Trump 22: Not Even Poe Could Make This Shit Up

[JMarie]

33 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

... or Nancy Reagan was in charge. I look back on her rather fondly now.

...or the White House residents appreciated the lawn, using part of it as a garden (Michelle Obama) or wedding venue (Tricia Nixon)

[GreyhoundFan]

"One group loved Trump’s remarks about Charlottesville: White supremacists"

Spoiler

President Trump’s public remarks on the violence in Charlottesville have been criticized by many, including members of his own political party, for being insufficient and vague.

But Trump’s choice of words — and the silence that preceded them — are being cheered by at least a few groups of people: neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

On the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, updates about Saturday’s events unfolded quickly, as hundreds of mostly young, white men who had gathered in Charlottesville to stage a rally to “take America back” clashed with counterprotesters.

“WE HAVE AN ARMY!” the website posted to a live blog shortly after 11 a.m., along with photos of people carrying Confederate flags and neo-Nazi paraphernalia. “THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A WAR!”

Shortly afterward, the “Unite the Right” rally planned for noon — intended to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the city’s Emancipation Park — had been canceled as Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) declared a state of emergency.

Around 1 p.m. Saturday, Trump finally broke his silence, tweeting that there was “no place for this kind of violence in America.”

...

Trump’s first tweet didn’t even mention Charlottesville and neither tweet denounced the ideology that had driven the white nationalists to rally in the first place. And they were so generalized that even self-proclaimed “alt-right” leader Richard Spencer, who was at the demonstrations Friday and Saturday, quoted one and wondered whether the president had just denounced antifascists instead of them.

...

The Daily Stormer live blog quoted Trump’s initial tweets with the commentary: “Trump is tweeting about us. I don’t think he understands who the haters were.”

Soon, the chaos in Charlottesville escalated even further as a car plowed into a crowd, killing one person and injuring 19 others. Police later arrested 20-year-old James Alex Fields Jr., of Ohio, who was identified by a former teacher as being a longtime Nazi sympathizer.

From his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Trump once again addressed the violence, this time by reading a prepared statement. Once again, however, the president did not mention white supremacists or white nationalists. In fact, he seemed to go out of his way to avoid placing blame.

“The hate and division must stop. And must stop right now,” Trump said Saturday. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country.”

He did not say which “sides” he was referring to, or whose hatred and bigotry he was condemning.

Less than a half-hour after Trump’s live remarks, the Daily Stormer had declared the president’s words as a signal of tacit support for their side:

Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.

He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate … on both sides!

So he implied the antifa are haters.

There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.

He said he loves us all.

The neo-Nazi live blog also noted that Trump had refused to respond when a reporter asked about white nationalists who supported him.

“No condemnation at all,” the Daily Stormer wrote. “When asked to condemn, [Trump] just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”

It was far from the first time white supremacists had signaled their support for Trump. Earlier Saturday, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke replied to Trump, suggesting the president was attacking “White Americans being targeted for discriminated [sic].”

“I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists,” Duke tweeted to Trump.

...

Trump has in the past had to be pushed to rebuke white supremacy and those in the movement who supported him, particularly when it came to Duke. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog found that Trump’s statements about Duke, spanning more than two decades, are often “reactive.” For example, when Bloomberg News’s John Heilemann asked Trump in 2015 whether he would repudiate Duke, Trump responded: “Sure, I would do that, if it made you feel better. I don’t know anything about him. Somebody told me yesterday, whoever he is, he did endorse me. Actually I don’t think it was an endorsement. He said I was absolutely the best of all of the candidates.”

As The Post’s Jenna Johnson and John Wagner reported, Trump’s presidential campaign excited many white nationalists:

They rallied behind his promises to build a wall on the southern border, reduce the number of foreigners allowed into the country and pressure everyone in the country to speak English and say “Merry Christmas.” And they celebrated Trump selecting Stephen K. Bannon as his chief strategist, who formerly ran the right-wing Breitbart News and advocated for what he calls the “alt-right” movement.

The Daily Stormer wrapped up its coverage of Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville by attacking House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for speaking out forcefully against white supremacists and neo-Nazis. It ended with nary a word about Trump — but an optimistic note to those who had protested in Charlottesville, and a word of warning to everyone else.

“And to everyone, know this: we are now at war. And we are not going to back down. … We are going to go bigger than Charlottesville. We are going to go huge. We are going to take over the country. … We learned a lot today. And we are going to remember what we learned. This has only just begun.”

You know that things are bad when Richard Spencer and David Duke are celebrating. And, sadly, that last paragraph is probably correct, thanks to the orange menace not standing up, they feel empowered.

[MarblesMom]

3 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Well, here we are, Scare Americans Shitless Week is over. Thank goodness.

And I thought Shark Week was scary.....

[AnywhereButHere]

22 minutes ago, MarblesMom said:

And I thought Shark Week was scary.....

It's now alligator week. The swamp is out in full force.

[Howl]

Loved this tweet: 

[GreyhoundFan]

"After Charlottesville: End the denial about Trump"

Spoiler

It should not have taken the death and injury of innocents to move our nation toward moral clarity. It should not have taken President Trump’s disgraceful refusal to condemn white supremacy, bigotry and Nazism to make clear to all who he is and which dark impulses he is willing to exploit to maintain his hold on power.

Those of us who are white regularly insist that the racists and bigots are a minority of us and that the white-power movement is a marginal and demented faction.

This is true, and the mayhem in Charlottesville called forth passionate condemnations of blood-and-soil nationalism across the spectrum of ideology. These forms of witness were a necessary defense of the American idea and underscored the shamefulness of Trump’s embrace of moral equivalence. There are not, as Trump insisted Saturday, “many sides” to questions that were settled long ago: Racism, anti-Semitism, discrimination and white supremacy are unequivocally wrong.

A president who cannot bring himself to say this immediately and unequivocally squanders any claim to moral leadership.

Advisers to the president tried to clean up after this moral failure, putting out a statement Sunday morning — attributed to no one — declaring that “of course” his condemnation of violence “includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.” But if that “of course” is sincere, why didn’t Trump say these things in the first place? And why hang on to the president’s inexcusable moral equivalence by adding that phrase “and all extremist groups”? This was simply a weak philosophical coverup for a politician who has shown us his real instincts throughout his public life, from his birtherism to his reluctance to turn away 2016 endorsements from Klansmen and other racists.

More Republicans than usual broke with Trump after his anemic response, and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was especially poignant in offering historical perspective on this episode: “My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

But that so many others in the party preferred to keep their discomfort on background was itself a scandal. “I can’t tell you how sick & tired I am of the ‘privately wincing’ Republicans,” Peter Wehner, a veteran of three Republican administrations, tweeted. “It’s a self-incriminating silence.” Yes, it is.

The proper response is for Democrats and Republicans willing to take a stand to force a vote in Congress condemning the president for his opportunistic obtuseness and making clear where the vast majority of Americans stand on white supremacy. This is important for many reasons, but especially to send a message to America’s minorities that whites are willing to do more than offer rote condemnations of racism.

For make no mistake: No matter how accurate it is to say that neo-Nazis and Klansmen represent a repugnant fringe, the fact that our president has consistently and successfully exploited white racial resentment cannot help but be taken by citizens of color as a sign of racism’s stubborn durability.

The backlash to racial progress is an old American story, from the end of Reconstruction forward. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words from 1967 speak to us still: “Loose and easy language about equality, resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro, there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.” This is what we saw this weekend.

The battles over Confederate monuments, in Charlottesville and elsewhere, reflect our difficulty in acknowledging that these memorials are less historical markers than political statements. Many were erected explicitly in support of Jim Crow and implicitly to deny the truth that the Southern cause in the Civil War was built around a defense of slavery. Taking them down is an acknowledgment of what history teaches, not an eradication of the past.

But history is also being made now. As is always true with Trump, self-interest is the most efficient explanation for his actions: Under pressure from the Russia investigation, he is reluctant to alienate backlash voters, who are among his most loyal supporters.

The rest of us, however, have a larger obligation to our country and to racial justice. As the late civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer might suggest, it is time to ask about Trump: When will we become sick and tired of being sick and tired?

Excellent editorial.

[unholypoledancer]

2 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

... or Nancy Reagan was in charge. I look back on her rather fondly now.

I miss the just say no Era. I just came away singing catchy jingles, not fearing for my life, you know?

[Gobsmacked]

Trump finds it easier to eat chocolate cake with two scoops of ice-cream whilst Liberty weeps on her Pedestal. 

 

[JMarie]

I can't wait to see how Sarah Huckabee Sanders tries to spin this at tomorrow's press conference.

[fraurosena]

The look on his smug face.

 

[Gobsmacked]

Wow. The smugness and ignorance....................

How? Just how did he happen?????????????????????. What a crying shame that his mother hadn't had a headache that night.

 

[fraurosena]

Wow.

Now that's how you do presidential.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Job seekers urge Trump to hire American at Mar-a-Lago"

Spoiler

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — If President Trump’s Florida clubs wanted to hire U.S. workers, there were many willing to sign up at an event here this past week where other luxury properties got in touch with the local workforce in search of employees.

“Oh, my God, working at Mar-a-Lago is my dream job,” said Sky Chester, a job hunter with experience in the service industry. “I would do anything: make beds, scrub toilets, whatever they need. Just to get my foot in the door at Mar-a-Lago would be amazing. That place is the top of the top.”

But Trump’s company did not participate in the event, which drew more than 300 job seekers. Mar-a-Lago and the Trump National Golf Club in nearby Jupiter are instead engaged in a process to fill more than 70 jobs with foreign workers. The president’s properties are among the 30 in Palm Beach County that use the H-2B visa program, which allows U.S. companies to hire foreign workers if they can prove that they can’t find Americans to do the jobs.

“We have the workers, we prescreen the workers, and we can help train the workers,” said Tom Veenstra, senior director of support services at CareerSource Palm Beach County, which hosted the job fair. “And we do it all for free. I don’t know why an employer wouldn’t want to use us.”

Rekiya Overstreet was enthusiastic about the prospect of a job at Trump’s winter resort.

“I would work there, absolutely,” Overstreet said. “I think it would be a great opportunity. But I think they prefer to hire foreign workers.”

It isn’t a matter of preference, say the employers who use the foreign workers, including Trump — it’s a matter of necessity.

“It’s very, very hard to get people,” Trump said during a presidential debate last year. “There’s nothing wrong with it. . . . We have no choice.”

Overstreet said there’s plenty of choices among local residents — all of them U.S. citizens or legal residents — who were prescreened for employment at the career center.

Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, did not respond to a request for comment.

Showing up on a blistering hot Florida summer day, dressed in their professional best, résumés in hand, the job hopefuls were there specifically for positions such as those at Mar-a-Lago. Their experience is suited to the industry. They know many of the jobs are seasonal, that the work can be demanding and that the pay isn’t high. (Server jobs at Mar-a-Lago, like other area clubs, start at $11.88 an hour.) But they still want them.

“We could do those jobs. We’d love to have those jobs. I know I would,” Overstreet said. “I just wish they’d give me that chance.”

A 14-day window that U.S. workers had to apply for the jobs before they were opened to competition from H-2B visa recruiters has closed. Companies using the visa program must show that they made an effort to find U.S. workers for the jobs.

“We have plenty of people to fill those jobs,” said Joyce Pepin, a senior manager at CareerSource. “They just choose to work with the H-2B program.”

The CareerSource center has been successful at placing local workers in the industry. When a Hilton hotel opened at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in 2015, for example, a job fair hosted by CareerSource attracted more than 400 people.

The Hilton hired 200 of them — all local residents.

“We were able to staff that hotel when it opened,” Veenstra said.

The Breakers, Mar-a-Lago’s main competition for charity galas that mark the Palm Beach social season, also uses H-2B workers.

But recently, the Breakers agreed to work more closely with the CareerSource center. Holly Carson, director of the CareerSource youth program, said that last week, the resort offered a training session to 20 young people looking to get started in the hospitality industry. The Breakers invited the young job seekers (ages 17 to 24) to the resort to shadow their staff.

Carson hopes that Trump’s company will do something similar.

“I would like to invite him to come and see what we do, and see the kind of people we have here,” Carson said. “We have a lot of great people we’re trying to help find jobs.”

Chester, a fan of Mar-a-Lago’s glamour since she moved to Palm Beach County in 1986, said her 55 years of work experience include many jobs that would make her a suitable hire.

“I’ve been working since I was 16, and I want to keep working. I have to, to pay my rent,” Chester said. “I’m willing to do anything. I need a job.”

Oh, but no American workers will take the jobs...

 

7 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Now that's how you do presidential.

There are rumors McAuliffe is considering running for president. If he does, the Repugs will go crazy, since he is good friends with the Clintons and was chairman of the DNC in the early 2000s. I can already hear the attack ads.

[WiseGirl]

2 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

It's now alligator week. The swamp is out in full force.

Very  close to what I heard one of the speakers say at the vigil I went to. Oh yes, he-who-shall-not-be-named said he'd clean out the swamp. Sure he did, he got rid of crocodiles and let in the alligators. 

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, Gobsmacked said:

Trump finds it easier to eat chocolate cake with two scoops of ice-cream whilst Liberty weeps on her Pedestal. 

Now, we've all lived in fear of the needs of our neighbors
Yet, we voice our opinions through weak politicians
Hey, the shores of our country have closed for this season
And our lady of the harbor stands lonely and weeping... 'cause...

Love is a Hard Waltz... And we could all use a
Lesson in giving
If we give it hearts... It could teach us the
Rhythm if only we're will

-Nanci Griffith-  Love is a Hard Waltz.

[AuntK]

These idiots look just as stupid carrying their backyard tiki torches, (probably purchased at Home Depot), as their predecessors did wearing the household bedsheets. Individually, they are simpering cowards; unfortunately, en masse they are domestic terrorists and should be called what they are. 

And, as far as their Nazi brethren, you cannot be a loyal, patriotic American and prance around giving the Nazi salute! This country and most of the world fought a war over this and the Nazis lost! In many European countries, it is against the law to flash the Nazi salute. We should consider similar laws here, despite the First Amendment. It is despicable. 

Finally, you cannot erase history by removing a statue. Too bad. But I doubt any of these pinheads could pass an 8th grade history exam anyway. It is not about "erasing their history," it is about putting other people down so these losers can feel better about their sad little selves.

ENOUGH! ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT! ENOUGH OF TRUMP!

 

[VixenToast]

I'm just kinda in shock. I had to go eat delicious ice cream yesterday, it was just all too horrible watching the news, I went to the ice cream parlor. Yum. And sadness.

[Cartmann99]

So, the white supremacist ensemble is now khaki pants and a white golf shirt. I feel badly for any schools or businesses that have chosen the same uniform for their students or employees. Now, when we see people dressed like that, our first thought won't be Springfield Academy or Rose's Doughnuts, we'll think of Nazis and wonder where they left their tiki torch. 

[fraurosena]

This is satire, but it so easily could not have been. 

Trump Imagines Life as a Soldier

Quote

Being a soldier is tremendous. I’m one of America’s greatest soldiers, if you want to know the truth. I’m a soldier in the Army. Or maybe it’s the Navy. Whichever one McCain wasn’t in. Did you know he got captured? A real lightweight.

I’m glad I’m not serving with any trans people, otherwise I would forget how to do soldier stuff. Like fighting! Fighting is the main thing I do as a soldier, O.K.? I carry a machine gun for fighting, and it’s the best machine gun. But I would forget how to shoot it if I were near a trans person.

But I’m very pro-trans, believe me. Maybe the most pro-trans person in history. Not only that, I’m pro all the other letters in “L.G.B.T.Q.” I’m pro-lesbian, I’m pro-gluten, I’m probiotic. I’m pro everything except trans people being treated like regular, non-trans people. That’s where I draw the line.

America lost eight wars during the time that trans people were allowed to serve. Many people are saying this.

It’s a good thing my bone spurs cleared up. Bone spurs are very painful, honestly, and bone spurs are a disgrace. They send a sharp pain through one of your feet—I can’t remember which one—and they always strike right when you’d otherwise be eligible for military service. Sad!

Anyway, if I still had bone spurs, then I wouldn’t be able to be a soldier, and then America would lose the war I’m currently winning for them. The war is in Syria, and it’s against Hezbollah, and it’s also in North Korea, against Kim John-un, and I’m doing a very good job in it.

I wrote a book called “The Art of the Deal.” That’s not about being a soldier, but in some ways it is.

The worst part of being a soldier is that it’s hard to tweet. You have to hide your phone from the generals. Generals are the bosses of the soldiers, and you can tell who they are because they wear funny pins. The pins symbolize how many guns they’ve shot. You can only become a general after you shoot enough guns. I know this because I went to military school, O.K.?

I went to military school, and I was such a good student that they offered to make me a general even though I hadn’t fired enough guns yet. But I turned them down because they sounded desperate. Desperate like you wouldn’t believe. Pathetic.

The movie “Saving Private Ryan” is about me.

I’m in very good shape because of all the pushups you do in the military. I can do five hundred pushups. Many people have seen me do five hundred pushups, and they were all very impressed. I am also very good at golf. They don’t normally let you play golf as a soldier, but they made an exception for me because I’m incredible at golf.

My wife is better-looking than the wives of all the other soldiers. Sometimes I feel bad for them, if you want to know the truth. And you won’t believe this: some of the other soldiers are women. I don’t know how that works.

Women confuse and upset me.

Last week I was in a helicopter for the Army, and the pilot told me he thought I’d be a better helicopter pilot than he was. Can you believe it? I’ve never flown a helicopter, but he was probably right.

Please tell me I’m good.

 

[WiseGirl]

6 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

So, the white supremacist ensemble is now khaki pants and a white golf shirt. I feel badly for any schools or businesses that have chosen the same uniform for their students or employees. Now, when we see people dressed like that, our first thought won't be Springfield Academy or Rose's Doughnuts, we'll think of Nazis and wonder where they left their tiki torch. 

Oh, don't forget the shirt has to have the white supremist symbols on it, the black and white triangle on one of the identified's shirt. I can't remember what it is called.

[Cleopatra7]

The response from the right appears to be that anti-Nazi protests are a slippery slope to Nazism, whereas actual Nazis are not a problem:

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2017/08/fuck-your-feelings-and-your-thoughts.html?m=1

[fraurosena]

8 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

So, the white supremacist ensemble is now khaki pants and a white golf shirt. I feel badly for any schools or businesses that have chosen the same uniform for their students or employees. Now, when we see people dressed like that, our first thought won't be Springfield Academy or Rose's Doughnuts, we'll think of Nazis and wonder where they left their tiki torch. 

Hmm, I wonder who came up with the idea for that attire? Oh yeah...

[fraurosena]

Trump Tweets About Everything Except Denouncing Neo-Nazis

Spoiler

President Donald Trump had a lot to say on Twitter Monday morning ― but none of his posts addressed the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, where a car rammed into a group of pedestrians protesting a white supremacist rally, killing one woman.

Over the weekend, Trump condemned the “violence” and “hate” in general terms but stopped short of explicitly naming any of the white supremacist groups responsible for the event. He also blamed “many sides” for the unrest, which took place in a protest over the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

In his tweets Monday, the president called out “obstructionist Democrats” as well as Ken Frazier, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Merck, who resigned from Trump’s manufacturing council over the president’s tepid response to the terror attack.

 

 

 

 

According to the White House, Trump is scheduled to meet with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Chris Wray on Monday to discuss the Charlottesville violence. It’s unclear whether he will offer any public remarks after the meeting.

Republican leaders and Democratic lawmakers alike have called on Trump to explicitly condemn the white nationalist groups in the wake of the violence.

You have to wonder, when will the Repugs finally denounce this presidunce and kick him out of the party?

[GrumpyGran]

Well that was...unsettling? He just came out and said what he should have said two days ago. And he sounded like he was actually aware of what he was saying. Did somebody slip something in his Diet Coke? We know absolutely that this is not his inclination.

All this accomplishes is allowing his borderline supporters to breath a little easier. This was too late to convince very many but was his most impressive performance so far. If I didn't know him better I might have believed him. And he may have pissed off the Nazis.

[candygirl200413]

Terry spoke at my graduation last year and I really loved it so I was happy with what he said in regards to this happening.

Will Bannon, Miller and Gorka go off on him? Also just reading on twitter, a good amount of repugs have discussed how those three aren't really nazis, like what?