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Trump 22: Not Even Poe Could Make This Shit Up


Destiny

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After ranting about Trump and his Nazi pals, I'm getting an ad here on FJ for a product that is supposed to get rid of "Super Lice". 

Well played, FJ, well played. :dance:

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@kayleighmcenany: "Everyone must unite behind the @POTUS and materialize on the promises we made to the American people."*

Screenshot 2017-08-15 at 8.29.29 PM.png

*Terrifying.  She channels the ghost of Sarah Palin.

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"Trump’s rhetorical ricochet on Charlottesville highlights basic truths about the president"

Spoiler

When President Trump’s supporters rail against efforts to rein in his unpredictable, provocative behavior, they often call on White House aides, news reporters and Republicans in Congress to “let Trump be Trump.”

But from Capitol Hill to the American heartland Tuesday night, the question was posed over and over again, “Which Trump?”

Was it the Trump who responded to calls from senators and ordinary citizens to “call evil by its name,” as Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) put it? Or was it the Trump who believes that he got where he is today by sticking to his guns and saying what no one else in public life would dare say?

The president’s rhetorical ricochet — from declining on Saturday to name the bad guys in the violent confrontation in Charlottesville to his muted acknowledgment Monday that neo-Nazis and white supremacists “are criminals and thugs” and then Tuesday to a classic doubling down on his original remarks — seemed almost perfectly designed to highlight some basic truths about Donald Trump: He does not like to be told what to say. He will always find a way to pull the conversation back to himself. And he is preternaturally inclined to dance with the ones who brought him.

As his top aides stood behind him in the lobby of Trump Tower Tuesday, looking like they were wondering whether it was possible to slide right into the pink marble, the president fielded questions about the aftermath of the Charlottesville confrontation between far-right marchers and those who protested against them.

Trump’s language and demeanor were about as different as possible from his formal White House statement the day before. In his remarks Monday, Trump stood stiffly and spoke in complete sentences, using measured, calm rhetoric of the sort that he’d never come up with himself: “Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America,” he said. “In times such as these, America has always shown its true character — responding to hate with love, division with unity, and violence with an unwavering resolve for justice.”

One day later, without teleprompter or script, Trump reverted to the kind of brash refusal to say what the establishment politicians demanding of him all weekend.

“The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement,” he said. Then, the man who takes deep pride in never backing off from anything, the man who believes that one must never show weakness by retreating from one’s words, went right back to where he’d started on Saturday.

Speaking about his Monday speech, he said that “second statement was made with knowledge, with great knowledge. There’s still things — excuse me,” he admonished a reporter who was interrupting him — “there’s still things that people don’t know.”

Just as he had on Saturday when he condemned violence “on many sides,” repeating that phrase for emphasis, Trump now used his Tuesday exchange with reporters to double down on the idea that blame should be directed at the left as well as the right.

“Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at — excuse me! — what about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right,” he said “Do they have any semblance of guilt?”

This was Trump unleashed, the Trump of the rallies, not the Trump of those stiff, scripted, stifling appearances with foreign leaders, those sessions where the president sits hunched over, his hands between his legs, puckering his lips, looking mightily uncomfortable, stuck with the lines put together for him by diplomats and aides who worry over every word.

Now, he was in his element, on his own, putting it right in the face of those who pester him constantly and poke fun at him on TV. “I’m not finished, fake news,” he told another interrupting reporter.

Trump has a long history of using phrases such as “on many sides” to deflect blame or to splinter any notion that he faces a united opposition. He likes to position himself as one solid, clear force lined up against a noisy, messy, unfocused opposition. In this case, although he had briefly characterized the offending party in the Virginia violence as far-right groups, he was now returning to his more typical construction, in which there was no reason to bash all of the marchers as right-wing extremists because some of them had a reasonable cause.

“I’ve condemned neo-Nazis,” Trump said. “I’ve condemned many different groups, but not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch … Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue of Robert E. Lee.”

But there were no chants about Gen. Lee on Friday night, when the far-right marchers carried their torches through the University of Virginia campus. The chants were about Jews and others who the marchers blame for their diminished role in American society.

The president said he’d now had the chance to take a very close look at what happened on the streets of Charlottesville, and so he would assume the role he most relishes — the truthteller who will say things that no one else will: “I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it, and you have — you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now.”

Trump said Tuesday that Saturday’s confrontation “was a horrible day.” And he made clear again that “the driver of the car” that plowed into pedestrians in Charlottesville “is a disgrace to himself, his family and this country.” But then the president turned to one of his favorite rhetorical tools, using casual language to strip away any definite blame, any clear moral stand, and instead send the message that nothing is certain, that everything is negotiable, that ethics are always situational.

“You can call it terrorism,” he said. “You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want.”

The author is correct. It boils down to: he doesn't want to be told what to do and he always brings it back to himself. Gee, just like a toddler.

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22 minutes ago, Howl said:

@kayleighmcenany: "Everyone must unite behind the @POTUS and materialize on the promises we made to the American people."*

Kayleigh you sack of honking shit how is that even close to English? There are countess languages and dialects with in those languages on this planet. For fucks sake pick one and learn how to speak!

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This is one of the strongest condemnations I've seen from Jennifer Rubin: "What did you expect from Trump?'

Spoiler

As we have noted, President Trump’s initial response to events is always the truest expression of his outlook. The scripts that follow are post-facto damage control by his staff and never stick. In the case of Trump’s remarks on the horrific events in Charlottesville — his third go-around — he not only undid his aides’ handiwork but also confessed the words he read on Monday didn’t represent his true views.

The Post reported: “First, he tried to argue that he initially hesitated to condemn the explicitly racist elements at Charlottesville only because he didn’t have enough information to do so.” When has Trump ever required facts to make an assertion? Indeed, after three days he decided that the facts as we all had seen them — neo-Nazis and white nationalists chanting anti-Semitic statements, bearing tiki torches, engaged in street battles, and one of their ilk committing an act of domestic terrorism, killing one and injuring dozens — didn’t really matter. He alone was convinced there was equivalence between the neo-Nazi and the protesters objecting to the white supremacist message. (“You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible,” he said. “And it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You’ve just called them the left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”) But only one side killed someone, right? Trump did not make that distinction.

But he did somehow intuit that not all the people marching with neo-Nazis and white supremacists were bad guys. “I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. … But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know — I don’t know if you know — they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit.” Really, which of the Confederate- and Nazi-flag bearers were innocent, peaceful and just good people?

And to top it off, he equated Robert E. Lee, who waged war against the United States and fought to continue enslavement of fellow-human beings, with George Washington. Plainly, the New York education system, Fordham University and Wharton School of Business have failed Trump, promoting him without ensuring that he possessed basic reasoning skills and a grasp of American history. But in these institutions’ defense, he is unteachable, we have learned.

Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) re-upped their condemnation, but mere words fall on deaf ears. Unless and until Republicans are willing to censure the president, withhold endorsement for a second term and vigorously pursue avenues for impeachment, they are wasting their breath and our time.

How bad was his press conference? Well, when you lose Fox News you might as well throw in the towel. (Fox News’s Kat Timpf declared, “It’s honestly crazy for me to have to comment on this right now because I’m still in the phase where I’m wondering if it was actually real life what I just watched. It was one of the biggest messes that I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe it happened. . . . It shouldn’t be some kind of bold statement to say, ‘Yes, a gathering full of white supremacist Nazis doesn’t have good people in it. Those are all bad people, period.’”

We  should be clear on several points. First, it is morally reprehensible to serve in this White House, supporting a president so utterly unfit to lead a great country. Second, John F. Kelly has utterly failed as chief of staff; the past two weeks have been the worst of Trump’s presidency, many would agree. He can at this point only serve his country by resigning and warning the country that Trump is a cancer on the presidency, to borrow a phrase. Third, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have no excuses and get no free passes. They are as responsible as anyone by continuing to enable the president. Finally, Trump apologists have run out of excuses and credibility. He was at the time plainly the more objectionable of the two main party candidates; in refusing to recognize that they did the country great harm. They can make amends by denouncing him and withdrawing all support. In short, Trump’s embrace and verbal defense of neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be disqualifying from public service. All true patriots must do their utmost to get him out of the Oval Office as fast as possible.

 

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@Destiny, I've meaning to say this for a while, but every time this thread pops up on my notifications list, I snort out loud at just how aptly you named this thread. I'm looking forward to whatever snarky goodness you have in store for us for Trump part 23. :clap:

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[mention=11277]Destiny[/mention], I've meaning to say this for a while, but every time this thread pops up on my notifications list, I snort out loud at just how aptly you named this thread. I'm looking forward to whatever snarky goodness you have in store for us for Trump part 23. clap.gif

I’m thinking of going with The Death Eaters Have Taken Over the Fucking White House.
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Very nice PR for the CEOs to resign now, they knew what they were doing from the beginning. Still it is about time the walls close in on orange shit stain.

But if you're going to resign, you shouldn't be so mealy mouthed about it as the CEO of underarmour was.
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What even is that council about? They haven't done anything and I couldn't really find an actual explanation.

Even though it's not surprising that he said it, it still upsets me.

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I just finished watching this documentary about Charlottesville from Vice News. Heads up, there's lots of NSFW language, scenes of violence, and the sad aftermath of that violence. The video is closed captioned, so be sure and hit the button marked "cc" in the lower right corner if you need captions. 

 

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Apparently Obama's tweet after Charlottesville is the most liked tweet ever!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/15/obamas-response-to-charlottesville-violence-is-one-of-the-most-popular-in-twitters-history/?tid=pm_pop&utm_term=.abc1c81b80a1

tRump's head will explode - beaten on his own medium......

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7 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

So does this look like a dude who will keep Trump under control? 

I can't get a read on him.  He is smiling or is that an "oh fuck this guy is insane" grimace?

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"‘Clinically insane,’ ‘7th circle of hell’: Late-night hosts process Trump’s news conference"

Spoiler

On Monday, the late-night TV hosts got serious as they talked about the horrific events in Charlottesville over the weekend — and President Trump’s delayed reaction. On Tuesday night, their disbelief continued after the president’s “off-the-rails” afternoon news conference, in which he stated that there was blame for the violence on “both sides,” the white supremacists and the protesters.

CBS’s Stephen Colbert jumped right in: “It took Donald Trump two days to condemn the white nationalists and the neo-Nazis who held that rally down in Charlottesville. But even though many criticized how long it took, the president knew the right thing was to make the statement Monday, be clear about who was to blame, and then move on to the people’s business,” he deadpanned. “I’m just kidding. He held a press conference today in, I believe, the seventh circle of hell.”

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel also didn’t hold back. “It was supposed to be a press conference about infrastructure, and it ended with our president making an angry and passionate defense of white supremacists,” he told his audience, urging them to watch the “astonishing” conference in its entirety online. “I feel like I can say this with reasonable certainty: The president is completely unhinged.”

Here are the other elements that all of the hosts — including NBC’s Seth Meyers, TBS’s Conan O’Brien and CBS’s James Corden — covered on Tuesday:

When Trump said there was blame on “both sides.”

Colbert: “What the hell are you talking about? (Trump voice) ‘You know, one side hates minorities. The other side hates people who hate minorities. Okay, two sides. It’s just like D-Day. Remember, D-Day, two sides, Allies and the Nazis. There was a lot of violence on both sides. Ruined a beautiful beach. And could have been a golf course.’ ”

Corden: “This is ridiculous. Trump’s the guy that walks out of ‘Star Wars’ thinking they didn’t have to blow up the Death Star. There was blame on both sides.”

When a reporter pointed out that the neo-Nazis showed up in Charlottesville first, and Trump said, “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Meyers: “President Trump this afternoon gave a press conference that can only be described as clinically insane. You know that list of side effects at the end of a pharmaceutical ad? He apparently has all of them. He said among other things that ‘there were very fine people on both sides’ of the events in Charlottesville.”

Kimmel: “If you’re with a group of people and they’re chanting things like ‘Jews will not replace us’ and you don’t immediately leave that group, you are not a very fine person.”

When Trump said, “Unlike the media — before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.”

Kimmel: “That’s right, he’s very careful about that. Like the fact that Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK and Obama was born in Kenya. He’s a stickler for the facts.”

Colbert: (Trump voice) “I need the facts, okay. Just ask the millions of illegal voters who refused to look for Obama’s birth certificate during my record-breaking inauguration. Okay? It’s all on the Obama wiretaps.”

Corden: “No, it’s true, he only makes a statement when he has the facts. You know, like when he told us how his inauguration crowd was the biggest in history. Or that time he told us Meryl Streep was a bad actress. And of course, that time when he said Robert Pattinson is too good for Kristen Stewart.”

Colbert: “This guy is a four-star general. Iraq, no problem. Afghanistan, we can do it. Twenty-minute Trump press conference? A quagmire from which our country will never emerge.”

Meyers: “Trump is so fully out of his mind, he broke a general. That guy’s been in wars!”

When Trump declared that Stephen K. Bannon is “not a racist”:

Colbert: “If the third thing someone says about you, unprompted, is ‘He is not a racist,’ you’ve got a problem. ‘Oh, you’d love Jeff. He’s nice, he’s good looking. Not a necrophiliac, I can tell you that.’ ”

O’Brien: “In the press conference, President Trump said that Steve Bannon was a good friend and not a racist. Then he said, ‘Oops, I meant to say, a good racist and not a friend.’ ”

When Trump said, “I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States. It’s in Charlottesville.”

Colbert: “It is not one of the biggest wineries in the United States, though he is one of the biggest whiners in the United States.”

Corden: “For someone who doesn’t want to make a statement before he has all the facts, maybe he should have looked at that winery’s website. Because this is what it actually says: ‘The winery is not owned, managed or affiliated with Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization or any of their affiliates.’ So the winery may not be his, but at least now we know where he gets all his sour grapes.”

There are videos embedded in the article.

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Thank you for the video @Cartmann99 it was a horrible watching. All those people with fear in their eyes after the crash reminded me of terrorism victims in Nice, Berlin, Paris, London. How could Trump watch and understand fucking nothing? I swear his read of the events is as crazy and out of touch as that of the moron who is interviewed at the end.

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The daily roundup in the WaPo is very lengthy, but worth a read. I'm only going to include a few quotes that really jumped out at me. "The Daily 202: False moral equivalency is not a bug of Trumpism. It’s a feature."

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump has a troubling tendency to blame “both sides.”

Showing that the remarks he delivered from a White House teleprompter Monday were hollow and insincere, Trump yesterday revived his initial claim that “both sides” are to blame for the horrific violence at a white supremacist rally over the weekend in Charlottesville.

...

-- One of the many ironies in all this is that conservatives have spent decades accusing liberals of believing in the kind of both-sides-ism that Trump now routinely espouses.

In one of his most famous speeches, Ronald Reagan told the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983: “I urge you to beware the temptation of … blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick’s essay on “The Myth of Moral Equivalence” is a classic of this genre. Reagan’s former ambassador to the United Nations pilloried those who argued that NATO was no better than the Warsaw Pact.

It has never gotten sufficient attention, but the year Kirkpatrick published her piece, Trump was paying to run full-page ads in The Washington Post attacking Reagan and his administration for lacking “backbone” in the realm of foreign policy. Talk about being on the wrong side of history

The right’s disdain for both sides-ism continued through the Obama era. In 2011, Paul Ryan told the Weekly Standard: “If you ask me what the biggest problem in America is, I’m not going to tell you debt, deficits, statistics, economics — I’ll tell you it’s moral relativism.”

...

-- A top-ranking official in Angela Merkel’s government slammed Trump’s comments in a press release that went out this morning. From Reuters: “German Justice Minister Heiko Maas on Wednesday condemned (Trump's) latest comments … ‘It is unbearable how Trump is now glossing over the violence of the right-wing hordes from Charlottesville,’ Maas said … reflecting concern across the German political spectrum about the Trump presidency.”

-- The mainstream media's coverage is brutal:

  • Washington Post A1: “Trump appeared far more passionate in defending many of the rally participants than he had in his more muted denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis a day earlier at the White House.”
  • The Post’s Editorial Board: “The nation can only weep. ... That car in Charlottesville did not kill or wound just the 20 bodies it struck. It damaged the nation. Mr. Trump not only failed to help the country heal; he made the wound wider and deeper.”
  • Philip Bump: “Trump puts a fine point on it: He sides with the alt-right in Charlottesville."
  • David Weigel: “If some Republican candidate for state representative gave that press conference, the party would take him off the ballot."
  • Dana Milbank: “Trump just hit a new low. … It was downright ugly. … The nationalist-turned-presidential-adviser Stephen K. Bannon used to say that the publishing outfit he led, Breitbart, was a ‘platform for the alt-right,’ a euphemism for white nationalists and related far-right extremists. But now there is a new platform for the alt-right in America: the White House. It looks more and more like the White Nationalist House. … Trump, who this week retweeted an ‘alt-right’ conspiracy theorist and ally of white supremacists, continues to employ in his White House not just Bannon and Stephen Miller, two darlings of the alt-right, but also Sebastian Gorka, who uses the platform to defend the embattled white man.”
  • New York Times A1: “[Trump] buoyed the white nationalist movement on Tuesday as no president has done in generations ... Never has he gone as far in defending their actions as he did during a wild, street-corner shouting match of a news conference in the gilded lobby of Trump Tower, angrily asserting that so-called alt-left activists were just as responsible for the bloody confrontation as marchers brandishing swastikas, Confederate battle flags, anti-Semitic banners and ‘Trump/Pence’ signs.”
  • USA Today: “Former KKK leader David Duke praises Trump for his 'courage.'”
  • Associated Press: “Racial politics haunt GOP in the Trump era.”
  • Wall Street Journal: “With New Remarks on Charlottesville, Trump Leaves Himself Isolated.”
  • Los Angeles Times: “Trump provokes new furor by giving foes of white supremacists equal blame.”
  • The Daily Beast: “For a White House that has careened from crisis point to crisis point, Trump’s performance on Tuesday was a uniquely chaotic crescendo. He had gathered the press to talk about infrastructure regulations only to find himself defending a portion of the white supremacists who had marched with tiki-torches on Friday while shouting anti-Semitic epithets. Trump often can serve as his own worst enemy. One White House official conceded … that Tuesday’s presser was a continuation of a pattern that the president follows, in which he will ‘extend the shelf life’ of a controversy because he somehow cannot help himself from talking about it. … ‘It was the president’s decision to do this,’ another White House official (said) of Trump’s free-wheeling at the press conference. Asked for a mini-review of Trump’s press conference performance, the official would only respond, ‘clean-up on aisle Trump.’”
  • CNBC’s John Harwood: “The president does not share the instinctive moral revulsion most Americans feel toward white supremacists and neo-Nazis. And he feels contempt for those — like the executives — who are motivated to express that revulsion at his expense. … Trump has displayed this character trait repeatedly. It combines indifference to conventional notions of morality or propriety with disbelief that others would be motivated by them. He dismissed suggestions that it was inappropriate for his son and campaign manager to have met with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. ... ‘Most people would have taken the meeting,’ he said. He called it ‘extremely unfair’ that Jeff Sessions recused himself from [the Russia investigation] after the attorney general concluded that the law required him to do so. 'In a president, character is everything,’ Republican commentator Peggy Noonan has written. ‘You can't buy courage and decency. You can't rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him.’ Trump has brought other values, as today's news conference again made clear.”
  • CNN’s Chris Cillizza: “Trump's comments ... not only revealed, again, his remarkable blindness to the racial history and realities of this country, but also showed his willingness to stake out morally indefensible positions as the result of personal pique. ... What Trump is doing is dangerous — for our politics and for our moral fiber. To condone white supremacists by insisting there are two sides to every coin is to take us back decades in our understanding of each other. ... To do so purposely to score political points or stick it in the eye of your supposed media enemies is, frankly, despicable.”
  • The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza: “Firing Steve Bannon Won’t Change Donald Trump. ... If Trump finally pushes Bannon out of the White House, the nationalist policy project will be all but dead. … Trump himself has always been more animated by the xenophobia of Bannonism than by its populist economic views. A Trump White House without Bannon will be no more radical in its coddling of far-right groups—today, Trump showed again that he needs no encouragement—but it will be more captured by the traditional small-government agenda of the G.O.P. that Bannon hoped to destroy.”

...

-- Responsible conservative thought leaders were aghast: 

  • Post columnist Charles Krauthammer declared on Fox last night: “What Trump did today was a moral disgrace.”
  • National Review’s David French argues that Trump gave the alt-right its “greatest media moment ever”: “To understand the significance of Trump’s words, you have to understand a bit about the alt-right. While its members certainly march with Nazis and make common cause with neo-Confederates, it views itself as something different. They’re the ‘intellectual’ adherents to white identity politics. They believe their movement is substantially different and more serious than the Klansmen of days past. When Trump carves them away from the Nazis and distinguishes them from the neo-Confederates, he’s doing exactly what they want. He’s making them respectable. He’s making them different. But ‘very fine people’ don’t march with tiki torches chanting ‘blood and soil’ or ‘Jews will not replace us.’”
  • Commentary Magazine Editor John Podhoretz tweeted: “There were not ‘very fine people on both sides’ in Charlottesville. No one on the Nazi side was fine. Every one of them is a monster.”

-- Multiple right-wing news sites deleted articles from January that encouraged readers to drive into protesters: “Originally published by The Daily C@ller and later syndicated or aggregated by several other websites, including Fox Nation, an offshoot of Fox News' website, it carried an unsubtle headline: ‘Here's A Reel Of Cars Plowing Through Protesters Trying To Block The Road.’ Embedded in the article was a minute-and-a-half long video showing one vehicle after another driving through demonstrations,” CNN reports. “The footage was set to a cover of Ludacris' ‘Move B****.’ … The article ... drew renewed attention on Tuesday following this weekend's deadly incident in Charlottesville. As the outrage grew on Twitter, Fox News took action, deleting the version Fox Nation had published.”

-- Did Trump get his George Washington and Thomas Jefferson line from Fox News? “The night before the president's press conference, Fox's Martha MacCallum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich discussed the same thing," BuzzFeed notes. 

-- Doubling down: The White House press office last night distributed these suggested talking points to friendly surrogates: “The President was entirely correct — both sides of the violence in Charlottesville acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility. ... We should not overlook the facts just because the media finds them inconvenient: From cop killing and violence at political rallies, to shooting at Congressmen at a practice baseball game, extremists on the left have engaged in terrible acts of violence.” (The Atlantic’s Molly Ball posted the full document.)

...

-- Top Republicans quickly distanced themselves from the president's comments:

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla), who battled Trump in the 2016 primaries, went on a tweetstorm: “The organizers of events which inspired & led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons. They are adherents of an evil ideology which argues certain people are inferior because of race, ethnicity or nation of origin. … These groups today use SAME symbols & same arguments of #Nazi & #KKK, groups responsible for some of worst crimes against humanity ever. Mr. President, you can't allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of blame. They support idea which cost nation & world so much pain. The #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We cannot allow this old evil to be resurrected.”

  • Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee: “I don't understand what's so hard about this. White supremacists and Neo-Nazis are evil and shouldn't be defended.”
  • Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.): “Apologize. Racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, of any form is unacceptable. And the leader of the free world should be unambiguous about that.”
  • Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio): “Let's get real. There is no moral equivalency to Nazi sympathizers. There can be no room in America — or the Republican party — for racism, anti-Semitism, hate or white nationalism. Period.”
  • Mitt Romney: “No, not the same. One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.”

-- But, but, but: Actions will speak louder than words. And GOP congressional leaders are not rushing to hold hearings on the resurgence of white supremacy. So far, they are ignoring the pleas of Democrats. Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Rachael Bade report: “[T]he House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Department of Justice’s handling of domestic terrorism, has no immediate plans to schedule one, aides say. The House Homeland Security Committee is lumping the issue into an annual ‘global threats’ hearing scheduled sometime in September. … Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has no plans to call for one focused on the events in Charlottesville. GOP leaders, meanwhile, aren’t leaning on their allies to hold public sessions or launch inquiries. … GOP sources suggested it might be too early to tell whether Congress should get involved. And some question what tangible action Congress could take to help the situation, aside from calling public attention to the issue through hearings.”

-- Many elected Democrats cited the news conference to argue that Trump is no longer a legitimate president and/or should be removed from office:

  • Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): “As a Jew, as an American, as a human, words cannot express my disgust and disappointment. This is not my president.”
  • Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.): “My Republican friends, I implore you to work with us within our capacity as elected officials to remove this man as our commander-in-chief. For the sake of the soul of our country, we must come together to restore our national dignity that has been robbed by [Trump’s] presence in the White House.”
  • Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.): “FYI, after today, White House staff have effectively been folded into the white supremacy propaganda operation. Your choice — stay or go.”
  • Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.): “No more dog whistle, now a megaphone used by the President to message approval for violent hate groups.”

...

So, he got his talking ranting point about George Washington from Faux and Newt. Yeah, par for the course.

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I was pleasantly surprised by this, since the governor had recently said they wouldn't be removed because that was too politically correct. "Baltimore hauls away four Confederate monuments after overnight removal"

Spoiler

Crews removed Baltimore’s Confederate statues early Wednesday, days after the deadly unrest in Charlottesville instigated by white nationalists rallying to defend a downtown Confederate monument.

The quiet and sudden removal of four monuments, with little fanfare and no advance notice, marks an attempt by the city to avoid a long, bruising conflict that has embroiled Charlottesville and other communities rethinking how they honor figures who fought to preserve slavery.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh (D) announced Monday she was in talks with contractors to haul away the statues, and the city council approved a removal plan that night. Some activists had vowed to destroy the monuments before government could act.

Photos and video posted on social media Wednesday morning showed crews using cranes to remove statues of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, hauled away on a flatbed truck. Statues honoring Confederate women and Roger B. Taney, the former chief justice who authored the notorious proslavery Dred Scott decision, were also removed.

Another statue to Confederate soldiers slated for removal, which was defaced with bright red paint over the weekend, also appears to be gone.

On the base of the now-empty Jackson and Lee monument are messages saying “Black lives matter” and “F--- the Confederacy,” according to photos shared on Twitter.

Pugh told the Baltimore Sun on Wednesday that crews worked from 11:30 p.m. Tuesday to 5:30 a.m. to remove the statues, and swift overnight removal with little fanfare was meant to stave off the kind of violent conflicts that embroiled Charlottesville.

“It’s done,” she told the Sun. “They needed to come down. My concern is for the safety and security of our people. We moved as quickly as we could.”

It’s unclear what will come of these statues. Councilman Brandon Scott tweeted that they should be melted down and their materials recycled to honor “true Maryland heroes.”

A commission appointed by former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake after a white supremacist killed nine African Americans in a historically black church in South Carolian recommended the removal of the Lee-Jackson monument, and signs adding historical context to two other statues. Pugh criticized the inaction following the commission’s recommendations.

Across the nation, Confederate monuments have come under renewed scrutiny following widespread disgust at how the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville became a rallying point for white supremacists this year.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday announced he’d support removing the statue of Taney from State House grounds. The statue had been defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, and Hogan last year described calls to remove it as “political correctness run amok.”

The mayor of Lexington, Ky. is seeking approval to relocate two Confederate-era monuments in the city, citing the Charlottesville clashes for the timing of his decision. Officials in other southern cities have been considering removal as well.

Elsewhere, activists have been pushing to bring monuments down with or without the government’s support. A woman in North Carolina faces felony charges in connection with the vandalism and toppling of a monument to Confederate soldiers in Durham.

 

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24 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I was pleasantly surprised by this, since the governor had recently said they wouldn't be removed because that was too politically correct. "Baltimore hauls away four Confederate monuments after overnight removal"

Wow Larry, every once and a while you do something which makes me say "Hummm maybe there are some good Republicans". Then of course you keeping being a wimp and stay silent on Trump. So errr still wont' vote you next year.

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Holy hell!  I just saw a photo of Hope Hicks. She looks like First daughter and Mrs Trump # 3.  

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Washington State University racist resigns - Spokane Spokesman-Review article

James Allsup, president of the WSU College Republicans resigned after being filmed drooling at Charlottesville (and sucking up to Richard Spencer), and another creep (Amir Rezamand) took his place.  The university republicans state they do not endorse these guys, but then why they were/are in leadership is mystifying.  Anyway, a quote from Rezamand has stuck with me, so I'll share it with you:

"I think the political world is slowly coming to realize a rather simple fact.  It's a really, really bad idea to piss off lonely white guys with above average intelligence and below average social skills."  (Source:  Rezamand's Facebook)

 

 

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