Trump 28: He's a "stable genius" with a "big & powerful button"

[Gobsmacked]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

Now I feel like I need to go save these people. I wonder how many of the Romanian women have a story or two to tell. But whooosh, at the end of the season they're back off to Romania, no one the wiser. I want to take up a collection to pay all of the ones that are here now to tell us the truth about what goes on there. I hope everyone from Haiti is getting a "briefing" about what their boss said yesterday about their country.

I hope they pee in his soup, spit in his best slice of chocolate cake ever and sneeze into his two scoops of ice-cream. 

[apple1]

CNN is on a roll - Don Lemon, Jake Tapper, Jim Acosta, Anderson Cooper - maybe some more.

No wonder Trump hates CNN so much.

[Destiny]

CNN is on a roll - Don Lemon, Jake Tapper, Jim Acosta, Anderson Cooper - maybe some more.
No wonder Trump hates CNN so much.

If he wasn’t such an asshole, maybe all the above would still have fucks left to give. But yeah, that’s totally why.

[apple1]

57 minutes ago, Destiny said:

If he wasn’t such an asshole, maybe all the above would still have fucks left to give. But yeah, that’s totally why.

THAT.

Plus I guess part of what adds to Jake's appeal for me is that I think he can be quite funny when he is totally serious (people say that about me - I guess that's partly why I notice this).

Besides, Jake Tapper has a Twitter account (WinstonTapper) for his little rescue dogs. They are absolutely adorable. Anybody that does that... well, I have to love. :-)

[onekidanddone]

He had his physical today. I had a traffic alert on my phone about 'police' activity by Navy Med so that was probably him. I wonder if he will get the same report as the last time.  Remember that? All his tests were 'positive' or some word salad babble speak. Was this a real check up or another stunt? Will the results be made public? Will we get the truth? Are the results of his exam covered under HIPPA?

Above all.. when will I stop obsessing, freaking out, and stomping around filled with rage?

[Rachel333]

According to the doctor who examined Trump, "The President's physical exam today at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center went exceptionally well. The President is in excellent health and I look forward to briefing some of the details on Tuesday."

[GrumpyGran]

Yes, HIPAA does apply to him, too. I assume that every President decides what is released and as long as he doesn't have some godawful disease we will hear what he wants us to hear. If he's on death's doorstep other people will be told so a plan can be put in place. My guess is his cholesterol is worse than before, his blood pressure is high but otherwise he's good enough. So he got BP meds, more drugs for the cholesterol, told to exercise and eat better. The rest of us will hear endlessly about how he is the healthiest human on the planet, ten times healthier than Obama and Crooked Hillary. Because, you know, he never talks about her. Never.

[AmazonGrace]

Did Trump write his own medical note again?

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

Clean up on Aisle three

This is exactly how I picture mentally stable geniuses who know more about policy than anyone alive conducting their presidency.

[WiseGirl]

13 hours ago, fraurosena said:

 He'll be crucified in the elections. Can't say I feel sorry for him.

I think or hope so too. Many Wisconsin friends are crucifying Ryan on Facebook. They are not amused ... It gives me a small glimmer of hope....

Nope, I don't feel sorry for any of these repugs that have sold their soul....and sold out the people to get ahead financially. 

[GrumpyGran]

7 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

 

Well, that explains it! I read Dr. J's report on Obama there and it was an "evidence-based health screening". Can't have that anymore. I guess Dumpy's was a anecdotal-based screening so of course he's in excellent health!

[apple1]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/05/26/haiti-born-cadet-weeps-west-point-graduation/84965636/

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/be72bba970b0addda0d6182ca31b4352df96301a/c=0-49-2048-1589&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2016/05/26/USATODAY/USATODAY/635998535142127471-13235650-10153529380746232-1770878952805500426-o.jpg

ETA - Sorry I couldn't get the picture to actually display here. It's the second link. Speaks for itself. Absolutely heart breaking.

[onekidanddone]

Did they give him a mental competency exam?

The repeating the same phrase over and over in once sentence and his echoing the last thing he hears screams red alter.  I don't think his 'shit hole' remark in an indication of mental illness, since he is a straight up racist.  That being said, his inability to stop from saying it out loud might be.

I love the "oh he plays golf so he gets the most exercise EVER. Riding around in a cart and getting out periodically to wave a piece of iron in the air is not exercise.

[fraurosena]

Remember the American ambassador to the Netherlands? 

After drubbing by media, Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands apologizes for anti-Muslim remarks

Quote

The embattled U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Peter Hoekstra apologized Friday for making unsubstantiated anti-Muslim claims at a conference in 2015, after his first week in the post was clouded by questions about the incendiary statements.

Hoekstra, a former Republican congressman from Michigan and recent political appointee, made the apology during an interview Friday with De Telegraaf, one of the largest Dutch newspapers, at the end of a particularly rough introduction for the new ambassador.

“Looking back, I am shocked I said that,” he told the newspaper. “It was a wrong statement. It was wrong.”

Hoekstra made the remarks in question during a conference on terrorism hosted by the right-wing David Horowitz Freedom Center. He talked about the supposed “chaos” brought to Europe by immigrants from Islamic countries and repeated a baseless theory about so-called “no-go zones” that is popular in right-wing media.

“Chaos in the Netherlands. There are cars being burned. There are politicians that are being burned,” Hoekstra said at the time. “With the influx of the Islamic community — and yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands. All right? There are no-go zones in France.”

In the interview with the Dutch newspaper, Hoekstra said that he couldn’t recall what his remark was based on.

“I mixed up countries. I was wrong. I can’t recall how that could happen. I know: I was wrong,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Hoekstra’s apology extended to the other instances where he had repeated the no-go zone theory in conservative media, or other baseless remarks he had made about Muslims, such as speculating that 10 to 15 percent of the Muslims in the world — potentially hundreds of millions of people — were radical Islamist militants.

The State Department distanced itself from Hoekstra’s remarks Thursday during a briefing in Washington but declined to call them inaccurate.

“The ambassador made mistakes in 2015,” Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Steve Goldstein told reporters. “Those comments were not the position of the State Department, and you will never hear those words from this podium.”

The remarks have overshadowed Hoekstra’s early days in the Netherlands, bringing criticism and controversy to the otherwise routine ritual of installing a new ambassador in a closely allied country. The Dutch media in particular have homed in on them, repeatedly asking Hoekstra to provide the names of the politicians he said were being burned in their country or retract the statements.

Before Hoekstra’s arrival in The Hague in January, he told a Dutch journalist that he had never made the statements and that they were “fake news.” He later apologized. And during his first news conference with Dutch media at his new residence on Wednesday, his refusal to answer basic questions about the remarks — and the Dutch press corps’ tenaciousness as they continued asking about it — drew a strong reaction in the United States.

“This is the Netherlands — you have to answer questions,” one reporter said during the tense meeting.

The State Department announced the interview with De Telegraaf on Thursday after it, too, faced questions about Hoekstra’s comments.

Hoekstra talked to the newspaper about his performance during the news conference, saying he felt like he had already apologized.

“How many times do I have to say sorry?” he said. The newspaper will publish the full interview Saturday, it said.

Goldstein, also a political appointee of President Trump, had said during a Washington briefing that it was his belief that the ambassador should answer reporters’ questions in the future.

“I have advised, as I’ve advised most people, that when reporters are in front of you, just as you are in front of me, that it’s always good to answer questions,” he said.

2

For those of you interested in the Dutch article, here's my translation.

Quote

Pete Hoekstra’s first days as US ambassador in the Netherlands could have been more festive. Instead of happiness with the return of an emigrated Groninger as the representative of an important ally, there was commotion over an untrue statement about Dutch no-go zones that Hoekstra refused to retract.

Now he has. “It was just wrong.”

To clarify the most important thing first: are there areas in the Netherlands where they burn politicians or not?

“That politicians are being burned, that was an inaccurate statement. And the no-go zones, that could have been an exaggeration of what’s happening here.”

What was the basis for your statement?

“I can’t remember that now. I have tried to recall the statement that politicians are being burned in the Netherlands. Looking back, I’m shocked that I said that. Of course, there are situations like that in European countries, but that has never been the case in the Netherlands. It was a wrong statement. It was simply not true.

Were you aware it was untrue at the time?

“No. If you have ever seen me in action, then you will know that I don’t stick to prepared texts. I have notes with talking points, but I hardly ever use them. Of course there are other countries in the world where this does happen. I have mixed up my information.”

You mixed up countries?

“I mixed up countries. I was mistaken, and I can’t recall how that could have happened.”

Is it usual [for you] to be so careless with the facts 

“I formulated things the wrong way. If someone had come to me the next day and pointed out my mistake, I would have said: you’re right, thanks.”

In the interview with 'Nieuwsuur' you were confronted with your statement and you said: I didn’t say that. Why?

“That was a misunderstanding between me and Nieuwsuur. I wasn’t my intention to deny it. That wouldn’t have been smart. It was on tape. I have been communicating with the media for eighteen years. When someone says: I have this on tape, you don’t say: nope.”

But you called it fake news.

“It wasn’t that they showed me the tape from 2015 right at that moment. I don’t know what I was referring to when I said that.”

So you forgot that you said that?

“No, I didn’t know.”

Then why didn’t you say that you were mistaken?

“It would have been easier if I had seen the tape at that time, if I had known exactly what it was about. We mentioned it, then spoke of other things, and later he came back to it.”

You have later apologised. What exactly did you apologise for?

“A couple of things. Firstly that I wasn’t communicating clearly in the interview. Secondly that I have said something that, looking back, could have been inaccurate.

Then [your first day as] ambassador in The Hague came along, with the pressconference, during which you didn’t wish to retract your statement when you were asked about it. Why not?

“How many times must someone say that they are sorry? I didn’t want my first day to be all about something I said in the past. Naturally I knew it would come up, so I said something about it at the start. But anyway, it was clear that the Dutch media wanted more clarity on the subject. That’s why I’m talking to you today. To clarify.”

Is this damaging to your role as ambassador?

“I have been so warmly welcomed here, I have contacts with civil servants of every level. They are interested in the things we need to address. We have troops in Irak, Jordania, Africa, we have challenges from Russia, from cyber, from Brexit. I have 25 years experience in promoting Dutch-American interests. People know who I am. So a statement from 2015 isn’t at the top of their list. Like: frist we have to get this out of the way before we can talk. Of course not.”

How can we be sure that the next thing you say is true?

“I’m sure you will check it out.”

No promises?

“I’ve been in politics for eighteen years. There are twenty years of my statements on tape. You aren’t re-elected to Congress nine times without a relationship of trust with your voters. You aren’t appointed to the Senate as I was. You can’t get a restructuring of the intelligence Bill through Congress without bipartisan support… you can’t do all that if you’re not sincere and honest.”

During the press conference you spoke about your Dutch parents. Would they have been ashamed of the way your first public performance went in their fatherland?

“No. Maybe a little disappointed. But ashamed: no. One of the things I learned in the corporate world is: you learn from your mistakes.

So what have you learned from this episode?

“That I should be more accurate.”

That you are now retracting old statements, was that your own idea, or were you pressured by Washington?

“We have bilaterally decided that we should clarify the matter.”

You were visiting the Schilderswijk [a neighbourhood in The Hague], a no-go zone. Sorry, just kidding.

“That is one of my resolutions: I’m not going to joke anymore. But it was very informative. I am impressed by the openness of the neighbourhood officers on challenges like joblessness and the diversity of the population- I understand that 125 different nationalities live there…”

Were there people there that come from countries that Trump would call “shit-holes”?

As the ambassador starts to answer, an embassy aide intervenes to say that although the statement has been attributed to Trump, it hasn’t been confirmed. “Then that simplifies things. I won’t comment on that.”

Will president Trump come to the Netherlands to open the new American Embassy in Wassenaar? It wasn’t that expensive…

“200 million is not cheap. But I would gladly welcome the president.”

 

Yep. Dutch journalists will go there. They will call you out. And they will confront you with the presidunce's idiocy. 

I'm willing to bet he was squirming in his seat... 

[GrumpyGran]

14 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Did they give him a mental competency exam?

The repeating the same phrase over and over in once sentence and his echoing the last thing he hears screams red alter.  I don't think his 'shit hole' remark in an indication of mental illness, since he is a straight up racist.  That being said, his inability to stop from saying it out loud might be.

I love the "oh he plays golf so he gets the most exercise EVER. Riding around in a cart and getting out periodically to wave a piece of iron in the air is not exercise.

It's hard to image that a doctor wouldn't notice the issue with repetition but it isn't this guy's job to make waves. I agree that he can't control his reactions some of the time. It seems anger or insecurity bring it on. He is probably able to recognize times when he should be "on guard" but I think he's gradually losing that. Eventually he'll just be spewing all the vile crap that is his narcissistic self all the time.

As for the exercise, in light of the revelation about Ms. Sparky or Splashy or whatever that woman's screen name is, he may be getting more exercise than we know during "Executive time". His TV time isn't just Faux News?

[fraurosena]

This is what happens when you poke the bear. It tends to throw your shit back at you.

Haitian government claims ousted dictator ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier laundered stolen money through Trump Tower

Quote

President Donald Trump insulted Haiti during an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers, but he once signed off on a shady real estate deal with the nation’s ousted dictator.

More than a fifth of Trump’s condominiums in the U.S. have been purchased since the 1980s in secretive cash transactions that fit a Treasury Department definition of suspicious transactions, reported Buzzfeed News.

Records show more than 1,300 Trump condos were purchased through shell companies, which allow buyers to shield their finances and identities, and without a mortgage, which protects buyers from lender inquiries.

Those two characteristics raise alarms about possible money laundering, according to statements issued in recent months by the Department of Treasury, which has investigated transactions just like those all over the country.

The agency may even require real estate professionals to adopt new programs to keep illegally obtained funds from being plowed into luxury housing to conceal the money’s origins.

Trump companies reportedly sold $35 million in real estate last year alone — mostly to secretive shell companies that open the president up to possible influence peddling.

According to the Buzzfeed News report, the Haitian government complained in the 1980s that former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier laundered money stolen from the Caribbean nation’s treasury by purchasing an apartment in Trump Tower.

Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc,” was overthrown in 1986, but three years earlier used a Panamanian shell company called Lasa Trade and Finance to buy apartment 54-K in Trump’s Manhattan tower for $446,875 cash.

Trump, the future U.S. president, signed the deed of sale.

Federal prosecutors charged a Russian native in 1984 with laundering the proceeds from a gasoline bootlegging operation through five Trump Tower condos purchased for $4.9 million.

David Bogatin pleaded guilty in 1987 and served eight years in federal prison.

Trump Taj Mahal casino was charged under anti-money laundering regulations 106 times in 1990 and 1991 by failing to identify gamblers who bought or cashed out more than $10,000 in chips.

Those reports are required to help authorities identify gamblers who may be laundering money, and Trump’s casino paid a $477,000 fine to the Treasury Department in 1998 without admitting wrongdoing.

1

 

[GrumpyGran]

6 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

This is what happens when you poke the bear. It tends to throw your shit back at you.

Haitian government claims ousted dictator ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier laundered stolen money through Trump Tower

 

That would be "Holy Shit!" that bear's throwing. He sold a condo to a dictator? Of the country he just claimed is in bad shape? Because they were under the harsh control of that dictator? He is an unstable moron.

[apple1]

18 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

It's hard to image that a doctor wouldn't notice the issue with repetition but it isn't this guy's job to make waves. I agree that he can't control his reactions some of the time. It seems anger or insecurity bring it on. He is probably able to recognize times when he should be "on guard" but I think he's gradually losing that. Eventually he'll just be spewing all the vile crap that is his narcissistic self all the time.

From Sanjay Gupta of CNN: To best knowledge, only John McCain (as presidential candidate) has had public reporting of cognitive or mental health; no other presidents or presidential candidates have done so.

BTW - I agree with @GrumpyGran - but even so, HIPAA still applies as far as healthcare providers are concerned. 

Quote

Only candidate John McCain released his full medical records in 2008, and he invited me to review them in a secure room for a few hours. While McCain's records included detailed reports around his mental health, virtually none of the others I have seen in the past 16 years of reporting on presidential health made mention of the cognitive or mental health of the presidential patient. The current White House has telegraphed that mental health testing is probably not something the president will even undergo.

 

[Howl]

I'm just going to go back to Sept 2016, when Trump was being called out for "fat shaming" and insulting Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, when he referred to her as Miss Piggy.  The other part of that was him referring to her as "Miss Housekeeping"  which, in the way that he used it, is also insulting on so many levels.   Just leaving this here. 

[fraurosena]

With the presidunce in office, news flies by so fast that we've probably forgotten way back when last week when it seemed the presidunce didn't know the words to the national anthem. But I've stumbled upon this bad lip reading video that is so hilarious I just had to share it with you guys.

 

[GrumpyGran]

28 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

With the presidunce in office, news flies by so fast that we've probably forgotten way back when last week when it seemed the presidunce didn't know the words to the national anthem. But I've stumbled upon this bad lip reading video that is so hilarious I just had to share it with you guys.

 

And a thanks, too! Still just mystified at the unawareness from a narcissist. Okay, either decide you're going to sing it and know all the words or don't sing at all. Methinks this might have been another Melania's revenge set-up. And he kept twisting back and forth like he forgot to go to the bathroom before he went out there.

[fraurosena]

Whoo... he's back from the golf course and has found his phone again! 

Too bad he was out golfing when that false missile alarm went off in Hawaii...

 

Here's some more about the alarm:

Side note: it took them 30 minutes to turn the alarm off. 

[fraurosena]

John Schindler's op-ed in the Observer uses the toddler's tweets to sum up all the presiduncial turmoil from last week. It's mindboggling when you see all the shit that went down in just one.single.week.

Donald Trump’s Crazy Week of Crazy

Quote

As Donald Trump approaches a year in the White House, one of his gifts that is too seldom acknowledged is his fine-honed ability to make days seem like weeks and weeks seem like months, even years. As president, he has managed to jam-pack so many bizarre, jaw-dropping antics into such short periods of time—any one of which would be scandalous for any normal White House—that they blur into each other inside the news cycle and soon melt into the morass of Trumpism.

However, for the sake of future historians trying to unravel the unprecedented disaster which is the Trump presidency, let’s review the past week’s Oval Office highlights (such as they were), many of which involve President Trump’s profligate use of Twitter. As is his wont, last Saturday morning the commander-in-chief started tweeting, and even for Trump this was a doozy.

The dark cloud hanging over the White House at the beginning of the new year is the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, which paints a deeply unflattering portrait of the administration. Although Wolff insists his work is factually accurate, his track record suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, his account of an idiot president, hopelessly out of his depth to the point of mental instability, who never wanted the job, surrounded by equally incompetent underlings who spend most of their time leaking on each other and back-biting, rings true to anybody who’s been paying the slightest attention to Team Trump in action. Why the White House allowed a well-known literary rapscallion like Wolff to wander the West Wing for months, unsupervised, is the obvious question here—though, as usual with Trump, there’s no point in asking normal questions of a very abnormal presidency.

Trump’s absurd efforts to get Fire and Fury taken out of circulation instead sent book sales into the stratosphere, so the wounded president retreated to Twitter to make his case. Last Saturday he tweeted to the world that, contrary to Wolff’s account, he is entirely in his right mind and very smart. After tweeting, yet again, that the “Russia collusion” story is a “total hoax” conjured up by the Democrats and their “lapdogs” in the “Fake News Mainstream Media,” the president added: “throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” For good measure, Trump followed that with the statement that he is, in fact, “a very stable genius.”

This induced global guffaws, since highly intelligent people in their right mind seldom have any need to state so publicly, but “very stable genius” was the new White House line, and Team Trump went out to defend it on the Sunday morning talk shows. The ranks of sycophants willing to baldly lie for the president on live TV have thinned over the last 12 months, and it fell to White House adviser Stephen Miller to explain to America what a stable genius his boss actually is.

The unctuous Miller, a 32-year-old right-wing ideologue, went on CNN and it didn’t go well. His insistance to Jake Tapper that President Trump really is a very stable genius, and Trump’s only problem is media lies propagated by the likes of CNN, blew up in his face so badly that Tapper cut the interview short with the statement, “There’s one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious and you’re being a factotum in order to please him.”

As if to prove Tapper’s point, President Trump quickly went to Twitter, where he stated: “Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!” In the Trumpian parallel universe, which the president nurtures with his Twitter feed, this became the new-new talking points to be parroted, obvious facts to the contrary. For good measure, Trump tweeted that on January 17 he will bestow “The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media,” and presumably Jake Tapper is a short-lister there.

Then, during the work-week, such as it is, Trump did some normal presidential things like photo-ops, signing executive orders, and meeting foreign dignitaries, but the president is functionally a part-time government employee. As depicted in Wolff’s devastating account, Trump spends his morning lounging around, watching Fox News and tweeting—this is charitably termed “executive time” in the West Wing—and gets down to work around 11 in the morning. Trump is often in bed by 6:30 in the evening, eating cheeseburgers while watching TV, Fox News predominating, naturally.

Mostly, the president tweeted a lot this week. About the glories of the stock market, about the still-not-built “wall” on our Southern border, and how awful and underhanded his opponents are. On Wednesday, frustrated by Republican lies and obstruction, Dianne Feinstein, one of the most powerful Democratic senators, released the transcript of the testimony of FusionGPS boss Glenn Simpson. In one stroke, Feinstein blew apart the totally fabricated Trumpian narrative that the infamous Steele dossier is a Democratic plot and the FBI is attempting a coup against the president. In a fury, Trump tweeted that “Sneaky Dianne Feinstein,” a “disgrace,” did something “underhanded” and “possibly illegal” by releasing the transcript—to no effect save to excite his dwindling base.

Things began to go seriously off the rails on Thursday morning, when President Trump tweeted about impending Congressional reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the National Security Agency to collect metadata on foreign spies and terrorists. Renewing Section 702 is our Intelligence Community’s highest legislative priority this year, since FISA plays a pivotal role in many classified national security programs.

However, the commander-in-chief was watching Fox and Friends, his favorite show, and tweeted out what he found congenial. It’s best to think of Trump’s morning Twitter feed as Fox and Friends highlights, transcribed. Andrew Napolitano, the New Jersey judge-turned-Kremlin crank, was on the show, lambasting FISA 702 as a sinister “deep state” plot against our civil liberties, and the president took to Twitter to spread the word. “‘House votes on controversial FISA ACT today.’ This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?” Trump tweeted, causing immediate uproar.

That one tweet included no less than four separate lies and fabrications, not to mention that President Trump doesn’t know the “A” in FISA stands for Act. More importantly, renewing FISA 702 was the White House’s own well-known position, which Trump blew up just before the vote on the Hill. In a panic, Congressional and Intelligence Community leaders went to the president and crafted a rebuttal of sorts, in a bizarre tweet that attempted to undo the damage. In the end, the House of Representatives renewed Section 702, but the needless drama laid bare that Trump pays no attention to his intelligence briefings, relying instead on Fox News, and has no idea what his own administration’s positions are, even on vital national security matters.

That was nothing compared to what happened later Thursday, when during a meeting with Congressional leaders, the president asked why America was taking immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti and Africa. With one statement—which was soon leaked to the media, since Trump, who has never grasped the concept of an “off-the-record conversation,” made the reference in mixed company—the president blew apart any chance at immigration reform, which is reputedly his signature issue. Outrage ensued, at home and abroad, and finally Trump had said something so offensive that even his political allies rapidly distanced themselves from the White House.

At first, Team Trump didn’t seek to walk away from the “shithole” comment, sensing that a good chunk of the president’s base might approve, but when it became obvious what an epically unforced error this was, the administration made efforts to deny the statement—without much effect. As usual, Donald Trump made the country’s political discussion all about him, his unpleasant views, and his inability to control himself in a manner most Americans expect of their children.

On Friday it broke that Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen reportedly paid $130,000 in hush-money to a porn star with whom the president had a liaison before the 2016 election. This surprised nobody who’s paid attention to the president and his habits (the Wolff book includes the mention of a hundred or so such settlements over the years), and this salacious scandal soon melted into the week’s other presidential disgraces and outrages. In normal times, there would be nothing else for the media to discuss than the president and the porn star, but these are not normal times.

Americans can be forgiven for yearning wistfully for the days when presidential “scandals” focused on the wrong suit shade—which Donald Trump has made seem like many decades ago already. As expected, the president was on Twitter this morning, lambasting Democrats as “all talk and no action” for not wanting to deal with him on immigration after his “shithole” comment, while stating simply, “AMERICA FIRST!”

So it goes, and will keep going until some sense of normalcy returns to Washington, presuming that President Trump hasn’t shattered our country’s political norms permanently. Time will tell. It usually does.

11

 

[47of74]

30 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Whoo... he's back from the golf course and has found his phone again! 

Too bad he was out golfing when that false missile alarm went off in Hawaii...

I'd say to him hey asshole if you don't like that the book is so popular quit fucking talking about it.  I'd also say you just reminded me to go out and buy the ebook.