While looking for pictures of Trump to post here in an attempt to humanize him on images.google.com, I noticed the vast majority of pictures were terrible. Trump was often photographed in a awkward position, or someone next to him was making a funny face, or a supposed “Portrait” of Trump with a noisy background. I looked up the name of the WhiteHouse photographer and found she was responsible for photographing Vice President Dick Cheney and Laura Bush. I then searched Images.google.com for their pictures. Notably, there were no bad pictures of Laura Bush. Dick Cheney’s pictures were a noticeable step down, often showing him displaying his apparent facial tick at the corner of his mouth. In a photograph of Laura Bush and her Husband on a patio, it showed Bush leaning away from Laura, as if to suggest he was not supportive of her. I have little doubt George Bush was merely shifting his position when the photograph has taken. Notably, a Socialist website displayed a uncomplimentary and credited picture of Trump. Interestingly, there is not a need to credit photographs of political figures in the US as I understand usage rights. The WhiteHouse Photographer’s name is Shealah Craighead. I have to wonder if Shealah traded professional accountability for partisanship? Or does she simply hate men? If Shealah was partisan against Trump, was she in a position to obtain and leak confidential or private information? The next question is where was Kelly Conway for the last four years on the steady stream of biased and unfavorable photos of Trump? The modern politician needs attorneys they can trust, campaign managers that are detail oriented, and a photographer that is professional beyond the technical aspects of taking photographs. The article below is from a self-described Socialist website. Any of the following sound familiar? WILL THE TRUMP TOWER OF CORRUPTION TOPPLE? April 24, 2018 The stench of corruption coming from the Oval Office is growing worse, but no one who wants to stop Donald Trump should count on scandal alone to bring him down. the FBI raid on the office of Michael Cohen earlier this month, Donald Trump's longtime lawyer and jack-of-all-sleazy-trades, marks an important threat to Trump's presidency that could have all kinds of consequences. We don't yet know what dirt federal investigators have on Cohen--and, by association, Trump--but only the most diehard "deep state" conspiracy theorists would deny that there must be something serious to prompt a raid on the lawyer of the President of the United States. And only the flunkies on the payroll of Fox News or the Trump Organization would deny that there are a seemingly limitless number of potential crimes to look into. Like real estate ventures with money launderers and crooks in Indonesia, Georgia and Brazil (not to mention New Jersey). Or the payment (possibly violating campaign finance laws) made to silence Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) about her affair with Trump. Donald Trump (Shealah Craighead) There are probably dozens of other things we don't know about. But Michael Cohen does, and a good deal of U.S. politics might turn on whether this longtime Trump sycophant will flip on his boss to keep himself out of jail. Trump, of course, claims that investigators are violating attorney-client privilege and a host of other civil liberties--the same ones he gleefully steps on when it comes to immigrants, people of color and anybody who gets in his way. It's possible that the FBI is trampling on Trump's legal rights, but less likely than if its target was Muslim or a political protester, to judge from the recent past. But Cohen is less Trump's lawyer than his fixer, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to see a billionaire and his crooked lawyer being held accountable to the law. The same goes for the entire gang of grifters assembled in the Trump administration. Like Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, who has repeatedly accepted gifts from the energy companies on whose behalf he is wiping out inconvenient regulations. And Trump hatchet men Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, whose unreported lobbying work for foreign governments made them early targets of Mueller's special investigation into collusion between the Russian government and Trump's presidential campaign. It's telling that even one of the lawyers who Trump brought on to protect himself from the Cohen investigation, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, is himself a potential legal liability. In addition to being a washed-up loudmouth whose only remaining discernable talent is getting angry on Fox News, Giuliani never made it into Trump's cabinet in part because of a possibly illegal relationship to an Iranian opposition group, as well as his likely role in working with FBI agents to leak their investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal during the presidential campaign. IT'S AN obvious, but still important, point to make that Trump's vast web of corruption is especially galling given that one of his favorite methods of attacking the vulnerable is through false accusations of fraud. Separating babies from parents trying to apply for asylum at the border; forcing Medicaid recipients to work 80 hours a month to maintain health coverage; blocking people from voting if they don't have the exact right form of ID--all of these cruel attacks are justified as crackdowns on fraud among poor and working-class people, carried out by a government led by the world's most famous con artist. But Trump's corruption isn't just reprehensible. It's also dangerous. His corruption goes hand in hand with his authoritarianism--both are about putting those in power above the law. Trump is obviously not the first or only corrupt American leader, but, just as he's pushing the acceptability of open racism and sexism to new lows, he's normalizing naked corruption--and, therefore, impunity for the rich and powerful. This isn't just about his scandals--it's his philosophy of government to replace laws and systems with a series of individual decisions that increase the power of the decision-maker. Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fines Wells Fargo for defrauding customers even as the administration strips regulations to prevent future crimes. That may seem like a contradiction, but for business, the message is clear: what matters less is legality than staying in Trump's good graces. As Adam Davidson wrote for the New Yorker, commenting on the administration's different treatment of two media companies, one of them a reliable Trump booster and the other more critical: Currently, the Department of Justice is suing to prevent a merger of AT&T and Time Warner, the parent company of CNN. At the same time, Sinclair is in the process of merging with Tribune Media, a move that would strengthen Sinclair's network of television stations. The Justice Department seems likely to approve that marriage. There are legitimate legal reasons for the Justice Department to treat the two mergers differently, but when the President makes his self-interest so plain it is impossible to fully trust the process. We should be clear that Trump didn't invent corruption, and he certainly didn't invent the entirely legalized form of bribery that falls under the category of corporate lobbying. The main difference between the Trump administration and earlier generations of Oval Office racketeers may not be their crimes, but their context. The White House officials caught doing favors for the 1870s railroad industry or 1920s oil barons were just as much sleazy parasites as Trump and his cronies today. But while those earlier parasites were feasting on a young American capitalism that couldn't be stopped by a little corruption from growing into the largest economy in world history, today's leeches are blindly engorging themselves while the country they are supposed to be running stumbles into a potentially historic decline. THE MICHAEL Cohen investigation is separate from Mueller's investigation into collusion with the Russian government. The Cohen raid was carried out by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which means that even if Trump fires Mueller, and the Republican Congress backs him up, the investigation into Cohen's--and quite possibly Trump's--crimes would keep going. On the other hand, the two investigations will likely overlap, and they could become inseparable if Cohen decides to cooperate with both Mueller and the Southern District. In any event, the lesson we need to learn from everything that's taken place in the Trump era is that scandalmongering is not the way to challenge the Trump regime, nor his far-right shock troops. The Trump presidency might still be rocked by either Russiagate or the various inquiries into Trump's business empire (our money is on the latter). If it is, that's so much the better for the left, which can celebrate Trump's suffering while pointing out that his scandals show how the whole system, economic and political together, is rotten to the core. But for the liberal establishment, obsessing over the leaks and speculating about the investigations has been little more than a distraction, sometimes a dangerous one--and often an alibi for doing nothing to oppose Trump in the here and now. You wouldn't know it from MSNBC's round-the-clock coverage, but it remains quite possible that Mueller's investigation won't conclude that the president colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the election--either because it didn't happen or because an accusation like that is hard to prove. The chances of prosecutable behavior being unearthed from the past or present of the Trump business empire are greater. But in the meantime, the Democrats' relentless focus on Trump's scandals has shifted attention from countless pressing issues. Case in point: The Democratic National Committee recently announced a lawsuit accusing WikiLeaks, along with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, of political espionage during the 2016 election. That could have a potentially chilling effect on whistleblowers and journalistswho publish classified information. Meanwhile, the Democrats have done nothing to challenge the instances of naked voter suppression that demonstrably did help hand Trump the election in 2016. In truth, every time Democratic Party leaders talk about Russia, they reveal their own central role in Trump's election victory. They can't fathom the idea that they and their preferred presidential candidate had so little to offer voters that a lot of loyal voters stayed home, and some were even drawn to supporting Trump. NONE OF this means that socialists should be indifferent to Trump's corruption--or his attempts to obstruct justice by threatening to fire officials charged with investigating him. There are protests planned by liberal organizations if Trump takes the step of firing Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Those protests will be wholly justified, even if some of their organizers conjure an image of the FBI as crusaders for justice, which they definitely aren't. The left will need to engage with those who will join such protests because they hate Trump and want to see him brought down--and who can be won to other struggles against injustice and oppression that badly need to be organized in Trump times. We certainly won't make a hero out of a dyed-in-the-wool authoritarian like Robert Mueller. But we can figure out how to make the fight against corruption part of a larger socialist agenda. Since the times of Karl Marx--who turns 200 years young in May--revolutionaries have stood for the utmost extension of democracy as an instrumental part of the struggle for socialism. We know the fight for a future world cleansed of tyranny and oppression begins with the fight against tyrants and oppressors in the here and now. https://socialistworker.org/2018/04/24/will-the-trump-tower-of-corruption-topple
Source number twelve reminds of Trump’s slaying of political correctness and the fact that more people felt they were better off under Trump than Obama, if we are to believe direction of country polls, among other things: Liz Peek: Trump’s four years – productive, contentious, energetic and … fun. Let's review It is hard to imagine that President Trump will soon leave office. His presidency has been so big, so full of energy and purpose, that it seems almost impossible that it will come to an end. Trump supporters are angry, yes, that the election was unfair, and, many think, dishonest. They are also sad, knowing they may never again elect a president more dedicated to protecting their interests and so ready to take on the intolerant liberal mob. JASON CHAFFETZ: MELANIA TRUMP HAS BEEN AN OUTSTANDING FIRST LADY — LIBERAL MEDIA HAVE TREATED HER UNFAIRLY To be sure, he is not done. Just recently, President Trump signed off on two new rules that remove water restrictions, allowing people to take more satisfying showers and buy dishwashers that actually do the job. Of course, the environmental lobby was outraged. It was a classic Trump move, heartening to those who rebel against the expanding and intrusive role of the federal government, and offensive to our woke overlords. For four years, the president has tackled one issue after another, some big, some small – like the water rules – using common sense and sheer orneriness to buck the system. Not being a creature of the "swamp," Trump entered the Oval Office four years ago prepared to challenge everything. For four years, he did just that, perpetually riling the Establishment. For example, Trump questioned why we allow tens of thousands of people to stream illegally across our southern border every year, which no country should permit. Rather than ignore the problem, Trump looked for solutions, ultimately demanding that Mexico keep asylum seekers in their country while they await their hearings, and working with governments in Central America as well. In the face of enormous opposition, Trump also began to build a wall, to narrow the places along our nearly 2,000-mile divide where gang members or coyotes could steal across. The flood of caravans heading north from Central America slowed to a trickle. In his very first year, Trump also focused on undoing the damage done by the regulatory zeal of the Obama-Biden crew. He issued 17 executive orders, his Cabinet officials made 96 agency decisions, and Republicans in Congress revoked 14 recently issued regulations and passed three laws that canceled Obama-era rules and policies concerning the environment, labor law, civil rights, government reform and a host of other issues. Over the next three years, Trump never let up. In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency replaced Obama’s signature climate bill, the massively disruptive Clean Power Plan (CPP), with the Affordable Clean Energy law. The CPP directed states to adopt "green" measures in their power industries so that by 2030 the country’s overall power plant emissions would drop 32% below 2005 levels. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained at the time that "The CPP would have asked low- and middle-income Americans to bear the costs of the previous administration’s climate plan… One analysis predicted double-digit electricity price increases in 40 states under the CPP." Such is the cost of meeting the goals set under the Paris Climate Accord. Trump is reviled by climate warriors, but protecting one of our greatest geopolitical competitive advantages – our abundant and cheap energy -- was the right thing for our country. Some of the changes Trump made, on labor practices and immigration, for example, won’t last; many will be challenged in court. But the outcomes of those legal battles will benefit from President Trump’s appointment of more than 227 conservative judges to federal courts, more than a quarter of the total, including three associate justices of the Supreme Court. Those mostly young judges will make a lasting contribution to protecting our Constitution; given the extent to which our freedom of speech, in particular, is under attack today, nothing could be more important. Trump’s achievements in foreign affairs include the historic Abraham Accords, which forged first-ever diplomatic relations between Israel and a number of Arab states, ring-fencing Iranian belligerence in the Middle East. Trump also took a harder line against ISIS, freeing our troops to crush the caliphate, which they did in short order. Most important, President Trump confronted China, exposing and demanding an end to their unfair trade practices, massive theft of American know-how and persistent human rights abuses. In thrall to Big Business and Big Tech, previous presidents turned a blind eye to the rising threat from Beijing; Trump did not. No wonder China hoped for a Joe Biden presidency. As for accusations that Trump has been soft on Russia, the charge is as dishonest as the Russiagate hoax. Unlike Obama, Trump sent lethal weapons to Ukraine to help in their battle against Russia, closed consulates in Seattle and San Francisco, threw dozens of suspected Russian spies out of the country and imposed sanctions on Moscow. More important, Trump’s enthusiastic backing of our oil and gas industries helped drive oil prices down, wreaking havoc on Russia’s economy. If the climate zealots succeed in hobbling our energy businesses, it will be a great gift to both Russia and China. Over four years, Trump brought home hostages, revamped important trade deals, rebuilt the military, boosted school choice, created nearly half a million manufacturing jobs before the virus hit, and pushed through major tax cuts. In February of this year, before COVID-19 hit, 45% of Americans told Gallup they were satisfied with the direction of the country, a higher level than ever recorded during Obama’s eight years. Additionally, in a recent poll, 56% of the country says they are better off than they were four years ago. Only 50% said that at the end of Obama’s presidency. Trump has presided over a remarkably productive and, many think, extremely successful four years. Those years have also been, at times, chaotic and disruptive, marked by some false steps as well as unprecedented opposition from the liberal media and dishonest Democrats. For his supporters, patriots from all walks of life fed up with political correctness and the censorious Left, the Trump presidency has been a breath of fresh air. It has also been – dare I say it? – great fun. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-presidency-productive-contentious-energetic-fun-liz-peek
Actually, I see @Tony Stark skillfully triggering a troll. Trump lost. Tony's guy won. It was and is obvious that this thread was started by a troll still upset over the election results. Instead of ignoring this irrelevant thread, Tony is having some fun.
Trump is still our President and alternative media will continue to gain market share. Whether Republican politicians ever get their sheet together, that is another matter.