Trump 22: Not Even Poe Could Make This Shit Up

[47of74]

16 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"With ‘fire and fury,’ Trump revives fears about his possession of nuclear codes"

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As with most things Trump, the furor over the “fire and fury” has divided the nation in two — those who believe the president is a loose cannon, impulsively blurting whatever flits through his mind, and those who believe his inflammatory talk is a wily combination of politically savvy instincts and a gut-driven populism that simply aims to please.

When President Trump went off script Tuesday to deliver a startling threat to North Korea — “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” — it was as if the nation relived the most lurid themes of the 2016 campaign in one chilling moment.

Last fall, Hillary Clinton’s ­campaign used as one of its final weapons a TV ad featuring a longtime nuclear missile launch officer who warned against voting for Trump: “I prayed that call would never come. Self-control may be all that keeps these missiles from firing.”

Then, quick-fire, a series of clips of Trump on the stump: “I would bomb the s--- out of them.” “I want to be unpredictable.” “I love war.”

“The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death,” Bruce Blair, the retired launch officer, says in the ad. “It should scare everyone.”

It very nearly did: Voters made clear last fall that they trusted Clinton vastly more than Trump on the use of nuclear weapons — by 57 percent to 31 percent in a Fox News poll in October, for example.

But Trump voters often said that their reasons for supporting him outweighed their sense that he could be dangerously impulsive — and they repeatedly expressed confidence that the national security apparatus would keep him in check.

Now, facing a reality test of that theory, Americans are coming to conclusions both predictable and surprising.

Trump’s critics tend to view his “fire and fury” threat as evidence of a president gone over the edge.

“Trump is fulfilling expectations of someone who lashes out dangerously at real and perceived challengers,” said Blair, who is now a research scholar at Princeton University. “He is raising the risk of a conflict that escalates to nuclear war. He has proven time and again to be . . . unable to apply a deft hand at diplomacy.”

But the president’s defenders see him working from the gut, with admirable instincts to protect the nation and take pride in American power.

Fred Doucette, a longtime Trump supporter who is assistant majority leader in New Hampshire’s House of Representatives, watched Trump’s appearance Tuesday. He was disappointed Trump didn’t declare a national emergency on opioid abuse but was pleased to hear the president deliver a strong message to North Korea.

“The president spoke in a language that Kim Jong Un understands — and, personally, I think they should follow up on that and show them that we mean business,” said Doucette, 52, a Navy veteran and retired firefighter and paramedic. “I assume the president spoke with his generals and his Cabinet first.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the president’s remarks were no harbinger of imminent nuclear war but rather tough talk designed to send Kim a clear message. “Americans should sleep well at night,” Tillerson said.

Doucette said he does exactly that. “When the phone rings at 3 a.m., I want Donald Trump to be the president that answers that phone call,” he said. “I sleep well at night with President Trump, very well.”

Last fall, 10 former Air Force nuclear launch officers issued an open letter warning that Trump “should not be entrusted with the nuclear launch codes . . . He has shown himself time and again to be easily baited and quick to lash out, dismissive of expert consultation and ill-informed of even basic military and international affairs.”

But on Wednesday, those officers were no longer united in their view of Trump.

“The reaction to this is not wholly rational,” said one of the signatories, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his employer had not authorized him to speak publicly. “A lot of people are caught up on Trump the character — and he is erratic — without thinking about whether there’s historical precedent for this kind of language. I’m actually a little relieved that Trump is crawling inside the North Koreans’ helmets. I would not have chosen those words, but he did put the fear of God into them.”

But another of the former “missileers” said Trump’s fiery rhetoric was evidence of exactly what he had warned about last fall. “He speaks impulsively, and he acts impulsively, and I don’t know what restraints there are on President Trump,” said Mark Lussky, a retired lawyer who served on a missile combat crew from 1972 to 1976. “He doesn’t know how to back down on anything.”

At the core of the anxiety over Trump’s remarks is the worry that the president made his threat without consideration of what might follow. The sheet of paper he held in his hand was about opioid abuse, not the conflict with North Korea. Yet the White House was quick to issue assurances that, as press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, although Trump’s “words were his own . . . the tone and strength of the message were discussed beforehand” by Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and members of the National Security Council.

Presidents don’t usually improvise comments on global crises. “What would be ‘normal’ in the Bush or Obama or Clinton administrations would be for the combination of strategic communications people and policy people — including the national security adviser — to develop, in consultation with the State Department and the Defense Department, a messaging strategy with top lines that they felt the president needed to emphasize,” said a senior diplomat who served in all three administrations.

To many Trump critics, the president’s remarks were of a piece with what seems like a casual attitude toward wielding the unfathomable power of the United States’ arsenal. On the campaign trail, he said that any Iranian vessels that “make gestures at our people . . . will be shot out of the water.” Trump, who attended a military academy as a teenager and repeatedly avoided the draft for the Vietnam War, had hoped to add tanks and heavy military equipment to his inaugural parade in January but was overruled.

Trump was dining with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in early April when he authorized an airstrike on a Syrian airstrip. As he later described the moment, “We’re now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen, and President Xi was enjoying it. And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded, what do you do? And we made a determination to do it, so the missiles were on the way.”

The Clinton campaign ran ads focused on Trump as commander in chief throughout October, including one spot that showed Trump asking, “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?”

“One of the great concerns voters had, particularly independent voters, was the threat of somebody that impulsive, that erratic, that unprepared, having control over the nuclear codes,” said Jim Margolis, the campaign’s media adviser.

Some of those voters acknowledged Trump’s erraticism yet voted for him anyway.

“There may have been a presumption that if elected, Trump would settle down, become more presidential, less crazy in his taunts, and that the cocoon of security advisers around him would keep him in check,” Margolis said. “Clearly, that presumption was wrong.”

Another anti-Trump spot, made by a super PAC run by former senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), targeted Ohio voters and evoked the famous 1964 “Daisy” ad for President Lyndon B. Johnson that capi­tal­ized on fears that his Republican challenger, Barry Goldwater, was too reckless to be trusted with nuclear codes.

Bradley’s ad showed the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb detonating, and it showed TV host Chris Matthews telling Trump that “nobody wants to hear” a presidential candidate talk about using nuclear weapons.

“Then why are we making them?” Trump replies.

Doucette is an idiot.

I remember last October that was the one thing that gripped my heart in a cold grip was the fact that the Orange Douchebag would have access to the nuclear codes and able to launch nuclear weapons.  I was already opposed to that fucker being anywhere near the White House, but that really worried me after seeing how much of an asshole he was and still is.  

[GreyhoundFan]

Greatest dealmaker ever, indeed: "The Foxconn deal Trump championed won’t make Wisconsin money for 25 years, report says"

Spoiler

The deal President Trump called “incredible” and Gov. Scott Walker hailed as a “once-in-a-century” opportunity to bring the electronic manufacturing giant Foxconn to Wisconsin wouldn’t generate profits for the state until 2042, a new legislative analysis projects.

The state’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau, a nonpartisan agency that analyzes proposed economic investments, looked at Walker’s bid last month to bring a new flat-screen-display factory to the state in exchange for a roughly $3 billion-incentives package.

Foxconn said it would break ground in southeastern Wisconsin and hire 3,000 workers there over the next four years, with the “potential” to create 13,000 jobs.

If the company hits that growth target, Wisconsin would break even after 25 years, said Rob Reinhardt, a program manager who worked on the report. If 13,000 jobs never materialize, it could take decades longer.

“We kind of dig a hole for ourselves,” Reinhardt said.

State officials, however, maintain the deal would bring more prosperity.

“The state of Wisconsin is investing in a once-in-a-lifetime economic development opportunity that will be transformational as the state will become home to the only LCD manufacturing facility outside of Asia,” said Mark Maley, spokesman for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. “Bringing Foxconn to Wisconsin will have an estimated annual economic impact of $7 billion that will touch every region of the state.”

That value, he added, will come from generating an estimated 13,000 direct and 22,000 indirect jobs.

Under Walker’s terms, Wisconsin, which competed with six other states to attract the business, would provide Foxconn with up to $2.85 billion in state income tax credits, which could be made in cash payments, and up to $150 million in sales tax breaks over a 15-year period.

The state legislature was expected to vote on the package early this month, but as of Wednesday, Wisconsin’s Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) told local reporters that he did not yet have the votes to approve it.

“We should be cautious,” he said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Fiscal Bureau’s analysis, released Tuesday, said other factors could delay the investment's payoff.

Wisconsin has an unusually low unemployment rate (3.2 percent), well below the country’s 4.3 percent. Employers there already complain about having trouble finding workers. (As The Post’s Chico Harlan reported last week, some are easing the labor demand with robots.)

If Foxconn fills jobs with workers from neighboring Illinois, where the unemployment rate is 4.7 percent, analysts predict the deal won’t start making money for Wisconsin until 2045.

Walker's office has said that community colleges and technical schools will adapt to meet Foxconn’s needs. The factory isn’t slated to open until at least 2021.

The Taiwanese giant,  which makes gadgets for Apple, Google, Amazon and other companies, said it would spend $10 billion to build the 20 million-square-foot plant and pay workers an average annual wage of $53,000. It would hire Wisconsin construction workers and purchase building materials in the state — a further boost to the local economy, Walker’s office has noted.

“The company’s investment is $10 billion, which is $6.70 of private investment for every $1 of public funds,” said Tom Evenson, a spokesman for Walker. “This is an excellent investment for our entire state.”

The governor has maintained the deal will spark more prosperity in Wisconsin.

“We are calling this development ‘Wisconn Valley,’ ” he said last month at the White House, unveiling the development news alongside Trump, “because we believe this will have a transformational effect on Wisconsin, just as Silicon Valley transformed the San Francisco Bay area.”

I wonder if it will end up as good as the Carrier "deal".

[47of74]

Awwww, Man Baby is still butthurt about the Senate saying no to kicking people off health insurance.

Quote

President Donald Trump slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Twitter for the second day in a row Thursday over the failure of Congress to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, escalating a war of words with the key Republican.

“Can you believe that Mitch McConnell, who has screamed Repeal & Replace for 7 years, couldn’t get it done,” Trump tweeted. “Must Repeal & Replace ObamaCare!”

 

 

[GrumpyGran]

3 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Awwww, Man Baby is still butthurt about the Senate saying no to kicking people off health insurance.

 

You know, I don't think this vacation thing is working out for him. Maybe they can book some last-minute weddings, two or three a day, so he can have some rich shits fawning all over him. That might make his bloated ego feel better.

[sawasdee]

Do you know, I think one of the things scaring the shit out of the TT is that Mueller can have access to his tax returns - and that they show he is worth a LOT less than he claims.

I don't think HE believes he or his campaign did anything wrong with regard to Russia: it was just his idea of (dirty) business as usual. He's never shown any moral or ethical sense in his business dealings, so why should he in his political? His MO has always been to do what he had to for a 'win'.

But to be exposed as not as rich as he says he is - I think that would be, for him, the ultimate humiliation.

[GreyhoundFan]

Gotta hate when your baby daddy is still married to his wife. "Ex-Trump staffers confirm they have a son but offer different accounts"

Spoiler

Jason Miller and A.J. Delgado on Wednesday confirmed the birth of their son, but the former campaign staffers to President Trump offered differing accounts of their relationship to a New York tabloid and on Twitter.

Miller, who was named White House communications director during the presidential transition — and who is married to another woman — confirmed the birth of son William to the New York Post, which reported that the child was the result of a campaign fling with Delgado. Miller told the tab that his wife has accepted the child. The couple have two children of their own, including a daughter born in January. “My wife and I, along with our two daughters, are excited to welcome William into the world and into our family, and we appreciate the well wishes we’ve received from so many,” Miller told the New York Post.

So all’s happy, right? Maybe not.

Delgado, a Trump adviser and member of the transition team, swiftly clapped back on Twitter, saying she and Miller had dated for two months and that Miller had told her he was separated from his wife. She also disputed Miller’s statement. “I’m not sure what Jason means that he and his wife are excited to welcome Will. Really? News to me.”

... <tweets>

It wasn’t the first sign of discord between the two. Before Miller suddenly resigned on Christmas Eve, saying he wanted to focus on his family, Delgado replied to the news of his impending White House job with an eyebrow-raising tweet. “Congratulations to the baby-daddy on being named WH ­Comms Director!” she wrote at the time.  Delgado also appeared to call Miller “The 2016 version of John Edwards,” a reference to the failed Democratic presidential candidate who had an affair with his campaign videographer.

And in her tweets Wednesday, Delgado accused Miller of airing their personal lives. “Wasn’t my choice to discuss this but since Jason went to Page Six, I guess I now have to share,” she wrote, implying that she had taken her version of events to McKay Coppins, a reporter for the Atlantic. “Stay tuned.”

... <more tweets>

Before joining the Trump campaign, where he shared spokesman duties with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Miller was a top communications aide for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Delgado is an attorney and a former Mediaite columnist who was one of Trump’s most steadfast defenders, including after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump can be heard making lewd remarks about women.

The pair made news in October when the New York Post reported that they, along with another Trump aide and several journalists, were seen in a Las Vegas strip club on the night before the final presidential debate. The New York Post on Wednesday reported that Miller fathered their child “following a wild night out in Las Vegas.”

But Delgado appeared to dispute that, too. “Love how the Page Six article implies it was a ‘Vegas’ love child,” she wrote late Wednesday. “Hm, no.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-donald-trump-1990

An old Playboy interview. I find it quite shocking compared to the more current transcripts. He still comes across as an a-hole but he could respond to the question in complete sentences and stick to the point. His thinking has deteriorated so much. 

[apple1]

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

 

 

My paternal Grandparents sure as hell wouldn't be down with the nuclear penis measuring that our and the North Korean idiots are doing.

Grandpa because he saw war first hand. And Grandma because her brother is MIA in Korea. I don't think she'd want any other families to go through all that.

 

My Dad is a Korean War veteran (and just turned 90 years old).

My Dad texted me, "It seems like we are back in 1950 again."

ETA: Yes, he can text.

12 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-donald-trump-1990

An old Playboy interview. I find it quite shocking compared to the more current transcripts. He still comes across as an a-hole but he could respond to the question in complete sentences and stick to the point. His thinking has deteriorated so much. 

Yes! And that is very scary.

[sawasdee]

@AmazonGrace This article agrees with you!

https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/23/donald-trump-speaking-style-interviews/

Spoiler

It was the kind of utterance that makes professional transcribers question their career choice:

“ … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero.”

When President Trump offered that response to a question at a press conference last week, it was the latest example of his tortured syntax, mid-thought changes of subject, and apparent trouble formulating complete sentences, let alone a coherent paragraph, in unscripted speech.

He was not always so linguistically challenged.

STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable.

Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. This was so even when reporters asked tough questions about, for instance, his divorce, his brush with bankruptcy, and why he doesn’t build housing for working-class Americans.

Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.”

Now, Trump’s vocabulary is simpler. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month:

“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

For decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease. STAT and the experts therefore considered only unscripted utterances, not planned speeches and statements, since only the former tap the neural networks that offer a window into brain function.

The experts noted clear changes from Trump’s unscripted answers 30 years ago to those in 2017, in some cases stark enough to raise questions about his brain health. They noted, however, that the same sort of linguistic decline can also reflect stress, frustration, anger, or just plain fatigue.

Ben Michaelis, a psychologist in New York City, performed cognitive assessments at the behest of the New York Supreme Court and criminal courts and taught the technique at a hospital and university. “There are clearly some changes in Trump as a speaker” since the 1980s, said Michaelis, who does not support Trump, including a “clear reduction in linguistic sophistication over time,” with “simpler word choices and sentence structure. … In fairness to Trump, he’s 70, so some decline in his cognitive functioning over time would be expected.”

Some sentences, or partial sentences, would, if written, make a second-grade teacher despair. “We’ll do some questions, unless you have enough questions,” Trump told a February press conference. And last week, he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago.”

Other sentences are missing words. Again, from the AP: “If they don’t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA,” and, “I don’t support or unsupport” — leaving out a “me” in the first and an “it” (or more specific noun) in the second. Other sentences simply don’t track: “From the time I took office til now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. It’s not like generalities.”

There are numerous contrasting examples from decades ago, including this — with sophisticated grammar and syntax, and a coherent paragraph-length chain of thought — from a 1992 Charlie Rose interview: “Ross Perot, he made some monumental mistakes. Had he not dropped out of the election, had he not made the gaffes about the watch dogs and the guard dogs, if he didn’t have three or four bad days — and they were real bad days — he could have conceivably won this crazy election.”

The change in linguistic facility could be strategic; maybe Trump thinks his supporters like to hear him speak simply and with more passion than proper syntax. “He may be using it as a strategy to appeal to certain types of people,” said Michaelis. But linguistic decline is also obvious in two interviews with David Letterman, in 1988 and 2013, presumably with much the same kind of audience. In the first, Trump threw around words such as “aesthetically” and “precarious,” and used long, complex sentences. In the second, he used simpler speech patterns, few polysyllabic words, and noticeably more fillers such as “uh” and “I mean

The reason linguistic and cognitive decline often go hand in hand, studies show, is that fluency reflects the performance of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher-order cognitive functions such as working memory, judgment, understanding, and planning, as well as the temporal lobe, which searches for and retrieves the right words from memory. Neurologists therefore use tests of verbal fluency, and especially how it has changed over time, to assess cognitive status.

Those tests ask, for instance, how many words beginning with W a patient can list, and how many breeds of dogs he can name, rather than have patients speak spontaneously. The latter “is too hard to score,” said neuropsychologist Sterling Johnson, of the University of Wisconsin, who studies brain function in Alzheimer’s disease. “But everyday speech is definitely a way of measuring cognitive decline. If people are noticing [a change in Trump’s language agility], that’s meaningful.”

Although neither Johnson nor other experts STAT consulted said the apparent loss of linguistic fluency was unambiguous evidence of mental decline, most thought something was going on.

John Montgomery, a psychologist in New York City and adjunct professor at New York University, said “it’s hard to say definitively without rigorous testing” of Trump’s speaking patterns, “but I think it’s pretty safe to say that Trump has had significant cognitive decline over the years.”

No one observing Trump from afar, though, can tell whether that’s “an indication of dementia, of normal cognitive decline that many people experience as they age, or whether it’s due to other factors” such as stress and emotional upheaval, said Montgomery, who is not a Trump supporter.

Even a Trump supporter saw and heard striking differences between interviews from the 1980s and 1990s and those of 2017, however. “I can see what people are responding to,” said Dr. Robert Pyles, a psychiatrist in suburban Boston. He heard “a difference in tone and pace. … What I did not detect was any gaps in mentation or meaning. I don’t see any clear evidence of neurological or cognitive dysfunction.”

Johnson cautioned that language can deteriorate for other reasons. “His language difficulties could be due to the immense pressure he’s under, or to annoyance that things aren’t going right and that there are all these scandals,” he said. “It could also be due to a neurodegenerative disease or the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging.” Trump will be 71 next month.

Northwestern University psychology professor Dan McAdams, a critic of Trump who has inferred his psychological makeup from his public behavior, said any cognitive decline in the president might reflect normal aging and not dementia. “Research shows that virtually nobody is as sharp at age 70 as they were at age 40,” he said. “A wide range of cognitive functions, including verbal fluency, begin to decline long before we hit retirement age. So, no surprise here.”

Researchers have used neurolinguistics analysis of past presidents to detect, retrospectively, early Alzheimer’s disease. In a famous 2015 study, scientists at Arizona State University evaluated how Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush spoke at their news conferences. Reagan’s speech was riddled with indefinite nouns (something, anything), “low imageability” verbs (have, go, get), incomplete sentences, limited vocabulary, simple grammar, and fillers (well, basically, um, ah, so) — all characteristic of cognitive problems. That suggested Reagan’s brain was slipping just a few years into his 1981-1989 tenure; that decline continued. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994. Bush showed no linguistic deterioration; he remained mentally sharp throughout his 1989-1993 tenure and beyond.

 

 

It's actually very noticeable.

[GrumpyGran]

49 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

Do you know, I think one of the things scaring the shit out of the TT is that Mueller can have access to his tax returns - and that they show he is worth a LOT less than he claims.

I don't think HE believes he or his campaign did anything wrong with regard to Russia: it was just his idea of (dirty) business as usual. He's never shown any moral or ethical sense in his business dealings, so why should he in his political? His MO has always been to do what he had to for a 'win'.

But to be exposed as not as rich as he says he is - I think that would be, for him, the ultimate humiliation.

I was thinking the same thing last night @sawasdee. I think the real reason he doesn't want anyone to see his taxes is because it would expose how bad of a businessman he really is. Possibly up to his neck in debt, cash-starved and writing off bad decisions. 

[Childless]

Just now, sawasdee said:

@AmazonGrace This article agrees with you!

https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/23/donald-trump-speaking-style-interviews/

  Reveal hidden contents

It was the kind of utterance that makes professional transcribers question their career choice:

“ … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero.”

When President Trump offered that response to a question at a press conference last week, it was the latest example of his tortured syntax, mid-thought changes of subject, and apparent trouble formulating complete sentences, let alone a coherent paragraph, in unscripted speech.

He was not always so linguistically challenged.

STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable.

Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. This was so even when reporters asked tough questions about, for instance, his divorce, his brush with bankruptcy, and why he doesn’t build housing for working-class Americans.

Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.”

Now, Trump’s vocabulary is simpler. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month:

“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

For decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease. STAT and the experts therefore considered only unscripted utterances, not planned speeches and statements, since only the former tap the neural networks that offer a window into brain function.

The experts noted clear changes from Trump’s unscripted answers 30 years ago to those in 2017, in some cases stark enough to raise questions about his brain health. They noted, however, that the same sort of linguistic decline can also reflect stress, frustration, anger, or just plain fatigue.

Ben Michaelis, a psychologist in New York City, performed cognitive assessments at the behest of the New York Supreme Court and criminal courts and taught the technique at a hospital and university. “There are clearly some changes in Trump as a speaker” since the 1980s, said Michaelis, who does not support Trump, including a “clear reduction in linguistic sophistication over time,” with “simpler word choices and sentence structure. … In fairness to Trump, he’s 70, so some decline in his cognitive functioning over time would be expected.”

Some sentences, or partial sentences, would, if written, make a second-grade teacher despair. “We’ll do some questions, unless you have enough questions,” Trump told a February press conference. And last week, he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago.”

Other sentences are missing words. Again, from the AP: “If they don’t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA,” and, “I don’t support or unsupport” — leaving out a “me” in the first and an “it” (or more specific noun) in the second. Other sentences simply don’t track: “From the time I took office til now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. It’s not like generalities.”

There are numerous contrasting examples from decades ago, including this — with sophisticated grammar and syntax, and a coherent paragraph-length chain of thought — from a 1992 Charlie Rose interview: “Ross Perot, he made some monumental mistakes. Had he not dropped out of the election, had he not made the gaffes about the watch dogs and the guard dogs, if he didn’t have three or four bad days — and they were real bad days — he could have conceivably won this crazy election.”

The change in linguistic facility could be strategic; maybe Trump thinks his supporters like to hear him speak simply and with more passion than proper syntax. “He may be using it as a strategy to appeal to certain types of people,” said Michaelis. But linguistic decline is also obvious in two interviews with David Letterman, in 1988 and 2013, presumably with much the same kind of audience. In the first, Trump threw around words such as “aesthetically” and “precarious,” and used long, complex sentences. In the second, he used simpler speech patterns, few polysyllabic words, and noticeably more fillers such as “uh” and “I mean.”

Dom Smith/STAT

I

t was the kind of utterance that makes professional transcribers question their career choice:

“ … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero.”

When President Trump offered that response to a question at a press conference last week, it was the latest example of his tortured syntax, mid-thought changes of subject, and apparent trouble formulating complete sentences, let alone a coherent paragraph, in unscripted speech.

President Trump denied his campaign colluded with Russia while speaking at a press conference in May 2017. Via YouTube

He was not always so linguistically challenged.

STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable.

Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

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Sign up to our Daily Recap newsletter

Please enter a valid email address.

In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. This was so even when reporters asked tough questions about, for instance, his divorce, his brush with bankruptcy, and why he doesn’t build housing for working-class Americans.

In an interview from 1987, Donald Trump talks about poverty and homelessness in the US. Via YouTube

Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.”

Now, Trump’s vocabulary is simpler. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month:

“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

For decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease. STAT and the experts therefore considered only unscripted utterances, not planned speeches and statements, since only the former tap the neural networks that offer a window into brain function.

Read More

Reporter’s notebook: I never thought I’d be writing about Trump’s mind

The experts noted clear changes from Trump’s unscripted answers 30 years ago to those in 2017, in some cases stark enough to raise questions about his brain health. They noted, however, that the same sort of linguistic decline can also reflect stress, frustration, anger, or just plain fatigue.

Ben Michaelis, a psychologist in New York City, performed cognitive assessments at the behest of the New York Supreme Court and criminal courts and taught the technique at a hospital and university. “There are clearly some changes in Trump as a speaker” since the 1980s, said Michaelis, who does not support Trump, including a “clear reduction in linguistic sophistication over time,” with “simpler word choices and sentence structure. … In fairness to Trump, he’s 70, so some decline in his cognitive functioning over time would be expected.”

Some sentences, or partial sentences, would, if written, make a second-grade teacher despair. “We’ll do some questions, unless you have enough questions,” Trump told a February press conference. And last week, he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago.”

In an interview conducted earlier this month, President Trump explains the timing of James Comey's firing. Via YouTube

Other sentences are missing words. Again, from the AP: “If they don’t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA,” and, “I don’t support or unsupport” — leaving out a “me” in the first and an “it” (or more specific noun) in the second. Other sentences simply don’t track: “From the time I took office til now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. It’s not like generalities.”

There are numerous contrasting examples from decades ago, including this — with sophisticated grammar and syntax, and a coherent paragraph-length chain of thought — from a 1992 Charlie Rose interview: “Ross Perot, he made some monumental mistakes. Had he not dropped out of the election, had he not made the gaffes about the watch dogs and the guard dogs, if he didn’t have three or four bad days — and they were real bad days — he could have conceivably won this crazy election.”

The change in linguistic facility could be strategic; maybe Trump thinks his supporters like to hear him speak simply and with more passion than proper syntax. “He may be using it as a strategy to appeal to certain types of people,” said Michaelis. But linguistic decline is also obvious in two interviews with David Letterman, in 1988 and 2013, presumably with much the same kind of audience. In the first, Trump threw around words such as “aesthetically” and “precarious,” and used long, complex sentences. In the second, he used simpler speech patterns, few polysyllabic words, and noticeably more fillers such as “uh” and “I mean.”

Donald Trump shares his take on Ross Perot's 1992 presidential campaign. Via YouTube

The reason linguistic and cognitive decline often go hand in hand, studies show, is that fluency reflects the performance of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher-order cognitive functions such as working memory, judgment, understanding, and planning, as well as the temporal lobe, which searches for and retrieves the right words from memory. Neurologists therefore use tests of verbal fluency, and especially how it has changed over time, to assess cognitive status.

Those tests ask, for instance, how many words beginning with W a patient can list, and how many breeds of dogs he can name, rather than have patients speak spontaneously. The latter “is too hard to score,” said neuropsychologist Sterling Johnson, of the University of Wisconsin, who studies brain function in Alzheimer’s disease. “But everyday speech is definitely a way of measuring cognitive decline. If people are noticing [a change in Trump’s language agility], that’s meaningful.”

Although neither Johnson nor other experts STAT consulted said the apparent loss of linguistic fluency was unambiguous evidence of mental decline, most thought something was going on.

John Montgomery, a psychologist in New York City and adjunct professor at New York University, said “it’s hard to say definitively without rigorous testing” of Trump’s speaking patterns, “but I think it’s pretty safe to say that Trump has had significant cognitive decline over the years.”

No one observing Trump from afar, though, can tell whether that’s “an indication of dementia, of normal cognitive decline that many people experience as they age, or whether it’s due to other factors” such as stress and emotional upheaval, said Montgomery, who is not a Trump supporter.

Even a Trump supporter saw and heard striking differences between interviews from the 1980s and 1990s and those of 2017, however. “I can see what people are responding to,” said Dr. Robert Pyles, a psychiatrist in suburban Boston. He heard “a difference in tone and pace. … What I did not detect was any gaps in mentation or meaning. I don’t see any clear evidence of neurological or cognitive dysfunction.”

Johnson cautioned that language can deteriorate for other reasons. “His language difficulties could be due to the immense pressure he’s under, or to annoyance that things aren’t going right and that there are all these scandals,” he said. “It could also be due to a neurodegenerative disease or the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging.” Trump will be 71 next month.

Dom Smith/STAT

I

t was the kind of utterance that makes professional transcribers question their career choice:

“ … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero.”

When President Trump offered that response to a question at a press conference last week, it was the latest example of his tortured syntax, mid-thought changes of subject, and apparent trouble formulating complete sentences, let alone a coherent paragraph, in unscripted speech.

President Trump denied his campaign colluded with Russia while speaking at a press conference in May 2017. Via YouTube

He was not always so linguistically challenged.

STAT reviewed decades of Trump’s on-air interviews and compared them to Q&A sessions since his inauguration. The differences are striking and unmistakable.

Research has shown that changes in speaking style can result from cognitive decline. STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

Newsletters

Sign up to our Daily Recap newsletter

Please enter a valid email address.

In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. This was so even when reporters asked tough questions about, for instance, his divorce, his brush with bankruptcy, and why he doesn’t build housing for working-class Americans.

In an interview from 1987, Donald Trump talks about poverty and homelessness in the US. Via YouTube

Trump fluently peppered his answers with words and phrases such as “subsided,” “inclination,” “discredited,” “sparring session,” and “a certain innate intelligence.” He tossed off well-turned sentences such as, “It could have been a contentious route,” and, “These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated.” He even offered thoughtful, articulate aphorisms: “If you get into what’s missing, you don’t appreciate what you have,” and, “Adversity is a very funny thing.”

Now, Trump’s vocabulary is simpler. He repeats himself over and over, and lurches from one subject to an unrelated one, as in this answer during an interview with the Associated Press last month:

“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

For decades, studies have found that deterioration in the fluency, complexity, and vocabulary level of spontaneous speech can indicate slipping brain function due to normal aging or neurodegenerative disease. STAT and the experts therefore considered only unscripted utterances, not planned speeches and statements, since only the former tap the neural networks that offer a window into brain function.

Read More

Reporter’s notebook: I never thought I’d be writing about Trump’s mind

The experts noted clear changes from Trump’s unscripted answers 30 years ago to those in 2017, in some cases stark enough to raise questions about his brain health. They noted, however, that the same sort of linguistic decline can also reflect stress, frustration, anger, or just plain fatigue.

Ben Michaelis, a psychologist in New York City, performed cognitive assessments at the behest of the New York Supreme Court and criminal courts and taught the technique at a hospital and university. “There are clearly some changes in Trump as a speaker” since the 1980s, said Michaelis, who does not support Trump, including a “clear reduction in linguistic sophistication over time,” with “simpler word choices and sentence structure. … In fairness to Trump, he’s 70, so some decline in his cognitive functioning over time would be expected.”

Some sentences, or partial sentences, would, if written, make a second-grade teacher despair. “We’ll do some questions, unless you have enough questions,” Trump told a February press conference. And last week, he told NBC’s Lester Holt, “When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago.”

In an interview conducted earlier this month, President Trump explains the timing of James Comey's firing. Via YouTube

Other sentences are missing words. Again, from the AP: “If they don’t treat fairly, I am terminating NAFTA,” and, “I don’t support or unsupport” — leaving out a “me” in the first and an “it” (or more specific noun) in the second. Other sentences simply don’t track: “From the time I took office til now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. It’s not like generalities.”

There are numerous contrasting examples from decades ago, including this — with sophisticated grammar and syntax, and a coherent paragraph-length chain of thought — from a 1992 Charlie Rose interview: “Ross Perot, he made some monumental mistakes. Had he not dropped out of the election, had he not made the gaffes about the watch dogs and the guard dogs, if he didn’t have three or four bad days — and they were real bad days — he could have conceivably won this crazy election.”

The change in linguistic facility could be strategic; maybe Trump thinks his supporters like to hear him speak simply and with more passion than proper syntax. “He may be using it as a strategy to appeal to certain types of people,” said Michaelis. But linguistic decline is also obvious in two interviews with David Letterman, in 1988 and 2013, presumably with much the same kind of audience. In the first, Trump threw around words such as “aesthetically” and “precarious,” and used long, complex sentences. In the second, he used simpler speech patterns, few polysyllabic words, and noticeably more fillers such as “uh” and “I mean.”

Donald Trump shares his take on Ross Perot's 1992 presidential campaign. Via YouTube

The reason linguistic and cognitive decline often go hand in hand, studies show, is that fluency reflects the performance of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher-order cognitive functions such as working memory, judgment, understanding, and planning, as well as the temporal lobe, which searches for and retrieves the right words from memory. Neurologists therefore use tests of verbal fluency, and especially how it has changed over time, to assess cognitive status.

Those tests ask, for instance, how many words beginning with W a patient can list, and how many breeds of dogs he can name, rather than have patients speak spontaneously. The latter “is too hard to score,” said neuropsychologist Sterling Johnson, of the University of Wisconsin, who studies brain function in Alzheimer’s disease. “But everyday speech is definitely a way of measuring cognitive decline. If people are noticing [a change in Trump’s language agility], that’s meaningful.”

Read More

‘Crazy like a fox’: Mental health experts try to get inside Trump’s mind

Although neither Johnson nor other experts STAT consulted said the apparent loss of linguistic fluency was unambiguous evidence of mental decline, most thought something was going on.

John Montgomery, a psychologist in New York City and adjunct professor at New York University, said “it’s hard to say definitively without rigorous testing” of Trump’s speaking patterns, “but I think it’s pretty safe to say that Trump has had significant cognitive decline over the years.”

No one observing Trump from afar, though, can tell whether that’s “an indication of dementia, of normal cognitive decline that many people experience as they age, or whether it’s due to other factors” such as stress and emotional upheaval, said Montgomery, who is not a Trump supporter.

Even a Trump supporter saw and heard striking differences between interviews from the 1980s and 1990s and those of 2017, however. “I can see what people are responding to,” said Dr. Robert Pyles, a psychiatrist in suburban Boston. He heard “a difference in tone and pace. … What I did not detect was any gaps in mentation or meaning. I don’t see any clear evidence of neurological or cognitive dysfunction.”

Johnson cautioned that language can deteriorate for other reasons. “His language difficulties could be due to the immense pressure he’s under, or to annoyance that things aren’t going right and that there are all these scandals,” he said. “It could also be due to a neurodegenerative disease or the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging.” Trump will be 71 next month.

Newsletters

Sign up to our Daily Recap newsletter

Northwestern University psychology professor Dan McAdams, a critic of Trump who has inferred his psychological makeup from his public behavior, said any cognitive decline in the president might reflect normal aging and not dementia. “Research shows that virtually nobody is as sharp at age 70 as they were at age 40,” he said. “A wide range of cognitive functions, including verbal fluency, begin to decline long before we hit retirement age. So, no surprise here.”

Researchers have used neurolinguistics analysis of past presidents to detect, retrospectively, early Alzheimer’s disease. In a famous 2015 study, scientists at Arizona State University evaluated how Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush spoke at their news conferences. Reagan’s speech was riddled with indefinite nouns (something, anything), “low imageability” verbs (have, go, get), incomplete sentences, limited vocabulary, simple grammar, and fillers (well, basically, um, ah, so) — all characteristic of cognitive problems. That suggested Reagan’s brain was slipping just a few years into his 1981-1989 tenure; that decline continued. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994. Bush showed no linguistic deterioration; he remained mentally sharp throughout his 1989-1993 tenure and beyond.

 

 

It's actually very noticeable.

Are we sure, given his lifestyle, he doesn't have syphilis.

[GreyhoundFan]

No. Just no. "Need a vacation? Trump's early childhood home is available on Airbnb"

Spoiler

Washington (CNN)It may not be Trump Tower, but Airbnb is offering visitors a stay at President Donald Trump's early childhood home.

The former Trump residence, located in Jamaica Estates, a wealthy neighborhood in Queens, is available for $725 per night. The listing features five bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms, along with an original kitchen and "opulent furnishings (that) represent the style and affluence in which the Trumps would have lived."

"This is a unique and special opportunity to stay in the home of a sitting president," the Airbnb advertisement adds.

Built by Trump's father, Fred Trump, in the 1940s, the Tudor-style home is where Donald lived until he was four years old, and the property is listed as Trump's address on his birth certificate.

The 2,500-square-foot home was sold last December to real estate investor Michael Davis, who flipped the property to an unnamed bidder in March for $2.14 million.

Misha Haghani, founder of Paramount Realty USA, which oversaw the property's auction last year, told CNN Wednesday that the value of the Trump home goes "beyond the brick and mortar."

"Clearly there's value in the property that's intangible in nature," Haghani said. "That's why there's demand for tenants to live there on a nightly basis, just to say they stayed in the home of the sitting President."

The Airbnb ad notes that there is "no relationship with the White House, the President, Donald Trump or the Trump organization in any way."

Along with space for 20 guests, the listing also touts that there is a giant cutout of Trump in the living room, which makes for a "great companion for watching Fox News late into the night." However, Haghani told CNN that "the cutout wasn't there when we sold the home."

Martha Taylor, chairman of Queens Community Board No. 8, which governs Jamaica Estates, said the board has already been checking with the building department and zoning codes to look into the legality of the Airbnb.

"In NYC there is a law that no more than three unrelated people can stay in house. If they are going to put 20 people in there, will they all be related?" she asked. "If they are doing anything illegal, we will have it stopped."

In the past, Trump himself has waxed nostalgic about the Queens home. When then-presidential candidate Trump was shown a photo of his old residence in an appearance on NBC's "The Tonight Show" starring Jimmy Fallon, Trump said "I had a really good childhood; oh, that's sad to look at that, I want to buy it."

 

[GrumpyGran]

28 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Gotta hate when your baby daddy is still married to his wife. "Ex-Trump staffers confirm they have a son but offer different accounts"

  Reveal hidden contents

Jason Miller and A.J. Delgado on Wednesday confirmed the birth of their son, but the former campaign staffers to President Trump offered differing accounts of their relationship to a New York tabloid and on Twitter.

Miller, who was named White House communications director during the presidential transition — and who is married to another woman — confirmed the birth of son William to the New York Post, which reported that the child was the result of a campaign fling with Delgado. Miller told the tab that his wife has accepted the child. The couple have two children of their own, including a daughter born in January. “My wife and I, along with our two daughters, are excited to welcome William into the world and into our family, and we appreciate the well wishes we’ve received from so many,” Miller told the New York Post.

So all’s happy, right? Maybe not.

Delgado, a Trump adviser and member of the transition team, swiftly clapped back on Twitter, saying she and Miller had dated for two months and that Miller had told her he was separated from his wife. She also disputed Miller’s statement. “I’m not sure what Jason means that he and his wife are excited to welcome Will. Really? News to me.”

... <tweets>

It wasn’t the first sign of discord between the two. Before Miller suddenly resigned on Christmas Eve, saying he wanted to focus on his family, Delgado replied to the news of his impending White House job with an eyebrow-raising tweet. “Congratulations to the baby-daddy on being named WH ­Comms Director!” she wrote at the time.  Delgado also appeared to call Miller “The 2016 version of John Edwards,” a reference to the failed Democratic presidential candidate who had an affair with his campaign videographer.

And in her tweets Wednesday, Delgado accused Miller of airing their personal lives. “Wasn’t my choice to discuss this but since Jason went to Page Six, I guess I now have to share,” she wrote, implying that she had taken her version of events to McKay Coppins, a reporter for the Atlantic. “Stay tuned.”

... <more tweets>

Before joining the Trump campaign, where he shared spokesman duties with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Miller was a top communications aide for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Delgado is an attorney and a former Mediaite columnist who was one of Trump’s most steadfast defenders, including after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump can be heard making lewd remarks about women.

The pair made news in October when the New York Post reported that they, along with another Trump aide and several journalists, were seen in a Las Vegas strip club on the night before the final presidential debate. The New York Post on Wednesday reported that Miller fathered their child “following a wild night out in Las Vegas.”

But Delgado appeared to dispute that, too. “Love how the Page Six article implies it was a ‘Vegas’ love child,” she wrote late Wednesday. “Hm, no.”

 

Aww, so sorry it didn't work out for them.  Poor William. I don't think that's going to be a happy life.

[Cartmann99]

4 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

Aww, so sorry it didn't work out for them.  Poor William. I don't think that's going to be a happy life.

It would be nice if these two fame whores could put their son's needs first and keep all of this crap private, instead of running to the media for validation. William will be able to read all these stories for himself one day, and it will hurt him deeply to see that his parents hated each other more than they loved him. 

 

[JMarie]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Gotta hate when your baby daddy is still married to his wife. "Ex-Trump staffers confirm they have a son but offer different accounts"

  Hide contents

Jason Miller and A.J. Delgado on Wednesday confirmed the birth of their son, but the former campaign staffers to President Trump offered differing accounts of their relationship to a New York tabloid and on Twitter.

Miller, who was named White House communications director during the presidential transition — and who is married to another woman — confirmed the birth of son William to the New York Post, which reported that the child was the result of a campaign fling with Delgado. Miller told the tab that his wife has accepted the child. The couple have two children of their own, including a daughter born in January. “My wife and I, along with our two daughters, are excited to welcome William into the world and into our family, and we appreciate the well wishes we’ve received from so many,” Miller told the New York Post.

So all’s happy, right? Maybe not.

Delgado, a Trump adviser and member of the transition team, swiftly clapped back on Twitter, saying she and Miller had dated for two months and that Miller had told her he was separated from his wife. She also disputed Miller’s statement. “I’m not sure what Jason means that he and his wife are excited to welcome Will. Really? News to me.”

... <tweets>

It wasn’t the first sign of discord between the two. Before Miller suddenly resigned on Christmas Eve, saying he wanted to focus on his family, Delgado replied to the news of his impending White House job with an eyebrow-raising tweet. “Congratulations to the baby-daddy on being named WH ­Comms Director!” she wrote at the time.  Delgado also appeared to call Miller “The 2016 version of John Edwards,” a reference to the failed Democratic presidential candidate who had an affair with his campaign videographer.

And in her tweets Wednesday, Delgado accused Miller of airing their personal lives. “Wasn’t my choice to discuss this but since Jason went to Page Six, I guess I now have to share,” she wrote, implying that she had taken her version of events to McKay Coppins, a reporter for the Atlantic. “Stay tuned.”

... <more tweets>

Before joining the Trump campaign, where he shared spokesman duties with former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Miller was a top communications aide for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Delgado is an attorney and a former Mediaite columnist who was one of Trump’s most steadfast defenders, including after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump can be heard making lewd remarks about women.

The pair made news in October when the New York Post reported that they, along with another Trump aide and several journalists, were seen in a Las Vegas strip club on the night before the final presidential debate. The New York Post on Wednesday reported that Miller fathered their child “following a wild night out in Las Vegas.”

But Delgado appeared to dispute that, too. “Love how the Page Six article implies it was a ‘Vegas’ love child,” she wrote late Wednesday. “Hm, no.”

 

if Fling Baby was just born, he was conceived around mid-November, when Miller's wife was about seven months pregnant.  Classy.

[Zola]

There was a roast of Trump on Comedy Central, back in 2011. I watched it. It was a bit of a disappointment. I've seen other roasts, and they can get really brutal. This one was as if they had held back. 

Some time afterwards, I found out that Trump had a list of acceptable and unacceptable topics for jokes. I went looking for it just now and found this:

http://www.vulture.com/2016/08/donald-trump-roast-off-limits-joke.html

Spoiler

This Joke Was Off-limits at Donald Trump’s Comedy Central Roast

Remember the epic Comedy Central roast of Donald Trump back in 2011? Comics from Lisa Lampanelli to Snoop Dogg (!!) roasted the Orange One to a crisp, dogging him for his hair (“What do you say to a barber to get that type of haircut … ‘I fucked your daughter?’” asked Lampanelli) to his creepy relationship with his daughter (“The Donald and I have a lot in common: We both live in New York, we both play golf, we both fantasize about his daughter,” joked Jeff Ross). According to Aaron Lee, who has written for almost every Comedy Central roast since Pamela Anderson’s in 2005, Trump said that there was only one topic that was off-limits for the show.* “Each year, the ‘roastee’ has certain topics they declare off-limits,” Lee writes on List. “It’s always interesting to learn what is ‘sacred’ for a celebrity.”

ALLOWED: Jokes about Trump’s hair
ALLOWED: Jokes about Trump’s wife Melania (and his two previous marriages)
ALLOWED: Jokes about Trump having sex with models
ALLOWED: Jokes about the failure of Trump Steaks, Trump Water, Trump Cologne, and other Trump products
ALLOWED: Jokes about Trump’s failed casinos
ALLOWED: Jokes about how Trump only became successful thanks to his wealthy father
ALLOWED: Jokes about Trump’s weight
ALLOWED: Jokes about Trump being attracted to his daughter Ivanka
NOT ALLOWED: Any joke that suggests Trump is not actually as wealthy as he claims to be

Anthony Jeselnik, one of Trump’s roasters, also noted the same thing during a conversation with Joan Rivers on In Bed With Joan back in 2013. “Donald Trump’s rule was, don’t say I have less money than I say I do,” Jeselnik said. “Make fun of my kids, do whatever you want, just don’t say I don’t have that much money.”

Well, Seth Meyers is on to you, Donald, and he’s roasting you for all you’re worth now. Which is probably not that much.

So it certainly seems as though TT cannot stand to have people even think he is not as wealthy as he says he is, much less joke about it. I don't think that's everything with the tax returns, though. He's not just hiding less wealth,I suspect he's hiding who he owes as well. 

That poor, unfortunate little William. Another casualty of the Trump administration. Good luck, tiny dude.

[apple1]

2 minutes ago, JMarie said:

if Fling Baby was just born, he was conceived around mid-November, when Miller's wife was about seven months pregnant.  Classy.

I KNEW I couldn't stand that guy.

[JMarie]

People posted some of Delgado's tweets, and baby was born July 10.  Why is this news a full month later, unless the White House is trying to deflect attention from something else?

Also, Jason Miller?  Eww.

[GrumpyGran]

14 minutes ago, JMarie said:

if Fling Baby was just born, he was conceived around mid-November, when Miller's wife was about seven months pregnant.  Classy.

Some men don't like having sex with pregnant women. So they just find another woman to have sex with. Simple. And disgusting. I'm buying the What-happened-in-Vegas-sure-didn't-stay-in-Vegas story.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo published this a few min ago. He is doubling down: "Trump escalates rhetoric on threat from North Korea"

Spoiler

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — President Trump escalated his rhetoric about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, threatening here Thursday that “things will happen to them like they never thought possible” should the isolated country attack the United States or its allies.

Trump told reporters that his Tuesday statement warning of “fire and fury” may not have been “tough enough,” but even as he stepped up his brinksmanship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the president sought to reassure anxious people around the world that he has the situation under control.

“Frankly, the people who were questioning that statement, was it too tough? Maybe it wasn’t tough enough,” Trump said. “They’ve been doing this to our country for a long time, for many years, and it’s about time that somebody stuck up for the people of this country and for the people of other countries. So, if anything, maybe that statement wasn’t tough enough.”

Asked what would have been tougher than “fire and fury,” Trump replied only, “You’ll see. You’ll see.”

Trump would not say whether he is considering a preemptive strike on North Korea, and while he said he was open to negotiating with Pyongyang, he said talks over the years had done little to halt the country’s nuclear program.

“What they’ve been doing, what they’ve been getting away with, is a tragedy and it can’t be allowed,” Trump said.

The nuclear crisis has left leaders and people around the world jittery, but Trump tried to offer assurances.

“The people of this country should be very comfortable, and I will tell you this: If North Korea does anything in terms of even thinking about attack of anybody that we love or we represent or our allies or us, they can be very, very nervous,” Trump said. “Things will happen to them like they never thought possible.”

Trump’s comments came during a seven-minute news conference on the steps of the grand clubhouse of his private golf club here in Bedminster, N.J., where he is spending most of his 17-day working vacation. He was flanked by Vice President Pence, who nodded approvingly, but delivered no statement of his own.

Trump and Pence were scheduled to attend a Thursday afternoon security briefing along with White House chief of staff John F. Kelly and national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

The session comes after two days of mixed messages emanating from the Trump administration.

On Tuesday, Trump delivered an unusually bellicose threat to North Korea, warning that further provocations from Pyongyang “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Trump improvised his statement, the language of which was not reviewed by his national security advisers or political aides.

In the 24 hours that followed, senior administration officials sought to calm jittery world leaders as well as Americans. But the statements from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and senior White House officials, including adviser Sebastian Gorka, varied in substance and especially in tone. They ranged from sober and reassuring (Tillerson) to forceful yet measured (Mattis) to bellicose in the style of the president (Gorka).

The North Koreans effectively laughed off Trump’s “fire and fury” threat, calling his statement “a load of nonsense.” And they also threatened to fire missiles over the waters off Guam, a strategically-located Pacific island and home to U.S. military bases.

Asked Thursday morning whether Trump’s thinking on the North Korean nuclear crisis had evolved in the wake of the threat to Guam, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said it had not.

“Certainly nothing has changed in the president’s thinking,” Sanders told reporters. “He’s made clear how he feels on that front.”

 

[Cartmann99]

16 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“The people of this country should be very comfortable, and I will tell you this: If North Korea does anything in terms of even thinking about attack of anybody that we love or we represent or our allies or us, they can be very, very nervous,” Trump said. “Things will happen to them like they never thought possible.”

Trump’s comments came during a seven-minute news conference on the steps of the grand clubhouse of his private golf club here in Bedminster, N.J., where he is spending most of his 17-day working vacation. He was flanked by Vice President Pence, who nodded approvingly, but delivered no statement of his own.

Well, shit. It's not even 5am yet in Pyongyang, so we'll have to wait till their idiot gets up and responds to our idiot. 

For those wanting to know exactly what time it is in Pyongyang, here you go:

https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/north-korea/pyongyang

We sit and wait to see what happens, while the orange shitweasel golfs and stuffs his face. 

[sawasdee]

I can't even.....SOMEBODY GAG HIM!

[Destiny]

I can't even.....SOMEBODY GAG HIM!

If only, and apparently he just talked again. CNN is waiting for the tape upload to finish before airing it.

[sawasdee]

Jesus, Mary and Joseph - we're living in a very bad, end of times novel. How the f&@k did he ever, with his manifest inadequacies, get into the primaries, let alone win them?  Can't a party refuse a candidate? WTF were they thinking?

For this alone, allowing TT to run in their name, the GOP should burn in hell.

And the rest of the world, with no say in US politics, has to live - or not - with the results. Goddamn them.

[47of74]

18 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph - we're living in a very bad, end of times novel. How the f&@k did he ever, with his manifest inadequacies, get into the primaries, let alone win them?  Can't a party refuse a candidate? WTF were they thinking?

For this alone, allowing TT to run in their name, the GOP should burn in hell.

And the rest of the world, with no say in US politics, has to live - or not - with the results. Goddamn them.

And fuck them too.

I have no sympathy for Branch Trumpvidians who now regret what they did, or were negatively affected by what they did in voting for that son of a bitch.  Nor am I one of those "tolerant, understanding" liberals either.  And reich wingers who don't like that can go perform a sex act upon themselves in traffic.