Trump 19: Please Cry for Us Montenegro (and We Are so Sorry!)

[sawasdee]

Just now, fraurosena said:

There is another epic fail in the logic of his tweet. Even if his statements about Germany not paying enough (which it isn't, but hypothetically speaking) were true, that's not bad for the US at all. It's bad for NATO. Who the fuck is the US to be taking fellow members to task like this, as if NATO owes the US something? Because, damn, if anybody owes anyone anything (which they don't), it's the US who is indebted to NATO for their help after 9/11. 

YES!!!!

The US is a member of NATO, not the owner or the boss. He has the right to dicuss contributions, but not to berate fellow members. Yes, the US percentage of GNP spent on defence is higher - but that includes spending in the Middle East, Asia, Africa - all not part of NATO's remit. If we broke it down, I think the US percentage of spending towards the NATO alliance might be under his magical  2%*- the total of US spending on defence is about 3.5%.

* The agreement on 2% - negotiated (note the word) by Obama - gave a 10 year window. NATO member countries have until 2024 to reach that target.

[fraurosena]

Oh, really?

White House officials 'convinced they may be victims of deep state conspiracy'

Quote

Donald Trump has called the investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history”.

But according to some in the White House, it’s something even worse: a conspiracy.

Top White House aides – including Mr Trump’s trusted adviser Steve Bannon –  are increasingly worried that the so-called “deep state” is conspiring to bring the presidency down, sources tell Politico.

In the weeks after Mr Trump dismissed former FBI Director James Comey, the White House was hit with a series of damaging leaks, from Mr Trump alleged disclosure of highly classified intelligence to Russian officials, to his son-in-law’s reported attempt to set up back-channel communications with Russia.

The number of leaks coming from inside the government, sources say, have advisers concerned that someone is out to get them.

Commentators on Fox News, Mr Trump’s channel of choice, have helped push the idea that these leaks come from an American “deep state” – a body within the government working to bring down those in power.

Host Sean Hannity, for example, has condemned what he called "deep-state Obama-holdover government bureaucrats who are hell-bent on destroying this president”.

“It’s time for the Trump administration to begin to purge these saboteurs before it’s too late,” he said.

Well, here's some news for you: There are! There really are forces looking to bring you down. Preferably sooner rather than later. But it's not the 'deep state' as you like to call it, that's trying to get you all out of the White House.

It's the majority of the American people.

 

[sawasdee]

Snort. Giggle. Snort snort. Bwahahaha...

So he thinks he can falsely boast about election/inauguration numbers at the CIA memorial, instead of honouring them, sack the head of the FBI in the most insulting way possible, badmouth the entire intelligence community - and do so with impunity?

The US intel services are very professional and very good. They don't like to see their work product shared with traditional foes, they don't like to see their ties with international agencies threatened, and they don't like to be disrespected.

And he didn't expect some comeback?

Bwahahahahahahasnortgigglebwahahaha!

[fraurosena]

Oh dear. Things are really heading in the wrong direction.

Germans wonder why Trump keeps lashing out at them and not Russia or Saudi Arabia

Spoiler

BERLIN — When news emerged in 2013 that the U.S. government had monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's communications for years, Merkel sent a firm but conciliatory message to Washington. Friends don't spy on each other, she said, and then moved on to calm tensions.

At the time, U.S. security experts defended the surveillance, saying friendships can easily end — an argument that was swiftly dismissed in Berlin, where strong transatlantic ties had long been the foundation of its international diplomacy.

Four years later, however, the once-unthinkable suddenly seems very real. President Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Germany in recent weeks, taking to Twitter on Tuesday in the latest attack — targeting Germany's military spending and trade practices.

>Toddler Tantrum Tweet<

Germans, long opposed to many of Trump's campaign promises, are irritated and concerned by his criticism of their country. They wonder why the leader of Germany's most influential international ally seems more willing to criticize their country than nations with questionable human rights records.

“Europeans think they are now being treated worse by Trump than countries like Russia or Saudi Arabia,” said Stephan Bierling, an expert on transatlantic relations at the University of Regensburg in Germany.

Confronted with Trump's verbal attacks on Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel — who is known for her cautious choice of words — appears to be increasingly outspoken about the ongoing decline of German-U.S. relations. Although she was never a supporter of Trump, she initially expressed a willingness to collaborate with him if he respected values such as “the dignity of each and every person.” Her conditional offer of support, made the day after Trump's election, was meant as both an invitation to work together and a subtle warning.

But after contentious meetings with Trump last week, Merkel indicated changes in the U.S.-German equation, saying Sunday that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands” and emphasizing that the days when her continent could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”

In Berlin, Trump's attacks on Germany have raised questions about the future of the alliance. Besides strong economic ties, Germany hosts some of the United States' biggest military bases abroad and about half of all U.S. soldiers on the continent. But Trump says Germany's trade surplus hurts U.S. interests, and he has criticized what he deems as Germany's low defense spending. Merkel rejects most of his criticism as baseless.

The bilateral strains mean that the United States has, to some extent, lost the trust of one of Europe's most pro-American leaders. The German chancellor, the most powerful politician in Europe, grew up in Eastern Germany, and her upbringing there has long been credited for her staunch support for closer European-American ties. “Given her experience with the Cold War, Merkel has long upheld and defended American ideals. But the belief in shared values has been shattered by the Trump administration,” Bierling said.

As the German leader starts to focus on general elections in September and her bid for a fourth term in office, the transatlantic rift could further deepen. Leading Social Democrats said Monday that Merkel should have openly opposed Trump from the start rather than trying to work with him at first. “Merkel needs to put some distance between herself and Trump, who is exceptionally unpopular in Germany,” said Marcel Dirsus, a political scientist at the University of Kiel in northern Germany.

But how far is Merkel really willing to go? Dirsus cautioned that Germany remained reliant on the United States, especially in terms of its military. “Germany will have to cooperate with the U.S., whether it wants to or not,” he said.

Merkel, for instance, announced last spring that she wanted to increase Germany's annual defense budget by $27 billion over the next three years. That would almost double the current budget — but it would still be dwarfed by the $664 billion the United States spends every year.

Merkel is unlikely to warm to Trump like she did to former president Barack Obama. But she also won't be able to simply ignore him.

With the up-coming elections in mind and the way Germans are viewing the presidunce, it could wel be that Merkel uses the anti-presidunce feelings of her countrymen to her advantage by becoming more outspoken and firmer in her condemnation of the tangerine toddler. This will only highten the tension on the already fraying cord of alliance between Europe and the US. And while these tensions might have a positive effect on the unity within the European Union (nothing helps to better glue nations together than a common 'enemy'), I can't but help thinking that in the long run breaking the alliance with the US is a potential disaster for all parties involved.

[sawasdee]

And Jennifer Rubin writes another blinder!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/05/30/its-the-trump-presidency-not-its-communications-staff-thats-failing/?utm_term=.a7c4a0e2b480#comments

Spoiler

Quote

Despite innumerable objective indicators of failure and incompetence — including a stalled and unpopular health-care bill, declining chances of a tax reform bill, criticism from European allies, a special prosecutor, the termination and scandals involving former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, open warfare among staffers and a growing list of court decisions slapping down his Muslim ban — President Trump continues to squawk “Fake news!” and rail at underlings. Now he is parting ways with his communications director Mike Dubke.

he Post reports, “The communications operation — and Dubke and [Sean] Spicer specifically — have come under sharp criticism from Trump and many senior officials in the West Wing, who believe the president has been poorly served by his staff, in particular in the aftermath of the Comey firing.” But, of course, it was Trump, egged on by son-in-law Jared Kushner, who decided to fire Comey, give his staff no notice, concoct a fake rationale and then undercut his own excuse within 24 hours. Trump cannot very well concede all of that, so, naturally, he labels the debacle a “communications problem” — the last refuge of every failing president.

It hardly matters whether Dubke stays or goes, whether Spicer (as has been reported) takes a less public role, whether the hapless chief of staff Reince Priebus gets replaced or whether thuggish campaign cronies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie head up a “war room.” Swapping one set of semi-competent staffers for another set of semi-competent staffers even less temperamentally suited to the White House will not reverse Trump’s fortunes. Let’s face it: The most talented people won’t take jobs with this president. The talent pool, already shallow, evaporates as scandals wash over the remains of Trump’s agenda

Trump’s apologists cry, “But his base is with him!” or “In the Rust Belt, they don’t care!” That’s a comment on blind partisanship and the impact of Fox News-type propaganda and should not provide solace to Trump for several reasons. First, his core groups (e.g. older voters) are starting to drift away. Second, his core base of support is a minority of a minority of the 2016 electorate, which is insufficient to reelect him in 2020. Third, congressional Republicans scattered across the country, now at risk of losing the House, are not impressed with his continued support in deep-red quadrants; Republicans in mildly competitive seats better scramble to save their own political hides.

Trump’s problems will only get worse thanks to his own limitations and to Robert S. Mueller III, the one man inside the Beltway entirely immune to spin and whose credibility remains pristine despite his intersection with the Trump administration’s antics. Ironically, on the day Trump and Dubke’s parting came to light, both Trump’s limitations and Mueller’s advantages are on full display.

The presidency, we see once again, is beyond Trump’s intellectual and temperamental capabilities. The Post reports, “President Trump consumes classified intelligence like he does most everything else in life: ravenously and impatiently, eager to ingest glinting nuggets but often indifferent to subtleties.” Sorry, but a man of extraordinary ignorance who is unable to absorb nuances is going to fail as president. He will not only fail to grasp critical data but also incentivize the intelligence community to ferret out whatever evidence of collusion and obstruction it can find:

Trump’s standing among career intelligence officers remains strained. He has continued to disparage their motives and work — most notably by refusing to accept the consensus of the CIA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that Russia waged an unprecedented effort to disrupt the 2016 election. In a recent television interview, Trump said that it “could have been China, could have been a lot of different groups.”

And Trump’s reaction to the disclosure that he shared highly classified information with Russian officials was to declare it his “absolute right” to do so and lash out at leakers — making clear that he still sees his own intelligence services as adversaries.

In short, he cannot successfully fake being presidential and cannot reconcile himself to the need to listen to those who know more than he does — and are in a position to damage his presidency. As a result, debacles will continue to unfold.

As for Mueller, he has been “building a team, designing a budget and forcing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to withhold from Congress documents he may be interested in—all in his first full week on the job,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Those expecting this to drag on for years underestimate the amount of information at his disposal, the assistance Comey can provide in getting him up to speed, the number of cooperating witnesses he will be able to unearth and the president’s own loquaciousness.

To sum up, Trump can holler at the media and fire every communications staffer in sight. It won’t matter. His current predicament is beyond spin. His own shortcomings and the arrival of a special counsel with immense responsibilities and unimpeachable character mean this is no “communications problem.” The presidency is collapsing, and only the speed and method by which it eventually ends are in question.

 

I still can't quite believe that it is a Republican writing like this - but it may be the best hope for the US that there are still people like Rubin who are willing to call out their own party.

I just wish there were a few in Congress.

[47of74]

Nordic leaders are mocking man baby for touching that glowing orb during his overseas trip...

thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/335591-nordic-leaders-troll-trump-orb-photo

Quote

A group of Nordic prime ministers is mocking an image of President Trump and Saudi Arabian King Salman touching a glowing orb during Trump's visit to Riyadh last week, reenacting the photo with a European football.

The leaders, including the prime ministers of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland, stood around a soccer ball, each touching it.

I wonder how long until the 3am tweet storms begin?

[sawasdee]

@47of74 Purely beautiful!

I just want to throw something out there - are you fed up with being 'insulted' by being called a liberal? The alt right has made it pejorative. I came across this, in a comment on the WaPo - Walter Cronkite's definition of a liberal - and I love it.

Quote

“I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."

On this definition, I am a proud liberal. But I think examining each position on its merits might make you left of centre in today's US.....

Where are today's Cronkites?

 

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."

Fits Hannity to a tee...

[47of74]

9 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

@47of74 Purely beautiful!

I just want to throw something out there - are you fed up with being 'insulted' by being called a liberal? The alt right has made it pejorative. I came across this, in a comment on the WaPo - Walter Cronkite's definition of a liberal - and I love it.

On this definition, I am a proud liberal. But I think examining each position on its merits might make you left of centre in today's US.....

Where are today's Cronkites?

 

Yeah we really need people like Edward C. Morrow or Walter Cronkite who did actual journalism.  Actual journalism seems to becoming something of a lost art here in the US thanks to the likes of Faux Spews.

[onekidanddone]

If this 'deep state' bull shit were true, how has TT been able to roll back so many of Obama's legacy? I thought he had the best people in the history of people. There is no 'deep state'

[GreyhoundFan]

18 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

snip

2. At his age, Trump could have been doing the pee pee dance at Arlington (Hurry up and finish- I need to go. Maybe If I move around a little, it will release some pressure. Nope. Maybe if I sing along, it will take my mind off things. Nope. Maybe I can focus on drumming my fingers on my chest. Nope- still gotta pee. Hurry up with this anthem, okay. My next executive order will be declaring a new national anthem. The words will be, "All hail Donald Trump! He made American great again. We are the best in the world. Suck it, Europe!" That way, I can remember all of the lyrics and it will be short enough I can get to the end of it without needing Depends.).

He could send Spicey out to buy some Depends or other adult diapers for just such a situation.

 

"How President Trump consumes — or does not consume — top-secret intelligence"

Spoiler

President Trump consumes classified intelligence like he does most everything else in life: ravenously and impatiently, eager to ingest glinting nuggets but often indifferent to subtleties.

Most mornings, often at 10:30, sometimes earlier, Trump sits behind the historic Resolute desk and, with a fresh Diet Coke fizzing and papers piled high, receives top-secret updates on the world’s hot spots. The president interrupts his briefers with questions but also with random asides. He asks that the top brass of the intelligence community be present, and he demands brevity.

As they huddle around the desk, Trump likes to pore over visuals — maps, charts, pictures and videos, as well as “killer graphics,” as CIA Director Mike Pompeo phrased it.

“That’s our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we’re trying to communicate,” said Pompeo, adding that he, too, prefers to “get to the core of the issue quickly.”

Yet there are signs that the president may not be retaining all the intelligence he is presented, fully absorbing its nuance, or respecting the sensitivities of the information and how it was gathered.

Earlier this month, for instance, Trump bragged to top Russian diplomats about the quality of the intelligence and revealed highly classified information, related to the fight against the Islamic State, that had been shared by a U.S. partner.

“I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during their May 10 meeting in the Oval Office, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the exchange.

He recently — despite all evidence to the contrary — said that perhaps China, not Russia, had tried to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. And during a meeting in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the president seemed to effectively confirm that the private information he divulged to the Russian diplomats came from Israel.

“Just so you understand, I never mentioned the word or the name Israel,” Trump told reporters, responding to a question no one had asked. “Never mentioned it during that conversation.”

In March, the president also pressured two of the nation’s top intelligence officials to help him publicly push back against the FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and his campaign, a request both men felt was inappropriate.

This portrait of Trump as a consumer of the nation’s secrets is based on interviews with several senior administration officials who regularly attend his briefings. Some of the interviews were conducted in early May, before the president’s meeting with the Russians.

Trump’s posture toward the intelligence community and its work product has evolved in the months since he was sworn in as president. 

Before his inauguration, Trump spoke of U.S. spy agencies with contempt. He sent demeaning tweets accusing intelligence officials of behaving as though they were in “Nazi Germany,” and he assailed them for what he said were “disgraceful” leaks to the media regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Intelligence officials were prepared to deliver daily briefings to Trump throughout the transition period, but the president-elect often turned them away, usually agreeing to sit for briefings only once or twice per week.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years,” Trump told Fox News last December.

President Barack Obama offered a retort when he later appeared on “The Daily Show.”

“It doesn’t matter how smart you are,” Obama said. “. . . If you’re not getting their perspective, their detailed perspective, then you are flying blind.”

As president, Trump now takes briefings nearly every day. In a White House with few steadying mechanisms — and one led by a Washington neophyte who bristles at structure and protocol — the daily intelligence briefing is the rare constant.

The sessions often run past their scheduled time, stretching for 30 or 45 minutes, prompting Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to pop into the Oval Office to cut off the discussion: “Mr. President, we’ve got people backing up outside.”

“A president who I think came into the office thinking he would focus on domestic issues — ‘make America great again’ — has learned that you inherit the world and its problems when you’re president of the United States,” said Daniel Coats, director of national intelligence and a frequent participant in Trump’s briefings.

“One time he came in and said, ‘All right, what’s the bad news this morning?’ ” Coats added. “You can see the weight of the burden on the shoulders of the president.”

Yet while Pompeo and Coats praise the intelligence-consuming habits of the president who appointed them, Trump’s standing among career intelligence officers remains strained. He has continued to disparage their motives and work — most notably by refusing to accept the consensus of the CIA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that Russia waged an unprecedented effort to disrupt the 2016 election. In a recent television interview, Trump said that it “could have been China, could have been a lot of different groups.”

And Trump’s reaction to the disclosure that he shared highly classified information with Russian officials was to declare it his “absolute right” to do so and lash out at leakers — making clear that he still sees his own intelligence services as adversaries.

Shortly after taking the oath of office, Trump visited CIA headquarters and delivered a freewheeling speech in which he boasted that “probably almost everybody in this room voted for me,” while standing in front of the agency’s sacred memorial wall that honors employees killed in the line of duty.

Mark Lowenthal, a former assistant director of the CIA and the president of the Intelligence and Security Academy, said Trump’s biggest challenge is his “lack of previous exposure” to sensitive intelligence. 

“Pompeo and Coats are doing their best to give him the most accurate daily briefing, but my sense is in the rank-and-file, they are very worried about how do you deal with him and about sharing with him sensitive material,” Lowenthal said. “This is the result of his behavior, both during the campaign and that visit to the CIA, which was a disaster, and now the whole Russia briefing.” 

Still, Trump tells advisers that he values his daily briefings. Though career intelligence analysts often take the lead in delivering them, Trump likes his political appointees — Pompeo and Coats — to attend, along with national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Pompeo and Coats, whose offices are in McLean, Va., have had to redesign their daily routines so that they spend many mornings at the White House.

Vice President Pence usually attends, while other administration principals join depending on the topic of the day, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly. Senior members of the West Wing staff sometimes float in and out of the Oval Office during the briefings.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, often observes quietly; he receives his own intelligence briefing earlier in the morning, according to two White House officials. Some Democrats are now calling for Kushner’s security clearance to be reviewed after The Washington Post reported Friday that he attempted to set up back-channel communications with the Russian government during the presidential transition.

The briefings are tailored around events on the president’s schedule. For example, if a foreign leader is visiting, Trump will receive information pertinent to that country, often delivered by a subject-area expert.

Intelligence officials said they use the briefings in part to impress upon a president who has viewed their community with skepticism the breadth and depth of the government’s espionage capabilities.

Trump prefers free-flowing conversations over listening to his briefers teach lessons. “It’s a very oral, interactive discussion, as opposed to sitting there and reading from a text or a script,” Pompeo said. 

Pompeo added: “He always asks hard questions, which I think is the sign of a good intelligence consumer. He’ll challenge analytic lines that we’ll present, which is again completely appropriate. . . . It is frequently the case that we’ll find that we need to go back and do more work to develop something, to round something out.”

Trump will task his briefers with returning the next day with more information about a particular subject, or will turn to McMaster and say, “General, give me more information,” according to Coats.

Presidents have received daily intelligence updates for more than 50 years, usually in written form as the President’s Daily Brief, as the classified document is known. The “briefing book” is designed to provide a summary from all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies of key security developments and insights, in the United States and abroad.

The ways in which presidents have processed the material have varied greatly, based on their preferences. For instance, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush favored daily in-person oral briefings, according to David Priess, a former intelligence officer and CIA briefer. Some presidents read materials in narrative form, while others preferred shorter updates known as “snowflakes,” he said.

“The President’s Daily Brief is adapted to the personality and the style of each president,” said Priess, author of “The President’s Book of Secrets.” “It can be longer; it can be shorter. It can have greater sourcing information; it can have thinner sourcing information. It can have in-depth assessments; it can have virtual tweets.”

When he took office, Trump signaled to his national security team that he favors concise points boiled down to a single page. 

“I like bullets or I like as little as possible,” he said in a pre-inaugural interview with Axios. “I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page.”

Trump also has encouraged his briefers to include as many visual elements as possible. This is a reflection, aides said, of Trump’s career as a real estate developer who evaluated blueprints and renderings to visualize what a property eventually would look like.

“Sometimes,” Coats said, “pictures do say a thousand words.”

It must be hard to boil important security information down to a kindergarten level.

[onekidanddone]

On 5/29/2017 at 3:52 PM, fraurosena said:

<snip>

Well, at least he remembered to keep his hand on his chest, so that's something... 

Oh dear Rufus I pray to thee..  That was the longest minute I've ever seen EVER in the history of minutes. Please let me un-see it.

[fraurosena]

5 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Oh dear Rufus I pray to thee..  That was the longest minute I've ever seen EVER in the history of minutes. Please let me un-see it.

I'm sorry but...

[AmazonGrace]

44 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Nordic leaders are mocking man baby for touching that glowing orb during his overseas trip...

thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/335591-nordic-leaders-troll-trump-orb-photo

I wonder how long until the 3am tweet storms begin?

Remember when Trump said that Obama had made  a laughing stock out of the US? 

[apple1]

21 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

He could send Spicey out to buy some Depends or other adult diapers for just such a situation.

 

"How President Trump consumes — or does not consume — top-secret intelligence"

  Hide contents

 

It must be hard to boil important security information down to a kindergarten level.

"I'm, like, a smart person..." "I don't need, you know, 200-page reports..."

Verbally, he sounds stuck at middle school level. (Emotionally - about like a 3 year old).

[GreyhoundFan]

"Snubs and slights are part of the job in Trump’s White House"

Spoiler

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was giddy at the thought of meeting Pope Francis during President Trump’s first trip abroad, telling acquaintances that for him, a devout Catholic, the moment would fulfill a bucket-list dream. 

But when the White House finalized the lucky list of staff and family members who would accompany Trump into his private audience with the pontiff at the Vatican last week, Spicer’s name was nowhere to be found.

Enduring public humiliation has become a defining characteristic of Spicer’s tenure in the White House — from the “Saturday Night Live” parody in which a woman plays a ranting, red-faced Spicer to the constant rumors of his imminent dismissal. Yet being excluded from the papal visit still stunned his colleagues, many of whom expressed pity for him and were visibly uncomfortable talking about the slight.

In Trump’s White House, aides serve a president who demands absolute loyalty — but who doesn’t always offer it in return. Trump prefers a management style in which even compliments can come laced with a bite, and where enduring snubs and belittling jokes, even in public, is part of the job.

Allies say the president’s quips are simply good-natured teasing, part of an inclusive strategy meant to make even mid-level staff members feel like family. But others consider Trump’s comments pointed reminders to those who work for him that he is in charge — barbs from the boss that keep aides on guard and off kilter, and can corrode staff morale.

Trump sometimes refers to his 45-year-old chief of staff, Reince Priebus, as “Reince-y,” a diminutive nickname that some aides and outside rivals recount with gleeful relish. The president also frequently reminds Priebus that when “Access Hollywood’ tapes emerged during the campaign on which Trump could be heard boasting about groping women without their consent, Priebus urged him to drop out of the race.

The president has described House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), in theory one of his top allies on Capitol Hill, as a “Boy Scout” — a dig that the lawmaker joked he chose to take as a compliment even though “I’m not sure he meant it that way.”

And during the transition, Trump would make a point of noting that Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s crowds paled compared to his, teasing that even his daughter Ivanka and son Eric attracted more attention, said two people familiar with the comments, which they considered demeaning. (Pence offered a similar quip on the campaign trail.)

Even the president’s family is not immune. In a news conference at Trump Tower shortly after he won the White House, Trump announced that he would be putting his companies into a trust that his two older sons would run during his presidency. 

“I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, ‘Oh, you did a good job,’ ” Trump said, as his sons looked on. But he couldn’t resist a final tweak — half joke, half warning: “Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I’ll say, ‘You’re fired.’ ” 

The White House says that Trump, who came of age professionally running a family business, is simply joking with his staff, part of a warm, familial leadership style that makes everyone feel included.

“President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him,” Hope Hicks, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement. “He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000. He has built great relationships throughout his life and treats everyone with respect. He is brilliant with a great sense of humor . . . and an amazing ability to make people feel special and aspire to be more than even they thought possible.”

Many disagree with that assessment. Critics say the president often demeans those in his orbit, a tendency they say reflects a broader fragility beneath his bluster.  

“Trump is so deeply insecure that not even becoming president of the United States quenched his need to make others feel small to build himself up,” said Tim Miller, a former spokesman for an anti-Trump super PAC. “Choosing to work for him necessitates a willingness to be demeaned in order to assuage his desire to feel like a big, important person.”

Trump’s management style — whether good-natured ribbing or withering comments, depending on one’s perspective — dates to his days as a Manhattan real estate developer, when he enjoyed operating in an environment of competing factions. Now, he has transplanted that executive philosophy into his White House.

When he decided to fire his FBI director, James B. Comey, the president did so in an especially humiliating way. Like a scene out of “The Godfather,” Trump first sent Keith Schiller, his former head of security, to deliver the message to Comey at FBI headquarters. His allies maintain that Trump simply wanted the job done well, so he dispatched Schiller, whom he trusts deeply, in a sign of respect for how seriously he took the moment.

But Comey, who was visiting a Los Angeles field office, ultimately found out in embarrassing fashion — in public, from television, in full view of his staff. As Comey was delivering a speech to FBI field employees, he initially laughed as news flashed across the TV screens that he had been fired. “How’d you guys do that?” he asked, according to someone briefed on the moment.

The FBI director assumed he was being pranked by his underlings — and had to be told by his team that the headlines were no joke. He had been dismissed, effective immediately.

During a February prayer breakfast in Washington, Mark Burnett, the creator of “The Apprentice,” introduced Trump, who went on to make a few tone-deaf jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had replaced him as the show’s host. 

“The ratings went down the tubes,” the president said. “It’s been a total disaster and Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again. And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, okay?”

Trump’s friends and allies reject the notion that he diminishes those around him, saying the businessman-turned-president is simply trying to bring out the best in his employees. 

“I think it’s more New York swagger than he’s trying to belittle them,” said Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative media company, and a longtime friend of Trump’s. “I always say he makes people feel like a million bucks.”

The approach, however, frequently leaves Trump’s top team open to some of his more cutting digs.

At a private dinner shortly before he was inaugurated, Trump took aim at his incoming vice president and his incoming secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

Complimenting his vice presidential choice, Trump also reminded the crowd — and Pence — that he could have just as easily picked someone else. “Oh, I had a couple of beauties I could have picked,” he said. “They were good, too, but maybe they wouldn’t have worked out like Mike.”

Turning his attention to his secretary of state pick at the same gathering, he hinted that Tillerson — a former chief executive of ExxonMobil — might be in for a steep learning curve in the Trump administration. “Where’s our Rex?” Trump asked. “Wow. What a job. Thank you very much, thanks, Rex. I think it’s tougher than he thought. He’s led this charmed life. He goes into a country, takes the oil, goes into another country. It’s tough dealing with these politicians, right?”

Trump also sometimes reminds even his senior advisers, in ways big and small, that he has the power to demote them at any time. During an Oval Office meeting about trouble spots abroad, a relatively junior foreign policy staff member prepared to take a seat on the periphery as the president’s top aides, including chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, surrounded him in chairs around the Resolute desk. But the president soon ordered up a change, said someone who witnessed the moment, telling Bannon to give up his seat for the junior staff member and relegating his top strategist to the couch. 

More recently, during a lunch with ambassadors from countries on the U.N. Security Council, Trump jokingly polled those in the room on whether they thought U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, seated directly to his right, was doing a good job. “How do you all like Nikki? ” he asked, as she looked on. “Otherwise, she can easily be replaced.”

Close foreign allies are also targets of Trump’s public and private dressing-downs. 

During an early call with Australia, one of nation’s staunchest allies, the president got into a testy exchange with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, blasting him over a refu­gee deal, bragging about the size of his electoral college win and abruptly ending the call.

When news from the conversation emerged, Trump’s team readily confirmed details of the exchange. The president was livid about the leak — but had no problem being viewed as a bully, believing he was simply standing up for his nation’s best interests. 

The pattern continued in his trip overseas last week, when he gushed about the autocratic Saudi royal family even while insulting European allies. At a stop in Brussels, the president chastised NATO members for not meeting their financial responsibilities, shoved aside a Balkan prime minister to get in front for a group photo and needled his allies about the cost of a new building for the alliance.

During his first in-person meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump’s typically aggressive greeting became a duel of one-upmanship as the two men clenched their jaws and tightened their faces during an intense, white-knuckled handshake.

Macron, France’s newly elected 39-year-old leader, later said he wanted to show Trump that he would not be pushed around or demeaned.

“I don’t believe in diplomacy by public abuse,” he said. 

Even if I didn't think he was a narcissistic jackass, I couldn't imagine a situation where I would consider working for him. I wouldn't sign up to be publicly humiliated at every turn.

[fraurosena]

13 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Trump’s friends and allies reject the notion that he diminishes those around him, saying the businessman-turned-president is simply trying to bring out the best in his employees. 

Oh, of course! That's precisely the way to bring out the best in people, by belittling them. Riiiiight. "
And here I was thinking that you get the best out of people by making them feel good about themselves. Silly me.

[sawasdee]

@fraurosena It's not just belittling. I don't like Spicer - I think he's a sellout. But the fact that the toddler took his former elevator girl to the Papal visit, and omitted devout catholic Spicer - who's sold his soul for the toddler -  petty, nasty, power play and for me, a summing up of the vile and obnoxious  nature of this pretend president.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump interviews two more FBI director candidates"

Spoiler

President Trump is interviewing two more FBI director candidates on Tuesday in what has become a winding search to find a new leader for the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump was interviewing John S. Pistole, an FBI veteran and former Transportation Security Administration director who is now the president of Anderson University, and Christopher A. Wray, the former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division who now works in private practice at the King & Spalding law firm.

Spicer would not say whether the two men were the only ones now under consideration, or if they were considered finalists. Earlier this month, Trump had interviewed four different men, and from those former senator Joseph I. Lieberman emerged as a front-runner — though he soon withdrew his own name from consideration.

Trump has said he could make a “fast decision” on replacing James B. Comey as head of the FBI — although so far, the process has been anything but. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein initially interviewed eight people for the post, but the White House has not identified any as a finalist or top contender, and some have taken their own names out of consideration.

The job would surely be a difficult one. The FBI handles the nation’s most sensitive terrorism and public corruption investigations. Its work — already the subject of intense public scrutiny — has received even more attention since Trump fired Comey as director amid a probe into whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has said the Russia case was on his mind when he fired Comey, who wrote in a memo that Trump had asked him to shut down its look into a key figure in the investigation — former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The investigation is now being led by a special counsel.

The FBI director is generally appointed to a 10-year term so that the person in the job enjoys a measure of independence from politics. Whoever Trump appoints will require Senate approval, and winning that could prove difficult, as both Democrats and Republicans will probably push for a person who could resist the White House’s influence.

A representative of Anderson University said Pistole was not available for comment Tuesday, and Wray did not immediately return an email message seeking comment.

I can't imagine wanting the position.

[fraurosena]

Oh, I can imagine wanting to be in the position... to nail the presidunce's ass to the wall and bring the administration and DOH tumbling down.

But alas, apart from being a foreigner without any of the necessary credentials, I lack the the prerequisite appendages to be eligible for consideration by the current administration. 

[PsyD2013]

A light-hearted review of Trump's trip courtesy of Randy Rainbow

 

 

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, sawasdee said:

@fraurosena It's not just belittling. I don't like Spicer - I think he's a sellout. But the fact that the toddler took his former elevator girl to the Papal visit, and omitted devout catholic Spicer - who's sold his soul for the toddler -  petty, nasty, power play and for me, a summing up of the vile and obnoxious  nature of this pretend president.

I'm afraid to even ask, but "elevator girl"?

[GreyhoundFan]

Garrison Keillor hit the nail on the head: "It was so good to have Trump gone"

Spoiler

It was a great relief to have Mr. Twitter out of the country for nine whole days, and the entire country felt it, like when your neighbor with the busted muffler goes away for a while and takes his yappy dog with him, and you realize what a beautiful thing common civility can be. We were able to turn to the joys of life and forget the absurdities for a while.

And the guy loved being away. Honestly, he doesn’t seem to feel at home in America. He was to the penthouse born and ordinary life makes him uneasy. (Has he ever sat in the grandstand or stood in line for a bratwurst? When did he last mow a lawn?) Riyadh was his Camelot. He was feted by Saudi princes and put up in a magnificent palace and feasted and medallioned and not once did anybody shout unpleasantries. It was like a big Shriners convention and he and his brethren did the sword dance together and he felt truly appreciated at last.

Then to Jerusalem and more good times. Great photo ops. He stood at the Western Wall and looked reverent, an unusual mode for him. And then off to Rome to chum with the pope — “He is something,” President Trump said. “We had a fantastic meeting.” He came out of the meeting saying he intends to work very, very hard for peace, not something he was saying last year.

While he was in Rome, I was standing in the stairwell of a jampacked ferryboat heading to Martha’s Vineyard in a heavy squall. I stood in line in the rain for a taxi and got to the hotel, dripping wet, and my room wasn’t ready so I hauled my suitcases over to a cafe and sat at the counter, next to a blind man who was in a jolly mood. He was 85 and had a mane of wild white hair. He ordered oatmeal for lunch, with raisins, brown sugar and cream. “I don’t get this at home,” he said. He savored his oatmeal as other men might enjoy prime rib. He said that what he missed most since losing his eyesight was hiking in the woods. That, and reading poetry. He has a gizmo he could set a page of print on and an electronic voice would read it, but he hasn’t figured out how to work it. He told me he once had worked in the circus and was sad about the forced retirement of the Ringling Bros. elephants. “Circus elephants have much more interesting lives than zoo elephants,” he said. “They get to go all over the country and walk from the train siding to the venue and enjoy the smells and snack on the vegetation along the way.” Then he asked me to help him home so I did. We walked along the street, like two elephants, his hand on my shoulder. It was very companionable.

We approached a gaggle of girls who stood aside and he perked up when he smelled them. We passed a coffee bar, a candy store, a yard full of lilacs, an Episcopal church where the choir was singing, “Sanctus, sanctus, hosanna in excelsis.” He took it all in with pleasure. I felt like Virgil guiding Dante through the departments of paradise. All my earlier misfortunes had been perfectly aligned to allow me to meet this blind man and absorb some of his happiness. He who was in Rome was never mentioned nor did he even cross my mind until much later.

I felt safer with him gone, frankly. When he is surrounded by admiration, we don’t have to worry that he’ll get in a snit and call for the B-52s. Reverence relaxes him. If you removed the media from the White House and let the man and his loved ones make occasional appearances on the balcony, waving to the cheering crowd on the street, it might be better for us all.

Nothing in the Constitution requires the president to reside in the United States. He could cruise the world in a royal yacht, driving golf balls off the fantail, stopping at major ports for artillery salutes and royal processions. No naysaying would be allowed in the vicinity of him.

Other countries have lived with leaders who are ignorant, poorly tutored, self-obsessed and corrupt, and why can’t we? Let Congress hash things out, with the courts as safeguard, and Him of the Golden Hair and Mighty Eyebrows, go bear his Torch of Greatness to Benighted Peoples in Distant Lands and don’t hurry back.

The only problem is: congress is unable to hash things out.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump interviews two more FBI director candidates"

I can't imagine wanting the position.

Do they have to have a law enforcement background? Going by TT's other appointments knowledge of the position was not a prerequisite. So I'm thinking Michelle Duggar.

[GreyhoundFan]

10 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Do they have to have a law enforcement background? Going by TT's other appointments knowledge of the position was not a prerequisite. So I'm thinking Michelle Duggar.

I don't know that it's a requirement, but I believe all former directors have been in law enforcement. Sadly, I can see him nominating someone wacky, like Jared.

 

Jennifer Rubin has been on fire recently: "Stripping away the illusion: Trump has no backstop"

Spoiler

For more than four months, Republicans and Democrats anxious about President Trump’s inexperience, rotten judgment and defective temperament could tell themselves, “Well there are people around him to prevent disasters.” What the latest — and most jaw-dropping — of all the mini-scandals within the larger scandal involving Trump’s team and Russia has told us is that the supposed steady hands on the tiller are either part of the problem or utterly useless when the chips are down.

News that the princeling with a massive portfolio, Jared Kushner, while President Barack Obama was still in office, allegedly sought a “back channel” to Russia, using Russian communication systems, confirmed what Trump critics have long suspected: Kushner is a 30-something billionaire with zero government experience who is either laughably naive, mixed up in Russian shenanigans or both. He’s a focus of the special investigator’s inquiry and was, we have learned, one of those rooting to fire FBI Director James B. Comey. In short, if he were anyone but the president’s son-in-law, he’d be thrown under the bus, and rightly so. He defied common sense and every protocol in trying to run his own secret Russia channel — secret from the U.S. government. As former CIA and NSA director Michael V. Hayden said, “This is off the map. I know of no other experience like this in our history, certainly within my life experience. . . . What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?”

In other words, Kushner may prove to be a serious liability for the president, not a helpful sounding board in a White House under siege. Even if cleared of any wrongdoing, Kushner has shown himself to be witless, if not corrupt. We therefore can take no solace in knowing he is there to talk sense to the president. He’s among Trump’s weakest links (even when one considers how totally unprepared he is to carry out a list of tasks so enormous they’d sink the most esteemed White House veteran.)

But the generals, we still have the generals! Right? Eh, not so much. Once again we have seen generals debase themselves by lending their considerable credibility to the president.

Just as he did in vouching for the president on conveying code-word classified information to the Russians — first denying it, and then insisting it was no big deal (“wholly appropriate”) — national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster once again came out to defend ludicrously inappropriate conduct. On one hand he said Kushner’s Russia outreach was not anything he was involved in (because Kushner was seeking to cut out the Defense Department!), and then he sought to dampen the outrage. “We have back-channel communications with a number of countries. So, generally speaking, about back-channel communications, what that allows you to do is to communicate in a discreet manner,” said McMaster. This is weak bit of misdirection given that the sort of back-channel communication he had in mind is conducted by the U.S. government (not a president-elect) and is not conducted using Russian communication channels (thereby giving Russia, but not the United States, a record of a call that can be leaked, distorted or manipulated). McMaster continued, “No, I would not be concerned about it.” Without ever really blessing this conduct, McMaster once again used his own considerable prestige to defend something, the contours of which he may not even know. Inexplicably, he puts in the role of two-bit political flack.

Then there is also Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, who has already demonstrated his tone-deafness and unfamiliarity with civilian politics. Kelly went out on the Sunday shows to spin for Kushner, also insisting this was not anything to worry our heads about. “I don’t see the big deal,” he said vaguely. Like McMaster, he praised the concept of a back channel without addressing how abnormal it would be for the transition team to be hiding one from the current government and proposing to use Russians facilities. He ambiguously insisted, “There’s a lot of different ways to communicate, back channel publicly with other countries. I don’t see any issue here relative to Jared.” (He does not “see” it because he does not know exactly what occurred or he sees nothing wrong with using Russian facilities to cut out the national security team of the current administration?)

In sum, two respected generals took it upon themselves to issue non-denial denials. “They batted the questions away with a half truth: that back channels are usual,” noted Trump critic and former State Department official Eliot Cohen. “I wish someone had asked them something a bit more precise: ‘Do you mean to say that you think its okay for a transition team official to ask a hostile state for their secure communications to service that back channel — presumably to avoid the U.S. government monitoring those communications?'”

These two generals were supposed to keep the president on the straight and narrow, using their own prestige to prevent disasters and jealously guarding their own credibility. Without the latter, when the chips are down, they will not have the stature to tell the president “no” — or threaten to resign, which is their ultimate leverage. They are feeding his and his team’s worst instincts, emboldening them with the knowledge the generals will make things seem “wholly appropriate.”

When Trump was elected, many #NeverTrump Republicans (Cohen, most dramatically) warned about going into the Trump administration. It is far too easy to be cajoled into enabling bad behavior, they warned. It’s nearly impossible with a president this dishonest and this destructive to defend the administration without becoming an apologist for lies and bad behavior, they cautioned. The warnings were eerily prescient. “They took their jobs with the sincere belief that they could make a difference when it came to policy,” says Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute. “But what they didn’t think through as thoroughly is the chance that the president and his entourage would put their well-earned personal credibility at such risk that, at some point, their abilities to actually carry out policies will be gradually eroded as well.”

By now we know that just about anyone  — civilian aides, military men, congressional allies — who aligns with Trump becomes tainted, if not intellectually and morally corrupted. Politicians have sold out principles for as long as there have been politicians; it’s regrettable when pols who should know better do so. It’s not, however, surprising. When courageous warriors with decades of service to the country do it, it’s not just surprising; it is tragic.

Moreover, the notion that calm, principled voices surround Trump (Kushner, Kelly, McMaster) on disaster-prevention duty has been belied by recent events. As frightful as this might seem, there really is no one to save Trump — and more importantly, the country — from Trump. The Republic remains in great peril as partisan hacks and respected generals alike fall under Trump’s spell.

Frightful is the right term.