Trump 35: Still an Asshole to Everyone but Ivanka

[fraurosena]

The 2 most overlooked, inexplicable stories from Bob Woodward’s Trump book

Quote

President Trump's denials of the stories in Bob Woodward's new book on Wednesday turned to tacit admission: Trump may be an unwieldy boss, he seemed to admit, but that's part of why Americans elected him.

"I’m tough as hell on people & if I weren’t, nothing would get done,” Trump tweeted. “Also, I question everybody & everything-which is why I got elected!"

It's interesting spin. But Trump's defense here doesn't actually line up with what we know about Woodward's book. Woodward doesn't just paint Trump as a president who ruffles feathers, you see, but also as a man who struggles with very basic facts about very important matters — including on things about which he should definitely know better.

Two anecdotes that speak to this got short shrift Tuesday, but it's worth raising them again.

The first is Trump's apparent confusion about South Korea's importance as an ally. According to Woodward, Trump at one point asked his military leaders why the United States couldn't just withdraw from the Korean Peninsula. They explained to him that it would mean we wouldn't know about North Korean missile launches for 15 minutes rather than learning about them almost instantly, within seven seconds. This is the flap that led Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to reportedly suggest Trump was intellectually and temperamentally akin to “a fifth- or sixth-grader."

What The Post's story Tuesday didn't detail, though, is that this exchange didn't happen early in Trump's presidency; it came on Jan. 19, 2018 — almost exactly one full year into it. It came months after North Korea had threatened an attack on Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. It also came a couple months after North Korea said it had developed a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach the continental United States.

What got Mattis's goat, according to the book, was that he felt like they'd had this exact conversation many times before, and Trump refused to either remember or process it. As Mattis explained the reasons for a U.S.-South Korean alliance, Trump repeatedly returned to the idea that the United States is running a trade deficit with South Korea — suggesting the alliance was hurting the American economy. Mattis tried to explain that having troops in South Korea was actually the most cost-effective — and effective, period — means of preventing World War III. Trump, who often seems to misunderstand what exactly a trade deficit means, wouldn't have it.

"But we're losing so much money in trade with South Korea and others,” Trump pushes back at one point, according to Woodward.

At another: “We're spending massive amounts for very rich countries who aren't burden-sharing."

And at another: “I think we could be so rich if we weren't so stupid. We're being played [as] suckers, especially NATO."

Trump would argue this was merely him “question[ing] everybody and everything,” but it didn't seem to come off that way to Mattis. According to Woodward's reporting, it seemed to be Trump asking the same dumb, middle-school-aged questions for the millionth time. And it drew a curt rebuke from Mattis that took those in the room aback.

The other anecdote is Trump's comments about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who passed away a week and a half ago. In Woodward's telling, Trump was at a dinner with military leaders, including Mattis and Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he suggested McCain had been given an early release as a prisoner of war in Vietnam because of his father's military rank, a four-star admiral.

This is quite the opposite of the actual events: McCain turned down early release. And in fact, that may be the single biggest reason he is viewed as an American hero, because it meant he served for more than five years as a POW. Mattis had to correct Trump, according to Woodward, by saying, “No, Mr. President. I think you've got it reversed.” Trump responded: “Oh, okay."

But again, the timing is key. The dinner was held Feb. 8, 2017, shortly after Trump had been inaugurated. Just a year and a half earlier, Trump had caused arguably his first major splash of the 2016 campaign by attacking McCain's lack of war-hero bona fides. It was a major early inflection point in his 2015-16 Republican primary campaign. The men had a history, as well: Trump had questioned McCain's war-hero status back in 1999 and tangled with McCain regularly. How he could be so unaware of perhaps the seminal event in McCain's life — and the one which directly pertains to a war-hero debate which Trump participated in an extremely high-profile way just a couple years ago? It is inexplicable.

It's tempting to view Trump's conspiracy theorizing and falsehoods as a show or even a strategy. Perhaps he's doing it for the base! This anecdote suggests he's really just ill-informed, even about major issues in which he inserts himself. Either that or he's so committed to this ruse that he even makes himself out to be ill-informed behind closed doors with military leaders.

And combined with the South Korea story, it paints the picture of a man who indeed has lots of questions — probably more than he should.

 

[fraurosena]

This is an anonymous op-ed by a senior WH official. I am not sure what to make of it. I can't put my finger on it, but this seems to be a well thought out move, trying to assuage the public. Yeah, the presidunce is completely unfit, but don't worry, we have a WH resistance going on, and we'll keep you safe.  It is altogether a little too... I don't know. I guess it plays a little too neatly into everything that's playing out in public opinion at the moment, and it's setting off my spidey sense.

Then again, maybe I just have a suspicious mind.

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

Quote

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

 

[fraurosena]

Wait a minute... I think I know what's going on here...

The administration, Pencey-poo included, is preparing for the inevitable blue wave results of the midterms. They know the presidunce will be impeached soon thereafter. And now they are scrambling together their defence in an effort to not be co-indicted/ co-impeached along with him. 'See, we didn't agree with him, we were all so very busy resisting behind the scenes'.

I sincerely hope nobody falls for their ploy.

[AmazonGrace]

Anonymous op-ed in the failing New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Sept. 5, 2018

Spoiler

 

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

 

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[47of74]

Oh really, Fuck Face?

Quote

President Donald Trump suggested that he has photographs of former FBI director James Comey “kissing” special counsel Robert Mueller.

The president made the bizarre claims during a wide-ranging interview with the conservative Daily Caller website, whose correspondent asked Trump whether Mueller was interfering in the midterm elections by not ending his Russia probe by an artificial Sept. 1 deadline.

The president claimed he had a previous business dispute with Mueller, but he offered no specifics — and then claimed to have compromising photographs of the two former FBI directors together.

“I had a real business dispute,” Trump said. “And he’s Comey’s best friend, and I could give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other. You know, he’s Comey’s best friend.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

21 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Wait a minute... I think I know what's going on here...

The administration, Pencey-poo included, is preparing for the inevitable blue wave results of the midterms. They know the presidunce will be impeached soon thereafter. And now they are scrambling together their defence in an effort to not be co-indicted/ co-impeached along with him. 'See, we didn't agree with him, we were all so very busy resisting behind the scenes'.

I sincerely hope nobody falls for their ploy.

It's a bit of a cop out I think... Covering all the bases. Talking about civility in political discourse and reaching across the isle, yet there is a slam at the Democrat resistance.  We resist the amoral president... but hey if you like him here is a list of all  the great capitalist things this administration is doing.   We could have invoked the 25th Amendment but we didn't want to start a constitutional crisis... in the meantime here we are, trying to resist an elected president and pretending it's not a constitutional crisis.  We are unsung heroes for hating the amoral president, yet we lie for him in public so aren't we also amoral? 

 

Sorry for double posting the article, I should have updated.

I expect a drone strike at the NYT office by this time tomorrow.

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, AmazonGrace said:

Sorry for double posting the article, I should have updated.

No worries, it happens to me too sometimes when I'm in a hurry to post... 

I'm seeing all kinds of negative reactions to the op-ed btw. It looks like most people aren't buying it, and seeing it for the ploy that it is. Good.

 

This one made me laugh though:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

For once I agree with Sarah Sanders. The author should resign. Now he's enabling.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[nvmbr02]

No, anonymous Trump official, you're not 'part of the resistance.' You're a coward

Spoiler

A New York Times op-ed allegedly written by a senior Trump administration official has set the internet ablaze. Its headline: "I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration." Its premise: A group of Trump appointees is working from the inside to stop the president from fulfilling the parts of his agenda they disagree with.

Obviously, the writer and other like-minded higher-ups are not part of the "resistance" that's marching in the streets protesting.

The piece suggests America is currently under a "two-track presidency." If President Trump wants to do something the people in his administration think is good, they go along with it. If he wants to do something they think is bad, they find ways around it. This is in keeping with what the Bob Woodward book excerpt revealed: Senior officials are taking things off Trump's desk to keep him from seeing them.

Nobody who’s part of the real resistance should be celebrating this. If you work in this administration and carry out any part of Trump's agenda, you are enabling him, not undermining him. If we have a president so incompetent that his most trusted advisors have to play peekaboo to preserve national security, then those people should be working to get him out of office, not just spare us from his cruelest impulses.

The op-ed says Trump is anti-trade and anti-democratic. His leadership is characterized as  "impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective." It says he goes on long, repetitive rants and makes "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions." It says these "unsung heroes" are protecting America from Trump's "erratic behavior."

If they really believe there's a need to subvert the president to protect the country, they should be getting this person out of the White House. But they're too cowardly and afraid of the possible implications. They hand-wave the notion thusly:

“Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis."

How is it that utilizing the 25th Amendment of the Constitution would cause a crisis, but admitting to subverting a democratically elected leader wouldn't?

The truth is, Republicans don't want Trump out of office. They're clearly pleased with this “two-track” arrangement. They're advancing the right-wing economic agenda that President Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz would have been championing while preserving their popularity with Trump's base.

If you're reading this, senior White House official, know this: You are not resisting Donald Trump. You are enabling him for your own benefit. That doesn't make you an unsung hero. It makes you a coward.

I found this article interesting. And I agree 100%,

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[JenniferJuniper]

36 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

No, anonymous Trump official, you're not 'part of the resistance.' You're a coward

Or you're Mike Pence looking for a promotion.

[nvmbr02]

29 minutes ago, JenniferJuniper said:

Or you're Mike Pence looking for a promotion.

Or you are both Mike Pence and a coward. 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

[Rachel333]

Is that an admission?

[GreyhoundFan]

[onekidanddone]

9 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This great Halal restaurant I know.  Not because Obama or I am Muslim but because it would send the birthers into a head spinning fit. 

And because the owners are a married couple and are really nice folks.  We can go months without going and when we finally go back they always remember us. 

 

[Howl]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

This is an anonymous op-ed by a senior WH official. I am not sure what to make of it. I can't put my finger on it, but this seems to be a well thought out move, trying to assuage the public. Yeah, the presidunce is completely unfit, but don't worry, we have a WH resistance going on, and we'll keep you safe.  It is altogether a little too... I don't know. I guess it plays a little too neatly into everything that's playing out in public opinion at the moment, and it's setting off my spidey sense.

Ditto, @fraurosena.  It's powerful stuff, but I immediately began thinking, why this, why NOW?  What is the strategic importance?  Is there some information to be released that is going to blow up the White House and they want to get ahead of the curve?  Are they desperate to get Trump the hell out and get Pence in ASAP?  I'm gettin' the tingles. 

[GreyhoundFan]