Trump 25: Stephen King’s Next Horror Story

[laPapessaGiovanna]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Rather, what’s galling to Trump is the very existence of institutional barriers on him that are designed to protect the independence of law enforcement and insulate it from political interference. Getting law enforcement to target Hillary Clinton is something that he would like to be doing, if only he could do so. As Benjamin Wittes, the founder of the Lawfare blog, put it to me Friday morning: “It’s totally corrupt. Not in the monetary sense, but in the sense that he aspires to get people to violate their oaths of office, having taken his own oath insincerely.”

I think he took his oath seriously and sincerely. The problem is that he has no clue of its true meaning. He has no clue about separation of powers. He can't understand the limits imposed to the executive power. He thought that being POTUS was as close to being omnipotent as humanly possible and now he can't understand that it was never the case. He thinks the system is rigged against him, that there's an inner state plotting against him. There's zero awareness or cleverness hidden behind his limited, shallow words. I think most people have difficulties to fathom the depth of his moronity (I think I just made up that word). It's automatic for most of us to assume that he can't be THAT stupid, he must have an hidden plan, an evil one for sure, and the awareness to pursue it. He doesn't, he literally means the idiocies he says, he is that stupid.

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I think he took his oath seriously and sincerely. The problem is that he has no clue of its true meaning. He has no clue about separation of powers. He can't understand the limits imposed to the executive power. He thought that being POTUS was as close to being omnipotent as humanly possible and now he can't understand that it was never the case. He thinks the system is rigged against him, that there's an inner state plotting against him. There's zero awareness or cleverness hidden behind his limited, shallow words. I think most people have difficulties to fathom the depth of his moronity (I think I just made up that word). It's automatic for most of us to assume that he can't be THAT stupid, he must have an hidden plan, an evil one for sure, and the awareness to pursue it. He doesn't, he literally means the idiocies he says, he is that stupid.

I agree with your assessment of his moronity -- love that new word, it certainly fits. However, the members of congress, who also took oaths of office, are not taking their oaths seriously, at least on the Repug side of the aisle. I believe many, if not most, members do understand their oaths, they just don't care. They only care about cutting taxes on the wealthy and screwing over a good portion of the US. It's galling to think about it.

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I believe many, if not most, members do understand their oaths, they just don't care. They only care about cutting taxes on the wealthy and screwing over a good portion of the US. It's galling to think about it.

Members of Congress work for their masters. They give them laws that help them and in return their masters give them the money to get re-elected. Easy peasy. And if for some reason they don't get re-elected, the master will find other jobs for the poor soul.

Trump works for himself. When he was a private citizen he created his own world where he was king. No one said anything bad about him, or if they did he was able to make them go away. That's why he's upset. He believed his own press and now he hears something different. So they must be lying.

It occurred to me that he will be somewhere in Asia on the 8th. Uh-oh. A prime opportunity for him to embarrass himself by blathering on about his "tremendous" win in 2016. He probably thinks people on the other side of the world don't know what happens here so they'll believe he won in a landslide. They're too polite to publicly disagree, so he'll verbally wander with some nonsense about how the media in Asia reports the truth.

 

[Howl]

Yes, I'm waiting for reports on the gaffe du jour to start pouring in.

  

 

[VelociRapture]

On 11/3/2017 at 12:44 AM, Destiny said:

That Twitter employee is the hero nine of us deserve, but that we all need.

Wait. Batman worked at Twitter?! 

 

[VelociRapture]

20 hours ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Oh god, please no visits. I'm sure if he survives his term in office, he'll be back here soon enough. Although, the way his mental health seems to be going, by the time he makes it back north to his gilded penthouse, he'll be drooling into his undershirt and reduced to tweeting even more gibberishy forms of "covfefe". so, maybe we'll be spared his visual presence.

(Gibberishy - new word invented by me. I couldn't think of a real one... )

Yeah. I don’t think New York and California should be forced to put up with Trump right now. It’s not like he’s going to suddenly decide to act Presidential and, you know, offer actual comfort to grieving families.

I’m in Connecticut and I’ll never stop being grateful that Obama (or any other President than Trump actually) was President when Sandy Hook happened. He spent hours with the grieving families, let them react however they needed to, offered hugs, played with their surviving children, and used the names of the deceased when speaking to their loved ones. He helped set the town, state, and nation on the road to healing and did what he could to try and prevent more violence from occurring. 

Can you imagine Trump trying to offer comfort to the families of Ana Márquez-Greene or Emilie Parker or Noah Pozner or Dylan Hockley? Or tell the D’Avinos and Sotos their daughters were heros who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their students? Or do something as simple as offer a hug to the children of Dawn Hochsprung or Mary Sherlach? Can you imagine him shedding genuine tears as he helped steer the nation towards healing? I certainly can’t and that’s the first time I’ve ever said that about a sitting President. SAD!

[47of74]

Bush the Groper doesn't think much of Agent Orange, and thinks he's a blowhard. 

Quote

In a new book, former President George H.W. Bush confirmed he voted for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and said of President Trump, "I'm not too excited about him being a leader."

“I don’t like him,” George H.W. Bush says in the book. “I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard. And I’m not too excited about him being a leader.”

The book, “The Last Republicans” by Mark K. Updegrove, explores the connection between the elder Bush and his son, former President George W. Bush.

In the book, George H.W. Bush confirms he voted for Clinton over President Trump, and the younger Bush says he voted for “none of the above,” according to The New York Times.

 

[fraurosena]

And here we have it, folks, straight from the horses mouth. 

This is the reason why we can't imagine him doing any of the things @VelociRapture says: he's a narcissistic sociopath. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

He's on a moronity fuelled delirious omnipotence trip. He's truly stupid enough to think that he as POTUS is omnipotent. He has zero understanding of what a team work is. Just look at his WH.

[47of74]

41 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

And here we have it, folks, straight from the horses mouth. 

This is the reason why we can't imagine him doing any of the things @VelociRapture says: he's a narcissistic sociopath. 

God.  I don't even remember Bush II talking like this.  I will never forgive the Fornicate face supporters - both foreign and domestic - who put this nut case into office. 

[apple1]

41 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

God.  I don't even remember Bush II talking like this.  I will never forgive the Fornicate face supporters - both foreign and domestic - who put this nut case into office. 

That's because Bush DIDN'T talk like that.

Kind of the same way I feel I should apologize to John Boehner (who was from my district, in addition to being Speaker - and who I never liked, used to talk negatively about, and refused to vote for even when he ran unopposed on the ballot) - Trump kind of makes us all feel like we should revise our previous opinions about Bush.

[GrumpyGran]

44 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

 I don't even remember Bush II talking like this.

Nobody else talks like this. That's because in the real world if you talked like this you would get fired/shunned/punched/shut down/ridiculed/corrected/de-moted/counseled/beaten up. He really can't stop talking about himself and making up lies. People who support this kind of blatant narcissism in a world leader deserve what they get. 

[fraurosena]

Oh guys, those Hawaiians are so hilariously snarky.  

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"2016 is the election that will never end"

Spoiler

A full year has passed since Donald Trump was elected president, yet the campaign of 2016 will not end. The president remains obsessed with it, Democrats are still wrangling over a bitter primary contest and a shocking loss in the general election, and analysts are still trying to understand better exactly how it all happened.

The public has not moved on either. The divisions that produced the outcome on Nov. 8 remain as deep and pervasive as they were then. Views of the president, pro and con, have changed only a bit among the most partisan.

Trump has problems galore that should occupy his time, as his trip to Asia that began Friday will highlight. But in so many of his public utterances and especially his tweets, he refuses to let go of the campaign. At rallies, he has replayed his victories as if they happened yesterday. He demands respect for what he accomplished and doesn’t believe he’s gotten it. He’s still trying to score points against his rival, hammering on Hillary Clinton as if the election is in its last few days.

Clinton, however, is mostly a foil as Trump seeks to distract attention from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, which has worried the president since it began.

His tactic isn’t working.

Last week’s indictments of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Manafort associate Richard Gates, along with the guilty plea of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, demonstrated the degree to which Mueller and his team refuse to become sidetracked or intimidated by all the noise from the White House.

The Democrats, meanwhile, have been plunged back into another round of recriminations over what happened a year ago. Like Trump, they have not gotten past election night 2016. They cannot erase the sting of the defeat few expected, and the pain is still close to the surface. Clinton offered her view of why she lost in her recent book “What Happened.” But that hasn’t ended the discussion of whether she and her campaign team did all they could have to prevent Trump from winning.

Donna Brazile, who served as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the general election, has thrown gasoline on this still-smoldering fire with her forthcoming book, “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House.”

The book offers a litany of criticisms aimed at the Clinton camp and includes an incendiary section in which Brazile describes how she considered trying to replace Clinton, at the time of the candidate’s fainting spell in September 2016, with then-vice president Biden. Brazile writes Clinton’s campaign had taken on “the odor of failure” and recounts her own concerns about the campaign’s operations.

Brazile also asserts the Clinton team wrongly took control over the finances and operations of the DNC long before Clinton was the effective nominee of the party, as a condition of helping finance an institution that was debt ridden during the Obama years.

Her claim has been challenged as misleading by Clintonites, who say the agreement giving Clinton’s campaign power over the DNC, applied only to the general election. But the whole uproar has added to the grievances among the followers of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), that the deck was stacked against him in the primaries.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who shares many of Sanders’s views on policy, quickly waded into the controversy over whether the DNC had put its thumb on the scale in behalf of Clinton. Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether she thought the nomination process last year was rigged, Warren, a possible 2020 presidential candidate, replied, “Yes.”

She could have deflected the question but chose not to.

There will be more coming from Brazile’s book when it is published next week that will grab headlines and potentially further inflame the resentment toward the Clinton team among Sanders’s followers while restarting the bigger debate over how the campaign managed to lose an election so many thought she should win.

At a minimum, the unfolding controversy among Democrats is a distraction they don’t need right now. But it could reflect deeper differences inside a party that can’t shake off 2016 and is still searching for a comeback strategy that goes beyond being anti-Trump.

That question hinges in part on which voters are seen as most important to the party’s coalition: African Americans and other minorities or the white working class. A new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank, offers fresh analysis of 2016 that tries to answer that question. The authors, Rob Griffin, Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, plumbed a variety of available resources to produce the analysis, one that they say provides a more accurate portrait of the electorate than did the exit polls.

Among the conclusions is the electorate on Election Day 2016 included a higher percentage of white voters than the exit polls said at the time.

More significantly, the composition of those white voters was strikingly at odds with the exit poll estimates.

“Briefly put, the exit polls radically overestimated the share of white college-educated voters and radically underestimated the share of white non-college-educated voters,” the authors write.

Exit polls said white college-educated voters made up 37 percent of the electorate, while white non-college-educated voters constituted 34 percent.

The CAP analysis says whites with college educations accounted for 29 percent of the electorate while whites without college educations made up 45 percent. A post-election online poll by SurveyMonkey reached a similar conclusion.

The report looks at the national electorate as well as those in some of the key states that decided the election, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three Rust Belt states that sealed Trump’s victory.

After assessing how shifts in support and levels of turnout affected the most crucial states, the authors made other calculations and argue Clinton would have won the election if either of two things had occurred. She would have won if black turnout and support levels had been identical to those of 2012 or if white non-college-educated voters’ support had been similar to that of 2012.

Neither course was as easy as it might have seemed, however.

The authors note any Democrat would have had difficulty recreating black turnout and support levels of 2012, given the election involved the first African American elected to the White House.

Anyone following would have struggled to generate both the turnout and support levels of those campaigns.

Nor do the authors underestimate the difficulty of retaining the 2012 levels of support among white non-college-educated voters, given shifting allegiances among that group that have been ongoing.

But they argue even a modest improvement on her performance in 2016 would have allowed Clinton to win the three Rust Belt states. That failure falls on Clinton and her campaign.

Trump will be vulnerable in 2020, but Democrats still must better learn the lessons from Clinton’s defeat. The authors argue to appeal to the full range of voters they need to win, Democrats must “go beyond the ‘identity politics’ versus ‘economic populism’ debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class coalition.” Is there a leading Democrat out there who has cracked that code yet?

Trump, meanwhile, faces the challenge of reassembling the coalition that brought him to the White House at a time when demographic and other shifts continue to shrink the size of that group. Added to that is the fact that so far, his performance in office creates barriers to expanding beyond his 2016 coalition.

The 2016 campaign has now effectively lasted for three years, and the debates over it continue. Imagine what the coming three years are likely to bring.

The never-ending campaign.

[Smoochie]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Oh guys, those Hawaiians are so hilariously snarky.  

 

 

LOVE IT!

[fraurosena]

Hey American FJ'ers who don't have healthcare insurance yet, you have a unique opportunity to piss the presidunce off!

 

[fraurosena]

Hmm... now I wonder why this is? 

Trump attorney: We’ll challenge Mueller if he investigates old real estate deals

Quote

An attorney representing President Trump in the ongoing investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia said in an interview published Saturday that his team would challenge special counsel Robert Mueller if the probe began looking at Trump's former business deals.

Politico reported Saturday that Jay Sekulow, a conservative attorney who joined Trump's team in June, said that Trump's attorneys are ready to challenge the legality of Mueller's actions if he detours into anything they consider "outside the scope" of the inquiry, such as looking at old real estate deals the president might have been involved in through his Trump Organization.

“We’d view that as outside the scope of legitimate inquiry,” Sekulow said. “We’d raise it.”

Trump himself has said that any investigation of his personal finances by Mueller would be out-of-bounds.

In July, Trump told The New York Times that Mueller would be in "violation" of his special counsel mandate to shift his probe's focus from Russia.

"No, I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia. So I think if he wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company," Trump said.

Mueller's investigation entered a new stage this week with the handing down of indictments against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Richard Gates.

Manafort is charged with money laundering and tax fraud.

Prosecutors accused Manafort in court documents unsealed Monday of “together with others, knowingly and intentionally conspir[ing] to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful governmental functions of a government agency, namely the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury.”

The special counsel probe has the authority to investigate any potential collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow, as well as any auxiliary matters arising from the Russia probe.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Last night's SNL cold open is great. I can't decide if I like "Pence" wearing a suit in the shower, because he's "not married to the water" or "Sessions" saying "we all better get used to wearing stripes" best.

 

[WiseGirl]

I have to share. I'm making my monthly visit to check on my parents (mind you, my brother lives 5 minutes away), my 80 something father reaches for the remote announcing "I wonder what Trump has messed up today." 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course: "Arriving in Japan, Trump projects confidence, says he’ll probably meet Putin during Asia trip"

Spoiler

TOKYO — President Trump donned a military-style bomber jacket shortly after arriving in Japan on Sunday and projected confidence that the United States will confront threats in Asia, telling hundreds of U.S. troops that they will have his administration's support “to fight, to overpower and to always, always, always win.”

Trump's tough talk in a speech to U.S. and Japanese military personnel at Yokota Air Base, shortly after Air Force One touched down here, aimed to set a tone for his five-nation tour, during which the president said he is likely to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The president told reporters during his flight here that he wants “Putin's help on North Korea,” as his administration attempts to consolidate support for its strategy to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program.

“History has proven over and over that the road of the tyrant is a steady march towards poverty, suffering and servitude,” Trump told the troops, perhaps referring obliquely to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, whose name he did not mention. Noting that he has proposed a bigger military budget, Trump surveyed the troops in an air base hangar and declared: “We've got a lot of stuff coming; use it well.”

The boisterous scene, during which the troops cheered and chanted “U.S.A.!" was closely watched in capitals across Northeast Asia, where governments from Seoul to Beijing are looking for signals of how Trump will address the threat on his first trip to the region. The president's heightened rhetoric aimed at the North and the Kim regime has set the region on edge over concerns that increasing tensions could result in a military confrontation.

On the plane, Trump told reporters that he plans to decide “very soon” whether to relabel North Korea a state sponsor of terror. The North spent 10 years on that list before being removed in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration for meeting nuclear inspection requirements. Pyongyang later violated the agreement.

But Trump also offered encouragement for North Korean citizens, calling them “great people.”

“They’re industrious, they’re warm, much warmer than the world really knows and understands,” he told reporters on the plane. “They’re great people and I hope it all works out for everybody. And it would be a wonderful thing if it could work for those great people, and for everybody.”

And he seemed unconcerned about the prospect that North Korea might use his trip to the region to demonstrate its military might by firing a missile. “We’ll soon find out,” he said. “Good luck!”

After speaking at the air base, Trump spent the day with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, playing nine holes of golf, though a White House official said they did not keep score. At the golf course, Abe took pains to ensure Trump felt comfortable: He presented Trump with white baseball caps with the embroidered words: “Donald and Shinzo Make Alliance Even Greater,” which both men signed, and he served Trump, who can be picky about his food, a burger specially made from American beef.

On Monday, the two will hold formal bilateral meetings to talk about security and trade; first lady Melania Trump, who is accompanying her husband on the trip, will join the president for a morning meeting with Japanese Emperor Akihito and then take part in separate slate of events.

... < don't look at this tweet unless you want to lose your lunch >

The golf outing aimed to recreate the bond the two men forged during Abe's visit in February to Trump's Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where they played a round. It was while the two leaders dined together that evening that Kim launched a missile test, prompting an angry condemnation from both men at a joint statement to reporters in Florida.

Some national security experts have cautioned that Kim could choose to conduct another test during Trump's 12 days in the region to try to upstage him.

“North Korea's goal is not to simply acquire horrific weapons to maintain the status quo,” said a senior White House official, who briefed reporters in Tokyo on the condition of anonymity. “They are seeking these weapons to change the status quo. Their primary goal is to reunify the Korean Peninsula and these weapons are part of the plan.”

Trump, who had spent Saturday night in Honolulu and toured Pearl Harbor, seemed in buoyant spirits Sunday. He wore an unbuttoned, open-collared white shirt with no tie to chat with the press on Air Force One, and he enthusiastically donned the brown leather bomber jacket presented to him by Air Force officers at Yokota.

“I like this better,” he joked, after replacing his navy blue suit coat.

Trump confirmed that he expects to meet with Putin, likely on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, later in the trip. The meeting would come as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has heated up. Last week, Mueller indicted three people in Trump’s orbit — two senior campaign aides and one lower-level, unpaid volunteer — as part of his ongoing investigation.

But the president, who has often expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders, has remained reluctant to criticize Putin.

The president also promised that trade will also be a key focus of his trip, with China — a frequent target of his trade-related ire — looming largest on the economic front. Chinese President Xi Jinping consolidated power last month at the 19th Communist Party Congress, and Trump is preparing to face a newly emboldened Xi on his home turf.

“I think we’re going in with tremendous strength,” Trump said. When a reporter asked him about Xi’s elevated position, the president cut off the questioner, saying, “Excuse me, so am I.”

He then rattled off a laundry list of highlights of U.S. power, including the surging stock market, low unemployment and success in combating the Islamic State in the Middle East.

“I think he’s viewing us as very, very strong, and also very friendly,” Trump said. “But we have to do better with trade with China because it’s a one-way street right now and it has been for many years. And we will. But the reason our stock market is so successful is because of me. I’ve always been great with money.”

Trump noted that he will spend the first anniversary of his 2016 Election Day victory in Beijing on Wednesday, and he facetiously invited the traveling press corps to help him celebrate.

“Can you believe it is almost exactly one year?” he said. “We’ll have to celebrate together.”

The president didn't even let a question about a new book that includes sharp criticism of him from former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush spoil his good mood.

“I’ll comment after we come back,” he said. “I don’t need headlines. I don’t want to make their book successful.”

Hoping and planning to meet with Putin is beyond idiotic. I hope Mueller drops more bombshells during the TT's trip.

[GrumpyGran]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Sessions" saying "we all better get used to wearing stripes" best.

Half-possum.   So good.

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Because of course: "Arriving in Japan, Trump projects confidence, says he’ll probably meet Putin during Asia trip"

  Reveal hidden contents

TOKYO — President Trump donned a military-style bomber jacket shortly after arriving in Japan on Sunday and projected confidence that the United States will confront threats in Asia, telling hundreds of U.S. troops that they will have his administration's support “to fight, to overpower and to always, always, always win.”

Trump's tough talk in a speech to U.S. and Japanese military personnel at Yokota Air Base, shortly after Air Force One touched down here, aimed to set a tone for his five-nation tour, during which the president said he is likely to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The president told reporters during his flight here that he wants “Putin's help on North Korea,” as his administration attempts to consolidate support for its strategy to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program.

“History has proven over and over that the road of the tyrant is a steady march towards poverty, suffering and servitude,” Trump told the troops, perhaps referring obliquely to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, whose name he did not mention. Noting that he has proposed a bigger military budget, Trump surveyed the troops in an air base hangar and declared: “We've got a lot of stuff coming; use it well.”

The boisterous scene, during which the troops cheered and chanted “U.S.A.!" was closely watched in capitals across Northeast Asia, where governments from Seoul to Beijing are looking for signals of how Trump will address the threat on his first trip to the region. The president's heightened rhetoric aimed at the North and the Kim regime has set the region on edge over concerns that increasing tensions could result in a military confrontation.

On the plane, Trump told reporters that he plans to decide “very soon” whether to relabel North Korea a state sponsor of terror. The North spent 10 years on that list before being removed in 2008 by the George W. Bush administration for meeting nuclear inspection requirements. Pyongyang later violated the agreement.

But Trump also offered encouragement for North Korean citizens, calling them “great people.”

“They’re industrious, they’re warm, much warmer than the world really knows and understands,” he told reporters on the plane. “They’re great people and I hope it all works out for everybody. And it would be a wonderful thing if it could work for those great people, and for everybody.”

And he seemed unconcerned about the prospect that North Korea might use his trip to the region to demonstrate its military might by firing a missile. “We’ll soon find out,” he said. “Good luck!”

After speaking at the air base, Trump spent the day with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, playing nine holes of golf, though a White House official said they did not keep score. At the golf course, Abe took pains to ensure Trump felt comfortable: He presented Trump with white baseball caps with the embroidered words: “Donald and Shinzo Make Alliance Even Greater,” which both men signed, and he served Trump, who can be picky about his food, a burger specially made from American beef.

On Monday, the two will hold formal bilateral meetings to talk about security and trade; first lady Melania Trump, who is accompanying her husband on the trip, will join the president for a morning meeting with Japanese Emperor Akihito and then take part in separate slate of events.

... < don't look at this tweet unless you want to lose your lunch >

The golf outing aimed to recreate the bond the two men forged during Abe's visit in February to Trump's Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where they played a round. It was while the two leaders dined together that evening that Kim launched a missile test, prompting an angry condemnation from both men at a joint statement to reporters in Florida.

Some national security experts have cautioned that Kim could choose to conduct another test during Trump's 12 days in the region to try to upstage him.

“North Korea's goal is not to simply acquire horrific weapons to maintain the status quo,” said a senior White House official, who briefed reporters in Tokyo on the condition of anonymity. “They are seeking these weapons to change the status quo. Their primary goal is to reunify the Korean Peninsula and these weapons are part of the plan.”

Trump, who had spent Saturday night in Honolulu and toured Pearl Harbor, seemed in buoyant spirits Sunday. He wore an unbuttoned, open-collared white shirt with no tie to chat with the press on Air Force One, and he enthusiastically donned the brown leather bomber jacket presented to him by Air Force officers at Yokota.

“I like this better,” he joked, after replacing his navy blue suit coat.

Trump confirmed that he expects to meet with Putin, likely on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, later in the trip. The meeting would come as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has heated up. Last week, Mueller indicted three people in Trump’s orbit — two senior campaign aides and one lower-level, unpaid volunteer — as part of his ongoing investigation.

But the president, who has often expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders, has remained reluctant to criticize Putin.

The president also promised that trade will also be a key focus of his trip, with China — a frequent target of his trade-related ire — looming largest on the economic front. Chinese President Xi Jinping consolidated power last month at the 19th Communist Party Congress, and Trump is preparing to face a newly emboldened Xi on his home turf.

“I think we’re going in with tremendous strength,” Trump said. When a reporter asked him about Xi’s elevated position, the president cut off the questioner, saying, “Excuse me, so am I.”

He then rattled off a laundry list of highlights of U.S. power, including the surging stock market, low unemployment and success in combating the Islamic State in the Middle East.

“I think he’s viewing us as very, very strong, and also very friendly,” Trump said. “But we have to do better with trade with China because it’s a one-way street right now and it has been for many years. And we will. But the reason our stock market is so successful is because of me. I’ve always been great with money.”

Trump noted that he will spend the first anniversary of his 2016 Election Day victory in Beijing on Wednesday, and he facetiously invited the traveling press corps to help him celebrate.

“Can you believe it is almost exactly one year?” he said. “We’ll have to celebrate together.”

The president didn't even let a question about a new book that includes sharp criticism of him from former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush spoil his good mood.

“I’ll comment after we come back,” he said. “I don’t need headlines. I don’t want to make their book successful.”

Hoping and planning to meet with Putin is beyond idiotic. I hope Mueller drops more bombshells during the TT's trip.

He's like a thirteen-year-old girl with a birthday coming up. "I want a new jacket and my favorite food and a party that everyone comes to. And I want to meet Harry Styles, do you think he'll come to my party? It's going to be the best party ever!"

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Trump spent the day with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, playing nine holes of golf, though a White House official said they did not keep score.

In other words, he lost. 

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

In other words, he lost. 

Did he a have cake?  The best cake ever with two scoops of ice cream.  It also has been reported TT, being a picky eater, had a hamburger made with American beef. Oh please, he wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Yea, he is so in tune with the working class.

[GrumpyGran]

22 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Did he a have cake?  The best cake ever with two scoops of ice cream.  It also has been reported TT, being a picky eater, had a hamburger made with American beef. Oh please, he wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Yea, he is so in tune with the working class.

Why can't he just fucking eat what's offered? I swear, he is such an embarrassment. Does he really think foreign dignitaries respect him when he whines like a three-year-old if he doesn't get the food he likes?