Trump 36: We Shall Overcome

[AmazonGrace]

You know the forests won't get raked unless immigrants do it cheap. 

[AmazonGrace]

More man not smart: 

 

 

The Finnish president factchecks Trump: 

https://www.is.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000005903733.html

Spoiler alert: The conversation never happened. 

[AmazonGrace]

Man not smart strike again 

 

[Howl]

O. M. G.  Best thing evah!

 

[47of74]

The devil made me do it....again.

 

[fraurosena]

He really does take every opportunity to show off his stupidity, doesn't he?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The season finale of John Oliver was excellent:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Alisamer]

On November 18, 2018 at 10:08 AM, mamallama said:

Leaving aside the question of who will rake the forests and what money we'll pay them with, what do we do with the leaves and brush we rake up?  Won't that be sitting somewhere else ready to burn down that area?

Maybe somebody can find an early elementary school teacher to explain to him how forests work, and how the fallen leaves become the dirt and nutrients to feed the trees. 

He really is operating on preschool level. "I'm here to see the firefighters!" Did they give him a little plastic fire hat, and let him ride on a firetruck?

I thought he was showing signs of dementia even before he was elected, but maybe the stress of the job has ramped things up. I'd like to know if he's started hiding things around the White House yet, and whether he can always recognize Barron. At this rate he'll be wandering off in his pajamas by 2020, assuming he's not in prison by then.

It's probably that he's just one of the stupidest people alive, and managed to live to adulthood on a combo of decent genes and the protection of wealth. But at his age they can get away with calling it dementia. I hope Melania or Ivanka have got Powers of Attorney lined up, because he's going to be needing round-the-clock care within the next 5-10 years.

Which might be his out, for 2020. Announce that he'd love to continue to MAGA, as the most popular president ever in the universe, but sadly his doctors have made it clear it's necessary for him to step down, and retire to Mar-A-Lago. So sad. Boohoo.

I hope he retires to prison, in an orange jumpsuit. But at this point anything to get that moron away from the White House will work.

[47of74]

25 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Maybe somebody can find an early elementary school teacher to explain to him how forests work, and how the fallen leaves become the dirt and nutrients to feed the trees.

Well I don't know if there's enough one syllable words to do that job.

[Audrey2]

34 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Which might be his out, for 2020. Announce that he'd love to continue to MAGA, as the most popular president ever in the universe, but sadly his doctors have made it clear it's necessary for him to step down, and retire to Mar-A-Lago. So sad. Boohoo.

Sadly, I don't think it will go this way. There will be another letter released by some mysterious doctor in 2020 that says he is the best smartest healthiest most athletic president ever and that he easily can serve four more terms!

We all know that there is real medical care, which I think the president has to do like his annual physical, and the fish story that Trump will tell.

[fraurosena]

With Acosta back at his job in the WH, you may have thought everything was over and done with. Not so. Sarah Sanders and William Shine tried to retroactively do due process. CNN isn't falling for it, as the link in the tweet shows. Attached with the link is also a complete transcript of the court hearing. Quite interesting to read, if you're into that kind of thing. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Takes all of the oxygen out’: Trump further divides political map for 2020"

Spoiler

As the final votes from the midterm elections rolled in last week, it became clear that President Trump’s near-constant campaign presence helped transform the American political map — effectively erasing lighter shades of red and blue.

The Trump effect now sets the stage for an intensely tribal 2020 showdown over his reelection, with a smaller and heavily rural Republican Party facing off against a growing Democratic coalition of suburban and urban residents in higher-income states.

This dynamic will play out as Trump inevitably remains the dominant issue in nearly every facet of American politics, at once electrifying and polarizing, and constantly needling his friends and foes to react to his unpredictable moves and blistering Twitter feed.

“Trump just overwhelms and takes all of the oxygen out of the room and it’s all focused on him,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a critic of the president who declined to run for reelection.

“Republican primary voters, that subset of a subset, that’s Trump’s party,” he continued. “It’ll continue to be like this and be exaggerated in 2020 because they’ll draw even more turnout on the other side.”

Trump’s influence over the midterms was apparent almost immediately after he took over the electoral spotlight within the final month with a barrage of rallies laced with anti-immigrant rhetoric and falsehoods.

Voters who had been absent all cycle suddenly tuned in with interest.

Republicans in rural parts of Kentucky, Georgia and Tennessee were newly excited about the election, according to Democratic polling in those races, increasingly favorable toward the president and cheered by the recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. In suburban, wealthier parts of the country such as Northern Virginia, the opposite was happening, as moderates recoiled.

“Same president, same message,” said Democratic pollster Fred Yang, who was working for candidates in rural and suburban areas. “He sort of polarized the choices.”

Strategists from both parties say the president, in effect, erected a wall that broke the blue wave, allowing Republicans to hold onto key House seats and defeat Democratic Senate incumbents in conservative Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota. The same strategy, however, empowered Democrats to win decisive victories in formerly Republican suburbs in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, California and the otherwise reliably red state of Texas.

“If I didn’t do those stops, we would definitely not have control of the Senate,” Trump boasted in an interview last week with the Daily Caller, a conservative website. “Nobody has ever had a greater impact.”

Trump emerged in firm control of a Republican Party with an expanded majority in the U.S. Senate and a viable path to reelection, if he can hold onto his historic support in Florida and the industrial Midwestern states that nonetheless elected Democrats statewide this year.

But that is little consolation for the parts of his party that were sacrificed in the process.

“It was very difficult to try to make a case — particularly to suburban, college-educated women who were so upset with the president — to vote for me when they felt there needed to be a greater check on his power,” said Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), who lost his suburban Denver district by more than 11 points after winning by 8 points in 2016.

What was bad for Republicans in tony professional neighborhoods was good for the party in more rural parts of the country. Trump’s visit in the closing weeks to a district near Erie, Pa., for example, was seen by Democrats as a key boost for Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), who won reelection over a moderate Democratic challenger.

“What was made clear by this election is that Trump’s supporters in places like this are going to continue to support him because they feel they have been left behind,” said Tony Coppola, who managed Ron DiNicola’s losing Democratic campaign in that district.

Assessing Trump’s on-the-ground impact from his personal appearances is difficult.

Two eleventh-hour rallies in conservative bastions of southwest Florida and the Panhandle appear to have helped pull Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis and Sen.-elect Rick Scott across the finish line.

But multiple appearances in West Virginia and Montana were not enough to topple the Democratic incumbents in those heavily pro-Trump states.

And political strategists in both parties believe Trump’s rhetoric, particularly concerning the refu­gee caravan, contributed to GOP defeats in Nevada and Arizona.

These limits are likely to constrain the party going forward. “The states where we saw the most success with the rallies were states where he won by 20 points or 30 points or 40 points,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) who oversaw the GOP’s Senate effort this cycle and is expected to face a difficult reelection race in 2020.

One clear example of the dynamic came in rural Kentucky, where Democrat Amy McGrath, a well-funded former Marine pilot, tried to run beyond her party’s national brand among voters, in part by opening 19 field offices in the district.

At a rally there in October, Trump criticized her, calling McGrath an “extreme liberal, chosen by Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters — that’s a real beauty — and the angry Democrat mob” — even though McGrath had defeated another candidate favored by the Democratic Party in the primary.

The final internal McGrath campaign poll showed Trump’s approval increasing in the district over the course of October, along with the share of the electorate who considered the confirmation of Kavanaugh important. On Election Day, McGrath’s Republican opponent, Rep. Garland “Andy” Barr, posted higher numbers in the rural southeastern parts of the state than McGrath’s team had expected, Yang said.

That rural turnout matched by Democratic enthusiasm in cities and suburbs drove nationwide voting to the highest levels for midterm elections since 1914, before women were guaranteed a right to vote under the 19th Amendment, according to Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who studies historical voting patterns.

“The major story is that Trump has clearly created an engaged electorate,” he said. “As I look forward to what is going to happen in 2020, unless conditions change, we are probably looking at one of the highest turnout elections in our nation’s history.”

While Trump was able to galvanize his base, Trump’s effect on his opponents was even more pronounced nationally. A voter file analysis by the left-leaning firm Catalist shows that the same anti-Trump enthusiasm that led to a massive Democratic fundraising advantage and strong candidate recruitment, also showed up at the polls, with the overall share of nonwhite voters rising about 3 points this cycle compared to 2014.

Network exit polls gathered from CNN found shifts in how key parts of the electorate voted compared to 2016. Nearly 6 in 10 white college-educated women voted for a Democratic House candidates, an eight-point increase from the 51 percent that supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. Young people also moved, with 67 percent of voters under the age of 30 supporting a Democrat in the House, compared to 55 percent who supported Clinton.

Joel Benenson, the pollster for both of President Barack Obama’s national campaigns, said the election results call to mind the old political maxim that a politician’s greatest strength can also be a weakness, with a backlash growing against the very attributes that allowed Trump to win in 2016.

“You have to realize that Trump may be punching himself out,” Benenson said.

There were regional shifts, as well, that could affect the 2020 landscape. Republicans performed much worse in states along the southwest border and in western states such as Montana and Colorado.

“In the places we lost, he remains enormously popular. But there are fewer of those places now,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

In Colorado, a historic number of voters unaffiliated with either of the main political parties turned in ballots. Of that group, which was larger than the number of Republican or Democratic voters, the overwhelming majority voted Democratic, according to a post-election poll by Magellan Strategies, a Republican firm.

Fewer than one in four of unaffiliated voters in the state said they expected to support Trump in the 2020 election.

In Georgia, the diverging energies of voters showed up in the contrast between statewide results and the fortunes of suburban Republican members of Congress. Rep. Karen Handel (R) lost the suburban seat she had won in a special election in 2017. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux is seeking a recount in her race against Rep. Rob Woodall (R), who won by less than 0.5 percent in his district outside Atlanta. Two years earlier, he had won by 20 points. At the same time, Republican Brian Kemp won the gubernatorial race behind strong support from the state’s more rural areas.

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a Trump ally, defended the president and said the Democrats deserve more credit for how they ran campaigns, including in Georgia, where Handel was defeated in the Atlanta suburbs.

“I don’t think Republicans did a good enough job of telling America what the reality really is,” Perdue said. “Health care was a bigger issue in the suburbs than President Trump.”

Among many congressional Republicans, the election aftermath brought a bleak and rattled aura as they grappled with the loss of the House majority and the seemingly unmovable presence of Trump in their political lives and fortunes.

Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), who served as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee this year, tersely offered only a few vague statements when asked whether Trump was a boost or burden for his party.

“I’m not focused on looking backward, I’m looking forward,” Stivers said.

When asked whether Trump will lift the GOP in the suburbs in the run-up to the 2020 elections, Stivers demurred again.

“He’s the president and I think he’s going to be the president,” he said.

Stivers was then asked whether he was implying that the answer to the question “is not ‘yes.’ ”

“It’s not a ‘no,’ ” he said with a slight chuckle as he quickly walked away.

 

[AmazonGrace]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

He really does take every opportunity to show off his stupidity, doesn't he?

 

You can't blame an old man for mixing up the names of strip clubs he used to frequent. 

[TuringMachine]

On 11/18/2018 at 2:32 AM, AmazonGrace said:

Man not smart: 

 

Our president may have spoken of "doing things" but he certainly didn't say we don't have forest fires because we rake the forests. 1. We have forest fires. 2. We don't rake the forests. 3. There are  not enough  people in Finland to rake all the forests. 4. The polar circle runs through our country so Californian climate is a tad different from Finland. 

So my mother’s friend is a trump supporter and she called this weekend after remembering we live in California to discuss the presidents ingenuous fire solution. My mom had to explain to her that in California, unlike Finland, we have this problem where it doesn’t rain for long periods of time. 

Also I know the son of the woman in the video, which is cool. 

[thoughtful]

9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“You have to realize that Trump may be punching himself out,” Benenson said.

I'm a nonviolent person, but I have to admit I like the image this calls to mind.

[GreyhoundFan]

Manbaby is frightened for his own personal safety, not about the safety of our armed forces: "White House discusses possible Trump visit to troops in Iraq or Afghanistan"

Spoiler

President Trump has begun telling advisers that he may visit troops in a combat zone for the first time in his presidency, as he has come under increasing scrutiny for his treatment of military affairs and failure to visit service members deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq.

Trump has so far declined to visit those combat regions, saying he does not want to associate himself with wars he views as failures, according to current and former advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Current advisers said Trump is not expected to visit a war zone during the Thanksgiving break, which he will spend at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida.

The president has often cast himself as a champion of the Pentagon, invoking the strength and size of the military at his campaign rallies and on Twitter. At the same time, he has frequently criticized U.S. military missions and decisions while personally attacking some former military leaders, contributing to a complicated relationship with the armed forces he commands.

Although he signed off on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s requests to bolster the American military presence in Afghanistan and Syria and retain the footprint in Iraq, Trump isn’t a fan of U.S. military operations there.

In meetings about a potential visit, he has described the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan as “a total shame,” according to the advisers. He also cited the long flights and potential security risks as reasons he has avoided combat-zone visits, they said.

Questioned last week about why he has not visited American troops deployed in overseas conflicts, Trump indicated during a Fox News interview that a trip was in the works.

“I think you will see that happen,” Trump said in the interview with Chris Wallace that aired Sunday. “There are things that are being planned. We don’t want to talk about it because of security reasons and everything else.” 

The president also repeated his erroneous contention that he was opposed to the Iraq War. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has found that Trump initially expressed support for the invasion and did not register public objections until more than a year after the war began.

“I think it was a tremendous mistake, should never have happened,” Trump told Wallace. 

“But this is about the soldiers, sir,” Wallace responded.

“You’re right,” Trump said. “I don’t think anybody’s been more with the military than I have, as a president. In terms of funding, in terms of all of the things I’ve been able to get them, including the vets.”

Trump has spoken privately about his fears over risks to his own life, according to a former senior White House official, who has discussed the issue with the president and spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about Trump’s concerns. 

“He’s never been interested in going,” the official said of Trump visiting troops in a combat zone, citing conversations with the president. “He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.”

Pressure for Trump to make such a visit has been building for months. Eliot Cohen, a former George W. Bush administration official and Trump critic, has raised the issue regularly in public. 

“The point is American servicemen and women are on the ground in these places,” Cohen said in an interview. “They are getting killed. I think any good leader would want to see something for themselves. And they would want to do something for the troops other than using them as props.”

Since Trump took office, about 60 American service members have died while deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, according to Pentagon statistics, including both “hostile” and “nonhostile” deaths.

Plans for a visit by Trump aren’t firm, several advisers said, and the president has only begun saying in recent weeks that it may need to happen. A White House spokesman declined to comment on presidential visits, citing security concerns.  

The president has come under increasing scrutiny for his behavior toward the military in recent weeks. He attacked the former head of U.S. Special Operations Command, retired Adm. William H. McRaven, on Sunday for his role in catching and killing Osama bin Laden, calling him a supporter of Hillary Clinton and saying that the al-Qaeda leader should have been caught sooner in Pakistan. McRaven responded in a statement saying he did not endorse Clinton during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump recently skipped a cemetery service marking the end of World War I in France, citing poor weather. He also did not go to Arlington National Cemetery two days later on Veterans Day, later expressing rare regret for missing the occasion.

“I should have done that,” he said in the Fox interview.

Trump has sent thousands of troops to the border with Mexico in anticipation of a Central American migrant caravan in what his critics labeled a preelection stunt designed to shore up anti-immigration sentiment within his base. Mattis has described the mission as good training and necessary support for the Department of Homeland Security.

The history of presidents visiting American troops on active deployments dates back decades and gives presidents a sense of what is happening on the ground — while sending a message to troops that the government at home appreciates their personal sacrifices.

During the Korean War, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s pledge to go to Korea helped propel him into the presidency over Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower followed through with a visit in 1952.

Lyndon B. Johnson met with troops at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam in 1966, telling them he had come only to say how proud he was of what they were doing and the way they were doing it. He also visited forces there the next year.

George H.W. Bush spent Thanksgiving with American troops in Saudi Arabia during Desert Shield in 1990 and New Year’s with troops in Somalia in 1993. His successor, Bill Clinton, visited troops in Bosnia in 1996 and spent Thanksgiving with troops in Kosovo in 1999.

George W. Bush made a surprise Thanksgiving visit to troops in Iraq months after the invasion in 2003 and went to the country three additional times after that while president. At the time, the U.S. military footprint in the country was building, ultimately numbering about 170,000 troops in Iraq at the peak of a surge in 2007.

Mark Hertling, a retired three-star general, helped organize the surprise visit in 2003.

About six officers knew Bush was coming, he said, recounting how the president flew into the international airport in the wee hours of the morning and stayed hidden until the troops were in a large mess hall. Bush later served turkey and received resounding applause.

“The troops in the field need to know their efforts are not being wasted,” Hertling said. “It shows [that] the government and the people have their back.”

The troop presence in Afghanistan grew during the first half of the Obama administration, reaching a peak of about 100,000 in 2011. President Barack Obama visited the country four times as president, most recently in 2014, and made one trip to Iraq shortly after his first inauguration, meeting with American forces each time. He had previously visited the combat zones in both countries as a U.S. senator.

Trump’s advisers say his lack of a visit does not represent a lack of interest in or disrespect for the military. There are military figures in his administration that he admires, his advisers say: Gen. Mark Milley, the chief of staff of the Army, and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former White House adviser who now works for Vice President Pence.

The president was persuaded to sign a spending bill that he did not like by aides who brought him lists of military equipment the money would buy — even down to the specific planes and ships, current and former White House aides said. 

Trump frequently touts the strength of the U.S. military at his political rallies, having signed off on a $716 billion budget for the Pentagon this year that included the largest base budget in adjusted terms since World War II.

Current and former aides said Trump is somber when making military decisions and has expressed concern about troops dying on his watch. They also note that Trump has visited domestic military bases and visited troops while overseas, such as a stop in Japan last fall, while also bringing military visitors into the Oval Office. 

“I have never heard him show any sort of disrespect toward the military in private,” said one former senior administration official. “Any time you go anywhere with him in the military, he is overwhelmingly popular.”

According to current and former aides, Trump was shaken after visiting Dover Air Force Base shortly after his inauguration to receive the remains of a Navy SEAL killed in Yemen, his first trip to meet a grieving family. He has not returned since. 

The president, who attacked a Gold Star family on the campaign trail in 2016, has shown little interest in some of the minutiae of the military and regularly complains about the headaches involved in its entanglements around the world, aides said. 

For most of Trump’s tenure, a trip to Iraq or Afghanistan would have carried real security challenges and political complications, U.S. officials said.

Iraq was heading into elections during the president’s first year in office, and a visit by Trump around the time of the controversy over Trump’s travel ban affecting Muslim-majority countries could have further complicated efforts by the U.S.-backed prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to secure reelection in May.

In Afghanistan, the security situation has deteriorated. In September 2017, Mattis was the target of a failed rocket attack at Kabul airport. A month later, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a secret visit to Afghanistan but didn’t leave Bagram air base, in part owing to security concerns.

Still, if the president wanted to visit American troops deployed to one of the countries, U.S. military officials would find a way to organize the trip as they have done in the past, according to officials familiar with the matter. He could easily stop at Bagram for a few hours as Tillerson did, they said.

Hertling said he remembered a visit by the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) to Iraq in the worst days of the conflict, and McCain wanted to go to Mosul despite heavy fighting. The military blanched. 

“We wanted to take him anywhere but Mosul,” Hertling said. “He found out about it and wanted to go there. So we went.” 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people want to kill him.”

 

Orange is the new yellow.

[47of74]

Orange is the new yellow.

Apologies in advance for any mental images.

Fornicate Face would give his laundry a new orange stain if he had to go in to such situations. Even more than he probably has already.

I feel so sorry for the people who have to do his laundry.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Most charities that deserted Trump’s Florida club after Charlottesville haven’t come back"

Spoiler

Last year, 22 charities deserted President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. — canceling high-dollar events after Trump said there were “very fine people” among violent white-nationalist protesters in Charlottesville.

This year, only two are coming back.

A survey by The Washington Post could only find six groups planning big-money evening banquets this winter at the club, where Trump is scheduled to arrive Tuesday for Thanksgiving. Several are new clients, aligned with Trump’s politics, including a group of young conservatives and a gathering of superfans called Trumpettes USA.

Before Charlottesville, the number of high-dollar events at Trump’s club was as much as 22 in a single season of galas.

Trump seems to have self-disrupted the banquet business at Mar-a-Lago, a part of his company that once seemed undisruptable. After all, he owned one of two major party venues on a small island whose super-rich residents love to party and hate to leave. How could that go wrong?

“It may have been crippled, temporarily,” said Shannon Donnelly, the society editor for the Palm Beach Daily News, talking about the banquet business at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s problem is not that he’s lost the support of Palm Beach’s wealthy winter snowbirds: Donnelly said they still like him, by and large. The problem, as the past two years have shown, is that many of the island’s biggest banquets are linked to national charities, who must schedule their galas months in advance.

If they went back to Mar-a-Lago, they would be linking their national reputations — again — to the words of an unpredictable president. Donnelly said she thought Trump could still win back their business: “Depends on what Donald says next.”

The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the special-events business at Mar-a-Lago.

Special events and ballroom rentals are not Mar-a-Lago’s only source of income. It reported $25 million in revenue last year, which also includes members’ dues and income from restaurants, guest rooms and wedding rentals.

But the ballroom rentals were previously a key part of the club’s value. They didn’t just bring in money. They brought in Palm Beach itself — allowing Trump to play host to the old-money crowd that once regarded him as a garish outsider.

That has changed.

To measure Mar-a-Lago’s reduction in business, The Post examined public calendars of Palm Beach society events and interviews with Mar-a-Lago’s current or former customers.

That tally found about 20 events planned between Halloween and Mother’s Day, where outside groups had paid Trump’s club to rent space, including the six galas.

Those totals appeared lower than the figures for the same period in 2016 to 2017, when Trump was elected. That year, The Post counted 40 events, including 22 high-dollar galas.

This year, many of Trump’s old customers are holding their events at his longtime rival, a Palm Beach resort called the Breakers. Its charity business increased 50 percent last year. And this year, Trump’s loss is still their gain.

“Almost all [the charities] are returning to The Breakers next year and we are very happy to have them back,” said Paul Leone, CEO of Trump’s rival, in a written statement.

The groups holding events at Mar-a-Lago include two charities that left last year and are now returning. One, an eye institute at the University of Miami, said they came back to Mar-a-Lago only when the Breakers — its first choice — didn’t have availability.

The other, a group that helps adults with disabilities, said they came back for a simple reason: money.

“Our job is to raise money for the clients we serve,” Glen Torcivia, a board member at the Palm Beach Habilitation Center, told the Palm Beach Post. When they moved their luncheon away from Mar-a-Lago last year, they raised less money.

So: “We’re going back to Mar-a-Lago,” Torcivia told the Palm Beach Post.

Another set of Mar-a-Lago customers this season are longtime clients who never left, even after Charlottesville.

The Palm Beach Police Foundation — which once gave Trump an award after he donated $150,000 he had gotten from another family’s charity — is coming back for a gala. The World Affairs Council of Palm Beach, which has hosted speakers at the club, is holding a talk by foreign-affairs expert Gordon Chang called “Trump, China and North Korea: War or Peace?”

“I certainly did not choose the venue. They just invited me to speak,” Chang said in a phone interview. He said that, if Trump were to drop by during Chang’s remarks, the president may not like what he hears: Chang believes that Trump has allowed North Korea too much leeway to violate and evade sanctions this year, as Trump says he “fell in love” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“It would extremely unlikely that the president would like what I’ve said about his policies on North Korea,” Chang said.

Other events at the club will include two dinners put on by the Marriott Vacation Club, a timeshare business. The dinners, which Marriott owners can buy with “points” earned in Marriott’s system, could mark the first time that dinner at a sitting president’s home has been offered as a perk to timeshare owners.

There will be two car shows, which will use Mar-a-Lago’s huge lawn to show off classic automobiles. One of them, the Palm Event, is coming back to Mar-a-Lago after a couple of years at another site.

The risk of political blowback “scared the heck out of me. It really did. And I was trying as best I could not to take politics into consideration. And it’s hard when it’s at the president’s house,” said Scott Shrader, the Palm Event’s president. But he said that, among his customers, there has been a lot of interest.

“It’s actually surprised me. So far it’s been a net positive,” Shrader said.

Then there are Trump’s allies, the groups that rushed in when others rushed out.

One conservative group has already held an event at Mar-a-Lago this season: On Nov. 13, the state-focused organization GOPAC held a reception there for Republican state legislators.

Next month, Turning Point USA — a group aimed at college Republicans and young conservatives — will hold its “first annual Winter Gala” at the club on Dec. 20. The tickets start at $2,500 each.

And early next year, the club will host another gala put on by the Trumpettes USA. One of its leaders, Toni Holt Kramer, is a Mar-a-Lago member who decided to have a party to show Trump that his real supporters had not left him.

“The message that I’m sending to the president — that all of us, myself and everybody who’s attending [is sending] — is how grateful, how absolutely grateful, how humbled we are to have him as the president,” Kramer said. “He is our only, our only, only chance to keep this country. To keep this country the way it should be.”

Her group, which held a raucous celebration at the club in January, will be back in February, at a party featuring singer Lee Greenwood, Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro and former game-show host Wink Martindale.

She expects 700 people, Trump fans from all over the country and the world. The main difference this time is that the ticket price has been raised, from $300 to $550.

Kramer said Trump’s club wouldn’t give them the same discount as before. “We can’t do it again,” she said they told her.

 

[Howl]

Holy Moly, the body language of the people in the Alan Rupar tweet posted by @TuringMachine up thread -- something must have gone down before the cameras started to roll.  Nobody is standing close, Trump's arms are crossed high up on his chest, and the three people who aren't Man Not Smart look insanely pissed/disgusted. 

[formergothardite]

4 minutes ago, Howl said:

something must have gone down before the cameras started to roll

He said that they had been discussing how to prevent forest fires on the drive over and I bet all those people are ready to kill him after attempting to explain basic stuff while he rambles. None of those people look like they would have fawned over Trump on the drive in so he is almost certainly not happy. He probably expected to be praised for showing up and they didn't do it. He looks mad. 

[fraurosena]

Cue the tweet storm!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good op-ed by Dana Milbank: "Trump is surrounded by fools"

Spoiler

President Trump is surrounded by fools.

There’s that fool William H. McRaven, Special Operations commander of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and the other fools in the U.S. military, who should have brought down bin Laden “a lot sooner,” because “everybody in Pakistan” — all 208 million of them — knew the terrorist leader was living in “a nice mansion.” Trump alone “predicted Osama bin Laden” in 2000 when “nobody really knew who he was.”(Were they waiting for Trump to give them bin Laden’s Zip code plus four?)

There are the fools in the CIA, who have concluded based on so-called evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered last month’s killing of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. But Trump alone understands that we’ll never know the truth, because the crown prince denied involvement “maybe five different times.”

There’s that fool Chris Wallace at Fox News, who didn’t understand why Trump skipped Arlington National Cemetery on the Monday after Veterans Day after skipping a visit to a U.S. military cemetery in France two days earlier. But Wallace, if he were wiser, would have known Trump was “extremely busy on calls for the country” as well as “doing other things.”

There are the foolish Finns who, after Trump claimed Finland avoided forest fires because “they spent a lot of time on raking,” are now mocking him by posing with garden tools in the woods. But Trump knows Finnish forest-raking is real because Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, told him about it just last week (even if Niinisto can’t remember this).

Worst of all are the fools in California — people who insist on calling the fire-destroyed town there “Paradise” instead of “Pleasure,” as Trump prefers to call it — who assert that the fires were caused by drought instead of their own mismanagement. As Trump well knows, “there is no drought” in California and there is “plenty of water.”

No one has suffered as many fools as Trump has. But this is to be expected when a “very stable genius” leads a “stupid country.”

Trump knows “more about courts than any human being.” He knows “more about steelworkers than anybody.” He knows “more about ISIS than the generals do,” and “more about offense and defense than they will ever understand.” He knows “more about wedges than any human being that’s ever lived.” He even knows more about medicine than his doctor, dictating a doctor’s letter predicting he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

How does Trump know so much about so many things? Explaining his disagreement with scientists on climate change, Trump told the Associated Press: “My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years. Dr. John Trump. And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science.”

Given Trump’s natural scientific instinct, you don’t need a B.S. from Trump University to know how frustrating it must be to be contradicted repeatedly by “experts” — some in his own administration!

The intelligence community unanimously believes that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, but Trump’s instinct says there’s no reason to disbelieve Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials.

Satellite imagery shows that North Korea has enhanced its ability to launch missiles, but Trump says, “I don’t believe that.”

The scientific consensus supports the theory of climate change, but Trump says “it could very well go back” to cooling.

Trump’s instinct has led him to a number of scientific discoveries over time:

“The worst hurricanes were 50 years ago.”

Vaccines cause autism in “many” healthy children.

The flu shot is “totally ineffective.”

Exercise is unhealthy.

Coal is “indestructible.”

Windmills are a “killing field” for birds and can make people who live near turbines “go crazy after a couple of years.”

It’s okay to look directly at the sun during a solar eclipse.

California is “shoving” water out to sea “to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”

With such a high level of technical expertise, Trump waited 19 months into his presidency to name a White House science adviser. More than 1,000 members of the National Academy of Sciences accuse Trump of the “denigration of scientific expertise and harassment of scientists.”

But they don’t understand. Trump knows more about science than the scientists do.

And this is the problem with being surrounded by fools: Though Trump gives his presidency an “A-plus,” most Americans — about 60 percent — do not appreciate his brilliance.

He deserves better — and he should demand it. He should walk away, withdraw his excellence, maybe get a place in Pleasure — and leave us to suffer our own foolish “scientists” and “experts” and “facts.” That would really show us.