timorl @timorl@qoto.org

Amazing piece made by Fatygi (my friend's roommate). The description is in Polish, it was provided by the author and I don't feel worthy translating it.

CC BY-NC. #StrajkKobiet

Finally a reasonably sized container of peanut butter.

@freemo
Final note

I restricted myself to only instances where I believe Trump damages the democratic and rule of law systems in the US, specifically omitting other policy. That is due to the fact that I believe the continued
adherence to these systems of checks and balances is crucial for the continued wellbeing of a nation, without them it risks sliding rapidly into authoritarianism. There are still rational reasons to vote for the man (the closest to my heart being the fact that he did not start any new wars), but I struggle to imagine a reasonable person choosing them over democratic standards. Again, I am not a US citizen, so the impact
on me is limited and unclear whether bad or good (legitimizing dismantling democracy vs an actually more isolationist US foreign policy), so I would mostly like to learn whether the above beliefs arose due to propaganda or they are actually correct.

Thanks for any answers, but please don't feel pressured if you have better things to do or are sick of the topic.

@freemo
Five: Endorsements of violence and extremism

The most relevant example is still fresh -- the "I LOVE TEXAS!" tweet with the video of trucks surrounding a Biden campaign bus.
There were many earlier examples too, the "fine people on both sides" comment, "stand back and stand by" directed towards a militant group, the main reaction to the Michigan kidnapping attempt being criticizing the attempted victim (and afaik no actual condemnation of the attempt?).

I am not completely sure that I have all the facts right in these cases, in particular as to how dangerous the various endorsed groups are, but at least the first one is very clear-cut. I looked at the context of the statements and it ranges from somewhat lessening the impact, but still bad (with the both sides comment) to actually worse (with the "stand by" comment). I would have this point higher, since political violence is a very serious thing, but it is known that Trump says whatever his saliva brings to his tongue (to borrow an expression from my native language), so hopefully the impact of his words is lessened by fewer people taking him seriously. This is, however, quite a terrible excuse.

@freemo
Four: Appointments by decree

This one I'm actually very unsure about, but it's not topic, and learning that I am wrong would be useful. Supposedly Trump appointed multiple people as "Acting $POSITION", bypassing Senate confirmations. By itself this is not a problem, but the claim is that this happened to significantly more positions than in previous administrations and for a longer time without the confirmation.
What is surprizing and especially suspicious to me is that the current
senate is generally aligned with the president, so why would he even do that? This is both suspicious in the sense that I'm less inclined to trust what I think I know of this case, as well as in the sense of arousing suspicion of foul play if it actually happened.

@freemo
Three: Profiteering and corruption

There are a couple really obvious cases, like the military planes being re-routed to Trump properties, or him suggesting a G7 summit should happen at his resort. There are also less clear ones, like the Saudis renting rooms at Trump's hotel, which I would label as coincidental normally, but the brazen ones plus the lack of transparency I mentioned before raises my priors for foul play.

The blatant profiteering seems pretty clear-cut, the actual political corruption less so. Again, maybe I lack knowledge about the US system, but I was under the impression at least the two former points were clearly illegal.

@freemo
Two: Lowering transparency

I am a bit biased towards the importance of transparency, hence the high position on the list. I believe it is crucial for any system
we want to keep working to be transparent, and complicated ones like
politics are especially sensitive in this regard.

This is somewhat connected to the first point, discouraging people from testifying, but it is much more prevalent. The refusal to publish taxes returns is the poster boy for this issue, but there are also White House visitor logs, the significant increase in rejected FOIA requests, and, most recently, the restrictions to access of COVID-19 data.

I am much less sure about this point than the previous, especially the FOIA part -- I would be very surprized if the media lied about the increase, but the ones I was able to find didn't specify whether the total number of requests also increased. That data is not easy to query (sic), but checking a couple of data points on the foia.gov web page seems to confirm the claims -- the increases in the number of requests seemed in line with previous years and lower than the claimed increases in rejections.

@freemo
One: Obstruction of justice

Trump took multiple actions to hinder the Mueller investigation, including firing and pressuring people to resign, publicly verbally attacking people who cooperated with authorities, and ordering his subordinates to thwart the investigation in various ways.

The Wikipedia page on the Mueller report provides a reasonable overview of the situation, but the report itself is obviously the main source, and I have read significant fragments of it (but not everything).

This issue seems like an obvious abuse of power to me, and the facts associated with it are mostly a matter of public record, so I don't think I am a victim of propaganda in these regards (although I am open to somehow being wrong here). If I were to guess what I might be getting wrong -- maybe this is not unusual for US politics, and such abuses of power are normal there? And in this case the propaganda only highlighted Trump's abuses to me, despite them being a common occurrence?

Hi @freemo

I saw you claiming that you prefer Trump to Biden for US president, which surprized me as I was under the impression that Trump is so bad for democratic & rule of law standards that no reasonable person valuing these things could support him. I also saw you point out some anti-Trump propaganda that was just factually wrong, so you seem to be knowledgeable in that matter. Since I am now wondering whether my views are just a result of such propaganda I was hoping you could verify some of the things that led me to my conclusions.

I am not a US citizen and this exercise is mostly for anti-propaganda calibration purposes for me. You seem to enjoy this kind of discussion, but I know that you are a busy man, so I won't assume a lack of response to have big significance. I will still be grateful for any you give.

Thread follows, ordered by a combination of severity and how sure I am of specific claims.