Anonymous's War on Trump Described as Successful and Disastrous (techinsider.io)

CitizensForTrump.com and the Trump Hotel Collection site reportedly went offline Friday, seeming to confirm threats made by the hacktivist collective Anonymous. But TechInsider is reporting that "The 'total war' that Anonymous declared earlier this month against Donald Trump has devolved into a war among hackers fighting within the group and pro-Trump supporters who are trolling them within their chat rooms." They describe two warring factions within the group's anti-Trump movement, also quoting CloudFlare's CEO as saying denial of service attacks "are sort of the functional equivalent of a caveman with a club." But while Trump has warned that law enforcement officials are pursuing the attackers, one Anonymous member unequivocally announced that still more attacks were planned. "This is NOT the last time you hear of this operation. We will be watching, and will act when the time is right."

Comments

Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, anonymous. I was worried that Trump wasn't getting enough media attention; I almost started remembering there are other candidates.
Pro Trump, Anti Trump, Trump Trump, Trump? Trump! TRUMP TRUMP TRUPM TRUPMUTRPRATRRUEMMP

Re: How about Ted Cruz?

[WarJolt]

The perceived danger of Trump in a 4 years term is worse than the actual danger. He'll be fighting against establishment Republicans in congress and ALL Democrats. Without that support, he'll have a hard time abusing his executive powers like many of our Presidents have. One dangerous thing about him is he calls people on their shit, which is ironically what Anonymous is kinda known for. He's not even the front runner in the polls between Hillary and Trump.

Anonymous can waste their time on American politics, but this seems ridiculous when there are issues that inspire far more consensus. Also, Trump finds ways to turn negative actions against him into poll numbers, so I wonder how counter-productive this all is.

*with a tinfoil hat on head* Maybe this was all orchestrated by his campaign.

Re:Setting fire to the process

[jopsen]

All this "disrupt the process" behaviour is ridiculous.

Yeah, when I observe American politics this is what is broken, at every level, repeatedly...

The absolute inability of Americans to admit defeat in politics and then move on.. Instead you disrupt, derail and set fire to the process.
This is nothing new, it's been going on more extreme than ever throughout Obama's presidency... (I doubt he is to blame though).

And yet, the American voter is to blame for this, you've repeatedly voted for extremists this is what you get.

Presidential power(s) unrelated to congress

[fyngyrz]

The office of the president can exert power without the compliance of congress in the following areas:

1) Foreign policy
2) Arbitrary short term military action; "commander in chief" is not just a meaningless phrase
3) Executive orders (which is a pretty broad canvas to paint on...)

All of the above are potential sources of long term consequences in the areas of military action, social change, international trade and relations.

Having said that, I am very confident that no Republican of any stripe can win the presidency this time around. This is due to the torpedo-at-the-waterline that has been, and continues to be, Trump's effect on the Republican party. I see concern about presidential action by Republicans like Cruz and pseudo-Republicans such as Trump as something that be be safely deferred until the Republicans can rebuild their brand from the mess they've made out of it the last six years or so. I also suspect that will take them quite a while.

I do worry about having Clinton in there; she's Trump-lite as far as I'm concerned. It seems pretty clear from the media bias and the disruption of the Republican party's ability to be effective that it will be Clinton we end up with; the American public has a consistent history of going with what the media tells them. For a while, I nursed some hope that the ability to do one's own research becoming available to most via the Internet would change this, but I have seen very few such signs, and it's been around long enough that I think they would have been easily obvious by now if they were actually there.

Sanders still has a chance; but the odds are, at the very least, quite seriously stacked against him.

I'm most interested in the next iteration of congressional elections. Last time around, voter satisfaction was 14%, and re-election rates were 94%. Recent polling puts satisfaction with congress at this point even lower at 11%; I keep asking myself if that might be enough to make people actually realize that the problem is congress in general, and not "the other representatives in congress." I'd like to think so, but last election's set of numbers doesn't make me optimistic about it at all.

Interesting times, anyway.

Re:Presidential power(s) unrelated to congress

[Greyfox]

Satisfaction with Congress won't do much good if there's not a viable replacement. Democrats are probably not going to kick a Democrat out of office and Republicans are probably not going to kick a Republican out of office. Third party candidates will continue to see single-digit numbers in the polls, if they are lucky. IIRC one of the more popular third parties in the last state election here got .6% of the vote. And that's in a state where Independents outnumber Democrats and Republicans, combined. Pretty much the only way you'll see a swing is if discouraged voters stay home and don't vote.

In Trump's case, if he doesn't get the nomination he can always take his toys and his racist followers and screw up the presidential election for the Republicans. Depending on how vindictive he's feeling, he could also screw up the Congressional ones for them. Seems like a shitty position for Republican leadership to be in, but that's kind of what they get for not taking him seriously six months ago and coming up with some more appetizing candidates. I mean really, another Bush, the chick who drove HP into the ground and a handful of other bland dudes that no one likes very much? Fuck those guys.

Oh well, at least we know with Trump's popularity that it's the people speaking and not the money of a couple of cocks from Witicha. No matter how much money gets involved and no matter how shady the back room dealings are, it won't be enough to affect the course of this election.