A big stake
Today in Trump News –
Yesterday’s fascist rally in Michigan:
Thank you Michigan. We are going to bring back your jobs & together, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Watch: https://t.co/cJK323RDYl pic.twitter.com/JjhIdFXCGV— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2016
Again: this isn’t what presidents-elect do. They work hard to get up to speed on the job, they read intelligence briefings, they learn as much as they can. They don’t bounce around the country working up their fans.
Another thing presidents-elect and presidents don’t do: produce tv shows. The NY Times reports that Donnie from Queens will be executive producer of The Apprentice starting in January (funnily enough, the same month he takes over that other job).
President-elect Donald J. Trump is entering office with financial entanglements that are exotic and far-flung: a condominium project in Manila, a luxury furniture maker in Istanbul, golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, and a hotel in Azerbaijan.
But starting next month, Mr. Trump’s most visible business interest will be beamed directly into millions of American living rooms: “The Celebrity Apprentice” is back, and the president-elect is coming with it.
Just weeks before Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump will resume his role as an executive producer of the NBC reality show, an unlikely side project for a commander in chief, and one that is poised to bring him hundreds of thousands of dollars in income.
“Unlikely” is putting it gently. Wholly inappropriate would be a start.
“I think it’s weird,” said Newt Gingrich, a close campaign ally of Mr. Trump, holding back chuckles during a Fox News interview. “Donald J. Trump is going to be the executive producer of a thing called the American government. He is going to have this huge TV show called ‘Leading the World.’”
Added Mr. Gingrich: “I think he’s still going through some transition things here, where it hasn’t quite sunk in.”
Hmmm no. That level of not quite sinking in has to be called what it is: mind-numbingly stupid.
On Twitter though, Trump explained that he has nothing to do with The Apprentice, nothing at all, apart from a couple of tiny insignificant details.
I have NOTHING to do with The Apprentice except for fact that I conceived it with Mark B & have a big stake in it. Will devote ZERO TIME!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2016
He has nothing to do with it other than having a big stake in it. Oh well then, that’s different.
Is he so totally dim that he has no clue that the “big stake” is the problem? If Hillary Clinton had won, and had become an executive producer on, say, “Dancing with the Stars”, would he have been saying no problem? Or would he think that was inappropriate for a leader of the world? I think I know the answer to that one…I cheated, and peeked in the back of the book.
What does an “executive producer” do? Other than get their name on the credits?
I’m reminded of Idiocracy, where the President is a professional wrestler, the government has been purchased outright by large corporation, and all politics is basically a reality TV show.
Funny you should mention it – for head of the Small Business Administration he’s nominated a former chief executive of WWE – World Wrestling Entertainment. I’m not making it up.
I don’t see Trump’s connection to The Apprentice as a problem or conflict for Trump. It does strike me as a problem for NBC, especially its news division.
The issue isn’t whether it’s a problem for Trump, it’s whether it’s a problem for everyone who isn’t Trump.
I’m surprised he didn’t do The Apprentice: Cabinet Special.
Give him time, Acolyte. He hasn’t thought of it yet, because he’s having to work weekends just to get the cabinet in place. For those of us who have never had to work weekends, how could we possibly understand? (Just a joke; I have spent all day today, and will spend all day tomorrow, grading papers because there aren’t enough hours in the week. But pity poor Donald…he just isn’t used to that!)
Lucky old me got his weekends back on my semi-retirement. Shame I’m too knackered from all those years of working them to enjoy the buggers now I’ve got them.
“Lucky old me got
hismy weekends….”Bedtime, methinks. Goodnight.
What does that mean? At what cost? Why did the jobs go somewhere else in the first place if, indeed, they did? Why do you imagine those jobs are yours? And so on.
Politics have always been like this but I think it’s only recently that we’ve all so deliberately embraced empty promises with quite such abandon that we elect terrifying bullies like Trump and May. It’s like we expect the universe to somehow bail us out regardless of the terrible decisions we make, which causes us to make ever more terrible decisions.
How do we stop?
The other thing about that, latsot, is how many of those jobs simply don’t exist anymore. No one acknowledges the elephant in the room – many of the jobs that used to pay well are now done by computers, and more are going that direction every day. We are starting to computerize surgery now, and taxi drivers, and I have no doubt we will have teaching fully computerized soon, where no student will ever actually see a real live person guiding them through the minefields of learning.
Maybe it’s time to computerize our government officials?
Well this isn’t what I was talking about but you know what? You’re wrong. People talk about this elephant *all the time*. People have been talking about it since at least the industrial revolution. Nearly everyone has talked about it nearly every day since at least then.
Computers aren’t your enemy, just like mechanical looms were never anyone’s enemy.
Greedy people are.
Which was the point I was making.
Actually, I don’t think computers are my enemy. I do think an enemy is those who throw people out of work in favor of computers, and then expect those newly unemployed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and not be able to survive if they don’t miraculously find work doing a new job (sometimes at an age where they are no longer able to find a new job, because no one will hire them). In short, if we had a more sensible system where people could still survive even if thrown out of work, then computerization would not be such a big problem.
In short, I think we are saying the same thing – greedy people is the problem. The rich get richer by eliminating labor (sometimes without computers, by making a single person do the work of two); the poor don’t get anything. Our system is screwed up.
Yes, I think we agree.
Could Trump be computerised out of his looming presidential role? Is a computer of whatever degree of sophistication up to being POTUS?
That computer which took over in ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey’. Its name was HAL. Could it have been called DONALD? Or perhaps THE DONALD?
It might just be that the US voters, in both their minority and in their wisdom, have given the world a Frankenstein monster.
http://h7.alamy.com/comp/C4568E/adolf-hitler-speaks-during-the-cathedral-of-light-on-the-nuremberg-C4568E.jpg
I dunno, Trump just can’t do stuff with the raw style and power of Hitler. Sad.