via Business Insider:
[…] But walls and tunnels are simple things that, hopefully, the electorate will eventually grasp without coaching.
Of far greater concern to me is Trump’s grasp of technology.
The first photo that I saw of Donald Trump at work alerted me to a potential issue. There was not a single laptop, pad or other smart device anywhere on his desk. Given the fact that my own office, and the offices of everyone that I know are virtually littered with active screens, I found this to be odd in the extreme.
PJ,
The gravamen of McAfee’s argument for himself as the ideal presidential candidate is precisely that:
1) He positions cyber security as the central issue of this presidential election; and
2) He positions himself as the only expert on the subject in a field consisting entirely otherwise of, to steal your phrasing, tech-illiterates.
In other words, he understands the importance of cyber security, they don’t. He knows what to do about it, they don’t.
That’s his argument, and Trump was not the first target of that argument (he hit Jeb Bush on it first).
Since everyone seems to think I’m in the tank for McAfee, perhaps this would be a good time and place for me to shoot holes in the argument.
It’s hard to shoot holes in his argument that he’s the most tech-literate of the candidates. The only other candidate I can think of who has a real background in tech is Carly Fiorina, and that background seems to consist of 1) nearly destroying Hewlett Packard and 2) helping the US intelligence community with hardware infrastructure to improve its illegal domestic surveillance operations. So I’m just going to let his first point stand. Yes. McAfee is the tech guy in the race and probably has a much better handle on the technical aspects and possibly apocalyptic dangers of cyber warfare.
But the second claim — that he knows best what to do about it — ranges beyond the technical and into the political. While his ideas on the subject are probably better than any of those proposed by the “major party” candidates, it’s my opinion that those ideas would be much better (and much more practical) if they were more … well, libertarian.
In fact, I so publicly advised him. I don’t know whether or not he’s noticed.
Of course, whether he’s noticed or not, unless he actually takes the advice there’s no good reason why some other aspirant to the LP’s nomination couldn’t take the fight to him on his own banner issue. I’m dangling the keys to the car. Anyone wanna grab them and take it out for a spin?
I have no love for Trump, but suggesting that he’s tech-illiterate is kind of a hard sell. The guy’s on Twitter constantly, and seems to get social media.
It’s 2015. Under the pretext of an imminent ISIS attack, Republican Presidential candidates called for a war on on American Islamites. Marco Rubio wants to close Islamic mosques, cafes, and internet sites. Ben Carson wants to plant government spies in mosques, schools, press corps, and churches that espouse positions he dislikes. Donald Trump wants a government data base that tracks every American Moslem. Ted Cruz wants to ban immigration by Moslems. Donald Trump and Ben Carson called for the ultimate in surveillance enhancement: Torture via waterboarding.
Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. The refuge situation, where they are using federal resources (aka tax dollars) to bring people to our shores from a country where the odds are quite high that the “bad guys” from any one of a number of organizations have seeded the refugee pool with their supporters, is one that most libertarians could agree is dangerous. Forget the fact that we gave them the weapons to start their war, propped up and then took down quite a few regimes in the area, and generally meddled in things that aren’t our business.
But Trump has said on several occasions that he wants all Muslims prevented from traveling to our country. All. That’s a little bit different from what you’ve written, and a quick google search will show you that he has said this in interviews as recently as last month.
But I certainly won’t disagree with your assessment that some of his opponents are actually worse on some issues. I could never see myself supporting any of them (in either party), with the possible exception of Rand Paul if he could ever wake up and move quite a few more degrees into the libertarian quadrant.
Stewart,
I view him as considerably less alarming than his opponents, meaning that his opponents are even crazier.
At the time Trump wanted a temporary hold on Islamites entering the United States, from certain foeign countries, some of his opponents had for more vitriolic positions, not to mention that the rest of them are all forced-birthers.
I still believe that he’s just playing games. He is getting an insane amount of PR out of this, for very little expense or effort. He’s been in the Clinton’s pocket for years. If you look at his positions, historically he’s more of a hawk democrat than anything else — or at least that’s my take on it.
All his speeches are full of insults aimed toward his opposition in his own party. He talks about poll numbers during stump speeches, rather than actually tell voters what he’d do if elected!
Everyone I’ve talked to , democrat, republican, libertarian or “whatever”, are all scared of him. That’s why I believe it is possible that he’s just a straw man, with a goal of getting the Clintons back in the White House.
Could be wrong of course, but whether he is or isn’t he is dangerous. And crazy!
I agree, Stewart. Trump is so over-the-top that he’s sabotaging the GOP (not that they don’t deserve it).
Trump is now claiming that he could kill someone and not lose a single vote. He is sick and dangerous. Cruz is just as bad. The Republicans are going to hand this to Clinton, who is the real Hitler in the bunch.
sc: Trump listens to no one
me: That’s the story, at least. I’d say it shows, and not in a good way. Autocracy might work in business (although it’s not been my experience), but Trump’s approach could be unimaginably disastrous if he actually wins.
Statecraft involves so many more variables than business. OTOH, he does talk about bringing smart people into his administration to do things like trade deals, so perhaps he might govern differently.
It’s unimportant to me, but I do note that both Sanders and Bloomberg are Jewish. That would be a first for the top of the ticket, with Lieberman being the first Jewish veep candidate of the majors.
To give Ls their propers, Nathan was the first Jewish person to get an electoral vote. And Marrou is Jewish, but I don’t think he made that widely known. In fact, he told me during his presidential campaign that he spoke to a Jewish organization without telling them of his being a Jew, since he felt that would be pandering.
Also of some note, should any of them win (Trump, Clinton, Sanders, and Bloomberg), all would be 70+ during most of their administrations, should they stay in office all 4 years. This is an older crowd.
Paulie, most of your comments above are just made up bullshit. The kicker for me was the “huge staff” for approving posts on Twitter. Trump barely has a staff at all, much less a “Twitter staff.”
So calling bullshit on you in full. You can’t use completely fabricated facts and maintain credibility on an issue.
Trump listens to no one and his campaign manager is a solid “yes” man so there’s really no reason to have a staff outside of logistics, accounting, etc.
And related to Hitler? Really dude?
Donald Trump’s daughter married a Jew and converted to Judaism. Donald Trump has spoken to the Republican Jewish Coalition and was cheered wildly.
Continued:
Was it all just a mistake? This isn’t the first time that Donald Trump has retweeted messages from NeoNazis.
On Twitter, when you retweet someone else’s message, it’s like bringing that person up on stage with you for a photo opportunity, and shaking their hand. It’s a declaration that you are willing to be associated with that person. People who use Twitter know that you don’t retweet material from people you disagree with – unless you write a message along with it explicitly disagreeing with that material.
Donald Trump has a huge staff dedicated to his tuning his campaign message on places like Twitter. That staff has seen fit, with almost a full day to review the decision, to not distance Donald Trump from the racist NeoNazi white supremacism of @WhiteGenocideTM.
That’s not where the story ends, however. What’s even more disturbing is that Donald Trump’s supporters aren’t repudiating his association with the most extreme, hateful fringes of the Republican Party. They’re cheering it on. They know very well that Donald Trump is no moderate, and they love him for it.
Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign isn’t dangerous just because of Trump’s own racist right wing extremism. It’s dangerous because it’s serving as a rallying cry for the most bigoted, intolerant, group of voters in the country. The Trump for President campaign is serving as a beacon for those Americans who are sick of the Bill of Rights, and want to put women, Jews, Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims, and anyone else who isn’t like them, back in their place.
It’s a fascist campaign, and the movement of hatred that it is inspiring is a danger to American society.
For the record, I’m not calling for a politically correct censorship of Donald Trump, or of @WhiteGenocideTM and Trump’s other NeoNazi supporters.
I believe in freedom of speech.
Donald Trump and @WhiteGenocideTM have the right to say what they’re saying.
I have the right to say that what they are saying is vile, dangerous, and in direct opposition to the democratic values represented by our nation’s Constitution.
-Peregrin Wood at Irregular Times (and I agree – paulie)
Since I may or may not ever get around to making it a post here it is as a comment.
This one may take some explaining if we post it:
1) Trump has been a registered independent in the past, and once was briefly a candidate for the Reform Party nomination. He is currently leading the field for the Republican nomination, but has not ruled out running as an independent if the forces in the Republican Party that oppose him figure out a way to do so. It’s not exactly a secret that most of the neo-nazi, racist and fascist and white supremacist (bowel) movement is avidly behind Trump. Trump welcomes their support and has retweeted their stuff before and has now done it again. The policies for rounding up, deporting, fencing off, interning in prison camps, tracking, stopping at the borders, bombing “the shit out of,” torturing, closing the houses of worship of, etc., millions of people, and the fascist Nuremberg style rallies, that Trump is best known for, are straight out of Hitler’s Germany and Trump reportedly had a book of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside according to his ex-wife.
2) The ludicrous “white genocide” campaign/meme/”mantra” was started by Bob Whitaker, who is currently the presidential candidate of the “American” “Freedom” Party. Which would of course be better known as a EuroFascist Party despite the Orwellian euphemism in its name. The AFP has been making robocalls for Trump instead of their own presidential candidate. And now Trump is returning the favor by retweeting the “White Genocide” campaign of lies which originated with the leadership of the AFP.
3) I have seen a separate story about how Trump recently also retweeted a cartoon of himself pushing the button to gas Bernie Sanders in a gas chamber. I did not see the cartoon, only read the description. Sanders is a Jew and a socialist, which are two groups of people that the original nazis rounded up and gassed. Apparently Trump is no longer completely covert about his plans to do the same thing again in America and gas Jews and socialists along with the other groups of millions of people he is leading a campaign of hate against and stroking the fires of racism, other kinds of hate, and potential and actual violence against. Sanders is currently running a surprisingly plausible campaign for the Democratic nomination, and may be leading in Iowa and New Hampshire; the scandal-plagued Mrs. Clinton could collapse. Sanders has in the past been elected as an independent, and before that was involved with the Progressive and Liberty Union parties, while even now continuing to call himself a socialist.
4) Mike Bloomberg has threatened to run as an independent if the two biggest parties pick Trump and Sanders as their nominees (or if it’s Trump or Cruz vs. a much weakened Hillary Clinton). Like Trump, Bloomberg is a billionaire New Yorker who has been an independent, Democrat and Republican at various points, and has been the subject of speculation about an independent or third party presidential run several times in the past. Like Sanders, Bloomberg is a Jew (and Sanders is also originally from NYC as well). Bloomberg is certainly no socialist, however; as a financial services billionaire he is as capitalist as they get. It will be interesting to see if Trump should happen to find himself in a three way race against Bloomberg and Sanders whether he will approvingly retweet a cartoon of himself pushing the gas chamber button to gas both Sanders and Bloomberg, both socialist Jews and capitalist Jews alike, much like his role model (and purportedly also his cousin), Adolf Hitler.
I disagree, and provided ample evidence for the comparison in the open thread.
“To be blunt about it why in the hell is he on IPR? ”
Well, let’s see:
1) “IPR is dedicated to covering America?s third parties and independent candidates”
2) McAfee is a third party presidential candidate.
Hope that clears things up.
Good attempt by McAfee to get some attention with an observation.
I think it’s great Trump doesn’t have a computer in his office (and that is his working office).
There are no Macs or PC’s in the Oval Office either (Obama uses an iPad).
It’s the old school way of doing things but with the right staff efficiency climb as you have singular focus without that portal of distraction. Given Trump’s a bit ocd, the dude would hit refresh on the polling sites 100,000 times a day if he did have a computer — and would never get anything done.
George,
“The observation that all around the world people can build tunnels is also ill-considered. A mile-long tunnel that took a prolonged time to build and can carry a few people is basically irrelevant to the “problem” that Trump proposes to “fix”. It is like the people who escaped from East Germany via hang glider, etc. These were brilliant and heroic efforts, but from the point of the East German fascists irrelevant. Their wall was intended to prevent large scale demographic shifts via mass emigration, and it was totally successful at attaining that demented goal. The wall cut population movements a hundred or a thousand fold. Trump’s wall has the same objective, namely blocking large-scale demographic shifts.”
That is an impressive observation.
To be blunt about it why in the hell is he on IPR? That is what I was going to ask but decided to be a bit, yeah just a bit, more diplomatic. Fuck it! Next time I’ll just be blunt and rude..
If I had to guess, I’d guess that Trump has a “public” office where he greets visitors and such. It has a huge “I Love Me Wall” full of awards and photos and certificates, and a big, important-looking, paper-littered desk.
He also has a private office with three large-screen TVs to follow news on and a state of the art computer with three monitors, where he actually works.
Comparing Trump and Hitler is daft.
Why should Jews in Germany have cared about Hitler in 1933?
The attentive viewer will look at the Trump side face of the desk, directly to Trump’s right, at the end of the desk, and notice under the piece of art a grey slab that looks remarkably like a piece of electronistical stuff.
Readers might be more concerned that Mr Trump’s empire seems too be a tad short of filing cabinets and book shelves…note half-wall behind him. One might propose that the image has been posed, with pieces of artwork arranged to cover up the actual documents…the desk appears to have no working area.
The observation that Trump does not type his own letters, whether sent via paper or electronically, is simply good business sense. Like executives for the last century+, Trump mostly does not do his own typing. He dictates or sketches the letter, the senior people or Executive Secretary type it, someone else proofs it and checks the text, perhaps legal offices inspect matters, and the letter is then passed back to the executive for a final inspection and signature.
The observation that all around the world people can build tunnels is also ill-considered. A mile-long tunnel that took a prolonged time to build and can carry a few people is basically irrelevant to the “problem” that Trump proposes to “fix”. It is like the people who escaped from East Germany via hang glider, etc. These were brilliant and heroic efforts, but from the point of the East German fascists irrelevant. Their wall was intended to prevent large scale demographic shifts via mass emigration, and it was totally successful at attaining that demented goal. The wall cut population movements a hundred or a thousand fold. Trump’s wall has the same objective, namely blocking large-scale demographic shifts.
Well, at least he wouldn’t be sending emails from a personal computer–or, would he?
This is an interesting thing to note. Trump is older, and he didn’t grow up with computers. He strikes me as the kind of guy that has to look brilliant at everything he does. His ego might not allow him to do something he isn’t good at, like learning computers from a much younger person. So, he just doesn’t do them hardly at all.
This is, of course, an undesirable trait, and would go along with what I understand of a narcissist person.
> Why should we even give a damn about Trump?
Because people want to know more about Donald Trump. Because John McAfee wants people to read about Donald Trump and learn more about himself.
I do agree.
Why should we even give a damn about Trump?