Trump 2020: Be Very Afraid 

America is the first country to ever elect a Mad King, and the way things are going, we may be dumb enough to do it twice..... By  Matt Taibbi

Early evening, August, Cincinnati. The Queen City’s many bridges are sealed off, its sky is dirty with helicopters, and seemingly every cop for 100 miles is patrolling Pete Rose Way along the Ohio River. A crowd of 20,000 or more stands in punishing heat, waiting to enter U.S. Bank Arena. The evil rumor buzzing down the line of MAGA hats is that not everyone will get in to see Donald Trump. 

“Can we just get in for a minute?” complains a boy of about 10 to his mother. There are a lot of kids here. 

Donald Trump doesn’t visit Middle America. He descends upon it. His rallies are awesome spectacles. Gawkers come down from the hills. If NASA traveled the country holding showings of the first captured alien life-form, the turnout would be similar. The pope driving monster trucks might get this much attention.

Almost everyone in line is wearing 45 merch. Trump is the most T-shirtable president in history, and it’s not even close. Trumpinator tees are big (“2020: I’LL BE BACK”), but you’ll also see Trump as Rambo (complete with headband, ammo belt, and phallic rocket-launcher), Trump as the Punisher (a Trump pompadour atop the famous skull), even Trump as Superman (pulling his suit open to reveal a giant T).

Slogans include “Trump 2020: Grab ’em by the Pussy Again!” and the ubiquitous “Trump 2020: Fuck Your Feelings.”

One merch hawker — an African American man with a visor, wraparound sunglasses, and spiked, dyed-white hair — is snaking through the crowd, pushing a T-shirt: “Donald Fuckin’ Trump.” On the back, the shirt reads “Bitch I’m the President!” “Five bucks for hats, 10 for tees!” he yells. “ ‘Bitch, I’m the president!’ ‘Make America great again!’ ”

“Four more years!” someone in the crowd yells back, to cheers.

Two and a half years into his presidency, Trump has already staked a claim to a role in history usually reserved for hereditary monarchs at the end of a line of inbreeding. Historians will list him somewhere between Vlad the Impaler and France’s Charles VI, who thought his buttocks were made of glass.

Much of America loves its Mad King, whose works are regularly on display. Russians under Ivan the Terrible used to watch dogs being hurled over the Kremlin walls when the tsar’s mood was bad. Americans have grown used to late-night insults tweeted at nuclear powers from the White House bedroom.

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Trump plan calls for nationwide concealed carry and an end to gun ban   By Katie Zezima   September 18, 2015 

Concealed Carry Gun Laws Going National  (video not connected to article)

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump -- who said he has a concealed carry permit -- called for the expansion of gun rights Friday, including making those permits applicable nationwide.

In a position paper published on his website Friday afternoon, Trump called for the elimination of gun and magazine bans, labeling them a "total failure."

"Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own," Trump wrote.

It's not a departure from what he's said on the trail this year, though it does mark a shift from a position he took in his 2000 book "The America We Deserve," where Trump stated that he generally opposes gun control but that he supported a ban on assault weapons and a longer waiting period to get a gun.

"Opponents of gun rights try to come up with scary sounding phrases like 'assault weapons', 'military-style weapons' and 'high capacity magazines' to confuse people," Trump wrote Friday. "What they’re really talking about are popular semi-automatic rifles and standard magazines that are owned by tens of millions of Americans."

Trump said in the paper he has a concealed carry permit. The permits, which are issued by states, should be valid nationwide like a driver's license, Trump said.

"If we can do that for driving -- which is a privilege, not a right -- then surely we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege," Trump said.

Trump has apparently had a handgun permit for years; a 1987 Associated Press story said he had one at the time.

The real estate magnate called for expanding mental health treatment, saying that people with mental health issues who are violent must be off the street "before they can terrorize our communities." Trump said the issue has been ignored.

"All of the tragic mass murders that occurred in the past several years have something in common – there were red flags that were ignored," Trump said. "And why does this matter to law-abiding gun owners? Once again, because they get blamed by anti-gun politicians, gun control groups and the media for the acts of deranged madmen."

Trump said when a tragedy happens gun control advocates will "immediately exploit it to push their political agenda," and that the solutions they propose would have prevented the shooting.

Trump said the current background check system needs to be overhauled because "very few criminals are stupid enough to try and pass a background check" and get their guns illegally. Trump said that criminal and mental health records also must be included in background checks.