too bloated. It was frustrating when we submitted requests for any office equipment. I couldn't just go to Office Depot and pick up a chair. I had to go through the appropriate government agency and spend upwards of 40% or more for the same chair. I am weary of the money we spend on new carriers (13Bn for the new Ford Class). Yes, they are exquisite ships, but our adversaries are getting more adept at finding ways to neutralize their bread and butter (the air wings).
-By its very definition, Diversity is a condition of having different elements. Equality means that everyone has access to the same opportunities. Inclusion is defined as an environment where everyone feels welcome, of value, and empowered with the ability to contribute. What's wrong with any of that? DEI ensures that EQUALITY is being met. How do you propose that equality be achieved? I took a non-partisan look at the top 50 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. In 1980 there were ONLY White, Male CEOs. In 1990 there were 49 White, Male CEOs and 1 Middle Eastern Male. In 2000, there were 47 White, Male CEOs, 1 Black Male, 1 Middle Easter Male and the FIRST Female CEO. in 2010, there were 46 White, Male CEOs, 2 White Female CEOs, 1 Black Male CEO and the first Black Female CEO. in 2023, there were 37 White, Male CEOs, 6 White Female CEOs, 4 Black Male CEOs and the First Male and Female Latino CEOs. So, since 1980, 91% of Fortune 500 CEOs have been White and Male. You cannot, in good faith, argue that only White men are smart enough to run a Fortune 500 company, yet they dominate the ethnic and racial breakdown.
-Secure the Southern border. I'm gonna raise the BS flag here. There was a bipartisan bill that addressed the border that the Democrats gave major concessions to the GOP, and yet Trump told them to vote it down because he wanted to run on the issue. Again, if the border was that much of a concern, why wasn't it addressed when Trump and the GOP held both the House and the Senate. I agree that the border is a major concern but it's not a cut and dried/black and white problem, but the constant lies that rapists and murderers are streaming across the border are no where near grounded in any objective truth. I don't have a solution but I hold out hope that one can be found.
-America first. I will concede that we could be doing a hell of a lot more domestically to ensure all of our citizens and veterans are receiving the care they need. However, we cannot just bury our head in the sand and pretend that everything that happens outside our borders shouldn't concern us unless our allies pay their fair share. That narrow view of the world is what contributed to the rise of strongmen and dictators that threw the world into a Second World war. Trump has openly said that Putin could do "whatever it wants to NATO member nations that are deliquent in devoting 2 percent of their GDP to defense". That's insane and incredibly stupid. How much more would it cost us if we just let Putin run rampant through Europe? Come on man. I get your frustration with the financial side of it and there should be a diplomatic solution to this problem. We cannot remain a serious player in world affairs if our President tells a foreign adversary that they can do whatever they want becuase country X isn't paying thier fair share.
-Senseless wars. I agree but the last senseless war was started by the GOP and their fake search for WMD. I get it. I was standing back gate watch at Corry Station when the towers went down. I was just as pissed as every American and wanted blood as much as the next guy, but we went off half-cocked and manufactured evidence out of thin air to support a hostile takeover of a soverign nation. That was the beginning of the never ending money pit also known as the military industrial complex. Bush wrote blank check after blank check in his zeal to overturn Saddam and find Bin Laden and subsequent administrations followed suit. The OCO (Overseas continguincy Operations) funds requests, which was seperate from the yearly budget was stupid in the amounts being spent. I personally think that no one should be Commander in Chief with the ability to send men and women into harms way who first hasn't raised their hand and served, but that's me.
-Gender care. That argument is rich coming from a party that didn't want to be told to wear a damn mask during a global pandemic. Neither you nor I should have the ability to tell a family what sort of medical care they should choose. That personal decision remains alone with the family and the proper medical professionals. Nobody is grooming kids or forcing gender "care" on minors. That is a difficult decision and the strain on the child as well as the family can be unbearable. You or I have absolutely NO say in what is best for them or their child.
-As far as dominant energy production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the US produces more crude oil than any nation and we have done so for the past 6 years. In December 2023, the US established a monthly high of 13.3 million barrels per day. Here's the link: United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
 
tarheel931 said:
Thanks for that. I have a few follow-up questions, if you don't mind.
-Where do you see fat that needs to be cut? Which agencies? I can tell you from experience that the military-industrial complex has become WAY too bloated. It was frustrating when we submitted requests for any office equipment. I couldn't just go to Office Depot and pick up a chair. I had to go through the appropriate government agency and spend upwards of 40% or more for the same chair. I am weary of the money we spend on new carriers (13Bn for the new Ford Class). Yes, they are exquisite ships, but our adversaries are getting more adept at finding ways to neutralize their bread and butter (the air wings).
-By its very definition, Diversity is a condition of having different elements. Equality means that everyone has access to the same opportunities. Inclusion is defined as an environment where everyone feels welcome, of value, and empowered with the ability to contribute. What's wrong with any of that? DEI ensures that EQUALITY is being met. How do you propose that equality be achieved? I took a non-partisan look at the top 50 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. In 1980 there were ONLY White, Male CEOs. In 1990 there were 49 White, Male CEOs and 1 Middle Eastern Male. In 2000, there were 47 White, Male CEOs, 1 Black Male, 1 Middle Easter Male and the FIRST Female CEO. in 2010, there were 46 White, Male CEOs, 2 White Female CEOs, 1 Black Male CEO and the first Black Female CEO. in 2023, there were 37 White, Male CEOs, 6 White Female CEOs, 4 Black Male CEOs and the First Male and Female Latino CEOs. So, since 1980, 91% of Fortune 500 CEOs have been White and Male. You cannot, in good faith, argue that only White men are smart enough to run a Fortune 500 company, yet they dominate the ethnic and racial breakdown.
-Secure the Southern border. I'm gonna raise the BS flag here. There was a bipartisan bill that addressed the border that the Democrats gave major concessions to the GOP, and yet Trump told them to vote it down because he wanted to run on the issue. Again, if the border was that much of a concern, why wasn't it addressed when Trump and the GOP held both the House and the Senate. I agree that the border is a major concern but it's not a cut and dried/black and white problem, but the constant lies that rapists and murderers are streaming across the border are no where near grounded in any objective truth. I don't have a solution but I hold out hope that one can be found.
-America first. I will concede that we could be doing a hell of a lot more domestically to ensure all of our citizens and veterans are receiving the care they need. However, we cannot just bury our head in the sand and pretend that everything that happens outside our borders shouldn't concern us unless our allies pay their fair share. That narrow view of the world is what contributed to the rise of strongmen and dictators that threw the world into a Second World war. Trump has openly said that Putin could do "whatever it wants to NATO member nations that are deliquent in devoting 2 percent of their GDP to defense". That's insane and incredibly stupid. How much more would it cost us if we just let Putin run rampant through Europe? Come on man. I get your frustration with the financial side of it and there should be a diplomatic solution to this problem. We cannot remain a serious player in world affairs if our President tells a foreign adversary that they can do whatever they want becuase country X isn't paying thier fair share.
-Senseless wars. I agree but the last senseless war was started by the GOP and their fake search for WMD. I get it. I was standing back gate watch at Corry Station when the towers went down. I was just as pissed as every American and wanted blood as much as the next guy, but we went off half-cocked and manufactured evidence out of thin air to support a hostile takeover of a soverign nation. That was the beginning of the never ending money pit also known as the military industrial complex. Bush wrote blank check after blank check in his zeal to overturn Saddam and find Bin Laden and subsequent administrations followed suit. The OCO (Overseas continguincy Operations) funds requests, which was seperate from the yearly budget was stupid in the amounts being spent. I personally think that no one should be Commander in Chief with the ability to send men and women into harms way who first hasn't raised their hand and served, but that's me.
-Gender care. That argument is rich coming from a party that didn't want to be told to wear a damn mask during a global pandemic. Neither you nor I should have the ability to tell a family what sort of medical care they should choose. That personal decision remains alone with the family and the proper medical professionals. Nobody is grooming kids or forcing gender "care" on minors. That is a difficult decision and the strain on the child as well as the family can be unbearable. You or I have absolutely NO say in what is best for them or their child.
-As far as dominant energy production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the US produces more crude oil than any nation and we have done so for the past 6 years. In December 2023, the US established a monthly high of 13.3 million barrels per day. Here's the link: United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
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See my post above where I expanded on a lot of these points in my response to CFord. I generally think you are a good guy and are coming at this from a good place and with a respectful tone, so I appreciate you for that.

Only one thing I’ll nitpick in your post which is minor but I did want to mention it. The “E” in DEI is generally understood to be equity, not equality. Huge difference since equality is something everyone should support while equity is bullshit. VP Harris is on the record as supporting equity over equality, for what it’s worth. See below.

 
HeelYeah2012 said:
See my post above where I expanded on a lot of these points in my response to CFord. I generally think you are a good guy and are coming at this from a good place and with a respectful tone, so I appreciate you for that.

Only one thing I’ll nitpick in your post which is minor but I did want to mention it. The “E” in DEI is generally understood to be equity, not equality. Huge difference since equality is something everyone should support while equity is bullshit. VP Harris is on the record as supporting equity over equality, for what it’s worth. See below.

Click to expand...

I am trying to genuinely understand. I've got friends and former Sailors I served with who spew the same insane rhetoric that Trump vomits every day and I am at a loss. I've had to block several people that I've known for 20 years or more who have gone full-on Jim Jones and guzzling the Kool-aid. I spent my early years in Broadway. It was a small town with an IGA and a single caution light. My pops was an Army man and we got out fairly early. I can say that my life experiences were shaped by the different people I met every time we moved. I was fortunate to live in several different states, and my belief system was reinforced by those experiences and by the upbringing my parents instilled. I occasionally run into old friends on FB and I'm astounded by the narrowmindedness with which they view the world. I see a lot of them moaning about illegal immigrants but I can fully remember family friends buying mobile homes and setting them up for transient migrants to work the tobacco fields. They would migrate around the south during various crop-picking seasons and move where the jobs were.
 
tarheel931 said:
I am trying to genuinely understand. I've got friends and former Sailors I served with who spew the same insane rhetoric that Trump vomits every day and I am at a loss. I've had to block several people that I've known for 20 years or more who have gone full-on Jim Jones and guzzling the Kool-aid. I spent my early years in Broadway. It was a small town with an IGA and a single caution light. My pops was an Army man and we got out fairly early. I can say that my life experiences were shaped by the different people I met every time we moved. I was fortunate to live in several different states, and my belief system was reinforced by those experiences and by the upbringing my parents instilled. I occasionally run into old friends on FB and I'm astounded by the narrowmindedness with which they view the world. I see a lot of them moaning about illegal immigrants but I can fully remember family friends buying mobile homes and setting them up for transient migrants to work the tobacco fields. They would migrate around the south during various crop-picking seasons and move where the jobs were.
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Well if it makes you feel any better, politics is not a topic I really discuss much at all with my friends and family, so it doesn’t dominate my life at all. I’ve said many times I would much rather watch UNC have success on the football field, basketball court or baseball diamond than see my preferred political candidates win. That sometimes makes people here mad, but it’s true. I stumbled across the old ZZLP by way of the sports boards, not the other way around.

I enjoy talking about politics and learning more about it, and I specifically enjoy visiting this board so that I can challenge my own belief system. This board has value to me because it helps me get the left’s point of view on the issues at hand and helps balance out the views of people in my inner circle, which are predominately conservative views. It also helps me play devil’s advocate to some of my far-right friends and family when they say stuff that I consider to be off the reservation.

What I’m saying is, if we ever met in real life I would happily buy you a beer and we’d likely find that we have a lot more in common than you may think! Simply put, someone who is center-left may vote for Harris and someone who is center-right may vote for Trump, but those two people may still be able to find common ground on a lot of issues.
 
The whole illegal immigrant hang up is just xenophobia and racism 95% of the time. They claim people are sneaking in to commit crimes, which is complete bullshit. I've yet to have my life negatively affected in any way by an illegal immigrant and overall I view them as a net positive.
 
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Scientific Mapp said:
I only saw excerpts from the press conference, but I didn't see anything different from the semi-coherent WCW promo stuff he's been doing for 8+ years. I don't understand the consensus here that this was some exceptional meltdown. Yall obviously saw something in this press conference, that I missed, to inspire a 14 page thread.
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It might have seemed worse to us because he didn’t have a herd of semi-lucid swampfolk clapping and chortling at every crazy thing he said, and that made it seem all the more unhinged.
 
HeelYeah2012 said:
See my post above where I expanded on a lot of these points in my response to CFord. I generally think you are a good guy and are coming at this from a good place and with a respectful tone, so I appreciate you for that.

Only one thing I’ll nitpick in your post which is minor but I did want to mention it. The “E” in DEI is generally understood to be equity, not equality. Huge difference since equality is something everyone should support while equity is bullshit. VP Harris is on the record as supporting equity over equality, for what it’s worth. See below.

Click to expand...

Why in the hell would anyone have a problem with equity in her explanation?
 
HeelYeah2012 said:
Well if it makes you feel any better, politics is not a topic I really discuss much at all with my friends and family, so it doesn’t dominate my life at all. I’ve said many times I would much rather watch UNC have success on the football field, basketball court or baseball diamond than see my preferred political candidates win. That sometimes makes people here mad, but it’s true. I stumbled across the old ZZLP by way of the sports boards, not the other way around.

I enjoy talking about politics and learning more about it, and I specifically enjoy visiting this board so that I can challenge my own belief system. This board has value to me because it helps me get the left’s point of view on the issues at hand and helps balance out the views of people in my inner circle, which are predominately conservative views. It also helps me play devil’s advocate to some of my far-right friends and family when they say stuff that I consider to be off the reservation.

What I’m saying is, if we ever met in real life I would happily buy you a beer and we’d likely find that we have a lot more in common than you may think! Simply put, someone who is center-left may vote for Harris and someone who is center-right may vote for Trump, but those two people may still be able to find common ground on a lot of issues.
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Look man, nobody cares if you vote for Romney, Bush, McCain, etc. None of those guys were ever deal breakers. Families and friendships weren't wrecked over whether someone voted for McCain vs. Obama. But when you vote for a man who tried to overthrow the government with a coup, and filed 70 failed lawsuits to overturn a free and fair election, it's simply not justifiable by your lame excuse that you support Republican policies more on a national level. Not to mention he's a felon and a rapist. Never in the history of this country have two major groups from the same party as a president aligned to prevent him from being re-elected. The Lincoln Project and Republicans for Harris should tell you all you need to know. And if you just can't bear to vote D on a national level, don't vote. It's still a bad option because everyone should actively try to prevent this man from having power again, but you can't vote for this man and call yourself an American. So I could give a rat's ass if we have everything in common and agree on everything non-political. I will never call anyone who votes for this man my friend.
 
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BlooVooDoo said:
I’m pissed the ZZLP isn’t around for this.
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I already like this new board better than the old ZZLP (it has much better, user friendly software), but if this was the old ZZLP then the flood of right-wingers who crashed that board after the first debate to gloat and trash talk would have quickly receded over the past couple of weeks as Kamala's campaign has surged in the polls and now this press conference disaster from Dear Leader. My guess is that most of them would have vanished by now, but they would have kept lurking, reading the boards while privately steaming. Sucks to be them, I guess.
 
LosPollosHermanos said:
Look man, nobody cares if you vote for Romney, Bush, McCain, etc. None of those guys were ever deal breakers. Families and friendships weren't wrecked over whether someone voted for McCain vs. Obama. But when you vote for a man who tried to overthrow the government with a coup, and filed 70 failed lawsuits to overturn a free and fair election, it's simply not justifiable by your lame excuse that you support Republican policies more on a national level. Not to mention he's a felon and a rapist. Never in the history of this country have two major groups from the same party as a president aligned to actively prevent him from being re-elected. The Lincoln Project and Republicans for Harris should tell you all you need to know. And if you just can't bear to vote D on a national level, don't vote. It's still a bad option because everyone should be trying to actively prevent this man from having power again, but you can't vote for this man and call youself an American. So I could give a rat's ass if we have everything in common with and agree with you on everything non-political. I will never call anyone who votes for this man my friend.
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That’s all fine with me, because if you’re too childish to call *any* of 74 million fellow Americans your friend, you probably aren’t a friend worth having anyway.
 
HeelYeah2012 said:
equality is something everyone should support while equity is bullshit.
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You either misunderstand "equity" or you are a complete asshole.

We've got 2 kids at our college. One is from a good family, upper middle class neighborhood, took a bunch of AP's in high school, and will certainly transfer to a top tier 4 year university once they receive their Associates Degree from us. The other is a former foster youth who is 1/2 step away from being an alcoholic on the street, or else being sex trafficked, or both.

"Equality" means we treat them equally in terms of resources (equal money, time, personnel, counselling, bookstore vouchers, etc)

"Equity" means we give more to the foster kid to try to give him/her the same fighting chance as the kid from the stable family.

If you're opposed to "equity" in that sense, you're nothing but a heartless bastard. I'm actually truly hoping that you simply misunderstand the term.
 
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Just saying on the topic of bloated govt, we need way more FBI agents not less. Do you know how understaffed and underserved we are right now? There’s agents doing the jobs of 3-4 people and we can’t keep up with how much rampant cyber crime is going on. The advance of AI has accelerated crime exponentially that most people never hear about, so please don’t vote for someone who wants to cut those officers. It will be an absolute travesty if that happens.
 
Btw, @nycfan I've furiously been working behind the scenes to get TruthSocial to be able to embed here but amusingly, TruthSocial was poorly built by people who cut corners and so it has a display issues with "padding" where there's a bunch of extra space because of something they need to fix. I actually sent an email to customer support, something I never thought I'd say, telling them to forward the issue to the developers but I don't expect to ever hear back or them fix it. Anyway, just felt like telling someone because hopefully it'll only be necessary for another 3 months and also I emailed TruthSocial about a problem which is humourous to me.

(you just click the three dots and copy link and paste)

 
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