Trump 34: Leading the Alternate Reality

[Cartmann99]

  If it never happened, why would Burnett call him to reassure him that no tapes existed of something that never happened? I've never killed anybody, and nobody has ever phoned me to reassure me that no evidence exists of murders I haven't committed.

This would make much more sense if Burnett contacted the media and tried to deny that any tapes existed. 

[AmazonGrace]

Yeah and if Trump never says the word he wouldn't have to wait for Burnett to confirm there's no tape of him saying it.

 

 

He'd have known already.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Rachel333]

Does he realize how bad he's making himself look? If Omarosa was this bad, why did he hire her? You shouldn't be hiring people for the White House just because you feel bad for them!

 

[AmazonGrace]

His explanation why he won't say what he heard doesn't really compute with me

His explanation why he won't say what he heard doesn't really compute with me

[Rachel333]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

His explanation why he won't say what he heard doesn't really compute with me

It sounds like he's saying that he doesn't remember exact quotations and so doesn't want to try and get it wrong, which makes sense to me.

Quote

Just so I’m clear: It’s a moral thing because it would be wrong to misquote him or because you don’t want to unduly have an effect on politics? 
If he hadn’t become president, I would be telling stories all day long. And if someone were to say, “Penn didn’t get that exactly right,” you’d go “Who cares?”

But now being accurate matters more.
Yeah, the stakes are really high. Not for me. Nothing I can say here hurts my career. But for the world the stakes are higher. He [President Trump] would be reading. And what I’m trying to do here is tell you the story emotionally without telling you specifics.

He does say this;

Quote

He would say racially insensitive things that made me uncomfortable. I don’t think he ever said anything in that room like “African-Americans are inferior” or anything about rape or grabbing women, but of those two hours every other day in a room with him, every ten minutes was fingernails on chalkboard. He would ask one cast member if he’d rather have sex with this woman or that woman. 

 

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 8/12/2018 at 11:26 PM, Audrey2 said:

I also wondered what their song would be- the Star Wars theme or the Star Trek theme, since each branch of the service has a theme song.

Battlestar Galactica. Since destroying civilization seems to be the way his administration wants to go. Wonder how any of them'd feel about being cast as a Cylon?

[Cartmann99]

Maybe I'm just dumb, but why is Trump trying so hard to convince us that he doesn't use racial slurs? He's already lost everyone with the tiniest sliver of a conscience, so what is the damn point in continuing this charade?

His supporters currently consist of sociopaths, bigots, and those who would happily eat their own foot if he told them to do so. Those folks are going down with the ship, so Trump might as well fess up so Jim Bakker can start selling those "Children of Ham" doom buckets he has in his warehouse.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Yeah and anyway, his base consists entirely of people who complain that it's not politically correct to say the N word anymore.

I happen to have secret tape recordings in which he calls Mexicans rapists and animals and boasts of sexually assaulting women. Do you think the media would be interested?

[fraurosena]

I don't have the answer to that particular question either, @AmazonGrace, but I do know that the cover-up is important enough that his inaugural committee surreptitiously paid $26m to keep certain revealing "Apprentice" tapes from becoming public.

  

Now I really want to know what's on those tapes that he's so afraid of becoming public. I simply can't believe it's only because of him using racial slurs. There's got to be more. 

[AmazonGrace]

Maybe he asks someone to lend him five dollars because he's broke?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump offers White House staffers a special perk at his golf club"

Spoiler

There’s an under-the-radar perk being offered to staffers in President Donald Trump’s administration — discounts on Trump-branded merchandise sold at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.

White House staffers who have a Secret Service hard pin identifying them as administration officials can flash it at the pro shop — where Trump-branded driver headcovers retail for $40 and a Trump golf polo tee sells for $90, according to the online Trump store — and receive the same discount available to club members, who pay a reported $350,000 to join the club.

Those discounts range from 15 percent off of any merchandise sold in the store, to 70 percent off clearance items, according to two staffers and a receipt reviewed by POLITICO.

The practice is the latest indication that being a public servant in this administration comes with special perks to sweeten the deal. The discounts available at the Bedminster club were originally pitched by the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and the president himself as a nice gesture to aides, according to the recollection of someone familiar with the setup. (White House officials denied Ivanka Trump's involvement and said she was not even aware the discount existed.)

But ethics experts say the arrangement only highlights how Trump remains more entangled in his commercial properties than any president in American history. Those blurry lines between his government work and his private business, from which he never divested, are perhaps most fuzzy when the president is spending time with government officials on the grounds of his own properties.

Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and a former associate counsel in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said the practice of offering any discounts to people identified by their Secret Service pins was “absolutely wrong.”

Discounts are not prohibited by the Office of Government Ethics if they are available to all government employees, or if it’s a standardized discount. But if they are not, the discount is considered a gift. Federal officials are also prohibited from accepting gifts in excess of $20 and are urged to decline any gifts "when accepting them would raise concerns about the appearance of impropriety."

“It's prohibited under the standards of conduct for any government employee to accept a gift because of their official position,” said Canter. “The fact is, people's access to that facility is extremely limited. It's not open to all government employees. It’s limited to staff who have access to the facility and second of all, who are given access to the Secret Service pin. It’s not OK.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would not comment about the discount.

But getting perks in the pro shop goes beyond White House staffers.

Trump has pilfered his own store to charm Republican lawmakers and their aides, whom he frequently invites to join him for rounds of golf at his properties in Sterling, Virginia, and Palm Beach, Florida. GOP aides have been directed to the pro shop to pick up golf apparel — gratis — when the president saw they were not outfitted for golf. It was not clear whether Trump later personally picked up the tab or the business ate the extra expense.

The discounts remain under the radar even within the White House. One former senior administration official said he never knew about the price chop and had always paid full price for pro-shop merchandise. “I overpaid, big time,” the former official said. “Part of me wishes I knew. Part of me is glad I didn’t.” Other aides said they learned of the discount through the grapevine only after having paid full price.

The discounts are also not available across-the-board at all Trump clubs — each pro shop sets its own rules, and staffers who recently shopped at the Turnberry resort in Scotland while working for the president on his most recent foreign trip said they were expected to pay full price for the goods they brought home.

POLITICO reviewed a recent receipt that showed a current White House official receiving a 70 percent discount on a piece of merchandise that was a clearance item, and a 30 percent discount on an item from the current collection.

Norm Eisen, who served as the ethics czar under former President Barack Obama, said Trump’s habit of doling out discounted goods from his personal business is an abuse of office.

“It does have an effect on how Trump tries to secure personal loyalty and woo people away from what should be their primary and their only loyalty — to the Constitution, to public service and to the people of the United States,” Eisen said. “This is another small inducement, apparently contrary to federal law, that he uses to bind his staff to him personally.”

Trump, who throughout his life has been accused of regularly stiffing contractors and failing to pay his debts, is often a fan of generous gestures when he’s relaxing at one of his own properties. If he sees a table of staffers dining, he’ll often send over a dessert on the house, or pick up the check, another aide said.

Those gestures would be allowed if he, himself, is paying out of his own pocket to cover the meal. But they would also be prohibited by federal gift rules if he simply charged those meals to the club.

A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, Amanda Miller, did not return calls and emails for 12 days.

 

[Howl]

Nice smack down of Trump over the McCain snub: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why are so many people Trump hires corrupt, incompetent and immoral?"

Spoiler

When a former aide turns on a politician, there’s a standard script the politician’s current aides employ in response. We had no idea she was such a treacherous snake, they say, and we’ve just discovered that she did terrible things while in our employ. Had we known who she really was we never would have hired her, but now that we do, it’s clear nothing she said can be believed.

President Trump, however, follows a different and far more bizarre script. When he gets betrayed by a former aide, he says that he knew all along what a terrible person the aide was, and in fact he even knew before he hired them how awful they were.

Yes, I’m talking about Omarosa Manigault Newman, but only partly about her, because it goes much farther. We may have never had a president who filled out his administration with such a collection of corrupt, incompetent, and immoral aides, and we’ve certainly never had a president who was so eager to tell everyone that his own administration is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

To begin, let me refer you to these two tweets from this morning:

So Trump’s story is that Omarosa was a “crazed, crying lowlife,” but he gave her a job in the White House, a job that many other people would have been happy to have. Then, though he said yesterday that “People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart,” he kept her around for a year.

Trump would also like America to know that his attorney general is a complete failure. Trump’s displeasure comes from the fact that by recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Jeff Sessions has rendered himself unable to shut it down in order to protect him; as he says, “If we had a real Attorney General, this Witch Hunt would never have been started!” In another tweet, Trump refers to “the ‘Justice’ Department,” to communicate that this vital part of the government he leads is not doing its job.

Now let’s remind ourselves of something. One of the rationales that businesspeople always offer when they run for office is that unlike career politicians, they can bring their hard-nosed business sense to government, including in hiring. Instead of bringing on a bunch of cronies, with their commitment to efficiency and results they’ll hire the best people for the job. This is what Trump himself said in 2016 when he was asked by a hedge fund manager what criteria he would use to select members of his administration:

You need people that are truly, truly capable. And I think so much has to do with past history: how have they done, how has it all worked out, you understand what I mean by that perhaps better than anybody. And we have to get the best people….We need to get the best and the finest, and if we don’t we’ll be in trouble for a long period of time, and maybe never come out of it.

There’s a fundamental fallacy at work in this argument even when it’s offered by an ordinary businessperson. It’s the widely-held belief that effectiveness in government requires no relevant knowledge or experience, and is only a matter of the business mindset or things like “common sense.” The truth, however, is just the opposite: Public policy, which combines intricate practical challenges with unpredictable political situations, is often far more complex than anything a corporate CEO ever has to deal with.

Which is why people with experience in politics and government are usually the best ones for the job, because they’re the ones who actually understand how it all works. If a politician brings with her a group of aides who have spent a couple of decades by her side as she climbs the ladder, you can call them “cronies,” but there’s also a good chance that they have the preparation necessary to do what’s asked of them when they get the opportunity to exercise power.

And if the outsider in question is Donald Trump, it’s much worse. Not only has he failed to find the best people, he attracts the most corrupt and incompetent people around, who see in Trump a vehicle to wet their own beaks or at the very least carry out a retrograde agenda in an environment where ethical behavior is actively discouraged.

Just to make this clear, let’s remind ourselves of the top Trump administration officials who have left in disgrace, been credibly accused of corruption or incompetence, or both. Here’s a partial list:

• Michael Flynn, national security adviser: In the job less than a month before resigning; has pled guilty to lying to the FBI over his contacts with Russia.
• Reince Priebus, chief of staff: Resigned after six months, widely considered comically ineffectual.
• Sean Spicer, press secretary: Terrible liar, resigned after six months on the job.
• Anthony Scaramucci, communications director: Lasted ten days after a series of exciting but unhelpful media appearances.
• Rob Porter, staff secretary: Resigned after credible allegations of domestic abuse surfaced from two ex-wives.
• Steve Bannon, chief political adviser: Pushed out after seven tumultuous months. Trump later said that Bannon “cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone.”
• Ronny Jackson, White House physician: Nominated by Trump to be secretary of veterans affairs despite lack of qualifications; nomination withdrawn after allegations of unprofessional behavior surfaced.
• Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control: Resigned after she was caught trading tobacco stocks while leading the agency tasked with reducing tobacco use.
• Scott Pruitt, EPA administrator: Resigned after too many scandals to count.
• Tom Price, secretary of health and human services: Resigned after controversy about profligate use of government and private aircraft.
• Ryan Zinke, secretary of interior: Caught up in multiple minor to mid-size scandals, including one involving a questionable land deal with the chairman of Halliburton.
• Betsy DeVos, secretary of education: Got the job despite knowing next to nothing about education; currently under fire because her $40 million yacht is registered in the Cayman Islands, allowing her to escape state taxes.
• Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development: Had zero experience in housing. Was criticized for ordering $31,000 dining set for his office; his spokesperson claimed he knew nothing about it, which emails later proved was a lie.
• Wilbur Ross, secretary of commerce: Accused of stealing $120 million from business associates.
• Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president: Pushed out when he failed to get a security clearance and no one could figure out what he actually did. Last seen passing out fake Fox News business cards.

Those are just the well-known ones. There are plenty of lesser-known officials who have been fired or resigned for things like making racist comments, having fishy finances that caused security clearances to be revoked, or being accused of domestic violence. That’s also not to mention the questionable characters Trump hired before becoming president, like Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, or the fact that he hires members of his own family despite the fact that they obviously have no idea what they’re doing.

And what’s really remarkable is that all this turmoil, all this corruption, all this backstabbing and frontstabbing and paranoia, has piled up after only nineteen months of the Trump presidency. Imagine what it’ll look like after four years.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The image is too large to copy here, but it's worth a look: The World According to Donald Trump

I especially love how the locations of Dumpy Towers are denoted by male genitalia.

[AmazonGrace]

The meangirl tweeting about Omarosa all day is also a constitutional law expert

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[AnywhereButHere]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/us/politics/john-brennan-security-clearance.html

And our poor, aggrieved, besieged leader is at it again. Brennan hurt poor Caligula's feelings, so he lashed out and removed his security clearance. Will Brennan even miss it? In terms of "silencing your enemies", is this tactic even punitive in the slightest?

[AmazonGrace]

 

Too long didn't watch: Somebody who wrote a book about Trump in the nineties got threatened by Trump's lawyers and goons. He says he never heard Trump say the n-word but that he said a lot of other racist things.

[fraurosena]

 

So last night, Brennan was on Lawrence O'Donnell, extremely critical of the presidunce and claiming he's a danger to the nation. Today, Brennan's security clearance is revoked. For once, I don't completely agree with Seth's take. I think it's just petty retaliation for Brennan's statements on MSNBC, and the tweet @AnywhereButHere mentions in her post. 

[fraurosena]

Whoops. It seems his petty vindictiveness just fed more ammo to Mueller. 

Funny thing is, the presidunce is blissfully (or maybe wilfully) ignorant of committing a 'high crime and misdemeanor' and has let it be known that he's not going to stop at just Brennan. He's threatening a whole bunch of other critics as well:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Oh he's got his defense ready. Waa waa it's so unfair black people can use the n-word and white people can't. (the account he tweeted at has been  suspended so I can't confirm it was a black person but seems like a fair assumption)

From 2013