Trump 41: Waiting For My Impeachment

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Dana Milbank's op-eds: "For D-Day, Trump recalls the heroism of ... Donald Trump"

Spoiler

World leaders have assembled on the English Channel this week, on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, for two days of ceremonies recalling the unrivaled bravery and sacrifice of Donald Trump.

President Trump, staying at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in London, was up early Wednesday morning and already thinking deep and profound thoughts on the theme of the day: himself.

“Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make ‘your great president’ look really bad,” he tweeted.

It was 1:30 a.m.

D-Day is often referred to as “The Longest Day,” but Trump’s Wednesday had to be a close second. As the world’s focus turned to the legendary World War II battle, Trump’s attention remained fixed on the commemoration of Trump. In this great and noble undertaking he had the support of Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who said the D-Day anniversary “is the time where we should be celebrating our president.”

The morning tweeting continued.

“This trip has been an incredible success for the President,” he declared, quoting Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.

“If the totally Corrupt Media was less corrupt, I would be up by 15 points in the polls based on our tremendous success with the economy, maybe Best Ever!” he wrote.

He tweeted a White House-produced video, set to triumphant music, showing images of — you guessed it — Trump, in Britain.

He sent word that House Republicans support him “all the way,” and he asserted that the “big crowds” of British protesters were in fact “gathered in support of the USA and me.” (But mostly him, surely.)

If any event symbolizes a cause greater than self, it is D-Day, when thousands stormed the beaches of Normandy under Nazi fire. But for Trump, no cause exceeds self. At a time for lofty sentiment, Trump defaulted to the small — about the “No Collusion Witch Hunt,” “Sleepy Joe Biden,” the “Corrupt Media” and “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” (“What a Creep”).

On the morning of the remembrance in Portsmouth, England, Britons woke to Piers Morgan’s interview with Trump.

“I know so much about nuclear weapons.”

“I’m running on maybe the greatest economy we ever had.”

“I knocked out ISIS.”

“I had an inauguration which I have to say was spectacular.”

“We had a big election-night win.”

“I have all the cards.”

“I have a good relationship with many of the leaders.”

“I have a very good relationship with the people in the United Kingdom.”

“We have tremendous support,” Trump proclaimed.

He and his wife were the “only people at a special ceremony for the new emperor.”

He paused the self-adulation long enough to ask: “How am I doing?”

Just great, sir.

Morgan, the 2008 winner of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” showed why he earned the sole TV interview with Trump. He asked what Trump’s late mother would think of her son.

“She would have been very proud,” allowed Trump, who reported that the queen herself “was very honored” to learn his mother was a fan of Elizabeth’s.

Does he see similarities between himself and Winston Churchill?

“I would be ridiculed” for saying so, but “I certainly would like to see similarities.”

Churchill’s “swashbuckling style? His fearlessness?” Morgan prompted. “He was polarizing.”

“Well, that’s true,” Trump admitted.

In a nod to the day’s solemnity, Trump described D-Day as a “really incredible” battle, maybe “the greatest battle in history.” The best!

With a straight face, Morgan recalled that Trump was “unable to serve in Vietnam” because of his “bone spur.”

“I think I make up for it right now,” Trump replied. “Look, $700 billion I gave [the Pentagon] last year, and this year $716 billion” (in taxpayer dollars, not his).

Morgan concluded by presenting Trump with the same style of hat Churchill wore. Trump put it on. The bowler fit!

At Portsmouth, Trump read the D-Day prayer of a man nearly as great as himself: Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion and our civilization,” he read.

The dignitaries applauded politely — though, inexplicably, not as much as they did for the French president. After brief visits with veterans and leaders, Trump flew to Ireland to spend the night at his golf club. He opted to sleep there on both nights of the D-Day commemoration, because, he said of the 400-mile detour, “it’s convenient.”

The Irish prime minister, declining Trump’s invitation to meet him at the Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg, instead met Trump at the airport. There, Trump reported, among other things, that he had “an incredible time” at the D-Day ceremony, that America’s air “has gotten better since I’m president” and that of the millions of Irish Americans, “I know most of them because they’re my friends.”

“Is this trip . . . just about promoting your golf club?” an Irish reporter asked.

The cheek! How could anybody accuse this man of self-promotion?

He really is a malignant narcissist.

[GreyhoundFan]

Lying liar who lies in Europe: "Trump’s parade of false claims overseas"

Spoiler

President Trump sat down for an interview with Piers Morgan of “Good Morning Britain” at the conclusion of his trip to London. Here’s a roundup of some of the president’s false and misleading claims during the discussion, one which he repeated a few hours later in Ireland.

“The United States right now has among the cleanest climates there are, based on all statistics, and it’s even getting better.”

— Interview with Morgan

“We have the cleanest air in the world, in the United States, and it’s gotten better since I’m President. We have the cleanest water; it’s crystal clean.”

— Remarks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar

Trump withdrew the United States from participation in the Paris accord to combat climate change, and he falsely asserted that the United States had the world’s “cleanest air” and “cleanest climate” and even the “cleanest water.”

The United States actually ranks 27th in the world, according to the authoritative Environmental Performance Index, a project of Yale and Columbia universities. It ranks 10th for air quality — but 88th on exposure to particulate matter, an indication of the health effects from pollution — and 29th for water and sanitation. The U.S. is tied for first place — with nine other countries — for the quality of drinking water.

As for whether things have improved under Trump, that’s hard to track in the available data, but he has taken a number of actions that could reverse or slow the gains made in air and water quality since 1990.

“In the 1890s, we had our worst hurricanes, and I would say we’ve had some very bad hurricanes.”

— interview with Morgan

The 1890 hurricane season was actually not especially active, but for some reason, this is one of Trump’s go-to claims.

What’s “worse” is open to interpretation. It could mean cost, damage or lives lost, but regardless of how you measure, several lists suggest that more recent hurricanes were the “worst” or “biggest,” including Hurricanes Maria and Harvey, which hit in 2017. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. At least 6,000 people were killed, and 30,000 people in the Texas city were left homeless.

Oddly, when Trump asserted in 2017 that hurricanes in the 1930s and 1940s were “bigger” than more recent storms, his staff directed The Fact Checker to a report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That report was updated in 2018, and it shows that the costliest storms, adjusted for inflation, are Katrina (2005), Harvey (2017), Maria (2017), Sandy (2012) and Irma (2017). So three of the costliest storms occurred on Trump’s watch.

“I just found out we have 94 percent support in the Republican Party. That’s higher. Ronald Reagan was the highest at 86. And we have 94 percent. It just came out.”

— interview with Morgan

We had just fact-checked this but here’s this Four-Pinocchio claim again. What’s odd is: a) Trump has been making this claim for almost a year, and yet he claims it’s a new poll, and b) he claims that Reagan was “highest at 86” percent when in fact the president has previously acknowledged that George W. Bush had the record, with 99 percent approval among Republicans, in the Gallup poll. Reagan hit a high of 94 percent — but not Trump. With a high of 90 percent, Trump ranks sixth out of the seven post-World War II Republican presidents.

“You’re talking about Vietnam, and at that time, nobody ever heard of the country.”

— interview with Morgan

In justifying his decision not to serve in Vietnam — a conflict waged two-thirds by volunteers and one-third by draftees — Trump makes the astonishing assertion that nobody had ever heard of Vietnam in 1968, when he received a possibly fraudulent diagnosis of having bone spurs to obtain a medical exemption.

The first Marines landed in Danang in 1965, and by the end of 1967, there were almost 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. At the start of 1968, the Viet Cong (rebel forces) and North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, weakening U.S. support for the war, and President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in March that he would not seek reelection. Vietnam — and the U.S. desire to thwart communist expansion in Southeast Asia — had been part of the national conversation since President John F. Kennedy first sent military advisers to the country in the early 1960s.

“In the military, you’re not allowed to take any drugs. You take an aspirin. And they [transgender individuals] have to, after the operation, they have to, they have no choice, they have to. You would actually have to break rules and regulations in order to have that.”

— interview with Morgan

False. As our colleague Aaron Blake documented, experts say the president is wrong to claim that service members are “not allowed to take any drugs” or that they can’t take the specific drugs used for gender reassignment. Hormones are permissible for service members, as are opioids and psychotropic drugs. Moreover, not all transgender people undergo gender reassignment surgery or take prescription hormones, so even if Trump were correct that such prescribed drugs were prohibited, it wouldn’t necessarily mean transgender troops would have to be banned from serving.

“President Obama made a deal, the Iran nuclear deal, which was a terrible deal because it was a short-term deal. Didn’t do the trick. Paid 150 billion dollars, paid 1.8 billion in cash if you can believe it, in cash.”

— interview with Morgan

Trump in recent weeks has claimed that the nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama would in five years give Iran “an open path to make nuclear weapons.” Presumably, that’s what he means by “short-term.” The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the Iran nuclear deal is formally known, actually bars Iran from ever seeking, developing or acquiring nuclear weapons. Trump is alluding to the argument that some restrictions in the deal sunset over time and that Iran could pursue a nuclear weapons program in secret once those restrictions are gone. But Iran was said to be abiding to the agreement when Trump terminated U.S. participation.

As for the $150 billion payment, Trump often makes it sound as if the United States cut a check to Iran. He also always uses too high an estimate, $150 billion, for the assets involved. But this was always Iran’s money. Iran had billions of dollars that were frozen in foreign banks around the globe because of international sanctions related to its nuclear program. The Treasury Department estimated that once Iran fulfilled other obligations, it would have about $55 billion left. The Central Bank of Iran said the number was actually $32 billion.

The cash was related to the settlement of a decades-old claim between the two countries. An initial payment of $400 million was handed over Jan. 17, 2016, the same day Iran’s government agreed to release four American detainees, including The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian. The timing — which U.S. officials insisted was a coincidence — suggested that the cash could be viewed as a ransom payment. But the initial cash payment was Iran’s money. In the 1970s, the then-pro-Western Iranian government under the shah paid $400 million for U.S. military equipment. But the equipment was never delivered because the two countries broke off relations after the seizure of American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. Two other payments totaling $1.3 billion — a negotiated agreement on the interest owed on the $400 million — came some weeks later.

“No, I don’t attack him. People ask me like you’re asking me, I didn’t bring his name up, you did. You brought his name up, John McCain. So I’m not attacking him at all. I don’t think about him. I was not a fan. I didn’t like what he did to health care. I didn’t like how he handled the veterans because I got him choice. He was always unable.”

— interview with Morgan

Our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims lists 20 times that Trump has attacked McCain by name — for his vote on Obamacare, for his passage of the dossier compiled by a British intelligence agent, and more recently for the false charge that he failed to achieve expanded private health-care options known as Veterans Choice.

In reality, a bill signed by Trump expanded an effort spearheaded by McCain in 2014 and was actually named after the late senator.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

And the corruption continues: "A wealthy Iraqi sheikh who urges a hard-line U.S. approach to Iran spent 26 nights at Trump’s D.C. hotel"

Spoiler

In July, a wealthy Iraqi sheikh named Nahro al-Kasnazan wrote letters to national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging them to forge closer ties with those seeking to overthrow the government of Iran.

Kasnazan wrote of his desire “to achieve our mutual interest to weaken the Iranian Mullahs regime and end its hegemony.”

Four months later, he checked into the Trump International Hotel in Washington and spent 26 nights in a suite on the eighth floor — a visit estimated to have cost tens of thousands of dollars.

It was an unusually long stay at the expensive hotel. The Washington Post obtained the establishment’s “VIP Arrivals” lists for dozens of days last year, including more than 1,200 individual guests. Kasnazan’s visit was the longest listed.

“We normally stay at the Hay-Adams hotel,” Kasnazan, 50, said in a recent interview with a Post reporter in Amman, Jordan, where he lives in a gold-bedecked mansion and summons his servants by walkie-talkie. “But we just heard about this new Trump hotel in Washington, D.C., and thought it would be a good place to stay.”

Kasnazan said his choice of the Trump hotel was not part of a lobbying effort, adding that he came to Washington for medical treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, about 45 miles away. Kasnazan, who socialized with State Department officials while in Washington, has set up several new companies in hopes of doing business with the U.S. government.

His long visit is an example of how Trump’s D.C. hotel, a popular gathering place for Republican politicians and people with government business, has become a favorite stopover for influential foreigners who have an agenda to pursue with the Trump administration.

A gallery of would-be foreign leaders — including exiles and upstarts who cannot always rely on a state-to-state channel to reach Trump’s government — have been gliding through the polished lobby of the Trump International Hotel since it opened in 2016.

A few weeks before Kasnazan checked in, a pair of exiled Thai prime ministers spent the night. A few weeks after, a Post reporter saw a Ni­ger­ian presidential candidate holding court in the lobby. None stayed as long as Kasnazan, the leader of an order of Sufi Muslims who said he served as a paid CIA informant in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

These visits offer proximity to Trump’s political orbit — as family members, advisers and fans regularly pass through the hotel and snap selfies at the bar — while putting money into a hotel the president still owns.

“We saw all the Trumpers,” said Entifadh Qanbar, a Kasnazan spokesman and aide who was frequently with him at the hotel. “Many ambassadors, many important people. We didn’t talk to them, but we saw them in the hallways.”

The downtown D.C. hotel has emerged as a bright spot in the president’s portfolio at a time when there are signs of declining revenue at some of his other properties. Lobbyists for the Saudi government paid for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel just three months after his election. Executives from the telecom giant T-Mobile booked at least 52 nights there last year.

The president’s ability to profit from foreign customers, in particular, while in the White House has drawn sharp criticism. The Trump Organization is battling a pair of lawsuits, including one filed by Democratic members of Congress, alleging that the business it does with foreign governments violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars payments to presidents by foreign states.

The company, which runs the hotel, declined to answer questions about how much Kasnazan paid for his stay, or whether it had informed anyone at the White House about the sheikh’s long visit. The company said it donated the profits of his stay to the U.S. Treasury as part of a voluntary policy aimed at countering claims that the president is in violation of the emoluments clause. Critics argue that the policy is insufficient, saying that the Trump Organization does not explain how it calculates its foreign profits or identify its foreign customers.

The Trump Organization did not say how much the profits were from Kasnazan’s stay and did not explain why in his case it applied the “foreign patronage” policy, which it has said is for business from foreign governments. He holds no government office, and his spokesman said he paid the bill himself.

The White House and the National Security Council declined to comment about the visit. State Department officials said that they were not aware of any official meetings between their personnel and Kasnazan at that time, but that they could not say whether informal meetings were held.

Kasnazan willingly acknowledges an ambitious political agenda: He’s advocating for a U.S. military confrontation with Iran and wants U.S. help to blunt Iranian influence in Iraq. He also considers himself a viable candidate to become president of Iraq — even though others view him as a minor political figure.

In addition, Kasnazan has recently registered several companies in the United States to provide private security, oil field services and construction, and said he is eager to do business with the Trump administration.

“We are looking for opportunities,” he said.

Kasnazan checked into the Trump hotel on Nov. 30, a day after his brother, a former Iraqi trade minister, was sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison on graft charges. Kasnazan is also facing charges, said Judge Abdulsatter al-Beriqdar, a spokesman for the Iraqi judiciary.

“Once they are in Iraq, they will be arrested,” al-Beriqdar said. 

Kasnazan denies the corruption allegations and says the charges are politically motivated.

Kasnazan said he paid for a suite and one additional room at the Trump hotel, and stayed there with his wife and children until Dec. 26. Qanbar, the spokesman — who for years worked for Ahmed Chalabi, a deceased Iraqi dissident who helped foment the Iraq War — declined to specify the cost but estimated that it was a “couple thousand” dollars per night.

Suites at the Trump hotel range from about $1,000 to $2,000 per night; at the Hay-Adams, they are about $840 to $1,840 per night.

During his recent stay in Washington, Kasnazan said, he socialized with some of the State Department’s Middle East experts outside of the hotel. One of them, Col. Abbas Dahouk, recently retired as a senior military adviser at the department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and previously served as a military attache at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia.

Dahouk said he viewed Kasnazan’s visit to the Trump hotel as an effort to make “himself available to talk about Iraq and to speak truth to power,” while seeking U.S. support for countering Iranian influence in Iraq. 

“It’s easier to meet people” at the hotel, he said. “Maybe indirectly to also show support to Trump.” 

“From his perspective, Trump is America,” Dahouk added.

'Mind-blowing' intelligence

Kasnazan comes from a prominent Sufi Muslim family from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. His father, Sheikh Mohammad al-Kasnazan, is the Kurdish leader of a branch of the Sufi order, a form of Islamic mysticism. In ceremonies, the Kasnazan Sufis pray and chant and sometimes perform self-mutilation.

Kasnazan and his siblings had been imprisoned during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. They turned to the Americans for help in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion — and ended up assisting U.S. intelligence officials.

They met regularly with CIA officers working from small bases in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan and recruited dozens of informants from within their Sufi network who worked in Hussein’s military and intelligence services, as described in the 2004 book “Plan of Attack,” by Bob Woodward.

The intelligence provided by two Sufi brothers and their network was “so rare, so mind-blowing,” that the CIA gave them the code name ROCKSTARS, according to Woodward’s book.

The book does not identify him by name, but Kasnazan confirmed that it described his family’s network.

For their efforts, the CIA paid more than $1 million per month, Kasnazan now estimates. 

“It was expenses for the network,” he said.

The CIA declined to comment. 

During the war, Kasnazan turned his network into a private security company, the Iraqi Establishments Protection Company, winning contracts to protect U.S. military bases and oil installations, according to U.S. military documents he provided to The Post. 

The family’s Sufi militiamen were put to work guarding oil companies and U.S. military installations, such as ammunition depots and the Civil-Military Operations Center in the northern city of Kirkuk. 

The business was just one part of his ambitions. He considered himself a natural choice to be president of Iraq. He viewed his Sufi order, which includes Sunnis and Shiites, as unifiers — a peaceable alternative to Iranian expansion on one side and al-Qaeda extremism on the other.

But in 2005, Kasnazan was banned from participating in elections by the commission that purged Saddam Hussein’s former party loyalists from government. In the years since, Kasnazan’s political party, the Coalition for Iraqi National Unity, has not established much of a footprint. 

The family’s most notable political achievement happened in 2014, when Kasnazan’s brother, Milas Mohammed Abdulkarim , was chosen to be trade minister. But that quickly ended in scandal.

Iraqi authorities issued arrest warrants for both brothers in October 2015 following an investigation of bribes and illegal benefits. The case involved alleged kickbacks connected to rice purchases for Iraq’s national food ration system. 

In November 2018, Milas Abdulkarim was convicted of graft and sentenced to seven years in prison. He is living in Iraqi Kurdistan now, his brother said.

Kasnazan, whose case is still open, according to Iraq’s judiciary, said the allegations against his family were “fabricated” by political enemies. 

He now lives in exile in Amman, in a palatial home amid marble, crystal and oil paintings. His furniture is leafed in gold; angel figures perch on the rims of giant vases. 

When particularly reverent guests arrive, he lets them bow and kiss him on the feet, according to a video he shared with The Post.

A hard-line position on Iran

Trump’s arrival in the White House shifted the U.S. government’s view of Iran closer to Kasnazan’s. He was in favor of Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. He supports the approach of Bolton, who advocates for regime change in Iran.

Kasnazan said that he opposes a full U.S. invasion, and that he wants “surgical U.S. military strikes” against Iranian military and intelligence installations. 

“You ask why would we want war, but in fact we are not in peace — the violence against Sunnis in Iraq has never stopped,” Kasnazan said in an interview. “Any retreat from Bolton’s policy on Iran will lead to a breaking down of America’s reputation in front of the world.”

He shared with The Post copies of letters he sent to Bolton and Pompeo last summer in which he praised the U.S. government’s hard-line approach toward Iran and offered policy recommendations.

In the letters, Kasnazan wrote that he was “very encouraged by President Donald Trump’s objectives to stop Iranian aggression and expansion in the region.”

A spokesman for Bolton declined to comment. A State Department spokesman said the department was not aware of the letters.

During Trump’s time in office, Kasnazan said he has met with State Department officials on various occasions, as well as visited think tanks to advocate for his position against Iran. 

During his long stay at the Trump hotel in November and December, Kasnazan said, he saw members of Trump’s family at the property, as well as Trump’s lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Fox News Channel personalities. But he said that he didn’t speak with them and that he never saw Trump. 

While in town, Kasnazan attended a retirement party for Dahouk, the State Department adviser. 

Dahouk described Kasnazan as an influential figure who has met with officials from the Near Eastern Affairs and policy planning bureaus.

“He had an audience, and many concerned officials valued his perspective,” Dahouk said. “His agenda was to provide an alternate source of atmospherics about what’s going on in Iraq from a person who has many devoted followers on the ground.”

Whether Kasnazan’s networking had any effect on the administration is unknown. But the sheikh said he feels encouraged by the Trump administration’s approach to his home region.

His spokesman said he plans to return to Washington soon — although he hasn’t yet chosen a hotel. 

 

[47of74]

Honor those who gave their lives on D-day?  Hell no, fuck face could barely be bothered to do that.

Quote

Trump was supposed to be marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day, but in an American cemetery in Normandy, Trump attacked Robert Mueller.

Trump told Fox News, “He made such a fool out of himself because what people don’t report is the letter that he had to do to straighten out his testimony because his testimony was wrong. Nancy Pelosi, I call her Nervous Nancy. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t talk about it. Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, and let her do what she wants. You know what? I think they’re in big trouble.”

Trump was a cemetery on D-Day where Americans gave up their lives in a historic landing on the beaches of Normandy, and he spent his time thinking about Robert Mueller, Nancy Pelosi, and impeachment.

I hate that fucker so much.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A very true piece by Eugene Robinson: "Only Trump can pack this much ignorance into a few words"

Spoiler

It is not unfair to point out that President Trump, on many important subjects, is just an ignoramus.

A vivid illustration of this unfortunate fact came this week in London, when it was revealed that Prince Charles, a knowledgeable environmentalist, had tried to educate the president on climate change — and utterly failed.

“I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways,” Trump told “Good Morning Britain” host Piers Morgan in an interview broadcast Wednesday. “Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather, you can’t miss.”

Good Lord, it’s breathtaking that anyone could pack so much ignorance into so few words.

The correct answer for what human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are doing to the planet is, of course, all of the above . There is indeed global warming — the past five years have been the hottest since record-keeping began, and so much sea ice has melted that shipping lanes are being charted across the Arctic Ocean. There is indeed climate change — this March, temperatures in northern Alaska were 30 to 40 degrees above normal, or what used to be normal. There is indeed extreme weather — scientists have long predicted that deadly weather anomalies, such as the widespread outbreak of tornadoes last month, would become more common as the temperature continues to rise.

Trump said his meeting with Charles was supposed to last 15 minutes but went an hour and a half. One wonders how much of that time Charles must have spent gritting his teeth.

The president did say he admired the prince’s passion and shared his hope for a “good climate as opposed to a disaster.” But Trump also said the United States has “among the cleanest climates,” so it’s unclear that he understands what the word “climate” means. He seems to be talking about smog or litter.

For the record, this country is the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and our emissions grew last year by an estimated 3.4 percent. But the gas is colorless and odorless, and it has no respect for national boundaries — qualities that perhaps put it beyond the grasp of Trump’s understanding.

Who bears the cost of tariffs is another topic about which Trump has views that are both unshakably settled and spectacularly wrong. China is paying the tariffs he imposed, Trump claims. Companies in Mexico will pay the tariffs he threatens, Trump promises. Yet that simply is not how tariffs work.

Tariffs are taxes, paid by the U.S. firms that import Chinese, Mexican and other foreign products. Those companies pass along those costs to American consumers, in the form of higher prices for foreign-made merchandise. In other words, the money that Trump claims is flowing into the treasury doesn’t come from Beijing or Mexico City. It comes out of your pocket and mine.

Trump has a right to argue that trade wars and protectionism are good for the U.S. economy and will somehow Make America Great Again (though a lot of his supporters wear knockoff MAGA hats that were made in China). But it’s comical to make such an argument based on a misunderstanding of what a tariff even is.

The president is often wrong but never in doubt, a know-it-all on subjects about which he knows nothing. He is not, for example, any kind of expert on horse racing. Yet when Maximum Security was disqualified in last month’s Kentucky Derby, Trump immediately shot out an authoritative-sounding tweet:

“The Kentuky [sic] Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough and tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby - not even close!”

Political correctness? About a horse? What’s wrong with the man?

Even more dangerous than Trump’s ignorance is the near-impossibility of changing his mind about certain things. It’s one thing to stick to one’s guns. It’s another thing to stubbornly resist fact and reason — especially when the stakes are so high.

Trump is apparently convinced that acknowledging Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — and taking action to prevent a recurrence — diminishes his victory. Some aides are reportedly not even raising the subject, perhaps out of fear of losing political standing with the president.

Only someone without a clue would fail to realize that he could be the victim of such meddling in 2020. I’m just saying.

 

[Dandruff]

Am I correct in understanding that the British royal family kept their small children away from the Trumps?

What do the royals do to unwind following visits such as this?

[47of74]

Am I correct in understanding that the British royal family kept their small children away from the Trumps?
What do the royals do to unwind following visits such as this?

Likely it involves getting shitfaced on the good stuff.

[GreyhoundFan]

He makes the bigliest deals.

[Audrey2]

Although, if I were renting something to the President, I'd Jack up the price too, just for the ick use factor.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s latest eruption at Pelosi reveals a terrible truth about this moment"

Spoiler

Amazingly, after all we’ve seen, there’s still a tendency in some quarters to treat the falsehoods regularly told by President Trump, and echoed by his media allies, as a somewhat exaggerated but basically conventional form of political dishonesty.

But Trump and certain of his media partisans have long been engaged in something altogether different — something that can only be described as concerted and deliberate disinformation.

Two new televised attacks on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — Trump’s interview with Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity’s follow-up broadcast, both of which aired on Thursday night — provide an occasion to underscore the point.

In his interview with Ingraham, Trump ripped into Pelosi for privately saying she wants to see Trump “in prison.” He blasted Pelosi as a “nasty, vindictive, horrible person” and claimed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report was a “disaster” that produced “nothing” (an incalculable absurdity, given its incredibly damning revelations).

Trump also insisted that Mueller produced a letter to “straighten out” his recent public remarks, which were “wrong” (as Steve Benen shows, Mueller in no way backed off his devastating core assertions). And Trump called the investigation a “phony witch hunt,” absurdly suggesting the Russian attack on our political system, which Mueller extensively documented, was a big nothing never worth investigating.

“I think they’re in big trouble,” Trump said of Pelosi and Democrats, “when you look at the kind of crimes that were committed.”

This echoed Trump’s long-running argument that the only corruption that occurred was the Russia investigation itself, perpetrated by law enforcement and Democrats, an absurd rewriting of basic history that has generated one buffoonish pratfall after another.

Naturally, Hannity picked up this baton, tearing into Pelosi for wanting “a political opponent locked up in prison,” which “happens in banana republics":

< side note from GreyhoundFan: I love how every picture of Shammity shows him with his mouth open like the idiot he is >

Hannity also claimed it’s an “irrefutable fact that there was no collusion.” This is a severe distortion: Mueller said “collusion” isn’t a legally meaningful term and documented extensive efforts by Trump World to encourage, profit off, and, yes, conspire with the Russian attack. Hannity suggested Democrats “don’t state” what they believe Trump has done wrong — a ridiculous lie, since this is amply laid out in Democratic documents.

It’s the disinformation, stupid

It should be impossible to watch these diatribes in full without quickly realizing that this isn’t ordinary political dishonesty — some level of artifice is an inevitable feature of politics — but rather is something much more insidious. What’s notable is the sheer comprehensiveness of the effort to create an alternate set of realities whose departure from the known facts seemingly aims to be absolute and unbridgeable.

As many have noted, it’s richly absurd that Hannity is claiming Pelosi is engaging in “banana republic” stuff, given that Trump has called for investigations into his political opponents for years. Indeed, in the Ingraham interview, Trump blasted Pelosi over this, then immediately segued into suggesting that Democrats will soon be held accountable for imagined crimes.

But this absurd duality should be understood as a feature of this kind of Trumpian disinformation. It won’t do to note its self-contradictory nature. The whole point is to wield this kind of absurdity as an instrument of power. It’s to use an alternate reality to supplant and extinguish good faith efforts to discern actual reality — to blot out the possibility of shared agreement on facts that are in front of all our noses through the sheer insistence that the alternate reality is supreme. The alt-reality doesn’t have to be proved as the true one; just established as the dominant one.

Disinformation and ‘constitutional rot’

Don’t take my word for it. Serious political theorists have noted this aspect of Trumpian disinformation. See this Jacob Levy essay, which argues that Trump’s autocratic reshaping of reality on multiple fronts depends on the delegitimization of other institutional authority.

Or see this Jack Balkin essay on “constitutional rot.” One key sign of our breakdown, Balkin argues, is the fact that Trump has the backing of what can only be understood as “domestic propaganda machines."

Propaganda, Balkin notes, “undermines the crucial role of deliberation and the search for truth in a democracy. Propaganda attempts to put everything in dispute, so that nothing can be established as true.” It “undermines shared criteria of reasoning, good faith attempts at deliberation, and mutual accommodation between political opponents in democracies.”

It’s impossible to watch Trump’s Fox interview and not come away convinced that, by instinct or design, this is what Trump is up to.

Pelosi shouldn’t be talking about Trump going to prison (though her rhetorical point, made privately, was that the only way to hold Trump accountable is to beat him in 2020), and surely all this will be portrayed by some as an equivalent erosion of norms on both sides.

But as Brian Beutler notes, the equivalence is false: Trump actually does face the real possibility of prosecution for crimes after he leaves office. He did engage in extensive, documented wrongdoing and (but for Justice Department policy) likely criminality. The Trump/Hannity narrative seeks to expunge these facts precisely through the act of trying to overwhelm reality with falsehoods.

Yet little of this understanding of Trumpian disinformation, or the deep asymmetries created by it, has penetrated to the broader media. As The Post’s Paul Farhi aptly reports, many in the media are still shy about accurately characterizing Trump’s serial lying. Read press critic Jay Rosen’s acid thread in response, which argues that false balance in the face of deep imbalance is itself profoundly distortive.

Indeed, it’s a particularly galling irony that the refusal to treat this disinformation for what it is itself helps contribute to a badly misleading picture of one of the most basic realities about our current political moment. We are still not reckoning adequately with what’s happening.

 

[47of74]

14 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s latest eruption at Pelosi reveals a terrible truth about this moment"

  Reveal hidden contents

Amazingly, after all we’ve seen, there’s still a tendency in some quarters to treat the falsehoods regularly told by President Trump, and echoed by his media allies, as a somewhat exaggerated but basically conventional form of political dishonesty.

But Trump and certain of his media partisans have long been engaged in something altogether different — something that can only be described as concerted and deliberate disinformation.

Two new televised attacks on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — Trump’s interview with Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity’s follow-up broadcast, both of which aired on Thursday night — provide an occasion to underscore the point.

In his interview with Ingraham, Trump ripped into Pelosi for privately saying she wants to see Trump “in prison.” He blasted Pelosi as a “nasty, vindictive, horrible person” and claimed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report was a “disaster” that produced “nothing” (an incalculable absurdity, given its incredibly damning revelations).

Trump also insisted that Mueller produced a letter to “straighten out” his recent public remarks, which were “wrong” (as Steve Benen shows, Mueller in no way backed off his devastating core assertions). And Trump called the investigation a “phony witch hunt,” absurdly suggesting the Russian attack on our political system, which Mueller extensively documented, was a big nothing never worth investigating.

“I think they’re in big trouble,” Trump said of Pelosi and Democrats, “when you look at the kind of crimes that were committed.”

This echoed Trump’s long-running argument that the only corruption that occurred was the Russia investigation itself, perpetrated by law enforcement and Democrats, an absurd rewriting of basic history that has generated one buffoonish pratfall after another.

Naturally, Hannity picked up this baton, tearing into Pelosi for wanting “a political opponent locked up in prison,” which “happens in banana republics":

< side note from GreyhoundFan: I love how every picture of Shammity shows him with his mouth open like the idiot he is >

Hannity also claimed it’s an “irrefutable fact that there was no collusion.” This is a severe distortion: Mueller said “collusion” isn’t a legally meaningful term and documented extensive efforts by Trump World to encourage, profit off, and, yes, conspire with the Russian attack. Hannity suggested Democrats “don’t state” what they believe Trump has done wrong — a ridiculous lie, since this is amply laid out in Democratic documents.

It’s the disinformation, stupid

It should be impossible to watch these diatribes in full without quickly realizing that this isn’t ordinary political dishonesty — some level of artifice is an inevitable feature of politics — but rather is something much more insidious. What’s notable is the sheer comprehensiveness of the effort to create an alternate set of realities whose departure from the known facts seemingly aims to be absolute and unbridgeable.

As many have noted, it’s richly absurd that Hannity is claiming Pelosi is engaging in “banana republic” stuff, given that Trump has called for investigations into his political opponents for years. Indeed, in the Ingraham interview, Trump blasted Pelosi over this, then immediately segued into suggesting that Democrats will soon be held accountable for imagined crimes.

But this absurd duality should be understood as a feature of this kind of Trumpian disinformation. It won’t do to note its self-contradictory nature. The whole point is to wield this kind of absurdity as an instrument of power. It’s to use an alternate reality to supplant and extinguish good faith efforts to discern actual reality — to blot out the possibility of shared agreement on facts that are in front of all our noses through the sheer insistence that the alternate reality is supreme. The alt-reality doesn’t have to be proved as the true one; just established as the dominant one.

Disinformation and ‘constitutional rot’

Don’t take my word for it. Serious political theorists have noted this aspect of Trumpian disinformation. See this Jacob Levy essay, which argues that Trump’s autocratic reshaping of reality on multiple fronts depends on the delegitimization of other institutional authority.

Or see this Jack Balkin essay on “constitutional rot.” One key sign of our breakdown, Balkin argues, is the fact that Trump has the backing of what can only be understood as “domestic propaganda machines."

Propaganda, Balkin notes, “undermines the crucial role of deliberation and the search for truth in a democracy. Propaganda attempts to put everything in dispute, so that nothing can be established as true.” It “undermines shared criteria of reasoning, good faith attempts at deliberation, and mutual accommodation between political opponents in democracies.”

It’s impossible to watch Trump’s Fox interview and not come away convinced that, by instinct or design, this is what Trump is up to.

Pelosi shouldn’t be talking about Trump going to prison (though her rhetorical point, made privately, was that the only way to hold Trump accountable is to beat him in 2020), and surely all this will be portrayed by some as an equivalent erosion of norms on both sides.

But as Brian Beutler notes, the equivalence is false: Trump actually does face the real possibility of prosecution for crimes after he leaves office. He did engage in extensive, documented wrongdoing and (but for Justice Department policy) likely criminality. The Trump/Hannity narrative seeks to expunge these facts precisely through the act of trying to overwhelm reality with falsehoods.

Yet little of this understanding of Trumpian disinformation, or the deep asymmetries created by it, has penetrated to the broader media. As The Post’s Paul Farhi aptly reports, many in the media are still shy about accurately characterizing Trump’s serial lying. Read press critic Jay Rosen’s acid thread in response, which argues that false balance in the face of deep imbalance is itself profoundly distortive.

Indeed, it’s a particularly galling irony that the refusal to treat this disinformation for what it is itself helps contribute to a badly misleading picture of one of the most basic realities about our current political moment. We are still not reckoning adequately with what’s happening.

 

Nancy is a "nasty, vindictive, horrible person" Donny?

Jesus Fucking Christ, Donny, have you looked in a fucking mirror lately?

 

[fraurosena]

Good grief. Just when you think you've gauged the depths of his childish narcissism, he goes and proves you wrong.

 

[47of74]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Good grief. Just when you think you've gauged the depths of his childish narcissism, he goes and proves you wrong.

 

Yeah Fuck Face is getting skewered on twitter for that bout of malignant narcissism.  For example....

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

To keep my sometimes tenuous grip on sanity, I don't watch any interviews featuring the tangerine toddler. I also studiously avoid the Faux "personalities". So, I didn't see this interview, but just from the recap, it seems like a humdinger.

"The 25 most shocking lines from Donald's Trump interview with Laura Ingraham at Normandy"

Spoiler

(CNN)Just prior to participating in a solemn ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, President Donald Trump sat for an interview with Fox News host (and Trump advocate) Laura Ingraham. With rows and rows of white grave markers as his backdrop, the President repeatedly slammed his political opponents, attacked former special counsel Robert Mueller and generally comported himself in ways that no one would mistake for presidential behavior.

Below, the 25 lines from Trump's interview that you need to see -- whether you want to or not.

1. "I think I can say I really got to know her because I sat with her many times. And we had automatic chemistry. You understand that feeling."

Trump kicks off the interview by touting his "automatic chemistry" with Queen Elizabeth II. Which, maybe?! And away we go!

2. "You know, this is supposed to be today a storm and it's a little like the invasion itself, the weather was a big factor and they delayed it a day and it worked out OK. And you look at the weather we have, we have beautiful weather."

Trump on the D-Day invasion: "It worked out OK."

3. "I mean, we've been out now for three and a half days and looks like, I'm saying it isn't always like this, it's pretty beautiful but it can be pretty rough."

Uh ... I think what Trump is saying is that they have had great weather for his trip (and kind of taking credit for it?) but that the weather in Europe isn't always nice. Which is true. Weather, man. Amirite?

4. "This is one of the true, in terms of war, in terms of, probably you can also say, in terms of peace, because this led to something very special."

A real, unedited sentence from the President of the United States.

5. "[United Nations] Secretary [Jens] Stoltenberg has been maybe Trump's biggest fan, to be honest with you."

... said Donald Trump.

6. "It's a beautiful word, if you know how to use them properly."

Trump's reference to "tariff" as a beautiful word reminds me -- again -- of how incredibly often he describes random things as beautiful. Here's a list of 21 of them, via Quartz.

7. "They send in $500 billion worth of drugs. They kill 100,000 people. They ruin a million families every year, if you look at that. That's really an invasion without the guns."

It's not clear to me where Trump is getting these numbers on the supposed damage done by people entering the country illegally via our southern border.

8. "[Mexico] stole 32% of our car business with NAFTA."

"Stole" is an interesting word choice to describe a multi-nation trade agreement.

9. "They send in drugs, illegal drugs, $500 billion, 100,000 people are killed, dead, every year from what comes through our southern border."

Again, a series of Google searches doesn't turn up the source of these numbers from Trump. Which doesn't mean they don't exist! But given Trump's track record on stuff like this, it's uniquely possible he made these numbers up.

10. "I think [Pelosi is] a disgrace. I actually don't think she's a talented person. I've tried to be nice to her because I would have liked to have gotten some deals done. She's incapable of doing deals. She's a nasty, vindictive, horrible person."

... said the President of the United States about the speaker of the US House while in a foreign country -- and with thousands of grave markers in the background of his TV shot.

11. "They thought their good friend Bobby Mueller was going to give them a great report."

"The Mueller report came out -- that's the Bible." -- Donald Trump, May 9, 2019

12. "He came out with a report with 13 horrible, angry Democrats who are totally biased against me. A couple of them worked to Hillary Clinton. They then added five more who are also Democrats."

Back in March 2018, PolitiFact found that 12 members of Mueller's special counsel team were registered Democrats while a 13th had said publicly he was a Democrat. That said, Mueller, who led the probe, is a longtime Republican.

13. "[Mueller] made such a fool out of himself the last time she -- because what people don't report is the letter he had to do to straighten out his testimony because his testimony was wrong."

As I documented on Thursday, this is both inaccurate and completely nonsensical.

14. "But Nancy Pelosi, I call her 'Nervous Nancy', Nancy Pelosi doesn't talk about it. Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, OK? She's a disaster."

... said the President of the United States about the speaker of the US House in a foreign country -- and with thousands of grave markers in the background of his TV shot.

15. "I think they're in big trouble because when you look at the kind of crimes that were committed, and I don't need anymore evidence and I guess from what I'm hearing, there's a lot of evidence coming in."

This sounds like a big story! Go on ...

16. "But look, and then ask Nancy, why is her district have drug and needles all over the place? It's the most disgusting thing what she's allowed to happened to her district."

Quick reminder: Donald Trump is the President of all the United States -- including Pelosi's San Francisco-based district with "drug and needles all over the place."

17. "Now, if I made any statement about anybody it would be like a big headline, why would he do that when he's overseas?"

Trump is referring here to the report that behind closed doors Pelosi allegedly told her Democratic colleagues that she didn't want to impeach Trump, she wanted him "in prison." (Pelosi's office never confirmed publicly that she said that.) And is Trump unaware of the fact he has savaged Pelosi (not to mention Mueller) repeatedly in this interview already? Was he not there for that part?

18. "She is a terrible person and I'll tell you, her name, it's 'Nervous Nancy' because she's a nervous wreck."

But in your last sentence you said....ah never mind.

19. "By the way, congratulations on your ratings. I'm very proud of you."

It's almost like -- and stay with me here -- Trump thinks he (and Fox News more generally) are on the same team ...

20. "No, I think we can have a good relationship with Russia. I think it's hurt by the phony witch hunt. You know, I could have a good relationship with Russia."

Wait, so our relationship with Russia is "hurt by the phony witch hunt?" It's not hurt by their broad and deep attempt to interfere in the 2016 presidential election? Huh!

21. "If somebody else, let's say the opponent, who shouldn't even be allowed to run, you know, she happens to be a crooked person."

Trump appears to be suggesting here that Hillary Clinton shouldn't have been allowed to run for president in 2016. Due to, well, crookedness?

22. "We have Pelosi, we have Crying Chuck Schumer, who's a disaster, by the way. He's a total political, you know, jerk."

"If I made any statement about anybody it would be like a big headline, why would he do that when he's overseas?" -- Donald Trump, literally two minutes before saying this.

23. "Peace, really peace. And we built up our military, we built up our wealth, we built up everything. Our country is in such great shape right now. Iran is in a much different position then they were two and a half years ago."

This was Trump's answer to this question from Ingraham: "What do you pray for when you pray for this country?" So, OK.

24. "Everybody wants to make a deal. We're the best. We're the strongest. There's nobody even close."

Case closed! Have a great night everyone!

25. "There are those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time, a more animated time."

In which Trump suggests that the Queen of England has never had a better time -- ever -- than she did hanging out with him over the past few days. This feels like a (very) good place to end.

I bet Queen Elizabeth had a better time during her last teeth cleaning than she did spending time with the trumptrashians.

[47of74]

10 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

To keep my sometimes tenuous grip on sanity, I don't watch any interviews featuring the tangerine toddler. I also studiously avoid the Faux "personalities". So, I didn't see this interview, but just from the recap, it seems like a humdinger.

"The 25 most shocking lines from Donald's Trump interview with Laura Ingraham at Normandy"

  Hide contents

(CNN)Just prior to participating in a solemn ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, President Donald Trump sat for an interview with Fox News host (and Trump advocate) Laura Ingraham. With rows and rows of white grave markers as his backdrop, the President repeatedly slammed his political opponents, attacked former special counsel Robert Mueller and generally comported himself in ways that no one would mistake for presidential behavior.

Below, the 25 lines from Trump's interview that you need to see -- whether you want to or not.

1. "I think I can say I really got to know her because I sat with her many times. And we had automatic chemistry. You understand that feeling."

Trump kicks off the interview by touting his "automatic chemistry" with Queen Elizabeth II. Which, maybe?! And away we go!

2. "You know, this is supposed to be today a storm and it's a little like the invasion itself, the weather was a big factor and they delayed it a day and it worked out OK. And you look at the weather we have, we have beautiful weather."

Trump on the D-Day invasion: "It worked out OK."

3. "I mean, we've been out now for three and a half days and looks like, I'm saying it isn't always like this, it's pretty beautiful but it can be pretty rough."

Uh ... I think what Trump is saying is that they have had great weather for his trip (and kind of taking credit for it?) but that the weather in Europe isn't always nice. Which is true. Weather, man. Amirite?

4. "This is one of the true, in terms of war, in terms of, probably you can also say, in terms of peace, because this led to something very special."

A real, unedited sentence from the President of the United States.

5. "[United Nations] Secretary [Jens] Stoltenberg has been maybe Trump's biggest fan, to be honest with you."

... said Donald Trump.

6. "It's a beautiful word, if you know how to use them properly."

Trump's reference to "tariff" as a beautiful word reminds me -- again -- of how incredibly often he describes random things as beautiful. Here's a list of 21 of them, via Quartz.

7. "They send in $500 billion worth of drugs. They kill 100,000 people. They ruin a million families every year, if you look at that. That's really an invasion without the guns."

It's not clear to me where Trump is getting these numbers on the supposed damage done by people entering the country illegally via our southern border.

8. "[Mexico] stole 32% of our car business with NAFTA."

"Stole" is an interesting word choice to describe a multi-nation trade agreement.

9. "They send in drugs, illegal drugs, $500 billion, 100,000 people are killed, dead, every year from what comes through our southern border."

Again, a series of Google searches doesn't turn up the source of these numbers from Trump. Which doesn't mean they don't exist! But given Trump's track record on stuff like this, it's uniquely possible he made these numbers up.

10. "I think [Pelosi is] a disgrace. I actually don't think she's a talented person. I've tried to be nice to her because I would have liked to have gotten some deals done. She's incapable of doing deals. She's a nasty, vindictive, horrible person."

... said the President of the United States about the speaker of the US House while in a foreign country -- and with thousands of grave markers in the background of his TV shot.

11. "They thought their good friend Bobby Mueller was going to give them a great report."

"The Mueller report came out -- that's the Bible." -- Donald Trump, May 9, 2019

12. "He came out with a report with 13 horrible, angry Democrats who are totally biased against me. A couple of them worked to Hillary Clinton. They then added five more who are also Democrats."

Back in March 2018, PolitiFact found that 12 members of Mueller's special counsel team were registered Democrats while a 13th had said publicly he was a Democrat. That said, Mueller, who led the probe, is a longtime Republican.

13. "[Mueller] made such a fool out of himself the last time she -- because what people don't report is the letter he had to do to straighten out his testimony because his testimony was wrong."

As I documented on Thursday, this is both inaccurate and completely nonsensical.

14. "But Nancy Pelosi, I call her 'Nervous Nancy', Nancy Pelosi doesn't talk about it. Nancy Pelosi is a disaster, OK? She's a disaster."

... said the President of the United States about the speaker of the US House in a foreign country -- and with thousands of grave markers in the background of his TV shot.

15. "I think they're in big trouble because when you look at the kind of crimes that were committed, and I don't need anymore evidence and I guess from what I'm hearing, there's a lot of evidence coming in."

This sounds like a big story! Go on ...

16. "But look, and then ask Nancy, why is her district have drug and needles all over the place? It's the most disgusting thing what she's allowed to happened to her district."

Quick reminder: Donald Trump is the President of all the United States -- including Pelosi's San Francisco-based district with "drug and needles all over the place."

17. "Now, if I made any statement about anybody it would be like a big headline, why would he do that when he's overseas?"

Trump is referring here to the report that behind closed doors Pelosi allegedly told her Democratic colleagues that she didn't want to impeach Trump, she wanted him "in prison." (Pelosi's office never confirmed publicly that she said that.) And is Trump unaware of the fact he has savaged Pelosi (not to mention Mueller) repeatedly in this interview already? Was he not there for that part?

18. "She is a terrible person and I'll tell you, her name, it's 'Nervous Nancy' because she's a nervous wreck."

But in your last sentence you said....ah never mind.

19. "By the way, congratulations on your ratings. I'm very proud of you."

It's almost like -- and stay with me here -- Trump thinks he (and Fox News more generally) are on the same team ...

20. "No, I think we can have a good relationship with Russia. I think it's hurt by the phony witch hunt. You know, I could have a good relationship with Russia."

Wait, so our relationship with Russia is "hurt by the phony witch hunt?" It's not hurt by their broad and deep attempt to interfere in the 2016 presidential election? Huh!

21. "If somebody else, let's say the opponent, who shouldn't even be allowed to run, you know, she happens to be a crooked person."

Trump appears to be suggesting here that Hillary Clinton shouldn't have been allowed to run for president in 2016. Due to, well, crookedness?

22. "We have Pelosi, we have Crying Chuck Schumer, who's a disaster, by the way. He's a total political, you know, jerk."

"If I made any statement about anybody it would be like a big headline, why would he do that when he's overseas?" -- Donald Trump, literally two minutes before saying this.

23. "Peace, really peace. And we built up our military, we built up our wealth, we built up everything. Our country is in such great shape right now. Iran is in a much different position then they were two and a half years ago."

This was Trump's answer to this question from Ingraham: "What do you pray for when you pray for this country?" So, OK.

24. "Everybody wants to make a deal. We're the best. We're the strongest. There's nobody even close."

Case closed! Have a great night everyone!

25. "There are those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time, a more animated time."

In which Trump suggests that the Queen of England has never had a better time -- ever -- than she did hanging out with him over the past few days. This feels like a (very) good place to end.

I bet Queen Elizabeth had a better time during her last teeth cleaning than she did spending time with the trumptrashians.

Having teeth pulled through one's nose or having one's knee scoped is generally more pleasant, less painful, and less complicated than spending time anywhere near Fuck Face or his groupies.

[fraurosena]

Presiduncial science lesson of the week: The Moon is part of Mars.

Don't forget to tune in to next week's lesson, when we'll hear all about how the Earth is flat, and the Sun has the face of a baby.

 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/07/trump-moon-is-part-of-mars-tweet-nasa

This dumb fuck.

[fraurosena]

Auntie Maxine has predictive powers!

Here’s the proof:

And Rick Wison is right about the BT’s.

Then again, Jennifer Rubin has a point.

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

11 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Presiduncial science lesson of the week: The Moon is part of Mars.

Don't forget to tune in to next week's lesson, when we'll hear all about how the Earth is flat, and the Sun has the face of a baby.

 

Our news, that usually blissfully ignore tRump, are busy laughing their heads off. LOL

[smittykins]

On 6/7/2019 at 3:56 PM, fraurosena said:

Presiduncial science lesson of the week: The Moon is part of Mars.

Don't forget to tune in to next week's lesson, when we'll hear all about how the Earth is flat, and the Sun has the face of a baby.

 

Well, his minions are saying that an ectopic pregnancy can be removed from the Fallopian tube and placed in the uterus, so...

[GreyhoundFan]

This is so true:

 

[47of74]

To keep my sometimes tenuous grip on sanity, I don't watch any interviews featuring the tangerine toddler. I also studiously avoid the Faux "personalities".

I’d sooner watch interviews with fucking Bush the Dumber than that sob fuck. Or get my knee scoped without anesthetic. If I go to the Y and Faux is on the TVs in the cardio room I’ll change the ducking channel and have a if you want to watch it they goddamn bad watch it at fucking home.

[47of74]

The Irish don't like you either, fuck wit

Quote

Piñatas modelled on the Donald Trump baby blimp designed to be smashed open by children at birthday parties are now on sale in Dublin.

The pint-sized models, which are made of dried paper and filled with sweets, were produced to mark the US president's visit to Ireland earlier this week.

Mr Trump and his wife Melania spent two nights at his golf resort in Co Clare and met Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on the trip, which followed on from his three-day state visit to the UK.

After being flown at London protests a few days before, the Trump baby blimp made its first appearance in Ireland at anti-Trump protests held in Dublin on Thursday. 

 

[fraurosena]

Don the Con was at it again. Of course.

Mexico Agreed to Take Border Actions Months Before Trump Announced Tariff Deal

Quote

The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations.

Friday’s joint declaration says Mexico agreed to the “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.” But the Mexican government had already pledged to do that in March during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, the officials said.

The centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s deal was an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed. But that arrangement was reached in December in a pair of painstakingly negotiated diplomatic notes that the two countries exchanged. Ms. Nielsen announced the Migrant Protection Protocols during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee five days before Christmas.

And over the past week, negotiators failed to persuade Mexico to accept a “safe third country” treaty that would have given the United States the legal ability to reject asylum seekers if they had not sought refuge in Mexico first.

Mr. Trump hailed the agreement anyway on Saturday, writing on Twitter: “Everyone very excited about the new deal with Mexico!” He thanked the president of Mexico for “working so long and hard” on a plan to reduce the surge of migration into the United States.

It was unclear whether Mr. Trump believed that the agreement truly represented new and broader concessions, or whether the president understood the limits of the deal but accepted it as a face-saving way to escape from the political and economic consequences of imposing tariffs on Mexico, which he began threatening less than two weeks ago.

Having threatened Mexico with an escalating series of tariffs — starting at 5 percent and growing to 25 percent — the president faced enormous criticism from global leaders, business executives, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and members of his own staff that he risked disrupting a critical marketplace.

After nine days of uncertainty, Mr. Trump backed down and accepted Mexico’s promises.

Officials involved with talks said they began in earnest last Sunday, when Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, met over dinner with Mexico’s foreign minister. One senior government official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the closed-door negotiations that took place over several days, insisted that the Mexicans agreed to move faster and more aggressively to deter migrants than they ever have before.

Their promise to deploy up to 6,000 national guard troops was larger than their previous pledge. And the Mexican agreement to accelerate the Migrant Protection Protocols could help reduce what Mr. Trump calls “catch and release” of migrants in the United States by giving the country a greater ability to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico.

But there remains deep skepticism among some American officials — and even Mr. Trump himself — about whether the Mexicans have agreed to do enough, whether they will follow through on their promises, and whether, even if they do, that will reduce the flow of migrants at the southwestern border.

In addition, the Migrant Protection Protocols already face legal challenges by immigrant rights groups who say they violate the migrants’ right to lawyers. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from implementing the plan, but an appeals court later said it could move forward while the legal challenge proceeds.

During a phone call Friday evening when he was briefed on the agreement, Mr. Trump quizzed his lawyers, diplomats and immigration officials about whether they thought the deal would work. His aides said yes, but admitted that they were also realistic that the surge of immigration might continue.

“We’ll see if it works,” the president told them, approving the deal before sending out his tweet announcing it.

On Saturday, Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, said the government looked forward to reducing illegal immigration and making the border “strong and secure” by working with Mexico to fulfill the agreement.

Mr. Trump’s decision to use trade as a bludgeon against Mexico was driven in part by his obsession with stopping what he falsely calls an invasion of the country and in part by a desire to satisfy his core supporters, many of who have grown angry at his inability to build his promised border wall.

Many of his top advisers, including those who oversee his political and economic agendas, were opposed to the tariff threat. But the president’s ire is regularly stoked by the daily reports he receives on how many migrants have crossed the border in the previous 24 hours.

Mr. Trump’s top immigration officials had repeatedly warned the president that results from their work to curb the flow of migrants might not be evident until July, and urged patience.

But that effort became more difficult in May, when the numbers spiked to the highest levels of his presidency. During the week of May 24, 5,800 migrants — the highest ever for one day — crossed on a single day. That was quickly followed by a group of 1,036 migrants who were caught on surveillance cameras crossing the border en masse.

Mr. Trump later tweeted out the video, and the tariff threat soon followed.

Throughout the week’s negotiations, officials on both sides worried about what Mr. Trump would be willing to accept in exchange for pulling back on his tariff threat. That question hung over the talks, which were led one day by Vice President Mike Pence and included Mr. Pompeo and Mr. McAleenan.

Mexican officials opened the negotiations with the offer to deploy their new national guard troops against migrants, using a PowerPoint presentation to show their American counterparts that doing so would be a breakthrough in their ability to stop migrants from flowing north through Mexico, often in buses.

Migrants passing through the Rio Grande River from Mexico into the United States last month. In the United States, migrants must see immigration judges before they can be sent to wait in Mexico, and a shortage of judges slows the process.

In fact, Mexican officials had already made the same promise months earlier when Ms Nielsen met in Miami with Ms. Sanchez and aides to Marcelo Ebrard, the Mexican foreign minister. The purpose of the meeting, according to people familiar with it, was to press the Mexicans to act faster.

Ms. Sanchez also told Ms. Nielsen that the Mexican government’s new national guard, which had been created just a month earlier to combat drugs and crime, would be redirected to the border with Guatemala, the entry point for most of the Central American migrants.

At the time, Ms. Nielsen and the other American negotiators referred to the Mexican promise as the “third border” plan because the Mexicans proposed creating a line of troops around the southern part of their country to keep migrants from moving north.

Mexicans had begun to follow the plan, but not quickly enough for the Trump administration, which said that only about 1,000 Mexican national guard troops were in place by May.

Friday’s agreement with Mexico states that the two countries “will immediately expand” the Migrant Protection Protocols across the entire southern border. To date, migrants have been returned at only three of the busiest ports of entry.

But officials familiar with the program said Saturday that the arrangement struck by the two countries last December always envisioned that it would expand along the entire border. What kept that from happening, they said, was the commitment of resources by both countries.

In the United States, migrants must see immigration judges before they can be sent to wait in Mexico, and a shortage of judges slowed the process. The Mexican government also dragged its feet on providing the shelter, health care, job benefits and basic care that would allow the United States to send the migrants over.

The new deal reiterates that Mexico will provide the “jobs, health care and education” needed to allow the program to expand. But the speed with which the United States can send more migrants to wait in Mexico will still depend on how quickly the government follows through on that promise.

Perhaps the clearest indication that both sides recognize that the deal might prove insufficient is contained in a section of Friday’s agreement titled “Further Action.”

One official familiar with the negotiations said the section was intended to be a serious warning to the Mexican government that Mr. Trump would be paying close attention to the daily reports he received about the number of migrants crossing the border. The official said that if the numbers failed to change — quickly — the president’s anger would bring the parties back to the negotiating table.

“The tariff threat is not gone,” the official said. “It’s suspended.”

 

[fraurosena]

What a waste of money. Of course nobody will do a thing about it.