The only guy left is the one that can’t be fired.
Really- what can Trump do to the Veep? Shut him out of meetings?
Hell - even if he tries to assign him crap duties - he can just refuse to do anything.
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Whether by design or chance (and as horrible as the subjects are), this photo is beautifully executed. The bodies and faces are angled around Pence’s face as if in a classic painting.
The bowed heads, averted gazes, genuflecting Spicer, Flynn’s outstretched arm… there’s a real Renaissance Jesus vibe.
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I hope they’re impeached together. At the same time a freak meteor shower buries Paul Ryan and Orrin Hatch in a hole that caves in Steve Bannon’s house in Hell. TFW you realize Rex Tillerson is the last best hope to reach 2020 without nuclear armageddon. I think I’m gonna hurl. We really need to find that brain bleach stat!
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Thats’ a fraud. That’s not Mike Hot-Pence, it’s Mike Hot Pants.
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Sure, when you crop out Trump, almost any photograph becomes better.
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Is Flynn holding a cigarette?
Now I’m wondering what’s actually in all those hanging file folders on IL DOUCHE’S desk - Mar-A-Lago dinner menus? Doctored golf scores? Blank pieces of paper?
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Looks like a pen.
I thought that the VP was solely there, constitutionally, to take over if the President suffered a dreadful fate. You don’t normally run mission critical tasks on standby servers.
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The Veep’s role has varied quite a lot over the course of its history and has largely been down to the discretion of the sitting President. This article gives a pretty good summary of it’s evolution.
The only official requirement though is for the VP to stay abreast of current intelligence briefings which mirror the President’s own in case the VP has to take over at a moments notice. That said, the President can still exclude the VP from receiving intel, which is why, for instance, Truman learned of the atomic bomb only after assuming office upon FDR’s untimely demise.
Given Trump’s blasé attitude towards his own briefings, Pence is probably more on top of what’s going on in the Executive than the President.
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Hard to say. More worrying is that he seems to have his hand on a ouija board planchette.
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More or less what I said. The VP’s official role is to be the hot standby server.
Problems come when, as with Cheney, the hot standby is the live server and the official server is only connected to 127.0.0.1
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By some accounts, Cheney exploited Dubya’s vacuity to manipulate him and that administration. But you can also have a VP like Biden or Gore, who took a more active role than was traditional for most of the office’s history, but took their lead from, as you say, the main server, instead of the other way around. My impression is that Pence has a similar relationship to Trump despite being more cunning than him, probably owing to Trump being more volatile than Dubya, but there’s no question that the standby server is the more competent one this time around.
Mind you I’m only commenting on the working relationship, not the character of the people. Gore and Biden were men of decent and good character who worked for competent leaders. Pence is, as we know, a Christofacist who works for a narcissistic clown.
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Servers are interchangeable pieces of equipment. Veeps are chosen because
they bring something to the ticket - usually. A state- a constituency
you’re weak in. A skill - youth if you’re old - age if you’re young.
Some become partners- like Biden. Who you can use for important tasks -
like working Congress on your agenda. Some are locked away because they’re
waiting for you to slip up. Some just hate each other.
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Indeed. Nixon didn’t care for Spiro Agnew, but thought his enemies were less likely to want Agnew to be president than himself. Part of me wonders if Bush’s handlers chose Cheney and if Pence was recommended to Trump in part for the same reason. Maybe that’s paranoid, but Sith do have a way of using their apprentices as shields and sacrificial lambs. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.
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It wasn’t intended to be a point for point analogy.
Though some people would insert the words “supposed to be” in there.
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Cheney was one of Bush’s handlers. He was the head of the committee to select Bush’s running mate during the 2000 campaign. That Cheney himself wound up with the job has more to do with Cheney wanting the job than anything else.
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Trump’s administration is some sort of a silly parody of Stalin’s reign. Mel Brooks take on the whole thing.
Truly history repeats itself twice. Once as a tragedy than second time as a farce.
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Who do you see in the Beria role?
Also, there’s an important difference. Stalin survived despite everything because not only did he control the four letter agency, an awful lot of Russians really believed in Communism and were determined to make it work. They didn’t know, because they were not allowed to know, that Stalin was a paranoid psychopath. Many of Trump’s supporters are wreckers. The people who oppose Trump are the ones who make society work. The situation is therefore very different and, I think, more likely to end in tears before bedtime.
Ah, please don’t read too much into my snarky comment. It was supposed to be a bit of humor. Sure things are different. That’s why I said silly parody and not a carbon copy.
