Trump 18: Info to Russia, With Love

[nvmbr02]

I don't think this story has been posted yet. But ugh.

Trump complained of trouble setting up golf courses in EU during Brussels visit: report

Quote

 

“Every time we talk about a country, he remembered the things he had done. Scotland? He said he had opened a club. Ireland? He said it took him two and a half years to get a license and that did not give him a very good image of the European Union.,” a source told Le Soir.

“One feels that he wants a system where everything can be realized very quickly and without formalities.”

I wish I could say that this was shocking, but it really just isn't anymore. I don't know how other world leaders deal with him. 

[GreyhoundFan]

41 minutes ago, AuntK said:

Damn! I saw a photo of the Orange shithead and Melania in the silver dress heading to a concert in Italy and now I can't find it. It is a close-up and his tie is out of place and you can see that the shirt buttons over his belly are straining and about to pop! And this is with him standing! And you know what happens when your shirt is too tight and you SIT! I wish those buttons would start flying! He obviously needs a larger size shirt! Now you know why you never see him without his coat!

Yes I am being petty, but I hate him.

Here ya go. Yeah, her dress is ugly and his shirt doesn't fit. What a pair.

"Trump’s Tweets Might Be Lawyered. But Who Will Babysit Him?"

Quote

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the White House is considering having a team of lawyers approve Donald Trump’s tweets before they go out. But who would stop Trump’s itchy fingers before dawn when he usually taps out his nastiest tweets?

That was the topic on a CNN panel Friday as journalists wondered who would be brave enough to bird dog Trump at 2 a.m. — or confiscate his phone.

“My question is, is one of those lawyers going to take up residence in the White House?” asked CNN political correspondent Dana Bash. “Because that is the biggest issue for the White House staff when they’re tearing their hair out looking at these tweets [written]  in the off hours when he gets himself worked up into a frenzy.”

Yahoo anchor Brianna Golodryga added: “I don’t seen the president handing over his phone ... are these lawyers coming in at 2 in the morning to do phone duty?”

The Journal reported Friday that advisers are weighing new strategies to deal with the pounding onslaught of bad news for the president as damaging information mounts in the ongoing investigations into Russian connections to the Trump campaign team. One strategy would have lawyers vet Trump’s tweets so they “don’t go from the president’s mind out to the universe,” and create more trouble for him and his aides, a source told the newspaper.

But timing would be an issue. Could the president let a tweet sit until lawyers could see it — or would he turn his phone over to someone until working hours? A former campaign aide said neither is likely.

Yeah, I can't see him agreeing to give up control.

[fraurosena]

I don't know who it was that said there were no gaffes during his foreign tour, but... 

 

Or does he suddenly speak fluent Italian, do you think? Yeah, me either.

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

I don't know who it was that said there were no gaffes during his foreign tour, but... 

 

Or does he suddenly speak fluent Italian, do you think? Yeah, me either.

 

It looks like he was sleeping.

[fraurosena]

I love this tweet by one of my favorite authors, Stephen King:

 

[fraurosena]

 

In my country we call this "ostrich politics". Just act like something's not there, ignore it, and maybe it will go away.... 

Not only is this incredibly rude and an obvious slight (yet again) of a fellow NATO member, but it's also a glaringly obvious ommission that shows them up to be the homophobic, misogynistic, FAKE!-Christians they really are.

 

To counteract this stupidity that makes us ragey, here's a wonderfully rousing speech from Joe Biden:

 

[47of74]

I have a new favorite photo of the G7!

[fraurosena]

This comes as no surprise, but:

Angela Merkel says Germany can no longer rely on Donald Trump's America: 'We Europeans must take our destiny into our own hands'

Quote

Angela Merkel has suggested Germany and Europe can no longer rely on the US under Donald Trump.

Speaking at a campaign event held in a Bavarian beer tent, the German Chancellor emphasised the need for friendly relations with the US, Britain and Russia, but added: “We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.” 

Ms Merkel said that as the traditional western alliance is threatened by the new US presidency and Brexit, “the times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days.”

While Germany and Europe would strive to maintain relations with the US and Britain, Ms Merkel said, “we need to know we must fight for our own future as Europeans for our destiny.”

Her comments came after Mr Trump said he needed more time to decide if the US would continue backing the Paris climate deal, which has frustrated European diplomats.

Mr Trump, who has previously called global warming a hoax, came under concerted pressure from the other leaders to honour the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing carbon emissions.

>Toddler tweet<

Although he tweeted to say he would make a decision next week, his apparent reluctance to embrace the first legally binding global climate change deal, signed by 195 countries, clearly annoyed Ms Merkel.

“The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying,” she told reporters.

“There are no indications whether the United States will stay in the Paris Agreement or not.”

G7 leaders went on to blame the US for the failure to reach an agreement on climate change, in an unusually frank statement which read: “The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics.

“Understanding this process, the heads of state and of government of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom and the presidents of the European Council and of the European Commission reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement."

Mr Trump has reportedly told “confidants” including the head of the Environmental Protection Angency Scott Pruitt, he wants the US to leave the international agreement on climate change, the Axios news outlet reported, citing three sources with direct knowledge.

[...]

Way to go, mr. presidunce! You've truly succeeded in alienating your greatest allies. 

[Destiny]

In case anyone is keeping score at home, he's back to tweeting about fake news.

[AuntK]

This was a successful trip? (She asked with her voice at a pitch so high it seemed that it could only be heard by dogs and small children).  

The purported president curtsied to the Saudi king, rode in a golf cart when the other leaders were strolling through the streets, actually shoved the prime minister of Montenegro, refused to wear headphones to hear translation from Italian to English at G7 meeting, insulted the member nations of NATO, called the Germans, "bad," did his alpha male handshake where he tried to inflict pain on the new French president, seemingly forgot that Israel is located in the Middle East, and most importantly, failed to affirm America's commitment to NATO.   And, of course, the shitstorm waiting for him back home.

SUCCESSFUL trip? I think not. It would only have been successful had he failed to return.  Can you seek asylum in Russia?

[AlwaysExcited]

24 minutes ago, AuntK said:

This was a successful trip? (She asked with her voice at a pitch so high it seemed that it could only be heard by dogs and small children). 

The expectations are very low right now. He didn't start a war? Didn't offend half of the world in one sentence? No sex tapes taken in foreign hotel? 
He did well. 

[Destiny]

The expectations are very low right now. He didn't start a war? Didn't offend half of the world in one sentence? No sex tapes taken in foreign hotel? 
He did well. 

Except it appears that he managed to offend the shit out of G7 leaders and NATO. Those Merkel remarks are fucking terrifying.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, Destiny said:

Except it appears that he managed to offend the shit out of G7 leaders and NATO. Those Merkel remarks are fucking terrifying.

Orange Fornicate Face probably has every German company with any kind of operations here in the US thinking twice about US expansions.  That plant expansion that such and such German company is thinking about?  Maybe after the tapeworm shared his words of wisdom that expansion here in the US will be cancelled in a favor of expanding operations in good ol' Deutschland or somewhere else not run by an unstable orange buffon.

[AmericanRose]

Expectations for the American president are lower than for the average American.

[AuntK]

38 minutes ago, AmericanRose said:

Expectations for the American president are lower than for the average American.

Expectations for the American president are lower than for the average American third-grader.

[GreyhoundFan]

12 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I don't know who it was that said there were no gaffes during his foreign tour, but... 

Or does he suddenly speak fluent Italian, do you think? Yeah, me either.

 

C'mon, @fraurosena, he doesn't even speak fluent English.

 

This is just lovely (NOT): "By backing Saudi Arabia’s vision of the Middle East, Trump may be sowing the seeds of conflict"

Spoiler

ISTANBUL — In a speech intended to galvanize Arab and Muslim leaders against threats from extremists and Iran, President Trump demanded unity from his audience in Saudi Arabia, and focus.

“One goal transcends every other consideration,” he said to the assembled leaders in the Saudi capital, in an address that shifted between stark realism and startling optimism. “We pray this special gathering may someday be remembered as the beginning of peace in the Middle East,” he said.

But instead of peace, the Middle East was battered by a wave of conflict in the days that followed, awash with recriminations and repression that suggested that, far from uniting the region, Trump’s words had only aggravated its divides.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia launched a bizarre and unexpected war of words that highlighted their longtime competition for regional influence and their often sharply contrasting visions.

As that dispute raged last week, the leaders of Bahrain and Egypt embarked on unusually vicious crackdowns on political opponents at home, killing five people and arresting hundreds.

And leaders in Iran, Saudi Arabia’s principal rival, where voters earlier this month reelected a reformist president, went on the offensive, condemning Trump’s announcement of billions of dollars in weapons sales to the Saudis while revealing the existence of an underground ballistic missile facility.

Analysts said the tensions were almost surely a consequence of Trump’s visit to Riyadh: a forceful American endorsement of Saudi leadership in the Arab world, punctuated by the weapons sales, which had stirred panic and anxiety among the kingdom’s competitors and enemies while emboldening its loyal and authoritarian allies.

And Trump’s appeal for a common stand against terrorism was unlikely to heal the rifts, analysts said: It was delivered to an audience of Arab leaders who have applied the term so broadly and casually — to violent militants as well as anti-government bloggers — as to render the word almost meaningless.

“Donald Trump now accepts the view of Saudi Arabia as a strategic bastion in the Arab and Islamic World,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle East studies at the London School of Economics. And his visit was “related” to the tumult that ensued, Gerges said.

“What you are seeing now is that the Saudi-led coalition feels empowered. They are on the offensive. It’s a new era. Everyone has to toe the line and join this alliance,” he said.

The consequences of the shift could trouble the region for years, he said, by intensifying proxy wars in Yemen or Syria, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have supported opposing sides, Gerges said.

New fronts also could ignite — between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran’s ally, in places like southern Lebanon.

“All sides are preparing for the next round,” Gerges said.

Iranian officials initially shrugged off Trump’s vociferous anti-Iran comments in Riyadh, dismissing the summit as spectacle. Iran’s Internet-savvy foreign minister, Javad Zarif, ridiculed the U.S.-Saudi arms deal on Twitter.

But in the days since, the Iranian government has adopted a more defiant tone, denouncing the raid in Bahrain against Shiite-led opposition activists as a direct consequence of Trump’s visit.

On Thursday, Iran unveiled the country’s third underground ballistic missile facility. Its ongoing missile production has been a source of contention between Iran and the United States.

“U.S. officials should know that whenever we need a missile test for technical reasons, we will test it, and we will not wait for their permission,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said at a news conference in Tehran on Tuesday.

It was a departure from the conciliatory tone Rouhani took on the campaign trail, and came as a senior military aide to Iran’s supreme leader also condemned the weapons deal as an attempt to destabilize the region.

As the Arab world braced for an escalating confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, another fight broke out last week between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose long-standing rivalry has flared repeatedly since the Arab uprisings in 2011.

The genesis of the feud was a report published on the website of Qatar’s state news agency on Wednesday. It quoted Qatar’s emir as criticizing the messages that had emerged from the Riyadh conference, including the attacks by Trump and others on Iran and condemnations of Hamas and Hezbollah, the Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups.

Qatar later said that the emir had never spoken and that the state news agency had been hacked.

That did not prevent Saudi Arabia from launching days of scathing attacks on Qatar through Saudi media channels, which suggested it would not tolerate any divergence from the Saudi-led position.

In a column titled, “Who runs Qatar,” a Saudi columnist, Said al-Suraihi, writing on the al-Arabiya news site, said Qatar had “disengaged itself from the consensus on issues that represent a common danger to the entire region.”

Trump’s visit — which included what was widely seen as a pledge not to lecture the region on human rights abuses — also raised fears about stepped-up domestic repression in Saudi Arabia and the countries in its orbit, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Violence last week in Bahrain highlighted those concerns. The tiny island nation — a Saudi ally and a close partner of the United States — has faced criticism for the government’s repression of dissent and accusations of systemic discrimination against Bahrain’s Shiite majority.

Trump met with Bahrain’s king in Riyadh last week, and promised their relationship would be free of the “strain” of previous years — a reference to the Obama administration’s periodic scolding of Bahrain for rights abuses.

On Tuesday, two days after the meeting, forces in Bahrain raided an opposition sit-in outside the house of Bahrain’s most revered Shiite cleric, killing five people in the deadliest confrontation with its opponents since a pro-democracy uprising on the island in 2011.

On the same day, in Egypt, the government of President Abdel-Fatah al-Sissi arrested one of the country’s most prominent opposition lawyers and a likely challenger to Sissi in elections that will be held next year.

Sissi — who had appeared in a widely circulated picture alongside Trump and the Saudi king during the meeting in Riyadh, palming a glowing orb in a newly minted counterterrorism center — has received political support as well as billions of dollars in aid from the Saudis over the last few years.

Khalid Ali, the lawyer who was arrested, had played a prominent role in the legal effort to block a plan by the government to transfer sovereignty of two islands in the Red Sea from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

It was not clear whether the arrest was related to the Saudi conference. Dozens of people have been detained in Egypt in recent weeks, including leftist and liberal government opponents as well as workers and trade unionists, according to Gamal Eid, an Egyptian human rights advocate.

The authorities also blocked at least 21 news websites this week, including Qatar-based outlets as well as Mada Masr, a news portal that it is widely seen as Egypt’s last remaining independent publication.

The crackdown was not new, Eid said, but after the meeting in Riyadh — and Trump’s “green light”— the campaign of arrests and censorship was “growing fast,” he said.

Oh yeah, such a successful trip, let's blow up the Middle East with stupid comments in Saudi Arabia. How unreal is this?

[fraurosena]

Donald Trump seems happy to destroy the planet. Only China and India can save us now

Quote

Earlier this year Donald Trump received a personal letter urging him not to withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

If the US pulled out, the letter said, it would lose a seat at discussions and could not make a case for “the most cost-effective greenhouse gas reduction options”.

Another voice in his ear said the US would weaken its own hand by “basically uninviting itself” from a number of negotiating tables.

If Trump does this, rejects climate change, abandons our commitments, gives up on US leadership, the damage of 2016 will be incomprehensible https://t.co/5TFIRQESkM

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) May 28, 2017

Those urging Mr Trump to stick with the agreement made by Barack Obama were not long-haired greenies or earnest activists. Rather, they were the chief executives of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest listed oil company, and Royal Dutch Shell. For they see the danger of the world’s most powerful nation not being present. Trump, apparently does not.

[...]

The Associated Press recently spoke to two dozen climate scientists and consulted a computer model designed to predict the potential impact of climate change. It found that Trump’s move would make a bad situation markedly worse and make it harder to stop the world crossing a perilous global temperature threshold. [...]

In another development, Trump’s rejection of the Paris Agreement would cede the US’s lead on confronting climate change to other nations, most notably China and India. 

[...] China has stepped up its game. Earlier this year, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Xi said the Paris accord was hard-won. “All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it, as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations,” he said.

[...]

European leaders were little short of furious with Trump over his climate change stubbornness. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said discussions “had been very difficult, and not to say very unsatisfactory”. 

French President Emmanuel Macron felt the need to underscore the severity of the situation by shaking Trump’s hand with such intensity that his knuckles went white. He later said it was “a moment of truth” designed to show that he was not a pushover.

None of this appears to have mattered to Trump. He seems set to pull the US out of an agreement most others nations consider essential to the planet’s survival.

The best hope may now lie with the very people Trump once mocked as hoaxers.

Oh dear, dear America. I'm afraid you're very, very fucked...

And after reading @GreyhoundFan's post above, I think the whole planet is fucked as well.  

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

Was talking to my generally boring BIL today.  He works for a large company that invests in corporate real estate.  He was telling me that there has been a significant uptick in US companies looking for real estate space here (West Coast of Canada)  so that they can relocate their foreign employees here instead of dealing with hassles from Trump in the US.  So that's more US business he is driving out of the country.   It's good for Canada, but the opposite of what he says he is doing.  Dolt 45 just doesn't seem to have a clue when it comes to anticipating what the consequences of his policies might actually be.  

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Awkward Body Language of Donald Trump"

Spoiler

Our golden-haired leader is no silver-tongued devil, but that’s O.K. What he lacks in verbal zingers he makes up for with physical ones.

Body language — both his and that of the pitiable people around him — told the story of Donald Trump’s foreign adventure better than anything else.

When I say “pitiable,” I’m thinking about the pope, of course, and the first lady, naturally, but especially Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, who was the visibly stunned victim of the shove heard round the world.

Please tell me you saw it. Markovic, Trump and other heads of state were arranging themselves for a photograph. And Markovic had the misfortune to be standing between Trump and the front of the pack, a lesser beauty in the bossy prom queen’s path.

But not for long! Trump batted him out of the way, perhaps mistaking him for a political reporter or picturing James Comey. Then, triumphal, Trump straightened his suit jacket, stiffened his posture and raised his fleshy chin. He was ready for his close-up.

With Trump, struts, scowls and pouts reveal every bit as much as what tumbles from his lips, which is a lot less trustworthy. His words can be counterfeit. His gestures are genuine. So it only makes sense that we lean on them for the narrative of his post-truth presidency, whose latest, foreign chapter brimmed with more awkward physicality than a toddlers’ gymnastics class.

The shove heard round the world was preceded by the curtsy heard round the world, when Trump did precisely what he maligned President Obama for — well, one of the countless things he maligned President Obama for — and approached Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman, in a pose of deference. Hypocrisy, thy name is Trump, and thy knees are bent and thy head is bowed.

Thy sense of rhythm doesn’t exist. Did you see him during that Saudi dance, not so much rattling his saber as dangling it while he wobbled, like a Weeble, from side to side? I imagined the following dialogue balloon above his head: “When I told the king I was a swordsman, this wasn’t what I meant.”

...

And the dialogue balloon above Pope Francis’s head when he posed with Trump in Vatican City later in the week would have said: “Forgive me, Father, for I cannot fake delight.” I’ve been told by Vatican insiders that the pope never forgets that he’s on camera and that the precise angle of his eyes and curl of his lips are being captured. He stared straight ahead, his mien as joyless as a gulag.

...

George Bernard Shaw wrote a play titled “Arms and the Man.” Someday somebody will write a Trump biography titled “Hands and the Man.”

From Spy magazine’s long-ago caricature of Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian” to that unforgettable moment during a Republican presidential debate when he displayed his digits to try to prove the opposite — Look, Ma, big hands! — his paws have been at center stage.

That remained true on the trip. In Israel, there was the swat heard round the world, when, walking alongside Bibi Netanyahu across a red carpet, he noticed that Netanyahu was holding his wife’s hand and so reached back for Melania’s.

...

To say that she withheld it would be an understatement. To say that Twitter and comedians had a field day would be even more of one.

...

After another, subsequent incident in Rome when Melania seemed to decline the heady opportunity to hold her husband’s hand, Seth Meyers, the host of “Late Night,” joked: “Former C.I.A. Director John Brennan testified today that there was contact between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. However, still no contact between Donald and Melania.”

...

There’s so much she could still be smarting over, including the inauguration back in January, when her husband bounded out of the car and up the steps before her, rushing to greet the Obamas and leaving her in his wake.

...

Courtesy: absent. Chivalry: dead. Her revenge came soon after, on the inaugural stage. She let a smile at her husband drop from her face so quickly and emphatically that it was like an announcement to the world that she’d been wearing a mask.

But back to our president’s paws, which aren’t just at center stage but also at the center of so much controversy. When Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany visited him in Washington in mid-March, there was debate over whether he denied her a handshake that she’d suggested or simply didn’t hear her request.

The tension in their postures prompted observations about how much more relaxed she and Obama always seemed, but there was another point of comparison — a weirder one — if President George W. Bush came into the picture. At a G8 summit meeting in St. Petersburg in 2006, he walked up behind Merkel, who was seated, and massaged her shoulders. This visibly surprised her. It didn’t seem to amuse her much, either.

Amusement wasn’t a word that popped to mind when you saw pictures and read accounts of Trump’s encounters with Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected president of France, in Brussels on Thursday. Maybe that’s because Trump was once again sowing doubt about his commitment to NATO. Or maybe that’s because he reportedly told Macron that he’d supported him, even though his affections had clearly been for Marine Le Pen of the National Front.

...

Whichever the case, Macron at one point seemed to swerve away from Trump, despite Trump’s outstretched arms, so he could embrace Merkel instead.

At another point, during a formal greeting, Macron and Trump “ grabbed each other’s hands, jaws clenched, in an extended grip that turned Mr. Trump’s knuckles white,” according to The Times.

“Their faces tightened,” reported The Washington Post. “Trump reached in first, but then he tried to release, twice, but Macron kept his grip.”

Sacred texts have received less scrupulous analysis than Trump’s foreign-leader handshakes, his presidential-debate snorts (remember those?) and the reactions — aghast, awe-struck, puzzled, peeved — of those who bump up against (or happen to be married to) him.

I think that’s fitting, not just because his actual speech is so honesty-challenged but also because the analyzers are paying respect to the way he takes in information. He prefers television to reading, images to pesky words. Shouldn’t we return the favor when appraising him?

And aren’t we in the right to take note of an Israeli diplomat’s physical reaction when Trump said, in Israel, “We just got back from the Middle East,” as if Israel were in South America or something? The diplomat, Ron Dermer, briefly buried his head in one of his hands.

Do cry for us, Montenegro.

"...swat heard around the world..." I got a good giggle out of that.

[Flossie]

8 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The Awkward Body Language of Donald Trump"

  Reveal hidden contents

Our golden-haired leader is no silver-tongued devil, but that’s O.K. What he lacks in verbal zingers he makes up for with physical ones.

Body language — both his and that of the pitiable people around him — told the story of Donald Trump’s foreign adventure better than anything else.

When I say “pitiable,” I’m thinking about the pope, of course, and the first lady, naturally, but especially Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, who was the visibly stunned victim of the shove heard round the world.

Please tell me you saw it. Markovic, Trump and other heads of state were arranging themselves for a photograph. And Markovic had the misfortune to be standing between Trump and the front of the pack, a lesser beauty in the bossy prom queen’s path.

But not for long! Trump batted him out of the way, perhaps mistaking him for a political reporter or picturing James Comey. Then, triumphal, Trump straightened his suit jacket, stiffened his posture and raised his fleshy chin. He was ready for his close-up.

With Trump, struts, scowls and pouts reveal every bit as much as what tumbles from his lips, which is a lot less trustworthy. His words can be counterfeit. His gestures are genuine. So it only makes sense that we lean on them for the narrative of his post-truth presidency, whose latest, foreign chapter brimmed with more awkward physicality than a toddlers’ gymnastics class.

The shove heard round the world was preceded by the curtsy heard round the world, when Trump did precisely what he maligned President Obama for — well, one of the countless things he maligned President Obama for — and approached Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman, in a pose of deference. Hypocrisy, thy name is Trump, and thy knees are bent and thy head is bowed.

Thy sense of rhythm doesn’t exist. Did you see him during that Saudi dance, not so much rattling his saber as dangling it while he wobbled, like a Weeble, from side to side? I imagined the following dialogue balloon above his head: “When I told the king I was a swordsman, this wasn’t what I meant.”

...

And the dialogue balloon above Pope Francis’s head when he posed with Trump in Vatican City later in the week would have said: “Forgive me, Father, for I cannot fake delight.” I’ve been told by Vatican insiders that the pope never forgets that he’s on camera and that the precise angle of his eyes and curl of his lips are being captured. He stared straight ahead, his mien as joyless as a gulag.

...

George Bernard Shaw wrote a play titled “Arms and the Man.” Someday somebody will write a Trump biography titled “Hands and the Man.”

From Spy magazine’s long-ago caricature of Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian” to that unforgettable moment during a Republican presidential debate when he displayed his digits to try to prove the opposite — Look, Ma, big hands! — his paws have been at center stage.

That remained true on the trip. In Israel, there was the swat heard round the world, when, walking alongside Bibi Netanyahu across a red carpet, he noticed that Netanyahu was holding his wife’s hand and so reached back for Melania’s.

...

To say that she withheld it would be an understatement. To say that Twitter and comedians had a field day would be even more of one.

...

After another, subsequent incident in Rome when Melania seemed to decline the heady opportunity to hold her husband’s hand, Seth Meyers, the host of “Late Night,” joked: “Former C.I.A. Director John Brennan testified today that there was contact between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. However, still no contact between Donald and Melania.”

...

There’s so much she could still be smarting over, including the inauguration back in January, when her husband bounded out of the car and up the steps before her, rushing to greet the Obamas and leaving her in his wake.

...

Courtesy: absent. Chivalry: dead. Her revenge came soon after, on the inaugural stage. She let a smile at her husband drop from her face so quickly and emphatically that it was like an announcement to the world that she’d been wearing a mask.

But back to our president’s paws, which aren’t just at center stage but also at the center of so much controversy. When Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany visited him in Washington in mid-March, there was debate over whether he denied her a handshake that she’d suggested or simply didn’t hear her request.

The tension in their postures prompted observations about how much more relaxed she and Obama always seemed, but there was another point of comparison — a weirder one — if President George W. Bush came into the picture. At a G8 summit meeting in St. Petersburg in 2006, he walked up behind Merkel, who was seated, and massaged her shoulders. This visibly surprised her. It didn’t seem to amuse her much, either.

Amusement wasn’t a word that popped to mind when you saw pictures and read accounts of Trump’s encounters with Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected president of France, in Brussels on Thursday. Maybe that’s because Trump was once again sowing doubt about his commitment to NATO. Or maybe that’s because he reportedly told Macron that he’d supported him, even though his affections had clearly been for Marine Le Pen of the National Front.

...

Whichever the case, Macron at one point seemed to swerve away from Trump, despite Trump’s outstretched arms, so he could embrace Merkel instead.

At another point, during a formal greeting, Macron and Trump “ grabbed each other’s hands, jaws clenched, in an extended grip that turned Mr. Trump’s knuckles white,” according to The Times.

“Their faces tightened,” reported The Washington Post. “Trump reached in first, but then he tried to release, twice, but Macron kept his grip.”

Sacred texts have received less scrupulous analysis than Trump’s foreign-leader handshakes, his presidential-debate snorts (remember those?) and the reactions — aghast, awe-struck, puzzled, peeved — of those who bump up against (or happen to be married to) him.

I think that’s fitting, not just because his actual speech is so honesty-challenged but also because the analyzers are paying respect to the way he takes in information. He prefers television to reading, images to pesky words. Shouldn’t we return the favor when appraising him?

And aren’t we in the right to take note of an Israeli diplomat’s physical reaction when Trump said, in Israel, “We just got back from the Middle East,” as if Israel were in South America or something? The diplomat, Ron Dermer, briefly buried his head in one of his hands.

Do cry for us, Montenegro.

"...swat heard around the world..." I got a good giggle out of that.

It's about time for a new thread.  Maybe that could be part of the thread title.

[GreyhoundFan]

10 minutes ago, Flossie said:

It's about time for a new thread.  Maybe that could be part of the thread title.

@Destiny has a list of thread titles for the orange swamp creature, but I agree, I like it.

[Destiny]

12 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@Destiny has a list of thread titles for the orange swamp creature, but I agree, I like it.

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