Trump 18: Info to Russia, With Love

[sawasdee]

The BBC has a lovely line in its report on tRump at NATO

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40037776

Quote

Donald Trump's timetable in Brussels is a minor diplomatic masterpiece of its kind, maximising as it does the number of meetings and minimising the amount of public speaking and press scrutiny which will follow them.

Obviously his handlers don't trust him in public at all......

[fraurosena]

25 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Can some country over there just keep him for a bit? Just lock him up somewhere with no internet and only books to entertain him. America won't miss him one tiny bit. Pretty please? 

There is a tiny uninhabited island lying just to the west of Texel (the first Wadden-island to the North of Holland) that is uninhabited (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noorderhaaks). The island's nickname is 'Razende Bol', which can translate as raging ball as the wikipedia page says, but 'razend' also means 'very angry' and  'bol' can also mean 'head', which somehow seems fitting for your presidunce 

We could house him there for a couple of weeks. Our navy and airforce regularly use it as a training ground, dropping (fake) bombs on it and such. Would that be appropriate do you think?

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

I'm cracking up reading this https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/25/is-this-real-life-or-is-this-a-cabaret-of-the-von-trump-family-on-tour

Spoiler

Observe the difference between Pope Francis’ positive engagement with the former president and his dour reticence to even speak to the grinning successor. If any institution on earth knows about a) nepotism and sex scandals, it’s the Vatican, and yet photographs reveal not even the pope’s legendary capacity for forgiveness can extend to the clan of pussy-grab-enablers descending on his home in mantillas. The pope’s official gift to the climate-change-denying Trump? His papal encyclical on climate change. What deep water western civilisation is truly in when the pope – the pope – is actively trolling the president of the United States.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

54 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

There is a tiny uninhabited island lying just to the west of Texel (the first Wadden-island to the North of Holland) that is uninhabited (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noorderhaaks). The island's nickname is 'Razende Bol', which can translate as raging ball as the wikipedia page says, but 'razend' also means 'very angry' and  'bol' can also mean 'head', which somehow seems fitting for your presidunce 

We could house him there for a couple of weeks. Our navy and airforce regularly use it as a training ground, dropping (fake) bombs on it and such. Would that be appropriate do you think?

 

Oh, that would be perfect! We could leave the rest of his sycophants who are traveling with him there too. Maybe with the exception of Melania -- let her come back and take care of her minor child.

 

 

[fraurosena]

I wonder if and how the WH will react to this news.

Pentagon report says more than 100 civilians killed in March bombing in Iraq

Quote

A Pentagon investigation has found that more than 100 civilians were killed after the U.S. dropped a bomb on a building in Mosul, Iraq, in March. 

The probe found that the U.S. bomb triggered secondary explosions from devices clandestinely planted there by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). And the military says the secondary blasts caused the concrete building to collapse. 

The air strike had been requested by Iraqi troops who were 100 yards away and could see the location of the two snipers on the second floor of a two story building, investigators found. [...]

However, the Iraqis could only see one side of the building and did not observe any civilians entering the building. Bad weather on the two preceding days prevented observation of the building from drones overhead, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. [...]

Both snipers were killed in the strike and ensuing secondary explosion, as well as 101 civilians taking shelter in the lower floors. Another four civilians died in a nearby building, Isler said. He said 36 civilians remain unaccounted for. [...]

It was likely the largest single incident of civilian deaths since the U.S. air campaign against IS began in 2014. The deaths represent about a quarter of all civilian deaths since the U.S. air campaign began.

News like this make me sad. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, what happened? Agent Orange is supposedly the "best" dealmaker ever: "Trump said he would save jobs at Carrier. The layoffs start July 20."

Spoiler

Carrier, the company President Trump pledged to keep on American soil, informed the state of Indiana this week that it will soon begin cutting 632 workers from an Indianapolis factory. The manufacturing jobs will move to Monterrey, Mexico, where the minimum wage is $3.90.

That was never supposed to happen, according to Trump's campaign promises. He told Indiana residents at a rally last year there was a "100 percent chance” he would save the jobs at the heating and air-conditioning manufacturer.

About 1,400 positions were on the chopping block, per company estimates. Over the past year, Trump has claimed he could maintain at least 1,100 of those jobs in the United States. But on Monday, the company gave official notice to Indiana officials that it would start laying off workers at the factory on July 20 and keep slashing staff until approximately 800 factory employees remain.

“This action follows a thorough evaluation of our manufacturing operations,” wrote Steven Morris, a Carrier manager in Indianapolis, in a memo Indiana’s Department of Workforce Development received Monday,“and is intended to address the challenges the business faces in a rapidly changing industry.”

The dismissals, he added, are “expected to be permanent.”

Trump’s saga with Carrier began last spring, when he declared to an Indianapolis crowd that he would stop the company from uprooting in search of cheaper labor.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Trump said at the rally. “They’re going to call me, and they are going to say, ‘Mr. President, Carrier has decided to stay in Indiana.’”

He kept going. “One hundred percent,” Trump said. “It’s not like we have an 80 percent chance of keeping them or a 95 percent. 100 percent.”

After the election, Trump took credit for rescuing the Carrier jobs, tweeting on Thanksgiving that he had called the company’s leadership to cut a deal.

United Technologies, Carrier’s parent company, agreed to spare some of the positions in exchange for $ 7 million in state tax credits. (If the company outsourced any of those jobs over the next 10 years, it would have to pay back the money, according to the Indiana Economic Development Corp.)

A celebratory Trump visited the factory in December and announced that, thanks to his negotiating, more than 1,100 of the jobs would stay in the heartland.

“Carrier stepped it up, and now they’re keeping over 1,100 people,” Trump told an audience of cheering factory workers.

He said those numbers could go even higher, noting that United Technologies had agreed to invest roughly $16 million into updating the plant.

“And by the way, that number is going to go up substantially as they expand this area, this plant,” Trump said. “The 1,100 is going to be a minimum number.”

But later that month, Greg Hayes, chief executive of United Technologies, admitted that the $16 million investment would go toward automation. 

“What that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs,” he told CNBC's Jim Cramer.

Chuck Jones, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents Carrier employees in Indianapolis, provided further evidence that Trump had inflated the number of jobs that would remain in Indianapolis. Only 800 Carrier employees would be able to keep their jobs — 770 factory workers plus 30 or so more employees, counting supervisors, according to the union count.

Jones told The Washington Post days later that Trump had “lied his a-- off.” He suspected the then-president-elect was including in his count design and engineering jobs that were never going to leave. Trump responded on Twitter by saying Jones had done a “terrible job” as union president.

The full extent of the layoffs emerged Monday with Carrier's announcement of 632 job losses.

The company told The Post on Thursday that “more than 1,000 jobs” will be preserved. However that figure included engineering and headquarters staff whose jobs were never scheduled to leave Indianapolis in the first place.

“Carrier will continue to manufacture gas furnaces in Indianapolis, in addition to retaining engineering and headquarters staff, preserving more than 1,000 jobs,” the company said. “We have also designated our Indianapolis facility as a Center of Excellence for gas furnace production, with a commitment to making significant investments to continue to maintain a world-class furnace factory.”

Holly Gillham, a spokesman for the Indiana Economic Development Corp., which was formerly led by Vice President Pence, said Monday's notice of jobs cuts was consistent with Carrier’s arrangement with the state and Trump.

“As announced in December, Carrier is fully committed to retaining more than 1,000 jobs in Indiana over the next 10 years,” she said in an email. “By choosing to maintain these Hoosier jobs, Carrier is showing confidence in Indiana’s skilled manufacturing workforce.”

According to Jones, 550 union members will be laid off, plus another 82 temporary factory staffers who were brought on to help with the transition.

“Everyone knew it was coming, they just didn’t know when, exactly. It's closure to a bad situation,” Jones said.

Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Trump’s deal with Carrier offered a partial solution to a broader problem.

American manufacturing employment, he noted, has dwindled for decades, especially in Indiana, where a third of workers held those jobs 50 years ago; the share today is closer to 10 percent.

“I wouldn’t even call it a deal,” Strain said. “It seemed to be that Carrier was responding to political pressure and did so in a way that allowed them to make it through a political moment.”

Trump, he said, benefited from the optics.

“The president,” Strain said, “took the opportunity to position himself as a champion of American workers.”

The number of Carrier jobs that will be eliminated is twice the size of the imminent job loss at Rexnord, the ball bearing factory about a mile away from the Carrier facility. Trump has slammed that company on Twitter, too, for outsourcing work to Mexico — but the firm has stuck to its plan and is dismissing the last hundred of its 300 employees in Indianapolis this summer.

 

[fraurosena]

Yay!

[GreyhoundFan]

Yay for Macron: "Trump and French President Macron get to know each other with a fierce handshake"

Spoiler

BRUSSELS — If relationships were defined by how two people shake hands, then the one between the newly elected presidents of the United States and France is going to be rather fierce.

As President Trump met French President Emmanuel Macron for the first time, welcoming him to lunch Thursday at the residence here of the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, the two men shook hands for six long seconds. Their knuckles turned white, their jaws clenched and their faces tightened. Trump reached in first, but then he tried to release, twice, but Macron kept his grip until letting go.

The meeting was on Trump's turf, but Macron, 31 years his counterpart's junior, signaled with his tight hold that the American was not the only alpha in the room.

But handshakes alone do not define relationships, of course. Although many contentious issues divide the two presidents -- perhaps most urgently, climate change -- Trump and Macron represent two longtime close allies and showed considerable respect for one another.

Trump, who is loath to talk about electoral victories other than his own, complimented Macron on his landslide win earlier this month in France's presidential runoff against a far-right candidate.

"It is my great honor to be with the newly elected president of France, who ran an incredible campaign and had a tremendous victory," Trump said. "All over the world they're talking about it."

"Congratulations," Trump added. "Great job."

Trump said he wanted to discuss terrorism and other issues, while Macron said they had "an extremely large agenda to discuss: the fight against terrorism, the economy, climate and energy."

"I am very happy to be able to change many things together," Macron said.

The French president, along with his counterparts from across Europe, is hoping to persuade Trump during his time at international summits here in Brussels and Friday in Sicily to maintain the U.S. commitment the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Trump is in the process of deciding whether to stick to the climate accord, which was negotiated under President Barack Obama, and his advisers have been debating the matter vigorously.

Trump vowed during his campaign that he would withdraw from the Paris agreement, but he now is open to remaining in it, and on a number of other issues he has been persuaded to break his campaign promises.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters that Trump intends to hear feedback from his foreign counterparts during his time abroad before making a decision.

For Trump and Macron, both newcomers to international diplomacy, Thursday's meeting was an opportunity to get to know one another, and perhaps form a bond.

As Macron pulled up outside the ambassador's residence and stepped out of a black Mercedes sedan, Trump and his wife, Melania, warmly greeted the French president, who arrived for lunch without his wife, Brigitte.

The presidents were served a three-course meal: a starter of tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella, veal fillet with chateau potatoes and tri-colored vegetables, and a duo of Belgian chocolate mousse.

Trump and Macron cut starkly different profiles as they built winning movements in their respective countries. Trump, 70, was a celebrity businessman and political outsider who campaigned as a populist and nationalist. Macron, 39, was a relatively unknown government insider who campaigned on an embrace of globalism.

Their differences were clear in their choice of attire Thursday. Each wore dark suits, but Trump's tie was thick and royal blue, with a slight shine, while Macron's was skinny and navy. And while Macron wore a standard shirt with a single button on the cuff, Trump opted for French cuffs, with large, diamond cuff links.

Gee, I wonder if the TT put ketchup on his veal or if he asked for ice cream instead of mousse.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

 

20 hours ago, nvmbr02 said:

True. We lived in Italy for a few years and saw many people (a lot of Americans, but other tourists too)  attempt to enter cathedrals with clothing that was unacceptable and were turned away.

Italian and living in Italy. I've never ever seen the scene you just described (ETA not saying it can't happen, just that it would be extremely unusual). In most touristy places at the entrance of churches you can find pieces of cloth that you can drape over your shoulders or wear around your waist if your clothes do not comply with the dress code. But if you don't no one will deny you access to the holy place.

Anyway Italians aren't appreciating Melania's interpretation of a Southern widow of the 19th century nor Ivanka's goth bride style. Social media are ablaze with scathing snark . Yes we are vain people, we are also cheap and his demands for us to pay more for military will make him even more unpopular.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The official who let Trump keep his government hotel deal explains herself"

Spoiler

Denise Turner Roth’s phone began ringing almost as soon as the presidential election results were in. Everyone was asking: Would her agency pull the plug on Donald Trump’s lease for a Washington property where he had just opened a luxury hotel?

Roth, the top federal official at the agency overseeing the Old Post Office Pavilion, decided to leave office on Inauguration Day without ending Trump’s lease, creating a business relationship between the president and a federal agency that experts consider untenable.

In her first public remarks since leaving office, Roth told The Washington Post this week that she personally thinks that President Trump should divest from the property but that the lease offered no valid reason to force him to.

The former head of the General Services Administration, the federal government’s chief landlord, Roth said her decision was based on a technical reading of Trump’s lease and an interest in ensuring that the GSA maintained its integrity in a heated moment.

She said she and her staff asked: “What would you do if this were any other lease? That’s what we kept coming back to. It was important for our motivations to not be seen as doing something political. Considering the role [the agency] was in and the political times, we needed to be as apolitical as possible.”

The interview marked the first time Roth explained how she reached her conclusion, one blasted in a May editorial in the New York Times.

Roth has been likened to a sort of anti-Sally Yates, a reference to the former deputy attorney general who was fired by Trump after saying she could not legally defend one of his executive orders. By comparison, Roth has been accused of avoiding the lease decision to protect her own interests, since after leaving government, she joined a company that does business with the GSA.

Roth says Trump should sell his stake in the opulent Pennsylvania Avenue hotel, which has become a destination for political movers and shakers and an ethical test for the new administration.

“From my perspective, divesting would have been the right move,” she said. “We shouldn’t have this question that we’re in about whether he’s a leaseholder while he’s the president and whether there is a clause affecting him. But those are his concerns.”

Trump’s lease, signed with the GSA in 2013, posed myriad ethical concerns that surfaced even before his election. That fall, his company opened the 263-room hotel in a historic property with a prime location that had fallen into disrepair.

Trump made no indication that he would divest from the property, which would allow him to profit from it while in office. As president, he could appoint a replacement for Roth, allowing him a say on both sides of landlord-tenant negotiations. Foreign governments and lobbyists were already booking rooms and meetings there, raising constitutional questions.

With fewer than a dozen weeks between Election Day and the inauguration, Roth said she and GSA lawyers asked for more information from the Trump Organization about who would oversee the project and how the president’s stake would be managed, information that did not entirely arrive before her watch ended.

She said the lawyers determined that the GSA had very narrow grounds on which to possibly act.

“The question we were focused on was the lease, whether there was any violation to the lease,” she added. “And if there was concern about how the president handled the lease once he took office, how could we deal with that?”

The closest call, Roth said, was over a clause in the agreement saying that no elected officials “shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”

But even that, she said, did not constitute a clear violation. For instance, the president was not an elected official while she was in office, so he might not technically have been in violation on Roth’s watch.

“We didn’t have a basis as to why we would be canceling the lease. If the suggestion was we would cancel the lease because of a clause that said that as an elected official he couldn’t be in this lease, that was not a clear question to answer,” she said.

Many of the initial concerns about leaving the agreement in place, however, have materialized since Roth handed over the keys of the agency on Jan. 20. Trump broke with tradition and the advice of the government’s top ethics official by declining to divest from the hotel. Foreign governments and lobbyists book rooms and meetings there, prompting lawsuits claiming that the president uses the hotel to unfairly capitalize on his office.

Two months after Trump entered the White House, the hotel project’s contracting officer, a career GSA bureaucrat many rungs down the ladder from Roth’s old post, ruled that the lease was in compliance.

The ruling reignited scorn for Roth’s inaction, particularly in left-leaning circles.

Reps. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) and Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) said the decision to permit the agreement rendered the lease terms “meaningless.”

This month, a New York Times editorial took direct aim at Roth, calling her inaction “mystifying” and suggesting that she may have avoided a confrontation with Trump to better position herself at her new post as a senior adviser for WSP USA, a firm with GSA contracts.

“She demonstrated a unique level of cowardice and self-preservation instead of focusing on the interests of the nation,” said Steven L. Schooner, a professor of procurement law at George Washington University who is advising a suit brought by the owners of Cork Wine Bar against the president and the hotel. “We have seen through the process that GSA was far more interested in being hyper-technical than making any effort to do the right thing.”

Schooner said there were obvious reasons for GSA to act, among them the financial interest the president would have in overseeing the GSA, the clause barring elected leaders, the evidence of possible emoluments (gifts or payments from foreign governments) and Trump’s $25 million settlement for defrauding students of his online university, which Schooner said would have given GSA grounds to terminate the hotel lease.

He said it was far more likely Roth acted to avoid confrontation.

“What is the difference between Denise Roth and Sally Yates?” Schooner said. “One did the right thing and was applauded by right-thinking people for putting the country above her own self interests.”

The GSA declined to comment.

Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said Tuesday that congressional scrutiny of the deal was paramount with Trump in office.

“Since he refuses to divest, congressional oversight of the GSA lease is more critical than ever,” Cummings said in a statement.

Roth acknowledged that putting the fate of the president’s 60-year lease in the hands of career staff placed them under unusual pressure that could lead to favorable decisions for Trump.

“It’s hard to say that as the head of the government that the president wouldn’t somehow influence benefits that would occur, financial benefits that could occur to the hotel,” she said.

But Roth said she had little to personally gain by deferring a decision.

In her new job, which she began in April, she is not permitted to lobby GSA staff for two years because of federal ethics rules. WSP issued a statement describing her duties as focusing on “revitalization issues, smart cities, performance measures and organization development for private and public clients.”

The Trump Organization declined to comment. It has said it has taken appropriate steps to separate the business from the president and that the company will donate foreign profits to the U.S. treasury at the end of the year.

Sigh.

[Rachel333]

Here's another video of Trump shaking Macron's hand. Notice how Macron ignores Trump at first and then Trump doesn't seem happy about it. 

And here's a gif of what Trump looks like shaking hands. 

Spoiler

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another good one from Jennifer Rubin: "No, Trump can’t get through a trip without creating chaos"

Spoiler

Aside from throwing human rights overboard in Saudi Arabia and making clear in Israel that he had given out Israel’s code-word intelligence (but did not actually say “Israel”!), President Trump was functioning fairly well on the international stage. Until today.

The Post reports:

President Trump, speaking at a ceremony Thursday to dedicate a memorial to NATO’s resolve in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, publicly chastised his fellow alliance leaders for not being “fair” to U.S. taxpayers.

Trump used the occasion of his maiden summit with NATO leaders in Brussels, where he was invited to dedicate the September 2001 memorial, to remind the alliance that “23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying,” and that they owe “massive amounts” from past years.

European leaders who gathered from across the alliance gazed at Trump without expression and offered modest applause at the end of a speech that he began by asking for a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of Monday’s terrorist attack in Manchester, England, that killed 22 and wounded many more.

He did not explicitly confirm our obligations under Article V, something he seemed to question in the campaign.

The telltale sign that Trump messed up was a clarification later from a “senior administration official” that Trump didn’t mean to cast doubt on the United States’ steadfast support for NATO. So who are allies supposed to believe — the president or his advisers? For months now, Trump’s vice president, secretary of state, defense secretary and national security adviser have bent over backward trying to confirm our commitment to NATO. In just one appearance, Trump undid months of work and handed Russia’s Vladimir Putin a symbolic victory.

Perhaps he was peeved at being scolded over leaks that revealed British intelligence regarding the Manchester terrorist bombing. That, in conjunction with his disclosure about the location of our subs to the president of the Philippines and giving out Israeli intelligence to the Russians, underscores that the fumbling Trump administration cannot be fully trusted.

The head of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, tweeted that “public lecturing of NATO allies [is] unseemly & counterproductive; hard not to see contrast between this & overly-solicitous treatment of Saudis.” Likewise, former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted, “No reason that Trump had to call out NATO allies in public for not meeting 2% of GDP targets. Some things best done behind closed doors.”

Daniel Twining of the German Marshall Fund tells me: “The United States remains the world’s only full-spectrum superpower. We are much more powerful than our rivals, including both China and Russia. But lately (including during the Obama administration — this did not start with Trump) we have acted as if we were not.” He explains: “We have lost our mojo in ways that cede strategic initiative to our adversaries. Signaling ambiguity over Article V of the NATO Charter risks compounding this self-inflicted phenomenon.” He emphasizes that “the current administration risks making the same mistake Obama did — empowering our adversaries at the expense of our friends. It is our European allies who need reassuring, not Moscow, just as our Asian allies fear a US-China G2 at their expense.”

Trump lacks impulse control to such an extent that whatever flashes through his brain (Pay up, NATO! I got the intel from Israel!) comes out of his mouth. Indeed, the New York Times has reported that aides are careful in briefing not to tell him something he shouldn’t say; that apparently only increases the chances he will blurt it out. This is the behavior of a 7-year-old, not the leader of the free world.

The entire purpose of Trump’s trip was to show leadership and solidarity with allies. In flubbing his best opportunity to do so with our closest allies in our most important alliance, he reminded them, the American people and our adversaries that he is not ready for prime time.

Woo-hoo, let's offend our allies.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, JMarie said:

As if his speech at the NATO conference wasn't embarrassing enough

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/25/politics/trump-nato-latest?lf-content=197354153:[email protected] &hubRefSrc=permalink

He actually shoved his way to the front of the pack?  When is he going to realize he's a grownup????

Here's a tweet with a slo-mo gif of that shove. 

 

Just look at the surprise Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic's shows when he suddenly gets grabbed from behind, and then that nauseatingly smug look on the tangerine toddler's face after he has shoved passed. 

 

This article also states that:

Quote

Mr Trump has not hid his disdain for NATO, which he has called “obsolete” because it is not addressing “taking care of terror.”

In an address to other NATO leaders he lectured them on needing to pay their “fair share” in the alliance.

The press pool reports that Mr Trump and the other NATO leaders subsequently “ignored one another during ‘family photo’ op in Brussels.”

Here's a pic from the article where you can clearly see the presidunce being ignored by the others. As they chat animatedly with one another, and he just stands there staring at the camera, twiddling with the phone in his hands. (He probably can't wait to tweet again).

 

[47of74]

Let's hope Fornicate Face doesn't cap off the trip by trying to give the German Chancellor an unwelcome shoulder massage like that one moron did about 10 years ago.

I wish FF would realize that the US does not exist in a vacuum and it's going to be pretty goddamn hard for this country to be safe, secure and to do well economically if none of the countries we thought were our allies want to talk to us or share jack shit.

[apple1]

To all of you who are not Americans: I am so sorry. So very embarrassing. I promise we are not all like that.

And I have to disagree with the article above that likened the behavior to that of a 7 year old.

I have a 6 year old grandchild who behaves about a thousand times better 99+% of the time. And we are working on behaviors like "don't push and shove" with my 3 year old grandchild.

Since Trump dislikes reading, and prefers to get his "information" from TV, I vote that we block his access to Faux News and stream Mr. Rogers from Netflix or something until some small bit of it sinks in.

 

So so sorry.

 

Gah.

[Audrey2]

@apple1, I think a freshly turned two is a more accurate age. Whoever can't up with the name Tangerine Toddler is exactly right.

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Another good one from Jennifer Rubin: "No, Trump can’t get through a trip without creating chaos"

  Reveal hidden contents

Aside from throwing human rights overboard in Saudi Arabia and making clear in Israel that he had given out Israel’s code-word intelligence (but did not actually say “Israel”!), President Trump was functioning fairly well on the international stage. Until today.

The Post reports:

President Trump, speaking at a ceremony Thursday to dedicate a memorial to NATO’s resolve in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, publicly chastised his fellow alliance leaders for not being “fair” to U.S. taxpayers.

Trump used the occasion of his maiden summit with NATO leaders in Brussels, where he was invited to dedicate the September 2001 memorial, to remind the alliance that “23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying,” and that they owe “massive amounts” from past years.

European leaders who gathered from across the alliance gazed at Trump without expression and offered modest applause at the end of a speech that he began by asking for a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of Monday’s terrorist attack in Manchester, England, that killed 22 and wounded many more.

He did not explicitly confirm our obligations under Article V, something he seemed to question in the campaign.

The telltale sign that Trump messed up was a clarification later from a “senior administration official” that Trump didn’t mean to cast doubt on the United States’ steadfast support for NATO. So who are allies supposed to believe — the president or his advisers? For months now, Trump’s vice president, secretary of state, defense secretary and national security adviser have bent over backward trying to confirm our commitment to NATO. In just one appearance, Trump undid months of work and handed Russia’s Vladimir Putin a symbolic victory.

Perhaps he was peeved at being scolded over leaks that revealed British intelligence regarding the Manchester terrorist bombing. That, in conjunction with his disclosure about the location of our subs to the president of the Philippines and giving out Israeli intelligence to the Russians, underscores that the fumbling Trump administration cannot be fully trusted.

The head of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, tweeted that “public lecturing of NATO allies [is] unseemly & counterproductive; hard not to see contrast between this & overly-solicitous treatment of Saudis.” Likewise, former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted, “No reason that Trump had to call out NATO allies in public for not meeting 2% of GDP targets. Some things best done behind closed doors.”

Daniel Twining of the German Marshall Fund tells me: “The United States remains the world’s only full-spectrum superpower. We are much more powerful than our rivals, including both China and Russia. But lately (including during the Obama administration — this did not start with Trump) we have acted as if we were not.” He explains: “We have lost our mojo in ways that cede strategic initiative to our adversaries. Signaling ambiguity over Article V of the NATO Charter risks compounding this self-inflicted phenomenon.” He emphasizes that “the current administration risks making the same mistake Obama did — empowering our adversaries at the expense of our friends. It is our European allies who need reassuring, not Moscow, just as our Asian allies fear a US-China G2 at their expense.”

Trump lacks impulse control to such an extent that whatever flashes through his brain (Pay up, NATO! I got the intel from Israel!) comes out of his mouth. Indeed, the New York Times has reported that aides are careful in briefing not to tell him something he shouldn’t say; that apparently only increases the chances he will blurt it out. This is the behavior of a 7-year-old, not the leader of the free world.

The entire purpose of Trump’s trip was to show leadership and solidarity with allies. In flubbing his best opportunity to do so with our closest allies in our most important alliance, he reminded them, the American people and our adversaries that he is not ready for prime time.

Woo-hoo, let's offend our allies.

Come on Jennifer, come on over to the blue side.  We have better cookies.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another good one: "Trump’s behavior at NATO is a national embarrassment"

Spoiler

Poor NATO. After all of the hoops summit organizers reportedly jumped through to accommodate President Trump and his anemic attention span, he definitely was not on his best behavior. Trump was the party guest whom no one really wants to deal with but has to — because he has more money than anyone else. The party guest who shows up and berates the hosts for not paying for their fair share of the defense spending cake. To borrow from NFL player Marshawn Lynch, Trump acted as though he was there just so he wouldn’t get fined.

The NATO summit isn’t over yet, but so far, it’s So Trump. According to early press pool reports, Trump literally gave NATO allies the cold shoulder:

...

Speaking of shoulders, the U.S. president basically shoved the prime minister of Montenegro, the newest member of NATO, to get to the front of the group, because AMERICA FIRST:

...

After Trump called NATO obsolete (then proceeded to walk that back), Europe was looking for public support of Article 5, which affirms that NATO members will come to the mutual defense of any member that is under attack. But alas, Trump could not even bring himself to utter explicitly that the U.S. supports Article 5 in his remarks at Brussels, which every single U.S. president has done since Harry Truman in 1949. If NATO allies were nervous about the United States’ commitment to Europe’s security before, they must be fuming now. The NATO summit comes as reports surface that British police are withholding intelligence from the United States after leaks to U.S. media about the Manchester bombing investigation, and weeks after Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russians about operations against the Islamic State. For all of Trump’s fire and fury about the United States getting the raw end of the deal from NATO, from an optics standpoint, it is the United States that is looking like the irresponsible partner.

Perhaps in Trump’s eyes, the Saudis threw a much better shindig — spending $68 million to host Trump. Well, really, it was a $110 billion dollar fete, considering the price tag for the historic weapons deal that the United States signed with Saudi Arabia. Trump appeared to be much more friendly and relaxed among Saudi Arabian and other Gulf leaders than with our European allies. Obviously, Trump was bedazzled by the kingdom’s hospitality, but none of the Saudi opulence and money can whitewash Saudi Arabia’s terrible record of fueling Wahhabi terrorism, carrying out record numbers of public beheadings, contributing to famine in Yemen, and withholding many basic rights for Saudi women and girls. Days after one of the worst terrorist attacks in British history,  Trump is visibly more comfortable praising autocrats and extremist governments who help to fuel violence and conflict. That should be a slap in the face to our liberal allies in Europe.

Maybe next time, NATO should serve chocolate cake, give out gold medals, impress Trump with glowing orbs, and throw in a sword dance or two. Oh, and $100 billion.

But in all seriousness, for anyone who cares about the America’s global leadership and the future of Europe, Trump’s behavior at the NATO summit has been embarrassing.

To quote the TT: SAD! I can't imagine a US President cozying up to Saudi Arabia and treating our long-term European allies like crap.

[47of74]

And on behalf of all my ancestors who came from what today is Germany or other German speaking regions of Europe, I say to the Tangerine Toddler, "Fick dich, Scheißkopf!"

 

[candygirl200413]

So with the Pope I read how President Obama and First Lady Michelle are in Italy and I imagined this conversation: (This didn't post when I wrote it yesterday but I still wanted to share!)

*After Trump Leaves*

Pope takes out cell phone: Miss you  (heart emoji) and sends it to Obama

POTUS: Same. Hey I'm out in Rome but I think I can somehow get out to the Vatican if Michelle lets me.

Pope: OMG thanks, love ya Barack. You guys aren't gonna survive this for so long.

 

Also Germany was the first country I went to and despite thinking everyone hated me and my siblings cause of the accent (we were in elementary school and years later learn that they weren't mad, we just weren't used to their accent!). Now that I'm older I totally understand that they are amazing people and whenever I plan my return to Europe, better believe Germany is on my list! (We went to Cologne!)

Also speaking again on Germany, here is this wonderful video of Chancellor Merkel being so excited (as well as others in the crowd) of her fav and a lot of our faves, President Barack Obama!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The conservative mind has become diseased"

Spoiler

To many observers on the left, the initial embrace of Seth Rich conspiracy theories by conservative media figures was merely a confirmation of the right’s deformed soul. But for those of us who remember that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were once relatively mainstream Reaganites, their extended vacation in the fever swamps is even more disturbing. If once you knew better, the indictment is deeper.

The cruel exploitation of the memory of Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot dead last summer, was horrifying and clarifying. The Hannity right, without evidence, accused Rich rather than the Russians of leaking damaging DNC emails. In doing so, it has proved its willingness to credit anything — no matter how obviously deceptive or toxic — to defend President Trump and harm his opponents. Even if it means becoming a megaphone for Russian influence.

The basic, human questions are simple. How could conservative media figures not have felt — felt in their hearts and bones — the God-awful ickiness of it? How did the genes of generosity and simple humanity get turned off? Is this insensibility the risk of prolonged exposure to our radioactive political culture? If so, all of us should stand back a moment and tend to the health of our revulsion.

But this failure of decency is also politically symbolic. Who is the politician who legitimized conspiracy thinking at the highest level? Who raised the possibility that Ted Cruz’s father might have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Who hinted that Hillary Clinton might have been involved in the death of Vince Foster, or that unnamed liberals might have killed Justice Antonin Scalia? Who not only questioned President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but raised the prospect of the murder of a Hawaiian state official in a coverup? “How amazing,” Trump tweeted in 2013, “the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

We have a president charged with maintaining public health who asserts that the vaccination schedule is a dangerous scam of greedy doctors. We have a president charged with representing all Americans who has falsely accused thousands of Muslims of celebrating in the streets following the 9/11 attacks.

In this mental environment, alleging a Rich-related conspiracy was predictable. This is a concrete example of the mainstreaming of destructive craziness.

Those conservatives who believe that the confirmation of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch is sufficient justification for the Trump presidency are ignoring Trump’s psychic and moral destruction of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Clinton, with a small number of changed votes, would have defeated Republicans. But Trump is doing a kind of harm beyond anything Clinton could have done. He is changing the party’s most basic moral and political orientations. He is shaping conservatism in his image and ensuring an eventual defeat more complete, and an eventual exile more prolonged, than Democrats could have dreamed.

The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased. The movement has been seized by a kind of discrediting madness, in which conspiracy delusions figure prominently. Institutions and individuals that once served an important ideological role, providing a balance to media bias, are discrediting themselves in crucial ways. With the blessings of a president, they have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion. They have allowed political polarization to reach their hearts, and harden them. They have allowed polarization to dominate their minds, and empty them.

Conspiracy theories often involve a kind of dehumanization. Human tragedy is made secondary — something to be exploited rather than mourned. The narrative of conspiracy takes precedence over the meaning of a life and the suffering of a family. A human being is made into an ideological prop and used on someone else’s stage. As the Rich family has attested, the pain inflicted is quite real.

A conspiratorial approach to politics is fully consistent with other forms of dehumanization — of migrants, refugees and “the other” more generally. Men and women are reduced to types and presented as threats. They also become props in an ideological drama. They are presented as representatives of a plot involving invasion and infiltration, rather than being viewed as individuals seeking opportunity or fleeing oppression and violence. This also involves callousness, cruelty and conspiracy thinking.

In Trump’s political world, this project of dehumanization is far along. The future of conservatism now depends on its capacity for revulsion. And it is not at all clear whether this capacity still exists.

Very well said. I've had ideological differences with conservatives for years, but the Repugs have become completely unhinged.

[GreyhoundFan]

Excellent editorial: "The White House’s Aversion to Ethical Scrutiny"

Spoiler

It takes a serious commitment to incompetence and deception to spawn as many ethical and legal concerns as the Trump administration has in just four months. The misbehavior by White House officials in the past few days has been impressive even by Trumpian standards. They’ve tried to raise doubts about the independence of the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. And they’ve stonewalled efforts by the Office of Government Ethics to identify conflicts of interest in the administration.

Take first the ethics issue. In January, Mr. Trump signed an executive order banning appointees who had been lobbyists or lawyers from working on policy or regulatory issues they were once paid to influence, for two years. Unfortunately, that order allowed the president or a designee to secretly waive these restrictions. In the Obama administration, any such waivers were made public, with a detailed explanation. Otherwise, it would be impossible for the public to know who was violating the lobbying rules, and who received permission to ignore them.

Confronted with multiple examples of former lobbyists working on the exact issues they once lobbied on, the ethics office last month directed the White House and federal agencies to provide, by June 1, copies of any waivers.

In a letter to Walter Shaub Jr., who directs the office, and to ethics officers in federal agencies, the White House challenged Mr. Shaub’s legal authority to make the request. The letter came from Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, which has no jurisdiction over the government ethics program. His effort centers on whether the White House is a “federal agency,” subject to ethics rules. But Mr. Mulvaney went further, maintaining, contrary to the Ethics in Government Act, that the ethics office has no authority to demand information on waivers from federal agencies. Since his office helps control the agencies’ funding, some interpreted that as an effort to intimidate them into keeping their waivers secret, too.

The ethics office was created after Watergate. A White House has never actively worked against it in this way. Mr. Shaub, whose five-year term ends in January, refuses to back down. He told agency ethics officers that contrary to what the White House says, they are legally required to provide details of the waivers to his office. Late on Monday, he sent a rocket of a letter to Mr. Mulvaney. His office’s job, he wrote, is “to lead the executive branch ethics program with independence, free from political pressure. Accordingly, OGE declines your request to suspend its ethics inquiry and reiterates its expectation that agencies will fully comply with its directive by June 1, 2017. Public confidence in the integrity of government decision-making demands no less.”

So will the White House bend? Or will Mr. Trump fire another independent official for excess loyalty to the law?

Meanwhile, back at the White House, Mr. Trump’s legal team sought legal cover to stymie Robert Mueller III, special counsel in the Russia investigation, by claiming Mr. Mueller needed the same type of waiver that the White House has been trying to hide. It said that because he worked at WilmerHale, the law firm that represents two major figures in the inquiry — Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman — he could not investigate them.

Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department disagreed, saying on Tuesday that its ethics experts “determined that Mr. Mueller’s participation in the matters assigned to him is appropriate.” Mr. Mueller did not represent Mr. Kushner nor Mr. Manafort while at WilmerHale, a firm that employs 300 lawyers in Washington and 1,200 globally. Nor was Mr. Mueller privy to any confidential information about their cases, a state of affairs that satisfies both District of Columbia and federal rules.

Why would White House lawyers pursue such a baseless line of attack? “They’re trying to use the ethics rules to fire a special prosecutor,” Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, said. “That’s insane.” If the Bush administration had told him to concoct legal justifications for evading ethics rules and legal inquiries in this way, Mr. Painter said, “I’d have quit.”

Instead of (in the inimitable words of Jessa Duggar Seewald) playing hokey pokey with the FOIA, the inhabitants of the White House are trying to play hokey pokey with ethics.

[IrishCarrie]

11 hours ago, apple1 said:

To all of you who are not Americans: I am so sorry. So very embarrassing. I promise we are not all like that.

Don't you dare apologise!!! I've been to the USA many, many times, for both work and leisure (New York, Boston, Florida, New Orleans,Nashville/Memphis, California) and with my hand on my heart, I can say that I experienced nothing but warmth, friendliness and helpfulness from the American people.

The Trump phenomenon is a symptom of deep divisions in the country but I try to believe that it's a necessary evil in order to expose the rot, so that it can be cut out. Things often get worse before they get better and that's totally shit for you guys, but I have faith that the world will right itself in the end and decency, kindness and humanity will prevail.

And while we're waiting for things to come full circle, don't you dare apologise!!!! Trump is a GOBSHITE and you bear no responsibility for his idiocy!

 ---> That's for you personally, @apple1! 

[apple1]

@IrishCarrie Thank you!

[GreyhoundFan]

Good grief: "Trump takes a moment to brag that less than half the country thinks he’s doing a good job"

Spoiler

This is a very weird tweet.

... <dumb tweet from twitler>

By itself, it’s weird. The president is thanking America for its support … while pointing out that less than half of the country thinks he’s doing a good job? Sure, 48 percent is more support than he earned in the November election, when he pulled about 46 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 48. But generally speaking, a 48 percent approval rating for a president is not what you might call “high.”

Setting that aside, though, it’s even weirder because that 48 percent isn’t even a good number by Trump standards! It’s from a poll from Rasmussen Reports, as the image indicates. Over the course of Trump’s presidency, Rasmussen has almost always showed stronger support for Trump than other polls, as data from HuffPost Pollster makes obvious.

,,,

So what Trump is doing is the equivalent of entering an Olympic diving competition and only reporting the high scores from the judges. It’s not a good representation of how he did overall. In Pollster’s running average, Trump is actually at 39.8 percent approval, worse than the 48 percent he touts. In RealClearPolitics’ average, he does slightly better: 39.9 percent.

There’s a reason that Rasmussen’s numbers are generally higher than other polls. It is not only a Republican-leaning pollster, but it surveys only likely voters, a group that skews more heavily Republican. Since Trump was inaugurated, likely voter polls have shown higher approval ratings for Trump than polls that survey all Americans. Gallup, for example, surveys all adults. In Gallup’s polling, Trump’s at 39 percent.

Are you sensing a trend?

But notice, too, how those red Rasmussen dots have trended since Trump was inaugurated. Forty-eight percent is actually a mediocre poll even just within Rasmussen’s results. In the 87 approval numbers Rasmussen has tallied since Jan. 20, Trump’s been at 48 percent 10 times. He’s been under 48 percent 37 times — and over it 40 times. Trump’s median approval rating in Rasmussen polls? Forty-eight percent.

His average? Slightly higher, at 48.6 percent. This is a below-average Rasmussen poll that Trump wants to celebrate for some reason.

One possible reason was that it was highlighted by Matt Drudge on Twitter on Wednesday.

...

Drudge tried to frame Trump’s numbers positively by comparing Trump’s 48 percent to the 47.9 percent average for Barack Obama. But that 47.9 percent for Obama was from Gallup‘s numbers — meaning that the comparison should have been not 48 to 47.9, but 39 to 47.9, using the Gallup daily average we mentioned above. Trump is just above Obama’s all-time low of 38 percent in Gallup polling, which is a better analogy than the one Drudge used.

So let’s now set that all aside and go back to the initial point. Trump would like us to take a minute from our day to know that he is considered to be doing a good job by less than half of the likely voters in the country — a subset of the overall, more-hostile population of American adults.

Okay. Now we know, Mr. President. Thanks.

Alternative math, I guess.