Trump 24: Fiddling, er, Tweeting While Rome Burns

[candygirl200413]

I keep forgetting that he's going on Tuesday down there. So my heart goes out to the people of PR even more with a dipshit who could care less about them. Even while he's down there part of me feels like he'll still be like "eh fake news, you could totally still live here".

[Destiny]

Well, he is back on North Korea, and undercutting the shit out of Tillerson in the process:

Orange Menace, could you PLEASE fucking stop poking the nutbar with the NUCLEAR FUCKING WEAPON.

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, Destiny said:

Well, he is back on North Korea, and undercutting the shit out of Tillerson in the process:

Yep, beat me to this @Destiny. Fuck, Tillerson's going to resign. On Friday, right? Then that gnat who has to pay people to play golf with him because he cheats will pick somebody like Omarosa to replace him. He'll probably replace Price with Arapio.

IF he goes on Tuesday, and it sounds like he's looking hard for a reason not to go, it will be a disaster. My fantasy: when they get down there, Melania looks around and sees the situation. After visiting the children in whatever hospital they can get to, she gets back on the plane, puts her stilettos back on and then stands on his crotch the whole way home.

[candygirl200413]

I can DREAM about that scenario @GrumpyGran !! I was just telling my dad about that tweet this morning and he was like don't you miss the days where you didn't have to go on twitter just to see if a nuclear war was going to happen?

[onekidanddone]

@GrumpyGran you are so on target. He is calling the devastation 'fake news'.  He calls the people of Puerto Rico ingrates. He attacks the Mayor of San Juan. Lets have all that roll around in our brains for a while. What the hell is he going to do when he gets there? Say how great he is? Go back and delete all this tweets about the fake news? 

All you fine people of FJ, you must hold me back from emailing the Trump lover I know who is Puerto Rican. I want to ask her how that MAGA thing is working for her. I'm so pissed off. 

[47of74]

I just saw this where fornicate face thinks O.J. was framed

Spoiler

Donald Trump may be in a fight with black NFL players today, but 22 years ago, he weighed in on one of the most racially-divisive trials in American history—on the side of O.J. Simpson.  

A month after Simpson was acquitted in Los Angeles of murdering Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, Trump was on the Howard Stern Show saying O.J. was probably framed and that “fifty people could have planted” the blood in Simpson’s white Bronco that was among the chief bits of evidence against him.

Simpson walked free today after ten years in prison related to other charges. He is 70 years old and has served ten years of a 33 year sentence for a 2008 armed robbery and kidnapping in relation to a confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room.

But his 1995 acquittal of the two murders remained an enduring symbol of America’s racial divide. In a 1995 CBS poll 76% of whites thought the former FNL star was guilty while just 22% of blacks thought so. Now 79% of whites and 41% of blacksthink that. Only 10% of whites and 39% of blacks think he is not guilty.

So how long until the bastard pardons him and gives him a cabinet level role? 

5 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

I keep forgetting that he's going on Tuesday down there. So my heart goes out to the people of PR even more with a dipshit who could care less about them. Even while he's down there part of me feels like he'll still be like "eh fake news, you could totally still live here".

I imagine it will go something like this.

Fornicate Face and his groupies will stop at small areas that have been rebuilt specifically for them and try to pass that off as the reconstruction of PR going very well.  He'll have an area full of astroturf supporters who have been flown in just for that purpose, and he will give a speech that is 99% him and 1% the disaster in PR. 

 

[Cartmann99]

I'm sure the hurricane victims are thrilled with this stupid gesture:

 

[onekidanddone]

Who are the women behind him? Wives number four and five?

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, 47of74 said:

So how long until the bastard pardons him and gives him a cabinet level role?

Attorney General to replace Jefferson Don't I Look Spiffy in My White Hood Sessions. 

[Cartmann99]

I was looking to see if Jim Bakker had said anything exceptionally stupid in the last few days, and I ran across this:

Quote

As the Religious Right coalesced behind Donald Trump’s presidential campaign last year, various narratives began to emerge that Trump had found God—or at least “opened himself” to Christianity—thanks to his proximity to conservative evangelical leaders.

George Barna, a conservative Christian pollster who is out with a new book arguing that Christians brought about Trump’s election in what he has called a “major miracle” sent by God, added to this narrative in a recent interview with Virginia talk radio host Rob Schilling, saying that the conservative religious leaders who Trump has surrounded himself with in the White House have brought about a “major change” in “the heart and hopefully the soul of this man who’s now our president.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/george-barna-religious-leaders-have-effected-a-major-change-in-trumps-soul/

Christian conservatives are in an unhealthy relationship with Trump, and they are still in the making excuses, lying to themselves, and blaming others part of this dance. It's going to hurt like hell when the denial finally stops working for them, but many of us have been rebuffed when we tried to warn them about what was happening. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo fleshed out the TT/Tillerson situation: "Trump contradicts Tillerson on North Korea, the latest in a series of put-downs'

Spoiler

President Trump, not for the first time, publicly contradicted his chief diplomat on a major foreign policy issue Sunday, saying via Twitter that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”

Using his nickname for North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and apparently warning again of a U.S. military response to its escalating nuclear threat, Trump advised, “Save your energy, Rex, we’ll do what has to be done.”

The tweets came the day after Tillerson, on a visit to Beijing, told reporters the administration had direct lines of communication with North Korea and was probing for a response. “We ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’” he said. “We can talk to them, we do talk to them.”

The latest display of dissension follows earlier presidential put-downs and efforts by Tillerson and other national security officials to smooth Trump’s rough edges on issues as diverse as U.S. policy toward NATO, Mexico and the Persian Gulf.

All have sparked questions about Tillerson’s longevity in office, with repeated speculation that he is fed up, or that Trump wants him gone.

“Humiliating for Tillerson, but worse, renders him useless. He’ll resign, today or after a brief face-saving interval,” predicted former Obama administration ambassador and National Security Council official Dan Shapiro, one of many foreign policy experts who tweeted about Trump’s Sunday comments, sent from his New Jersey golf club.

“President Trump spectacularly shot down SecState Tillerson after important Beijing talks. How long can this last?” asked Carl Bildt, former conservative prime minister of Sweden and current co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Neither the State Department nor the White House responded to queries on Trump’s comments.

Tillerson’s aides were quick to explain that the secretary’s Saturday remarks, made during a brief visit to China to plan for Trump’s trip there in November, did not imply that any substantive talks were underway with Pyongyang.

“That’s not happening,” senior Tillerson adviser R.C. Hammond told reporters aboard the secretary’s flight from Beijing. “There is a means by which the countries can engage with each other,” Hammond said, adding, “North Korean officials show no indication that they are interested in or ready for talks on denuclearization.”

In Washington, a senior administration official said immediately after the secretary’s comments, “I wouldn’t read too much into that.”

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned Sunday that “if we don’t ramp up the diplomatic side . . . it’s possible that we end up cornered.”

“I think there’s more going on than meets the eye,” Corker said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” While the Trump administration and the United Nations have rapidly increased sanctions against Pyongyang, he said, “I think Tillerson understands that every intelligence agency we have says there’s no amount of economic pressure you can put on North Korea to get them to stop this program because they view this as their survival. . . . We’re moving to a place where we’re going to end up with a binary choice soon.”

Shortly after Corker’s appearance, Trump tweeted again. “Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.”

Tillerson, a former ExxonMobil chief executive with no previous diplomatic experience, has been under a broader cloud in office, with lawmakers and others criticizing the slow pace of diplomatic appointments, his acquiescence to massive budget cuts proposed by the White House, and the State Department’s lack of visibility on a number of issues.

Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan acknowledged at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week that department morale was low. “I think there’s uncertainty,” he said, “and that causes — uncertainty leads people [to be] unsettled, and we need to address that,” he said.

On the world stage, where Tillerson has sought to reassure allies that Trump’s America is a reliable partner, many have concluded that his influence is limited.

With White House aides such as presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and others given a major role in foreign policy, the question of “who is responsible for what segment” of national security remains an open one, said a senior official in the government of a close European ally, speaking on the condition of anonymity about sensitive diplomatic issues. Unpredictability “may be a useful tool with adversaries,” he said, but with allies it creates “uncertainty and irritation.”

Tillerson defended Trump’s early August threat to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea as “important . . . to avoid any miscalculation on their part.” But he quickly followed with reassurance that Trump was “just reaffirming . . . that the United States has the capability to fully defend itself from any attack, and our allies, and we will do so. So the American people should sleep well at night.”

Retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, Trump’s secretary of defense, has often joined Tillerson in advocating diplomacy over military saber-rattling. But Mattis, a Trump favorite among the retired and active-duty military advisers around the president, has been spared the belittling comments and tweets Tillerson has endured along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others.

Early in the administration, Tillerson and Mattis, as well as Vice President Pence, traveled to NATO headquarters to express unwavering U.S. support for the alliance that Trump, during his campaign, had called “obsolete.”

In late February, as Tillerson was visiting Mexico, Trump told a business forum in Washington that he would launch a “military operation” at the U.S.-Mexico border to remove “gang lords . . . drug lords” and other “bad dudes out of this country at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before.”

At a news conference the same day with his Mexican counterpart, Tillerson chose to take the high road. “In a relationship filled with vibrant colors,” he said, “two strong sovereign countries will have their differences.”

Perhaps the sharpest dissonance occurred in June, when Tillerson publicly called on a Saudi Arabia-led bloc of Arab nations to immediately cease their blockade of neighboring Qatar, which they had accused of terrorism financing, and he urged “calm and thoughtful dialogue.” Barely an hour later, Trump called the blockade “hard but necessary” and said he agreed with the Saudi charges.

Members of his staff have sometimes risen to Tillerson’s defense. When a White House aide last summer publicly chastised the secretary for meddling in “military matters” on North Korea for his “sleep well” comment, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert bristled. “He’s a Cabinet secretary,” she said. “He’s fourth in line to the presidency. He carries a big stick.”

Tillerson himself has largely refused to talk about any frustration he may feel toward Trump. “There is no gap between the president and myself or the State Department on policy,” he told Congress in late June. “There are differences in terms of how the president chooses to articulate elements of that policy.”

More recently, following August’s neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Tillerson was asked on “Fox News Sunday” about the values of a President who said “many sides” were to blame.

“The president speaks for himself,” Tillerson replied.

Yeah, I'm guessing Tillerson will be out on (or before) Friday.

[TeddyBonkers]

So one of my friends down in PR is thankfully doing okay. She doesn't have a lot of food or water, but is getting by.

HOWEVER:

She was very adamant in her update video that we don't blame Trump. That the people in PR are waiting to get 'bailed out' instead of helping themselves. She was a die-hard Trumper before the hurricane, and I had hoped that his tweets would open up her eyes to his bullshit.

Sadly, the answer is apparently no.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Yeah, I'm guessing Tillerson will be out on (or before) Friday.

Sukkot starts Wednesday which means Lilly White Snowflake daughter and Jardolt won't be there to hold his hand so it might happen quicker.

[onekidanddone]

25 minutes ago, TeddyBonkers said:

She was very adamant in her update video that we don't blame Trump. That the people in PR are waiting to get 'bailed out' instead of helping themselves. She was a die-hard Trumper before the hurricane, and I had hoped that his tweets would open up her eyes to his bullshit.

Ugh. Sounds like the person I used to know (until I kicked her Trump loving self off FB last year). 

[GrumpyGran]

Whoa, he's hemorrhaging a bit.  I think the zombies may be overwhelmed. My totally unofficial research indicates that the Mnuch-me-more-money's morning confession of being a shit is causing some concern in the cult. Some of them may be actually getting the fuck-you message. 

oops, forgot to add that I'm changing my vote for who gets voted off the island on Friday. Now I'm 50/50 Tillerson/Mnuchin. Or it could be a double elimination! 

[onekidanddone]

11 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

oops, forgot to add that I'm changing my vote for who gets voted off the island on Friday. Now I'm 50/50 Tillerson/Mnuchin. Or it could be a double elimination!

I must have missed it.  What did Muchkin do?

[GrumpyGran]

9 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I must have missed it.  What did Muchkin do?

Essentially said he's not sorry for taking his child bride trophy wife gold digger barnacle to see the eclipse on our dime. Still thinks he is ENTITLED to it. Bye Felicia.

[Cartmann99]

Does anyone know if they still running television ads for Trumpy Bear? I just wondered if a new ad was out where Trumpy Bear burns all of the NFL merchandise in the neighborhood, and then pulls out a gun and forces everybody to stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner for eight hours. 

[GrumpyGran]

23 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Does anyone know if they still running television ads for Trumpy Bear? I just wondered if a new ad was out where Trumpy Bear burns all of the NFL merchandise in the neighborhood, and then pulls out a gun and forces everybody to stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner for eight hours. 

You know, used to see them on something I watch but now that you mention it, haven't seen one in maybe 6 weeks or more?

[fraurosena]

I so hope that IF he goes to PR tomorrow, there will be loads of people out on the streets loudly protesting him.

Oh, and Just to give him a dose of reality for once, could somebody make please make sure that Air Force One is disabled for about a week or so? Leave him stranded there without electricity and running water, no food, no gas for transport, and best of all, no internet. Then the presidunce will be hit where it really hurts him the most: his ability to tweet.

[GrumpyGran]

Looks like this is going to be More Horrible Shit and Terror, Corruption And Then Somebody Gets Fired Week.

[onekidanddone]

12 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Does anyone know if they still running television ads for Trumpy Bear? I just wondered if a new ad was out where Trumpy Bear burns all of the NFL merchandise in the neighborhood, and then pulls out a gun and forces everybody to stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner for eight hours. 

All great FJ minds must be synced as I was just thinking about that the other night. I've not see the 'Make America Sober Again' ads either. How about we make a bunch of giant Tumpy Bears and run them up the flag poles at every NFL game this week.

Because a mass shooting in Las Vegas and an epic hurricane PR and the VI won't bring him the ratings he needs.

[GrumpyGran]

43 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

All great FJ minds must be synced as I was just thinking about that the other night. I've not see the 'Make America Sober Again' ads either. How about we make a bunch of giant Tumpy Bears and run them up the flag poles at every NFL game this week.

Because a mass shooting in Las Vegas and a epic hurricane PR and the VI won't bring him the ratings he needs.

Him doing the perp walk would bring great ratings.

[Cartmann99]

Pat Robertson and Jim Bakker should just have a duel to decide who is Trump's BFF:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is part of the WaPo's daily mega-article and worth a read: "The Daily 202: Trump’s tweets make matters worse in Puerto Rico and North Korea"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: If Donald Trump doesn’t have anything presidential to say, maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all.

An instinct to counterpunch often leads Trump to try putting out fires with gasoline. That does not always best serve his, or the country’s, interests. This weekend brought two fresh illustrations that the president may say it best when he says nothing at all.

Puerto Ricans were outraged that Trump spent last weekend at war with the National Football League over the national anthem and said nothing about their suffering in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

Be careful what you wish for: Trump tweeted 24 times about Puerto Rico on Saturday and Sunday. But most of the messages attacked local leaders, ripped media coverage of the humanitarian disaster as “fake news” and praised the “GREAT JOB” his team is doing.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, drew Trump’s ire after she spoke at a news conference Friday about the “horror” she saw in her city’s flooded streets. “I am asking the president of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” she said.

Around 8 a.m. Saturday morning, apparently reacting to cable news coverage of this comment, Trump tweeted from his luxury golf club in New Jersey that Cruz had been “told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.”

“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help,” he added later. “They want everything to be done for them . . . Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates, people are now starting to recognize the amazing work that has been done by FEMA and our great Military.”

-- Then, on Sunday, Trump publicly contradicted Rex Tillerson. A day after the secretary of state, on a visit to Beijing, said that the administration has direct lines of communication with North Korea, the president tweeted that his chief diplomat is “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.” “Save your energy, Rex, we’ll do what has to be done,” Trump wrote.

This is just the latest in a string of presidential put-downs. “Perhaps the sharpest dissonance occurred in June, when Tillerson publicly called on a Saudi Arabia-led bloc of Arab nations to immediately cease their blockade of neighboring Qatar, which they had accused of terrorism financing,” Karen DeYoung notes. “He urged ‘calm and thoughtful dialogue.’ Barely an hour later, Trump called the blockade ‘hard but necessary’ and said he agreed with the Saudi accusations.”

-- It’s not just Tillerson: Trump has repeatedly made comments that undercut his underlings when they are trying to help him. After national security adviser H.R. McMaster denied that Trump shared secret information with the Russians, the president acknowledged that he had and defended his right to do so. After James Comey got fired, White House aides said it was because of the FBI director’s handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation. Then Trump sat down with Lester Holt and told the NBC anchor that he had the Russia investigation on his mind. The president spent weeks attacking his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, as weak. In each case, Trump might be in a better position today if he had kept his thoughts to himself.

Trump has also problematized relations with his should-be allies on the Hill by assailing Mitch McConnell out of the blue. During the debate over health care, Republicans would push for Trump to take a more hands-on role in pushing the legislation. But they’d often come to regret when he did, most memorably when he described the bill that passed the House as “mean.”

-- In the Bible, reticence is a virtue. “Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent,” we are told in Proverbs 17:28. “With their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.”

An Americanized version of this saying, often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain, is that it is better to remain silent and appear foolish than to speak and remove all doubt.

Or as Winston Churchill purportedly said, “We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.”

-- Some current and former administration aides say privately that their jobs would be easier, at times like this, if Trump just stayed out of the way. Trump probably would have been better off if he deferred to his national security team on North Korea and allowed his surrogates — from the FEMA administrator to the OMB director and treasury secretary — to defend his response to Maria.

Instead, all three of those guys were forced to explain on the Sunday shows what the president meant with the tweets. On “Fox News Sunday,” FEMA director Brock Long — using Trumpian hyperbole — said Puerto Rico is “the most logistically challenging event that the United States has ever seen.” Asked about the president’s tweetstorm, he replied: “You know, we can choose to look at what the mayor spouts off or what other people spout off, but we can also choose to see what's actually being done, and that's what I would ask.”

Allies of the administration distanced themselves. “Every minute we spend in the political realm bickering with one another over who’s doing what, or who’s wrong, or who didn’t do right is a minute of energy and time that we’re not spending trying to get the response right,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Mayor Cruz tried to take the high road. Instead of responding forcefully to Trump’s attacks, she tried Sunday to refocus the discussion to getting tangible assistance for her constituents. “All I did last week, or even this week, was ask for help,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Democrats cited the tweets to argue that race might be a factor in Trump’s apparent indifference to the misery of Puerto Ricans. “Given the president's history on race,” Bernie Sanders said on CNN, “I think we have a right to be suspect that he is treating the people of Puerto Rico in a different way than he has treated the people of Texas or Florida.”

For his part, Trump was defiant. He presided over the Presidents Cup golf tournament in New Jersey on Sunday. During an awards presentation at the end of the day, he acknowledged the victims of hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida. He dedicated the trophy to “all those people who went through so much.” Then he added, “But we have it under really great control.” “A man in the crowd shouted: ‘You don’t give a [expletive] about Puerto Rico.’ But Trump fans cheered,” David Nakamura reports. (He is scheduled to fly to Puerto Rico tomorrow.)

-- As he closes the door to a diplomatic solution, Trump continues to ratchet up his rhetoric vis-à-vis Pyongyang. He’s now repeatedly threatened to destroy North Korea. Every time the regime has responded with another provocation. Trump comes back with a new nickname or harsher rhetoric, further boxing himself in.

Kori Schake, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who served in key policy roles at the White House, Pentagon and Foggy Bottom during George W. Bush’s presidency, explained why Trump’s “fire and fury” threat was so dangerous back in August. Her piece for the Atlantic is as relevant today as it was seven weeks ago. This is the key paragraph:

“In 1949, the United States withdrew its military forces from the Korean Peninsula. Secretary of State Dean Acheson then gave an important speech defining American national-security interests — which notably excluded Korea. … It’s not the drawing down of U.S. forces but rather Acheson’s speech that is commonly cited as the signal of American abandonment of South Korea. Words matter: Acheson didn’t cause the Korean war, but his words are remembered as the provocation. Words especially matter between societies that poorly understand each other’s motivations and intentions, as do North Korea and the U.S. We can afford to be sloppy in our formulations among friends, where cultural similarity or exposure give context, but neither of those circumstances pertain with North Korea.”

...