Trump 34: Leading the Alternate Reality

[GreyhoundFan]

[AuntK]

I've spent way too many hours today catching up on this thread and after reading all this, all I can say is I hope the Orange idiot, Jr., the unqualified princess, Grandpa Rudy, Turtle, and the rest of the thugs burn in hell.  Soon.

If this is unChristian of me, I'll seek forgiveness from the Almighty.

[fraurosena]

The presidunce is so desperate he’s resorting to witness tampering.

 

[fraurosena]

Overt authoritarianism.

 

[AmazonGrace]

I am not an economist nor do I play one on TV but this seems like a third grade version of economics to me. How does the Donald think tariffs work exactly?   If you put tariffs on imported goods it's the American buyers who end up paying more for the stuff they want.  (Unless the seller is so desperate for the American market that they lower the prices enough to compensate for the tariffs but that might not happen if they can sell somewhere else.) Then if American manufacturers use imported raw materials they have to raise their prices accordingly for the end product, and if it's not worth the price they might not find an export market.

But the Donald sounds like he thinks tariffs are simply a tax that exporters happily pay to be allowed to bring their goods into the country and it's all just money coming in, nothing to do with profit margins and stuff.

 

[fraurosena]

6 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

I am not an economist nor do I play one on TV but this seems like a third grade version of economics to me. How does the Donald think tariffs work exactly?   If you put tariffs on imported goods it's the American buyers who end up paying more for the stuff they want.  (Unless the seller is so desperate for the American market that they lower the prices enough to compensate for the tariffs but that might not happen if they can sell somewhere else.) Then if American manufacturers use imported raw materials they have to raise their prices accordingly for the end product, and if it's not worth the price they might not find an export market.

But the Donald sounds like he thinks tariffs are simply a tax that exporters happily pay to be allowed to bring their goods into the country and it's all just money coming in, nothing to do with profit margins and stuff.

 

I'm not an economist either, nor do I play one on TV, but I agree with you. His idiot version also completely forgets that raising tariffs doesn't force other countries to negotiate with you, it merely antagonizes them towards you. In retaliation they'll raise the tariffs on goods you want to export. And if you happen to export more goods to them, than you receive from them, you'll end up losing money, bigly.

[Ozlsn]

"Leadfoot Hillary and the Roadraging Democrats" would make a great band name. Also I am ineligble to migrate to Australia, which probably shouldn't surprise me. Makes me sad though.

[fraurosena]

Something's up. He's gone off the deep end with his tweets today.

He's trying to deflect first by attacking the media...

then by pounding his chest about his tariffs and tax cuts...

Apparently he doesn't think deflection alone is doing the trick, so he gets all defensive (inadvertently throwing his  *gag* wonderful son under the bus while he's at it) ...

...followed up by the umpteenth attack on Mueller and crying Witch Hunt again. (Although you'll have to admit he's right about the facts all coming out.)

And then he comes full circle, attacking the media again...

 

[onekidanddone]

6 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Something's up. He's gone off the deep end with his tweets today.

He's trying to deflect first by attacking the media...

then by pounding his chest about his tariffs and tax cuts...

Apparently he doesn't think deflection alone is doing the trick, so he gets all defensive (inadvertently throwing his  *gag* wonderful son under the bus while he's at it) ...

...followed up by the umpteenth attack on Mueller and crying Witch Hunt again. (Although you'll have to admit he's right about the facts all coming out.)

And then he comes full circle, attacking the media again...

 

I thought they said the meeting was about adoption? They really should make some crib notes on their lies. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Also, facts don't develop over time. They simply are what they are. They don't change, alter or evolve, but remain ever unchanging.

[AmazonGrace]

"Facts develop" is a really nice way to say, "we had to change our previous lie because we got caught"

If he had bad information it's because people lied to him

[AmericanRose]

I don't understand how people fall in with this guy (Trump). He would never have your back if it risked endangering his own... though I guess maybe it's different when that guy is your parent!

[fraurosena]

Still scared. Still tweeting. Still lying.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

And now he’s an expert firefighter.

 

[Destiny]

13 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

And now he’s an expert firefighter.

 

Readily available water ... Do you even California bro? Cos, yeah, not so much. 

Shockingly, he knows zero things about living in California. 

[Cartmann99]

I've been thinking about getting one of those Trump baby balloon t-shirts. So far, this one is my favorite:

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "Trump tweeted what?!?"

Spoiler

President Trump is a lawyer’s client from hell. He lacks self-control, cannot tell the truth and will not absorb legal advice he doesn’t like. Most clients don’t incriminate themselves in public. Again and again. Trump does, however.

The Post reported:

“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,” the president wrote in one of several early morning tweets Sunday, many of which took aim at the media. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics — and it went nowhere.”

He concluded by further distancing himself from the meeting his son arranged, writing: “I did not know about it!”

Trump was responding to a Washington Post report this weekend that although he does not think his eldest son intentionally broke the law, he is worried that Trump Jr. may have unintentionally stumbled into legal jeopardy and is embroiled in [special counsel Robert S.] Mueller’s investigation largely because of his connection to the president.

That’s worse than acknowledging to NBC’s Lester Holt that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired then-FBI Director James B. Comey. It’s worse than his nonstop attempts to obstruct the prosecutors — who are investigating an obstruction-of-justice case. (You cannot make this stuff up.)

The tweet was awful for Trump and a gift to prosecutors in several respects. Most important, Trump confirmed that the meeting with Russians was designed to obtain something valuable — previously undisclosed dirt on Hillary Clinton. That arguably would violate federal law prohibiting a candidate from asking for or receiving something of value from a foreign national. Put it this way: The most powerful evidence that Donald Trump Jr. violated campaign law comes from Donald Trump Jr.’s own email (“I love it” in anticipation of the Trump Tower dirt-finding meeting) and his own father’s tweet. Like father, like son.

Trump Sr.’s insistence that he did not know about the meeting in advance might, to an outside observer, suggest he knows it would be a problem if he did. But then again, he knew about the meeting after the fact and drafted a false statement, so it’s not as though prior knowledge is essential to the prosecutors’ obstruction case. (In any event, his promise at a campaign event at the time that he’d have a speech on Clinton’s nefarious conduct suggests he certainly knew what the Russians had promised.)

Trump fails to understand that the very meeting he is acknowledging is collusion — or conspiracy, if you will — to break campaign-finance laws. Insisting that it is legal to get dirt from a foreign national is politically and morally offensive (Trump was picked by the Kremlin) and contradicts his claim the Russians didn’t want him to win (another lie in the coverup). He knows they did — they had a meeting to help his campaign.

The email also suggests that Trump Jr. (allegedly with drafting help from his father) tried to conceal the true purpose of the meeting with a false cover story (it was all about adoption, you see.) According to news reports, Trump Jr. may also have  lied to Congress by suggesting his father was not intimately involved in drafting the false written statement.

Trump’s insistence that the meeting was perfectly legal and perfectly normal is wrong on both counts. No presidential campaign has gone to a hostile foreign power for help in winning an election. It’s a invitation for a foreign power to help pick our elected leaders, a constitutional abomination and a repudiation of the very concept of democracy (i.e., we pick our own leaders).

The political implications of Trump’s latest confession are quite stunning. Will the rest of the GOP go along with the position that it was perfectly fine for Russia to help Trump? That would sure be a change from “No collusion” (to “Collusion, so what?!”). I don’t know how a major political party can maintain the view that hostile powers have carte blanche to influence our elections. Every Republican in elected office or on the ballot should be asked his or her view on the matter.

The notion that collusion with a hostile power is no big deal is so preposterous and unpalatable, you would think Republicans would not dare try to defend Trump on this point. But this crowd? They might just try it.

 

[thoughtful]

It's been clear for a long time that Donald believes in the old adage "The best defense is a good offense."

Problem is, he is unable to understand how important that penultimate word is.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump at a precarious moment in his presidency: Privately brooding and publicly roaring"

Spoiler

In private, President Trump spent much of the past week brooding, as he often does. He has been anxious about the Russia ­investigation’s widening fallout, with his former campaign chairman standing trial. And he has fretted that he is failing to accrue enough political credit for what he claims as triumphs.

At rare moments of introspection for the famously self-centered president, Trump has also expressed to confidants lingering unease about how some in his orbit — including his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. — are ensnared in the Russia probe, in his assessment simply because of their ­connection to him.

Yet in public, Trump is a man roaring. The president, more than ever, is channeling his internal frustration and fear into a ravenous maw of grievance and invective. He is churning out false statements with greater frequency and attacking his perceived enemies with intensifying fury. A fresh broadside came on Twitter at 11:37 p.m. Friday, mocking basketball superstar LeBron James and calling CNN’s Don Lemon “the dumbest man on television.”

This is the new, uneasy reality for Trump at an especially precarious moment of his presidency, with the Republican Party struggling to keep control of Congress, where a Democratic takeover brings with it the specter of ­impeachment, and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s grip seeming to tighten on the president and his circle.

Trump, who has decamped to his New Jersey golf estate for an 11-day working vacation, is at a critical juncture in the Russia investigation as he decides in coming days whether to sit for an interview with Mueller or defy investigators and risk being issued a subpoena.

“He’s more definitive than ever: This investigation should end now, and Mueller should put out what he has,” said Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney. “He doesn’t think they have anything, and he wants the country to move on.”

This portrait of Trump behind the scenes is based on interviews with 14 administration officials, presidential friends and outside advisers to the White House, many of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments.

Trump appeared to stand in conflict with his own government when he blasted the “Russian hoax” just hours after his national security team gathered at the White House on Thursday in a rare show of force to warn that Russia is yet again trying to interfere in U.S. elections. But a White House spokesman said Trump instructed them to hold the news conference and was adamant that they explain what the administration is doing to safeguard the ­midterm elections.

The frequency of the president’s mistruths has picked up, as well. The Washington Post Fact Checker found last week that Trump has now made 4,229 false or misleading claims so far in his presidency — an average of nearly 7.6 such claims per day, and an increase of 978 in just two months.

The campaign trail — where Trump held three mega-rallies in five days — has allowed him something of a respite, a chance for the reality-TV-star-turned-president to repackage his anger as something more campy, delivered with a showman’s élan.

On Thursday night, the president turned a Pennsylvania rally to support Republican Senate candidate Lou Barletta into a Trumpian grieve-fest, returning repeatedly to his favorite foil — the “fake, fake, disgusting news,” as he bellowed — to portray himself as a victim of chronically unfair coverage from “horrible, horrendous people.”

“The president is rightfully frustrated,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Thursday, going on to argue that “90 percent of the coverage on him is negative.”

Trump’s indignation with the Mueller investigation has long been evident, but it is boiling over with growing ferocity. He has tweeted the phrase “witch hunt” a combined 46 times in June and July, up from 29 times in April and May, and more and more he is calling out Mueller by name.

Trump’s lawyers say it is the president himself who is calling the shots in what is becoming an all-out public relations blitz to discredit Mueller.

“With his great feel for public opinion and how to deal with it, he has a sense about what would work, what to say,” Giuliani said. “He sort of determines the public strategy, and we get his approval and input for the legal strategy.”

Trump has told some associates that Giuliani has convinced him Mueller has nothing incriminating about him. “Rudy’s told him the other player is bluffing with a pair of 2’s,” said one Trump adviser. And Trump has latched onto Giuliani’s talking point that “collusion is not a crime,” believing it is catchy and brilliantly simplistic, according to people with knowledge of internal talks.

Still, Trump has confided to friends and advisers that he is worried the Mueller probe could destroy the lives of what he calls “innocent and decent people” — namely Trump Jr., who is under scrutiny by Mueller for his role organizing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. As one adviser described the president’s thinking, he does not believe his son purposefully broke the law, but is fearful nonetheless that Trump Jr. inadvertently may have wandered into legal ­jeopardy.

In a tweet early Sunday, Trump called it “a complete fabrication” that he was worried about his eldest son. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics — and it went nowhere,” the president wrote. “I did not know about it.”

Trump also has seethed privately about the trial of Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman. As coverage of the trial played on cable television in a blinking loop all around him this past week, he kept hearing another name on the shows: Trump.

The president privately fumed to one friend after another — on Air Force One, in the Oval Office and over the phone — that Manafort “has absolutely nothing to do with me,” according to people close to him. Although Trump tells them he feels bad for Manafort, he also has been complimentary of Judge T.S. Ellis, who has asked sharp questions of Mueller’s prosecutors.

“He is completely outraged by the way Manafort has been treated, with the solitary confinement and all of that,” Giuliani said. “It’s obvious to him that they’re all but torturing Manafort in order to try to get him to flip.”

As Trump sees it, Mueller is aggressively prosecuting Manafort — detailing his alleged tax evasion and bank fraud scheme and flashing snapshots of his extravagant wardrobe for the jury — to deliberately embarrass Trump and undermine his presidency. And, according to people familiar with the president’s thinking, he believes the news ­media is complicit.

From his White House residence Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted that Manafort may be treated worse by the criminal justice system than Al “Scarface” Capone, whom he identified as “legendary mob boss, killer and ‘Public Enemy Number One.’ ” He later called around to some advisers asking what they thought of the tweet, proud that he had come up with the Capone comparison.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who has been discussing the case with Trump, said, “If after two years of investigating possible Russian collusion, the crown jewel is bringing charges against Paul Manafort, then one would have to ask, why did the FBI not embark on that effort without a special prosecutor?”

Trump on Wednesday took his complaint that his political appointees at the Justice Department were not protecting him and his family and associates from the investigation to a new level when he tweeted, apparently on a whim, that “Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.” Trump’s lawyers later explained that the president was voicing his opinion, not giving an order, lest the presidential tweet provide Mueller fresh evidence of obstruction of justice.

Trump’s advisers said they never thought the president would actually move to stop the probe. “There is no desire here to have that whole sideshow,” Giuliani said. But they knew Trump would not let what he considers the unfair prosecution of Manafort and media coverage pass without speaking publicly.

One prominent Trump ally in the evangelical community, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., seemed to channel the president’s views when he later tweeted that Sessions was a “phony pretending to be pro-” Trump, a tweet that was circulated widely among Trump’s friends and aides.

For nearly 80 minutes on stage in a packed Wilkes-Barre, Pa., arena, where supporters cheered his flourishes and cut him off at the mere mention of Clinton’s name to chant “Lock her up,” the president was able to relieve some of his pressure with a combination of riffing and shtick. It was an act that, finally, he controlled.

Susan Price, 72, drove through pelting rain to attend — and, when the skies cleared as she pulled up at the arena, she saw symbolism.

“We want Trump to do exactly what he’s been doing and do more,” Price said. “And give him the encouragement to overcome all of the various forces that are trying to take him down, whatever their motives are.”

He is ramping up his travel schedule — a rigorous pace that he recently boasted would grow to six or seven days a week this fall — which will keep him in front of his adoring base. Midterm elections typically are referendums on the incumbent president, but by injecting himself so squarely at the center of this year’s House and Senate contests, Trump is further personalizing the Nov. 6 elections.

“The president is the single best messenger for the Republican Party, and every time he is on the campaign trail helping other Republicans win, it is a reminder to the American people of what this administration has been able to accomplish in a very short period of time,” said Corey Lewandowski, an unofficial Trump adviser who served as his first campaign ­manager.

Trump loves the frenzied, raucous energy of these events, and often leaves them buoyed, people close to him said. At times, when advisers have proposed a rally in several weeks, the president has agreed to do it — but suggested they hold it as soon as possible.

To the delight of aides, Trump also has become more disciplined on the campaign trail, keeping at least part of his focus on the candidate he is there to support, and often calling him or her onstage. Early on, Trump sometimes appeared at rallies where the local candidate seemed secondary — as in Alabama last year, where he famously delivered something of an anti-endorsement of then-Sen. Luther Strange, who looked on uncomfortably.

But advisers have impressed upon Trump the value of keeping his focus on the Republicans he is supporting, in part by showing him the positive headlines and articles in the local media that follow when he successfully stays on message.

There have been other signs of stability, too. After months of speculation that John F. Kelly would leave his job as White House chief of staff — fueled in part by Trump, who had been surveying associates about a replacement — Kelly announced Monday that he would be staying on through the president’s 2020 reelection campaign.

But while Trump settles in with Kelly, he increasingly is seeking counsel from outside allies who are urging a more combative approach to the Russia probe. He has been in regular contact with Meadows and Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, while Lewandowski and former deputy campaign manager David Bossie accompanied him on Air Force One to Tuesday’s rally in Tampa, where Trump publicly praised them.

Trump made a surprise call into Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show Wednesday to congratulate the conservative icon on his 30th anniversary on the air. Trump mused aloud with Limbaugh about whether it would be more politically advantageous for him to shut down the government over border wall funding before or after the November elections.

“I’ve heard a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, don’t do it before the election. We’ll upset the applecart,’ ” Trump said. But, he added, “I actually think it’s a great campaign issue. I think it would be great before.”

"...11 day working vacation..." at his golf club in New Jersey. So, that means, tweeting, golfing, and watching Faux. Must be nice.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

And now he’s an expert firefighter.

 

Maybe I’ll just an uneducated ebil liberal snowflake but what does he mean about water being diverted to the Pacific Ocean. Does he believe his own lies? 

My brain hurts and I need chocolate  

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[JMarie]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

And now he’s an expert firefighter.

 

So he's saying we have "bad" environmental laws that are forcing us to dump water into the ocean?  Really?  Which laws, specifically?