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[sluissa]

If Trump gets two full, otherwise uninterrupted, terms...  How does the next guy follow that?  I mean, apart from with a shovel and a bucket, to benefit the Whitehouse Rose Garden...

Or then there's still the prospect of...

Taco Bell 2024

Edit: Thought this out...

With corporate personhood on the rise and the re-election of a living brand and reality tv star corporations established within the united states more the 35 years ago start considering throwing their hat in the ring. It starts with Wal-mart and McDonalds, both of which have moderate success. But over the last 8 years a dark horse has been pulling up from the rear. With Donald Trump's expulsion of nearly all people of Mexican descent from the United States, Taco Bell has become the desperate fallback of those wanting a tortilla wrapped meat and cheese concoction. Profits surge across the country and with a warchest bursting at the seams, they enter the race, soundly trampling the more well known brands with their attached baggage. Wal-mart has their criminally low wages and poor working conditions which lose the vote of the labor pool (no longer called unions, that word being banned from all printed material (including the constitution)). McDonalds still reels to this day from their hot coffee scandal and the now completely false ideas that they mistreat their chicken stock. (Truth be told, in the year 2024, none of their meat products come from natural sources anymore and can only be classified as meat anymore under the vaguest of terms. Although their fish sandwiches are still real, for lack of demand keeps them from pursing a change that'd save them negligible amounts of money.)

So Taco Bell, long the cheap, hearty, plentiful food of the working people. And now the only source of anything even vaguely considered mexican cuisine, Taco Bell the corporation, becomes our new President in 2024 with mildly fecal metaphors of cleaning out the bowels of Washington. A result they're admittedly good at from a digestive standpoint.

[smjjames]

If Trump gets two full, otherwise uninterrupted, terms...  How does the next guy follow that?  I mean, apart from with a shovel and a bucket, to benefit the Whitehouse Rose Garden...

Or then there's still the prospect of...

Taco Bell 2024

Yeah, since corporations are people, why not have a corporation run for president? /heavy sarcasm

[ChairmanPoo]

  the Democrats will run a dark-haired white male named Paul 

[Reelya]

Pretty sure Trump's "Obama wiretap" accusations are actually related to the strange traffic from that one Trump server to those Russian banks, and also pretty sure that the Whitehouse had nothing to do with discovering that.

[martinuzz]

I know Obama denied doing so, but wouldn't he have been in his full right, if not even obliged to do so? A president is supposed to protect his citizens from all threats foreign and domestic, and I'd say allegations of a presidential candidate being a Russian puppet would have obliged president Obama to order the services to look into it, even if that does include wiretaps. It's would have been his presidential duty to do so.

[smjjames]

I know Obama denied doing so, but wouldn't he have been in his full right, if not even obliged to do so? A president is supposed to protect his citizens from all threats foreign and domestic, and I'd say allegations of a presidential candidate being a Russian puppet would have obliged president Obama to order the services to look into it, even if that does include wiretaps. It's would have been his presidential duty to do so.

He'd have to get a judges okay on it first, he couldn't just say 'lets put a wiretap on this guy', he'd need to go through all the legal steps. There is law that protects US citizens from that kind of thing.

Even if he wanted people to look into it, he still has to abide by the law.

On what Reelya said, I thought the bank stuff was the FBI doing it, not Obama ordering the wiretaps or anything.

Still, if Obama DID get a legal wiretap on Trump or his associates, that implies that there is something incredibly damning and proof enough to get a wiretap.

[Starver]

The pattern tends to be that Trump throws out a wild accusation about some rival, and then a not entirely untrustworthy source finds good evidence that Trump already did more or less the thing he had just accused the rival of.

Not every time, but makes one wonder if this is one of those times...  It'll be interesting to see what comes out in the wash.

[smjjames]

Still, some in Congress are saying that they'll check it out. The burden of proof is supposed to be on the Whitehouse, but now that the WH is refusing to comment more on it, Congress seems to be like 'Okay, we generally think this is BS, but we'll take a cursory look as part of the already ongoing investigation.'

I wonder if there will be any fallout from Republicans if Congress finds that Trump lied.....

[Starver]

I wonder if there will be any fallout from Republicans if Congress finds that Trump lied.....

That ship has already flown...

[WealthyRadish]

Is the word "lie" being brought out yet? I've only heard reporters use terms like "inconsistent", "misinformation", and "false". Something about lying implying intent, and possibly leading to prosecution (but we all know Tronald wouldn't dream of suing anybody for libel).

[smjjames]

He's already been eroding political goodwill between himself and Congress anyhow.

Also, FBI director Comey asked the DoJ to publicly reject Trumps claim because the claim also makes him look bad, right after AG Sessions recused himself from anything having to do with Trump.

Original NYT article

Relevant snippet from the NYT article:

One problem Mr. Comey has faced is that there are few senior politically appointed officials at the Justice Department who can make the decision to release a statement, the officials said. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself on Thursday from all matters related to the federal investigation into connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia.

Is the word "lie" being brought out yet? I've only heard reporters use terms like "inconsistent", "misinformation", and "false". Something about lying implying intent, and possibly leading to prosecution (but we all know Tronald wouldn't dream of suing anybody for libel).

Not that I know of. Something about it being that the word is a powerful one and should be used with care or something. They did the same with Nixon I believe, read somewhere.

[sluissa]

I wonder if there will be any fallout from Republicans if Congress finds that Trump lied.....

That ship pig has already flown sailed...

FTFY

[PTTG??]

I really wonder how much Comey regrets helping Trump.

[smjjames]

Comey has also been rather cagey at Congress recently since he's been not wanting to answer questions in a hearing, even behind closed doors.

If it weren't for the fact that Trump is likely to replace him with his own choice should he step down, I think he should step down because he's too mired in the whole political stuff. I thought he was elected from among his peers or something though, wasn't sure how the FBI chief selection works.

[Baffler]

Wiretaps happened. That isn't even a secret, both of these make mention of wiretaps on Trump's people and a server in Trump Tower as the President says. It's only "baseless accusations" now that it didn't turn anything up and they need a new angle of attack.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-associates-investigation.html?_r=0

Mr. Manafort is among at least three Trump campaign advisers whose possible links to Russia are under scrutiny. Two others are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign, and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

By the way, the investigation turned up nothing.