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Trump 33: Making Norman Bates Look Like a Choir Boy


Destiny

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How did Montenegro even come up? What with Trump disparaging the NATO mutual defense article and the secret talks with Putin I think Europeans should be very worried that Trump agreed to look the other way if Putin does Crimea in Montenegro

https://www.politico.eu/article/donad-trump-nato-montenegro-defending-could-mean-world-war-iii/ 

 

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8 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Colusion, it says

To quote Randy Rainbow:  "He knows eleven words and can't spell a single one of them..."

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Fuck Face's ugly orange face is the first one you see if you do a Google image search for idiot

Quote

President Donald Trump might describe himself as a “very stable genius” and claim he has one of the highest IQs but, right now, he’s making the top five image search results for anyone that types the word “idiot” into Google.

As I can attest....

IdTenT.thumb.png.a4c3d26348ad7dca91dcbd4a3d148b83.png

And sorry for all the fuck face images too....

 

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2 hours ago, Rachel333 said:

I guess we just weren't smart enough to understand what went on in Helsinki.

Honestly, my WTF button needs another break.  I shudder to think what "big results" might be.  Probably more real estate deals in Russia.

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8 hours ago, Howl said:

Is this the right place to note that Comey has gone full on "Vote for Democrats" in November; I guess Helsinki was the last straw.  This doesn't make up for what he did to screw Hillary in the last election, but it's a baby step. 

He's a flawed messenger - but I do think he has a conscience and at least tries to follow that conscience. JMO.

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Because we all need a laugh: "Infamous declarations by infamous people, as walked back by Donald Trump"

Spoiler

George Will has ruined serious punditry about President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin. I cannot improve upon what he wrote. So Spoiler Alerts asks that you please enjoy this more absurdist response to the absurd events of this week instead.

Trump saw that he had to respond to a torrent of criticism from his political base as well as from the opposition. But the way he delivered his statement of retreat was classic Trump, a dual message — a ritual statement of confidence in U.S. intelligence officials for those who insist that the president respect the nation’s systems and mores, but also winks and nods to those who like Trump expressly because he’s eager to smash china and topple tradition.

Marc Fisher, “How Trump retreats: Grudging apologies, plus a wink and a nod to the original insult.

1. Marie Antoinette, “Let them eat cake.”

TRUMP:  “I realize that there is a need for some clarification. It should have been obvious, I thought it was obvious, but I would like to clarify in case it wasn’t. I have seen it reported in the no-good, Fake Fourth Estate I call it, the biggest enemy of the Sun King you will ever see, that I said about the peasants, “Let them eat cake.” Lies, all lies! What I actually said was, “Let them eat my cake.” Trump Cakes are the most delicious cakes available on the Ile-de-France, everyone is talking about them. It’s sort of a double-stuff eclair. You can put that in, and I think that clarifies things pretty good by themselves.”

2. Bill Clinton, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” 

TRUMP: “In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word ‘not’ instead of ‘not not.’ It should have been ‘I did not not have sexual relations with that woman.’ Sort of a double negative. Because, let us stop being politically correct for a second, there is no way I would have had sexual relations with a woman like her. Have you seen any pictures? Have you seen one with the beret?! I could put such heavy moves on so many better-looking women, move on them like — well, you know. I think that clarifies things pretty good by themselves.”

3. Howard Dean, “YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

TRUMP: “Last night, to end my victory speech, about our campaign doing better than so many expected, I made an exclamation. Many members of the Fake News Media have said that I was out of control and unhinged, but nothing could be further from the truth. I had stubbed my toe on the mic stand. As you may recall, my shingles were a huge impediment to me serving in the military and have bothered me ever since. So I am planning to sue the hosting venue, the company that manufactured the microphone, and all the Fake News Media outlets that covered this scream. I think that clarifies things pretty good by themselves.”

4. Kanye West, “Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!”

TRUMP: “I would like to revisit my remarks from last night. When I was praising Beyoncé, I thought that she was, like Taylor Swift, white. I now realize that her culture poses a threat to what makes America great, and will not listen to her music again. Nor will I watch her videos, except the one in which she wants to put a ring on it, because that is a very hot video. I think that clarifies things pretty good by themselves.”

5. Donald Trump, “Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame. I think it changed the fabric of Europe, and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was, and I don’t mean that in a positive way.”

TRUMP: “What? What’s wrong with what I said? Remember, I know these things. Many people are saying that I am a very stable genius.”

 

 

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On 7/16/2018 at 10:14 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Oh, the complete lack of humanity!

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This is from Nate Silver's website.  It shows by state the declines in Trump's net approval ratings between 2017 and 2018.  The red states have the largest declines, followed by the beige/white, with the blue states showing the smallest decline.  Good news is, across the board it's all a downward slope. 

natesilver.jpg

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"The Daily 202: Russia imbroglio deepens the disconnect between Trump and his own administration". This is from the big morning summary, so it's long, but it's a good read.

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump found himself at odds on Wednesday with his own people who work at Foggy Bottom, Fort Meade, Langley, the Pentagon and the brutalist J. Edgar Hoover Building.

At the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last night, FBI Director Christopher Wray responded to Trump’s wishy-washy and inconsistent statements about festering Russian interference in the American political system.

“He’s got his view. He’s expressed his view,” Wray said. “The intelligence community’s assessment has not changed. My view has not changed, which is that Russia attempted to interfere with the last election and that it continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.”

Wray, who Trump tapped after he fired James Comey, defended the ongoing federal investigation into whether the president obstructed justice and whether his 2016 campaign colluded with the Kremlin. “I do not believe special counsel [Robert] Mueller is on a ‘witch hunt,’” he said. “I think it's a professional investigation conducted by a man that I've known to be a straight shooter.”

NBC anchor Lester Holt asked if he’s ever considered resigning, as has been reported. Wray did not say no. “I'm a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of,” he said. “I'll just leave it at that.”

It was a stunning ending to another stunning day. Columnist Karen Tumulty calls what’s transpired since Trump left Finland his “worst moment since Charlottesville.”

Earlier Wednesday, the president said “no” twice when a reporter asked him if he believes Russia continues to target the United States. That directly conflicts with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats’s declaration last week that “the warning lights are blinking red again,” comparing the threat matrix to the eve of the Sept. 11 attacks. Coats, a longtime Republican senator from Indiana, said during another appearance on Monday that Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy are “ongoing and pervasive.”

Two hours later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders argued that the president was actually just saying "no" to taking questions, not that he was regurgitating Vladimir Putin’s talking points or retracting his post-Helsinki retraction. In fact, Trump continued to take questions from reporters after answering “no.” The ABC News correspondent who asked Trump the original question pushed back on Sanders’s spin.

From the ABC News reporter who asked Trump about ongoing election interference:

Fox News didn’t buy it either. A chyron on the president’s favorite channel blared: “Try, try again: White House and Trump offer different responses on Russia.”

TRUMP VS. THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY:

-- During an interview that aired on the “CBS Evening News” a few hours later, Trump claimed that he pushed Putin hard on election interference in private before backing off and accepting his denials during the news conference. Asked if he holds Putin personally responsible for Russia’s election interference, the president replied: “Well, I would, because he's in charge of the country. Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. So, certainly, as the leader of a country you would have to hold him responsible, yes.”

Note Trump’s use of the word “would” in his response. He didn’t say, “I do hold him responsible.” Or, “I will hold him responsible.” The use of the word “would” conveys that Trump still refuses to admit Russia interfered, despite reading the statement on Tuesday saying that he accepts the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community.

Asked by CBS whether he agrees with Coats’s assessment, Trump said: “Well, I’d accept it. I mean, he’s an expert. This is what he does. He’s been doing a very good job. I have tremendous faith in Daniel Coats. And if he says that, I would accept that. I will tell you, though, it better not be. It better not be.”

At the risk of being repetitive, Coats has said it – repeatedly and publicly. For whatever reason, Trump does not sound like someone who accepts what he’s been told. Moreover, Trump has been hearing it for a long time in private.

To wit, today’s New York Times reports that, two weeks before his inauguration, Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that Putin personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election. “The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation,” per David Sanger and Matthew Rosenberg. “Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.”

-- This trio of tweets from sober-minded, retired intelligence professionals is truly remarkable:

Michael Hayden retired in 2008 from the Air Force as a four-star general. He was National Security Agency director from 1999 to 2005. George W. Bush appointed him as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a job he held from 2006 to 2009:

Steven Hall retired from the CIA in 2015 after 30 years of running and overseeing intelligence operations, including as the chief of Russia operations. He mostly operated in the countries of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact:

John Sipher retired in 2014 after a 28-year career in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, which included serving in Moscow and running Russia operations:

TRUMP VS. THE PENTAGON:

-- The military appears to be out of the loop. Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, told reporters in Moscow yesterday that “important verbal agreements” were reached on a series of national security issues when the two leaders met one-on-one in Helsinki for more than two hours, joined only by translators. He mentioned the preservation of the New Start and INF arms control treaties and said Putin made “specific and interesting proposals” related to Syria.

“But officials at the most senior levels across the U.S. military … had little to no information Wednesday,” Karen DeYoung, Missy Ryan and Anton Troianovski report. “At the Pentagon, as press officers remained unable to answer media questions about how the summit might impact the military, the paucity of information exposed an awkward gap in internal administration communications. … Defense Secretary Jim Mattis did not attend Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting with Trump and has not appeared in public this week or commented on the summit. …

“The uncertainty surrounding Moscow’s suggestion of some sort of new arrangement or proposal regarding Syria, in particular, was striking because Gen. Joseph Votel, who heads U.S. Central Command, is scheduled to brief reporters on Syria and other matters Thursday. … Nonmilitary officials who were provided minimal, indirect readouts expressed confidence that no agreement had been struck with Putin on Syria, and that Trump — who early this year expressed a desire to withdraw all U.S. troops from that country — made clear to Putin that no American departure was imminent.

“Some military officials, accustomed a year and a half into the Trump administration to a decision-making process that is far less structured than it was under President Barack Obama, appeared unfazed by the lack of clarity. Unlike Obama, who oversaw a national security process that was famously meticulous and often slow, Trump has presided over a more fluid, less formally deliberative system. Few if any top-level national security meetings, for example, have been held this spring following the administration’s attack on Syrian military facilities in April … That shift … may provide top military officials less regular access to their commander in chief and fewer opportunities to influence the policy process.”

TRUMP VS. THE FOREIGN SERVICE:

-- Perhaps the wildest moment of Wednesday came when Sanders said during her White House briefing that Trump has not ruled out a request from Putin to let Russian authorities interrogate Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama. “The president is going to meet with his team, and we'll let you know when we have an announcement on that,” she said. “There was some conversation about it, but there wasn't a commitment made on behalf of the United States. And the president will work with his team, and we'll let you know if there's an announcement on that front.”

“Allowing the interrogation of a former American ambassador, who held diplomatic immunity while in Moscow, would be an unprecedented breach in protections traditionally provided to the nation’s foreign service,” Bloomberg News’s Toluse Olorunnipa notes. “In exchange for the opportunity to have McFaul and a number of other Americans questioned, the Russian president offered to let [Mueller] observe interrogations of 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted by a U.S. grand jury last week.”

-- State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters that letting a former diplomat be questioned “would be a grave concern to our former colleagues.” She added that “Russian assertions are absolutely absurd at this point” vis-à-vis the 11 U.S. citizens that Putin wants access to.

-- Current and former U.S. diplomats expressed horror and disgust at the White House’s refusal to flatly rule out handing over McFaul, who has long been a bête noire of Putin. “One serving diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was ‘at a … loss’ over comments that can be expected to chill American diplomacy in hostile or authoritarian countries – a comment echoed by former State Department officials as well,” the Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman reports. “It’s beyond disgraceful,” the current U.S. diplomat said. “It’s fundamentally ignorant with regard to how we conduct diplomacy or what that means. It really puts in jeopardy the professional independence of diplomats anywhere in the world, if the consequence of their actions is going to be potentially being turned over to a foreign government.” (There are many similar reactions in the Social Media Speed Read below.)

-- McFaul, a political science professor at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said he hopes “the White House corrects the record and denounces in categorical terms this ridiculous request from Putin.”

-- One of the most scathing condemnations of Trump’s posture toward Putin this week came from a grieving father in Perth, Australia. “Four years ago, on July 17, 2014, Anthony Maslin and Rin Norris lost all three of their children, who were among the 298 passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur,” Rebecca Tan reports. “The flight was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing Norris's father, the three Maslin children — 12-year-old Mo, 10-year-old Evie and 8-year-old Otis — and all the other passengers. An investigation led by the Netherlands has since found evidence that points toward Russia having ‘direct involvement’ in the plane's downing.” (Putin has denied that the Kremlin was in any way responsible.)

In a Facebook post, Maslin wrote: “It's not anger that I feel towards the two of you. It’s something much, much worse. It's pity. You have no empathy for your fellow man, and you clearly have no idea what love is. So you have nothing.”

WILL CONGRESS ACT?

-- Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) introduced a nonbinding resolution yesterday. It would commend the Justice Department for its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, reaffirm the intelligence community’s assessment that the Kremlin interfered and say that Moscow must be held accountable (without specifying how). They’re hoping that it can pass by unanimous consent today.

-- “Threats from Republican lawmakers about confronting the president or pushing bills to punish Russia for further election interference are ringing hollow inside the White House, which has grown accustomed to panic, followed by inaction, on Capitol Hill,” Politico’s Burgess Everett and Eliana Johnson report. “A number of hawkish senators alarmed by the president’s remarks have yet to hear from chief of staff John Kelly, who frequently reassures nervous Republicans, and some senators are barreling forward with efforts to combat Russian interference in the fall elections. Increasingly, they view their own efforts to blunt Russia as distinctly separate from whatever Trump or his administration is doing or saying at any given time.”

-- House Republicans are trying to cut funding for election security grants from a spending bill that lawmakers will vote on today. Erica Werner reports: “At issue is a grants program overseen by the federal Election Assistance Commission and aimed at helping states administer their elections and improve voting systems; Democrats want to continue grant funding through 2019, while Republicans say the program already has been fully funded. Republicans argued strenuously in floor debate Wednesday that states had plenty of money from prior congressional allocations to spend on election improvements. But Democrats accused the Republicans of abetting [Trump] in his refusal to take a hard line against [Putin] at this week’s summit in Helsinki.”

-- Most states are not planning on upgrading their election security systems before the midterms, despite having federal money to do so. Politico’s Eric Geller reports: “Only 13 states said they intend to use the federal dollars to buy new voting machines. At least 22 said they have no plans to replace their machines before the election — including all five states that rely solely on paperless electronic voting devices, which cybersecurity experts consider a top vulnerability. In addition, almost no states conduct robust, statistic-based post-election audits to look for evidence of tampering after the fact. And fewer than one-third of states and territories have requested a key type of security review from the Department of Homeland Security.”

...

 

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