Trump 41: Waiting For My Impeachment

[fraurosena]

Here are some more meme's about 18th century airports. I particularly like the 'Onwards to JFK' one, as it's a twofer, with an added unwanted Ivanka. 

 

[Howl]

Anybody else see this? Is it for reals?  Trumpy is shit tweeting about the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

There is one paragraph in this story that is extra WTF. I've highlighted it: "Evening in America: What it felt like on Trump’s 4th of July"

Spoiler

From the president’s vantage point, his supporters looked like they were in cages. Their fingers curled around chain-link. Bellies smushed against butts. When their knees gave out, they sat on ponchos and muddy blankets and squares of wet cardboard. The air, scented by sodden socks and bug spray, sagged with humidity. When the breeze picked up, so did the sensation that everything was surrounded by a battalion of toilets. It was difficult to move, to escape, but then no one was trying to do so. They were grateful to be here, soaked by hours of drizzle, hugged by a lazy heat, waiting hours and hours for him, for the show. The president had invited them to express their love of country in a maze of corrals, on a truly crappy day of weather, but they didn’t feel like prisoners of pomp, or slaves to circumstance, but jubilant pilgrims thrilled to be counted as citizens of the “most just and virtuous republic ever conceived,” as the president put it.

Signs of distress were isolated. “CLOSE the CAMPS” said one sign, pressed against the fence toward the Lincoln Memorial, in reference to the squalid detention centers holding asylum-seeking migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Even if the letters were big enough for the president to read, his attention was on his teleprompter text. He was talking about conquering other planets.

“Someday soon,” President Trump declared from a dais of red carpet, “we will plant the American flag on Mars.”

The United States has turned 243 years old, which is adolescent for an empire (at least when compared to Rome). This might explain the national mood swings and infatuations, the cliques and the clumsiness, the tendency to bully or be bullied. It might explain why the 45th president wanted to fly a series of loud machines over the Mall, and why his haters wanted to fly a blimp of him as an infant, diapered and cranky. The blimp was inflated, but never flew.

“Officials pulled the plug yesterday right when we were about to get helium,” grumbled Joe Kennedy, the blimp baby’s guardian, across the street from the World War II Memorial on Thursday morning. Armed with nearly a dozen sandbags, two turbine leaf blowers and one bike pump, eight sweaty volunteers unfurled the baby’s flattened skin and inflated it in parts: first, its tiny orange hands. Then its body, but only halfway, because the ears had to be filled before the body could be hoisted upright.

People had staked out spots around the Reflecting Pool by 9 a.m. — a full nine hours before the “Salute to America” program started — as the president himself arrived at his golf club in Sterling, Va. The earthbound blimp was fully inflated by 11. By midafternoon a slight but stubborn rainstorm settled over the capital and a wild assortment of Americans mingled in front of the White House. An irate New Yorker, a wolf tattoo on his bicep, shouted about how men have no rights anymore. A Bernie Sanders supporter with a Go-Pro on his shoulder debated people through a megaphone. Black-clad members of the Revolutionary Communist Organization set fire to an American flag. Tourists took selfies as if it was all perfectly natural.

Around the Reflecting Pool, in the hours before the president’s address, all was joyful and polite, if crowded and with limited views.

Normally a Trump rally is a Caucasian affair, but his “Salute to America” was a mishmash of ethnicities, languages, ages and intentions. Some were there for the spectacle. Some were there to bask in the president’s glory. Some with there as proud soldiers of Q, a baffling conspiracy theory that has flourished in the Trump era. Is it a religion that believes in secret cabals? Or a cult fantasizing about a coup?

“Think of it as a frequency, as a resonance,” said a Q guy from Atlanta who declined to give his name because he preferred to be “clandestine.” He had a shirt that said “TRUMP/JFK JR. 2020,” which was not meant to be interpreted as a literal ticket, he said, but as an occasion to liberate your mind from the usual parameters of, uh, life and death and the space-time continuum — maybe? They’re awfully nice people, these Q people here, and they love how President Trump has exposed the cracks in our accepted reality. They love how the light is shining through now.

A wall of dark clouds had begun building behind the Lincoln Memorial, sack-clothing the sunset. Trump’s exit from the White House was broadcast live to the crowd on giant screens. At 6:37 p.m. the presidential airplane buzzed the Mall, and then Trump walked onstage as if he had parachuted out. “Hello, America,” he said, though he was obscured from the crowd, fittingly, by the biggest TV screen of all.

The president, who loves to veer off script, stuck to it. He talked about Lewis and Clark, about Thomas Edison, about Apollo 11, about Sept. 11. He began to list the military accomplishments of the United States. A thousand feet to his left — beyond the memorial to the war he avoided with five draft deferments — was a statue of Albert Einstein, who said 90 years ago that “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

As the military flyovers continued, 18-year-old Lucia Driessen ventured into the crowd blowing a whistle and holding a sign that said, “TRUMP DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOU.” As a recent high school graduate who lives in the heavily Democratic capital, this was by far the largest amount of Trump supporters she’d ever seen in person.

“Close the camps!” she yelled to attendees.

“U-S-A!” the crowd chanted back at her, and she cringed at the implication of the rejoinder. A B2 stealth bomber, a jagged black terror, screamed overhead as the president held his chin high.

Trump’s been doing this kind of thing for years, though never with the U.S. military as his production team. In April 1990, when he opened the doomed Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, a 43-year-old Donald Trump arranged 5 ½ minutes of fireworks that were half-obscured by his own building, insinuated that he had cured a disabled guest of honor and — after his podium spittled theatrical fog — told the crowd to “have a nice life.” (His business would file for bankruptcy the following year.)

“There goes a good man,” a retired Coast Guardsman told The Washington Post at that long-ago event.

“It’s the media who projects him as a bigot or a racist,” retiree David Limina told The Post on Thursday, seated in a red camper chair.

Trump’s takeover of Washington’s holiday custom only went so far. Over on the other side of the Mall was the usual “Capitol Fourth” concert, where MAGA attire was scarce. Around 7 p.m. there was only one visible red hat, and it belonged to Wendy McHugh, 55, a registered nurse from Georgia. She took a circumspect view of the flyovers, the tanks, the president’s spin on the holiday.

“There’s going to be controversy, there’s going to be division, but that’s okay,” McHugh said. “That’s how we grow.”

Soon after Trump departed one side of the Mall, the concert began on the other side. In between, near the Washington Monument, was a wide expanse of families on blankets, waiting for the fireworks. The mood was peaceful, save for a single locus of agitation. By a portable statue of Trump sitting on a giant gold toilet, a handful of protesters blew whistles until their faces were flushed pink. They held signs that called attention to militarization, to the crisis at the border, to the precarious state of the rule of law. They were blowing whistles to puncture the picnic vibe, to signal that America was in crisis, that the empire was not maturing but devolving.

A nearby stack of speakers thundered with Sousa marches until TV star John Stamos kicked off the Capitol Fourth concert.

“I see a mosaic of different histories,” Stamos said, his voice piped all over the Mall, echoing into a garble.

A band of young white supremacists began to confront the protesters.

“All part of the fabric that makes us an American family,” went the disembodied voice of Stamos.

A scowling man in a MAGA hat put his fist near a protester’s face and turned his thumb down. Dusk was falling. The whistles reached a shrieking volume.

“Let’s love each other as citizens,” Stamos said, and the whistles kept going and going and going.

 

[fraurosena]

He never makes mistakes. He's not that stupid!

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

13 hours ago, Howl said:

Anybody else see this? Is it for reals?  Trumpy is shit tweeting about the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

 

That was a 2012 tweet. He has been twit-ing shit for so long that there's always a tweet.

[fraurosena]

Because women have nothing to do with it.... oh, wait.

 

[Howl]

How did I miss the the ex RNC chair is now a never Trumper?  I think there is so much rank sh*t going down every day I can't keep up with who is batting on which team and I'm starting to tune out even the good stuff.  Also, Michael Steele, when Trump's lips are moving, he's lying.  It's that simple. 

 

[mamallama]

Psst..Michael Steele.  "They" are Fox News talking heads.

[fraurosena]

Russian state TV hosts mocked Trump’s July 4th event as ‘low energy’

Quote

Russian state media mocked President Donald Trump’s “Salute to America” July Fourth event,The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The hosts of Rossiya 1’s “60 Minutes” program, Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva, both scoffed at the footage of tanks rolling into Washington, DC, ahead of Trump’s military extravaganza.

“The greatest parade of all times is going to be held today in Washington, that is what our Donald Trump has said. The American president announced he would show us the newest tanks,” Popov said.

Popov told the audience that, “these are Abrams and Sherman tanks, used during World War II and withdrawn from service in 1957.” Trump had previously said both these retired tanks would be in the parade, but more modern equipment, Bradley fighting vehicles and M1A2 tanks, were actually featured in the spectacle.

Skabeyeva told the audience, “The paint on these vehicles is peeling off. There are no cannons, and their optics have been glued on with adhesive tape.”

Skabayeva also tweeted footage of a military vehicle being transported by truck in Washington, with the caption, “Putin’s America.” [note: the text in Russian translates to: Tanks in the streets of Washington, Trump is preparing for the parade]

According to Julia Davis, a writer who studies Russian disinformation tactics, Russian state news also criticized Trump’s display as being “low energy” and “weak,” with “rusty tanks.”

“The hosts LOL at Trump’s claim about ‘revolutionary war airports‘ & other historical flubs. ‘There’s your city upon a hill, there’s your world leader-and Martians have been defeated,'” Davis tweeted.

Displays of military might are much more common in Russia than in the US and are an opportunity to show off advances in military technology, The Washington Post reported. Skabayeva scoffed that the condition of US military machinery was less important to Trump than “that the parade takes place with much fanfare.”

The demonstration has had its fair share of critics stateside in the lead-up to the July Fourth celebrations. Trump visited France in 2017 and was wowed by their Bastille Day festivities, expressing his desire for a parade of his own. But a November parade was scrapped because of its exorbitant cost. The cost of Thursday’s festivities is as yet unknown, but the Pentagon will be footing the bill for the military displays, which featured all five branches of the military.

How telling that the Russian state tv refers to the presidunce as 'our Donald Trump'.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

7 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Because women have nothing to do with it.... oh, wait.

 

That's an old picture of when they were still trying to replace the ACA . In the end they gave up and focused only on the sabotaging er I mean the repealing part.

Edited July 6, 2019 by laPapessaGiovanna

[GreyhoundFan]

I laughed at the wonderfully snarky Alexandra Petri's take on the mango moron's speech: "The planes of the Revolutionary War"

Spoiler

“The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter at Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our Army manned the air, it ran the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.” — President Trump’s Fourth of July speech

President Trump has come under fire for implying there were airports to take over during the Revolutionary War. Fools, trolls, those with a fifth-grade understanding of history — all of them joined to calumniate him and suggest his statement was wrong. Even he blamed it on the teleprompter. This just goes to show how ignorant most people are of history. They do not know how key the air force was to the Revolution, or how vital taking the airports was. Well, I know.

Recently, I was leading an unauthorized tour of Fort Knox when I happened to bump against a button, opening a long, dark passageway. Cobwebs hung from its ceiling, and there was a skeleton in a tricorn hat leaning against the wall. Deep down the tunnel, I could see a faint light emanating from a pile of documents. I moved closer and saw parchment with writing in a neat slanting hand, bound by a leather cover that read: “BEING THE TRUE AND OFFICIAL MEMOIRS OF THE CONTINENTAL AIR FORCE, 1776-SO FORTH.”

I blew some dust off the cover and began to read:

Dec. 25, 1776: There is much consternation among the troops, and General Washington and his aides are in bitter disagreement as to the question of how best to surprise the Hessian forces encamped in Trenton, New Jersey. I suggested we use the air force. After all, we have an air force. But General Washington does not want to. General Washington thinks that it would be more picturesque if we were to all get in a boat and row across the Delaware River, with him standing in the middle looking steely and illuminated by a light from above. He is very specific about it. I, however, think we should use the air force and just bomb the Hessians. I said, “Sir, you must pardon me, but what good does it do us to have this air force if we do not use it?” But General Washington seems unmoved. I think we are going to do the boat thing.

Winter 1777: We are suffering a bitter winter at Valley Forge, in Pennsylvania. I think the air force is suffering most of all. We keep saying we have an air force and we could go spend the winter somewhere more pleasant — for instance, Florida. But General Washington says it will build character to stay here at Valley Forge. So we are staying. Our morale suffers. I have gangrene now. I think General Washington fears his horse will not want to get on the airplane. But that is no reason for the rest of us to suffer. I am not confident in the general’s leadership, and Benedict Arnold agrees with me.

February 1778: John Adams has been dispatched to the French to try to gain their support, and I said to him, “John, we do not need the French navy. We have an air force.” But nobody listens.

Spring 1778: I have asked Congress for funding for F-35s. I think they will be worth it, if we ever use them, and General Gates agrees. General Washington is very upset that we are asking for so much funding when the army goes without shoes, but I am still mad at General Washington about the gangrene.

Spring 1779: Congress has given us the F-35s. General Washington’s men still lack shoes, but I am glad to have the confidence of Congress.

September 1781: I think we are going to attack Yorktown, in Virginia. Alexander Hamilton is with me, and we are going to make the case that now is certainly the time to use our air force. The pilots are in good spirits to seize victory from Charles Cornwallis.

October 1781: A GLORIOUS VICTORY FROM THE AIR! First we stormed the airports, of course. Once we had done so, we could tell Cornwallis’s morale was broken. We picked him up in our Spitfire and performed a barrel roll, and he said, “The world is turned upside down!” Alexander “The Red Baron” Hamilton — so called on account of his hair — boarded his Sopwith Camel and wreaked havoc upon the British forces. Even General Washington was impressed at how our army manned the air. He said that someday, a future leader of our new nation would speak with gratitude of the actions of our aviators, and, in my heart, I felt certain he was right. They were the key to this war, the key to our freedom, and I hope one day they receive the recognition they deserve, even if General Washington has inexplicably insisted we erase all mention of them from history for the next 238 years.

 

[47of74]

Sir KIm thinks Fuck Face is inept

Quote

Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Sir Kim Darroch, reportedly described Donald Trump as “inept” and at risk of ending his presidency in “disgrace.”

An unprecedented leak of recent official diplomatic cables, reported by the Mail on Sunday, revealed Sir Kim’s frank views on the U.S. leader.

In one excoriating message, seen by the Mail, Sir Kim is said to have written: “We don’t really believe [Trump’s] Administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.”

Nonetheless, the disclosure of highly sensitive cables between the British embassy in Washington and Downing Street could strain the so-called “special relationship” between the U.K. and the U.S.

 

[AmazonGrace]

When was Joe Biden President?

 

[SassyPants]

32 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

When was Joe Biden President?

 

Now now, these are only little details. This guy is lucky he knows what country he represents.

[AmazonGrace]

30 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

Now now, these are only little details. This guy is lucky he knows what country he represents.

Russia, right?

[LeftCoastLurker]

Is it just me, or does the orange menace seem to be spouting even more nonsense/easily refutable "facts" than usual?

[GreyhoundFan]

26 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Russia, right?

And North Korea. He wouldn’t want to forget his pen pal, Kim Jong Un.

[47of74]

LOL - I wonder how much pearl clutching will be happening now.

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm guessing they want to get in on the caging of immigrants:

 

[47of74]

54 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm guessing they want to get in on the caging of immigrants:

 

I had my way the  28th amendment would absolutely forbid slavery and private prisons anywhere where the US has jurisdiction with violations punishable by death.

And someone should totally do this....

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Purell presidency: Trump aides learn the president’s real red line"

Spoiler

He asks visitors if they’d like to wash their hands in a bathroom near the Oval Office.

He’ll send a military doctor to help an aide caught coughing on Air Force One.

And the first thing he often tells his body man upon entering the Beast after shaking countless hands at campaign events: “Give me the stuff” — an immediate squirt of Purell.

Two and a half years into his term, President Donald Trump is solidifying his standing as the most germ-conscious man to ever lead the free world. His aversion shows up in meetings at the White House, on the campaign trail and at 30,000 feet. And everyone close to Trump knows the president’s true red line.

“If you’re the perpetrator of a cough or of a sneeze or any kind of thing that makes you look sick, you get that look,” said a former Trump campaign official. “You get the scowl. You get the response of — he’ll put a hand up in a gesture of, you should be backing away from him, you should be more considerate and you should extricate yourself from the situation.”

The president’s admitted germaphobia has been a fixture throughout his career — from real-estate deal rooms to casino floors — and it’s now popping up in more public ways. It could create another round of tactile challenges as Trump launches his 2020 campaign, during which he might try to steer visitors toward his signature thumbs-up selfies and away from handshakes for the next 16 months.

The president’s hatred of involuntary bacterial emissions burst into the open last month when his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, started coughing in the Oval Office while ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was interviewing Trump. “I don’t like that, you know. I don’t like that. If you’re going to cough, please, leave the room,” Trump said before shaking his head.

White House aides have said the president is simply displaying common sense: Trump keeping his hands clean is a good way to avoid getting him, or his staff, sick.

Indeed, many presidents have sought to avoid germs, using hand sanitizer and taking other precautions after shaking many hands over the course of a day. But Trump often takes the practice to an extreme.

White House staffers know that if they’re visibly sick or sound hoarse, they must steer clear of a president who doesn’t want to be around anyone who’s under the weather.

“It was serious that you shouldn’t spend much time in front of the president [if you were sick] because he would be extremely annoyed by that,” someone close to the White House said. “He doesn’t want to get sick. ... Everyone understood that if you were sick or sounded sick, your involvement in front of the president should be extremely limited.”

Sniffling staffers have been told they should take a break to drink some tea or otherwise get cleared up before going into the Oval Office, this person said.

Trump has a long history of germaphobia, which has sometimes hurt his business. Jack O’Donnell, a former president of the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City, N.J., recalled how Trump didn’t do well with some customers in the late 1980s — because he hated shaking their hands.

“Customers wanted to be around him and they didn’t understand when he didn’t shake their hand,” he said. “They would be like, ‘What a rude guy. I put my hand out, and he turned it down.’

“People would approach him as he’d walk through the casino to get to the offices and he hated that they touched him,” O’Donnell said. “He was always that way.”

Trump has even admitted that his germaphobia “could be a psychological problem,” as he told Howard Stern during a 1993 interview in which he also said he washes his hands “as many times as possible” during the day. He also told Stern in 2007 that he was even afraid of his own child — Barron Trump was a baby at the time — when he became sick.

“When he has a cold, I just keep him away from me,” he said, and then laughed with Stern.

On the 2016 campaign trail, new staffers were told not to cough or sneeze if they were in a room with Trump, said a former campaign staffer, who added that Trump and germs became a running joke among staffers. “We were surprised that somebody who had such an issue with germs would ultimately run because you have to shake so many hands,” the former staffer said.

During the campaign, then-spokeswoman Hope Hicks often offered Purell to Trump — and he made frequent use of it, according to a former campaign official.

More recently, Trump has used his germaphobia advantageously — as a shield to rebut salacious, unverified “golden shower” claims about his alleged 2013 behavior at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow.

During the presidential transition, right after BuzzFeed published the so-called Trump–Russia dossier — produced by former British spy Christopher Steele — that included those allegations about Trump’s conduct in Moscow, Trump said at a combative news conference: “Does anyone really believe that story? I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me.”

He hasn’t changed much as president, even with a very public job that entails him meeting people throughout the day, including world leaders who he must treat respectfully in diplomatic dealings. But even when guests he knows come to the Oval Office, Trump sometimes hesitates to initiate a handshake, leading people to extend their hands to get one.

“When you’ve been around this guy a lot, you know how it’s going to go. You’re in there and somebody will walk in and put their hand out and you’re just thinking to yourself, ‘Uh, that’s a mistake,’” a former campaign official said.

Although his love for fast food and soda is widely known, Trump religiously follows protocols from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on one aspect of his health: Washing his hands before eating, according to someone who has seen him do that multiple times. In the Trump White House, dining room attendants often bring out sanitary hand wipes along with dinner for the president.

A stash of Purell is kept outside the Oval Office. During the photo lines at White House Christmas parties, Trump likes to use hand sanitizer in between shaking people’s hands, according to a former White House staffer.

Trump’s personal aide, or “body man,” carries a bottle of hand sanitizer at all times. Before Trump eats or after shaking hands during meet-and-greets, Trump sticks out his hand to get a squirt of it, according to a former White House official.

Trump’s germaphobia has created challenges up in the air. Even though Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft, it’s still a metal tube in the sky — a prime vector for germs due to the number of people moving through tight quarters. White House staffers avoid going near the president — and some have avoided even going on trips — if they have a cold.

And when someone coughs or sneezes in Trump’s presence on Air Force One, he’s been known to quickly assume the worst. “Are you sick?” he has asked, according to the person close to the White House.

In July 2017, during Anthony Scaramucci’s brief White House tenure, the communications director had a sore throat and was coughing on an Air Force One flight to Ohio. Trump noticed and told Ronny Jackson, the White House physician at the time, that Scaramucci wasn’t feeling well and ordered him to go check him out.

Plenty of aides have joked that Trump is a germaphobe, Scaramucci said. But even more, Scaramucci added, “He’s a ballbuster."

"If you’re standing by him, and you’re going to look at something on his desk, and you lick your index finger to open the thing to try to catch an edge on the paper, he’ll smack your hand and be like ‘What are you, disgusting?’” Scaramucci said.

Some Trump aides have said they think Trump is now in on the joke himself — at least with some senior officials.

In the Oval Office in 2017, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue coughed in a meeting and Trump was “all grossed out, but it was more joking rather than angry,” said one former senior administration official with knowledge of the incident. “He was like, ‘Ahh, you’re going to get me sick, move back.’ He kind of yelled at him, like, ‘You’re going to get me sick!’”

Trump’s germaphobia can even help end intense internal arguments. After the 2016 campaign, Trump heard about a report that showed the Trump campaign had paid almost $94 million to digital guru Brad Parscale’s company Giles-Parscale. Trump came down to the campaign headquarters on the 14th floor of Trump Tower to dress Parscale down, according to a campaign official familiar with the events and another person familiar with the episode. Trump demanded Parscale tell him where his money went, why so much money went through his account and how much of it he was keeping for himself.

David Bossie, who was deputy campaign manager in 2016, inserted himself on Parscale’s side and said the money was mostly used to pay for digital advertising and was a standard part of a campaign. Kellyanne Conway, who had been campaign manager, made similar points but then she coughed — causing Trump to go “nuts” and soon leave the area, according to one of the people.

At that, the argument was over, shortened by the distraction of Conway’s cough.

 

[47of74]

Actually there was one plane back in the Revolutionary War.



But it belonged to a time traveling b movie denizen.

[GreyhoundFan]

Cue the butthurt twitter meltdown: "Trump has referred to his Wharton degree as ‘super genius stuff.’ An admissions officer recalls it differently."

Spoiler

PHILADELPHIA — James Nolan was working in the University of Pennsylvania’s admissions office in 1966 when he got a phone call from one of his closest friends, Fred Trump Jr. It was a plea to help Fred’s younger brother, Donald Trump, get into Penn’s Wharton School. 

“He called me and said, ‘You remember my brother Donald?’ Which I didn’t,” Nolan, 81, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “He said, ‘He’s at Fordham and he would like to transfer to Wharton. Will you interview him?’ I was happy to do that.”

Soon, Donald Trump arrived at Penn for the interview, accompanied by his father, Fred Trump Sr., who sought to “ingratiate” himself, Nolan said. 

Nolan, who said he was the only admissions official to talk to Trump, was required to give Trump a rating, and he recalled, “It must have been decent enough to support his candidacy.”

For decades, Trump has cited his attendance at what was then called the Wharton School of Finance as evidence of his intellect. He has said he went to “the hardest school to get into, the best school in the world,” calling it “super genius stuff,” and, as recently as last month, pointed to his studies there as he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to conservative economist Arthur Laffer. 

But Trump, who questioned the academic standing of then-President Barack Obama, has never released records showing how he got into the school — or how he performed once he was there. And, until now, Nolan’s detailed account of Trump’s admission process has not been publicly disclosed.

Nolan, who spoke to The Post recently at his apartment here, said that “I’m sure” the family hoped he could help get Trump into Wharton. The final decision rested with Nolan’s boss, who approved the application and is no longer living, according to Nolan. 

While Nolan can’t say whether his role was decisive, it was one of a string of circumstances in which Trump had a fortuitous connection, including the inheritance from his father that enabled him to build his real estate business, and a diagnosis of bone spurs that provided a medical exemption from the military by a doctor who, according to the New York Times, rented his office from Fred Trump Sr. 

At the time, Nolan said, more than half of applicants to Penn were accepted, and transfer students such as Trump had an even higher acceptance based on their college experience. A Penn official said the acceptance rate for 1966 was not available but noted that the school says on its website that the 1980 rate was “slightly greater than 40%.” Today, by comparison, the admissions rate for the incoming Penn class is 7.4 percent, the school recently announced.  

“It was not very difficult,” Nolan said of the time Trump applied in 1966, adding: “I certainly was not struck by any sense that I’m sitting before a genius. Certainly not a super genius.” 

The White House did not respond to requests for comment. 

Trump, as a young man looking ahead to a career in real estate, viewed entry into a top college as his ticket out of the outer boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, where his father had built housing largely aimed at the working class. But the idea of going to Penn, as his father wished, was daunting. 

Indeed, Trump needed to look no further than his older brother’s experience to realize the potential difficulty. Fred Trump Jr. had hoped to go to Penn with his friend Nolan. Fred Trump Jr. and Nolan were best friends, having gone to high school together and spent many hours in the Trump family home in Queens. Nolan provided The Post with a picture that shows him next to Fred Trump Jr. around the time they applied to Penn. 

Nolan recalled that Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr., never talked to him during this period, preferring the boys stay in the basement. But the plan for the boys to be roommates at Penn failed: Nolan got in, but Fred Trump Jr. was rejected. The two nonetheless remained close. 

Ten years later, in 1966, it was Donald Trump who applied to Penn’s Wharton School, having already attended two years at Fordham University in the Bronx., leading to the interview with Nolan. Nolan, who later became director of undergraduate admissions at Penn and now is an educational consultant, said he has not previously been quoted on the record about his role. A 2000 biography, “The Trumps,” by Gwenda Blair, cited a “friendly” admissions officer who was friends with Fred Trump Jr., without identifying or quoting him. Fred Trump Jr. died in 1981.    

It was common during this period for the children of wealthy and influential people to be accepted ahead of other applicants, especially if the parent made a substantial donation to the school. There is no evidence, however, of such donations in Trump’s case.

Records in the University of Pennsylvania archives provided to The Post do not show any donation from Fred Trump Sr. or other family members to the school during the period that Donald Trump applied for admission or was a student. However, some of the donations from that period were made anonymously, so it is not possible to say conclusively whether any Trump family donation was made. The records show donations of $1,000 or more.

The university declined to release records that would explain the decision to accept Trump, or to provide his grade transcripts, citing confidentiality restrictions. 

Legend born

Trump graduated from Penn in 1968. Before long, a legend was born. A 1973 article in the New York Times said Trump graduated “first in his class” from the Wharton School and then quoted his father as saying, “Donald is the smartest person I know.” 

The claim that Trump was the top student was repeated in a more widely noticed 1976 profile in the Times, once again including his father’s quote about being the “smartest person.” The Times later published stories that questioned whether Trump was a top student at Penn, noting that transcripts are private. 

In fact, Trump’s name was not among top honorees at commencement. Nor was he on the dean’s list his senior year, meaning he was not among the top 56 students in his graduating class of 366. All that is known for certain is that Trump received at least a 2.0 average, or C, enabling him to graduate. A 4.0 is equivalent to an A. 

Penn officials said they are prohibited from releasing Trump’s grades unless he allows it.

Trump himself has said that it is crucial to evaluate a candidate’s educational background to determine whether he or she is qualified to be president. 

For example, in addition to questioning whether Obama was born in the United States, Trump said in a 2011 interview with the Associated Press that he “heard” Obama was “a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” 

Then he challenged Obama to release his college transcripts. “I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.” 

Trump has not applied his standard to himself. He has declined to release his own college transcripts, and during the campaign, his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, threatened colleges with lawsuits if his academic records were released. 

The idea that Trump was the top performer has persisted partly because the president has continued to let it stand despite the many times it has been debunked. Trump admitted as much last year, saying that he “heard I was first in my class at the Wharton School of Finance. And sometimes when you hear it, you don’t say anything. You just let it go.”

Making money

The common thread in the early stories about Trump was that he had performed so well at Wharton that he was ready to take the family business to a higher level.

Yet Trump is remembered by some classmates as a middling student. 

Louis Calomaris, who spent considerable time with Trump during real estate classes, said in an interview that he headed a weekly study group. Trump had attended two or three of the study sessions when, one day in class, the professor announced that the most important thing was to attend his lectures. 

“Out of the corner of my eye, I see Trump close his book and he never came to another study group, but he never missed class,” Calomaris said. 

He recalled Trump standing in his three-piece suit and announcing that he planned to be one of the greatest real estate developers in New York City. 

Calomaris, who has worked as a business consultant and restaurateur and taught marketing at the University of Maryland, said that he thought Trump was “a bright guy” but that “he was always lazy — he wouldn’t read a book. I never considered him stupid, I considered him opportunistic. . . . He cared about making money, and he knew that the most prestigious school was Wharton, and that worked with his opportunistic nature.” 

In a 1985 biography about Trump, Jerome Tuccille wrote that Trump hardly viewed his attendance as a priority. 

“Donald agreed to attend Wharton for his father’s sake,” Tuccille wrote. “He showed up for classes and did what was required of him but he was clearly bored and spent a lot of time on outside business activities.”  

By the time Trump in 1987 released his autobiography, “The Art of the Deal,” he had embraced the idea of what he called “truthful hyperbole.” The key to promotion, he explained, “is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. . . . People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.” 

Without addressing his class rank or the circumstances of his acceptance, Trump was blunt in his autobiography about the value he found in promoting his time at Wharton.  

“Perhaps the most important thing I learned at Wharton was not to be overly impressed by academic credentials,” Trump wrote. “In my opinion, that degree doesn’t prove very much, but a lot of people I do business with take it very seriously, and it’s considered very prestigious. So all things considered, I’m glad I went to Wharton.” 

 As recently as June 19, Trump continued to cite his Wharton background, sometimes in misleading ways. Awarding the Medal of Freedom to Laffer, Trump claimed that “I’ve heard and studied the Laffer curve for many years in the Wharton School of Finance.” 

Trump graduated from Wharton in 1968, and Laffer didn’t outline his tax-cutting theory on the back of a napkin until 1974, according to Laffer’s account in a book he co-wrote called “The End of Prosperity.” Thus, studying the Laffer curve during Trump’s time at the school would have been impossible. 

 

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Buddy Hackett once had the most awesome joke about fuck face....

Quote

One man was unafraid. An underestimated voice of wisdom, he tried to warn us all, decades before the 2016 elections. His name was Buddy Hackett.

In this audio clip (uploaded ages ago by someone else), comedian Buddy Hackett tells Merv Griffin a pretty good joke about Donald Trump that you should probably not listen to on speakers in front of kids or your boss.

Here's the NSFW joke

I LOL when I heard that joke.  And it's quite fucking true as well.

[GreyhoundFan]

Cue a twitter tantrum: "President Trump cannot block his critics on Twitter, federal appeals court rules"

Spoiler

President Trump cannot block his critics from the Twitter feed he regularly uses to communicate with the public, a federal appeals court said Tuesday, in a case with implications for how elected officials nationwide interact with constituents on social media.

The decision from the New York-based appeals court upholds an earlier ruling that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked individual users critical of the president or his policies.

“The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees,” wrote Judge Barrington D. Parker in the unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Trump’s Twitter habits through his @realDonaldTrump account were central to the case brought by seven people blocked after posting disapproving comments in 2017.

The First Amendment prevents the government from blocking or excluding views it disagrees with in what is known as “viewpoint discrimination.” The Supreme Court has not directly addressed how the law applies to expanding digital spaces for public debate, and the case involving the president’s account — with millions of followers — was a high-profile legal test.

Elected officials throughout the country are also learning to navigate how those principles apply to their social media accounts. The ruling from the New York-based appeals court echoed an earlier decision from the Richmond-based appeals court involving the Facebook page of a Virginia politician.

This is a developing story.