Trump 42: Racist In Chief

[Howl]

Mind. Blown.  ?  We are getting so many lessons in civics these days.  

[GreyhoundFan]

Keyword is may. John Roberts is reliably republican. Who knows if he's in Russia's pocket too. I wouldn't count on a senate trial, no matter what the law reads. As far as the supremes, we know that Gorsuch and Kavano are there to protect the mango manbaby. Thomas won't rule against any repub, especially since his wife is a branch trumpvidian. That doesn't leave us (the American public) with any wiggle room.

[SilverBeach]

1 minute ago, GreyhoundFan said:

the mango manbaby

Excellent! This cracked me up.

[Howl]

I'm a little BEC today about Trump, so liking this a lot: 

 

[Dandruff]

18 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I’m beginning to believe Pence thinks Trump really is god, too. Why else is he ignoring the possibility of removing Trump for completely legitimate reasons and becoming president himself? And... becoming eminently more electable in the 2020 elections than Trump is, as he is (outwardly) more palatable for voters?

I think he's ignoring the possibility because he's doing his job...which is essentially the same as Barr's job...which is to protect Trump.  We know where the real strings are being pulled from.  No way the problem could be this large, and this cohesive, without the background work having begun a long time ago.  They're working as a team and I believe they're all afraid to stick their necks out.

I doubt Pence would win in 2020.  I think the loyalty is to Trump and the voters essentially see Pence as doing some useful work in the background.  Of course he'd get some votes, but I can't see him gaining much inertia on either a pro- or anti-Trump platform.

17 hours ago, thoughtful said:

Trump claiming to be good for Jewish voters is the moment for which the phrase "with friends like this, who needs enemies?" was coined.

I agree, but don't think his claim is going to gain him any votes and it appears he may be unravelling.  Tactical error.

6 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

NBC reporter this morning "The President is giving whiplash today with the changing of his position/statements from yesterday to today." I just love them labeling it as whiplash because that's what it's been nonstop since he took office.

Mango menace gives me whiplash ever day and I suspect the NRA got to him in less than 24 hours on one of his statements.

He seems to very much not want to mess with the NRA.

My guess is he's being pulled hard in multiple directions and is buying time, with this distraction, for things to calm down.

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, Dandruff said:

He seems to very much not want to mess with the NRA.

My guess is he's being pulled hard in multiple directions and is buying time, with this distraction, for things to calm down.

The NRA is the entity through which a lot of Russian money was pumped into Trump's campaign in 2016. The NRA is an arm of the Russian government, more or less bought and paid for by Alexander Torshin, one of Putin's cronies. Of course Trump will jump up when the NRA whistles.

I don't think he's buying time, though. He's just distracting, distracting, distracting. It's his default mode in trying to deflect from all the scandals. And with the possibility of his tax returns and financial statements being released after tomorrow, it's no wonder he's going gaga right now.  

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump, amid claims of anti-Semitism, invoked Henry Ford. Hitler called the automaker his ‘inspiration.’"

Spoiler

President Trump, who recently embraced the title of “King of Israel,” has been repeatedly accused of promoting anti-Semitic tropes this week for his assertions that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats are “disloyal.”

On Wednesday night, just hours after Trump dismissed the criticisms and shared quotes from a conspiracy theorist claiming that Israeli Jews “love him like he is the second coming of God,” the president appeared to depart from the ongoing debate by firing off several tweets about the auto industry. But critics quickly noted that two of those missives positively referenced “legendary” American automaker Henry Ford, who was once regarded by Adolf Hitler as his “inspiration” and is arguably the most notorious anti-Semite in modern U.S. history.

“Today is really not the best day for Trump to be taking the side of Henry Ford,” Dan McLaughlin, a contributing columnist at National Review Online, tweeted.

The White House did not respond to questions early Thursday about whether Trump was aware of Ford’s bigoted views, which have been described as “the most controversial and least admirable aspect” of a career that included founding the Ford Motor Company, pioneering assembly-line production and creating the Model T.

“He really has a very dark history as far as the Jewish community and Jews are concerned,” said one Jewish leader in Florida about Ford in a 2014 Religion News Service article.

Ordinarily, name-dropping Ford when discussing cars might not draw attention, but Trump did it as he weathered backlash from Jewish leaders and organizations over his earlier comments calling Jewish people “disloyal” because of their politics. Critics argued that Trump had echoed a historic anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews have “dual loyalty,” The Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez reported.

“American Jews — like all Americans — have a range of political views and policy priorities,” David Harris, chief executive of the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee, said in a statement. “His assessment of their knowledge or ‘loyalty,’ based on their party preference, is inappropriate, unwelcome, and downright dangerous.”

In that context, some critics drew a direct line from Wednesday’s tweets to Ford’s dark ties to anti-Semitism.

Between 1910 and 1918, Ford became “increasingly anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor and anti-Semitic,” according to the Jewish Virtual Library. He believed “the bankers” and “the Jews” were responsible for not only wars but also the rise of other things he disapproved of such as short skirts and jazz music, the Henry Ford Museum wrote.

Ford’s antipathy toward Jews became public knowledge soon after he purchased a newspaper published in Dearborn, Mich., where his company was headquartered. In May 1920, the Dearborn Independent, which “primarily served as a forum for Henry Ford’s views,” launched an anti-Jewish series titled “The International Jew: The World’s Problem” that continued for several years, according to the museum. The articles were later compiled into a book and sought to bring attention to a conspiracy theory that Jews were plotting to take over the world.

At one point, the newspaper also printed “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a book already widely discredited as fake by that time and later dubbed “the worst piece of anti-Semitic propaganda generated in the 20th century.”

It wasn’t long before Ford and the Independent started to receive worldwide recognition, even catching the attention of Hitler. By the mid-1920s, the newspaper had reached a circulation of 900,000. Ford is the only American mentioned by name in “Mein Kampf,” Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, according to Religion News Service. In his writings, Hitler called Ford a “great man.”

“You can tell Herr Ford that I am a great admirer of his,” Hitler once reportedly said. “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany.”

A portrait of Ford hung in Hitler’s Munich office, the New York Times reported in 1922. A table in the antechamber was also covered with translated copies of a book written and published by Ford. When a Detroit News reporter asked Hitler about the painting, he responded, “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” the Dearborn Historian reported.

Ford later apologized and blamed some of the anti-Semitic propaganda on his employees. He shuttered the Independent, but continued to support the Nazi Party and advocated for America to stay out of what would become World War II, The Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs reported. In July 1938, Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.

Many recalled Ford’s history when criticizing Trump’s tweets on Wednesday.

“Henry Ford was a Nazi sympathizer who wrote a publication called ‘The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem,’ " tweeted Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a liberal organization advocating for social justice causes. “He directly inspired Hitler Youth & said Jews provoke mass violence.”

The tweet continued: “Unsurprising that a man who calls Jews disloyal invokes him. You’re both antisemites.”

Another critic slammed Ford as a “fascist,” adding in a message directed to Trump, “No surprise you laud him. ”

At least one person, however, noted the possibility that Trump may have been unaware of Ford’s views.

 

 

[Audrey2]

6 hours ago, Howl said:

I'm a little BEC today about Trump, so liking this a lot: 

 

Now we know what the requirement is for a man to get a job at Fox News-small testicles.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Audrey2

[GreyhoundFan]

Cue a twitter melt down: "Trump said doctors left operating rooms to greet him after mass shootings. Hospitals in Dayton and El Paso say that’s not true."

Spoiler

Speaking to reporters on the White House’s South Lawn on Wednesday, President Trump claimed he was warmly welcomed at hospitals in the wake of recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, and intimated that surgeons had even deserted their patients to meet him.

“The doctors were coming out of the operating rooms,” Trump said. “There were hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor. You couldn’t even walk on it.”

But the hospitals he visited say that isn’t what happened — and that doctors would never pause surgery to greet the president.

“At no time did, or would, physicians or staff leave active operating rooms during the presidential visit,” Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Center of El Paso, said in a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday. “Our priority is always patient care.”

Trump visited University Medical Center earlier this month, days after a gunman police say was motivated by anti-immigrant hatred killed 22 and wounded dozens at a Walmart. Though two patients who had already been discharged returned to the hospital to meet the president, none of the eight victims who were still being treated wanted to do so, Mielke told The Post at the time.

“This is a very sensitive time in their lives,” he said. “Some of them said they didn’t want to meet with the president, some of them didn’t want any visitors.”

The rejection apparently stung, because Trump returned to the subject on Wednesday, weeks after his visit to the city. When asked during a freewheeling exchange with reporters if he had spoken to the victims of mass shootings about whether they would support changes to gun laws, he ignored the question and instead took the opportunity to complain about news coverage of his visits to El Paso and Dayton.

At hospitals in both cities, the president claimed, “the love for me — and me, maybe, as a representative of the country — but for me — and my love for them was unparalleled. These are incredible people. But if you read the papers, it was like nobody would meet with me.”

That wasn’t true, he insisted: “Not only did they meet with me, they were pouring out of the room.”

White House officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday, and it’s not clear if Trump was describing his visit to the Texas hospital or the Ohio hospital, or both, when he claimed that surgeons rushed out of operating rooms to see him.

“Our physicians and staff at no time leave an active operating room, procedural area or patient room to greet anyone," Ben Sutherly, a spokesman for Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, told The Washington Post on Friday.

Trump visited both hospitals on Aug. 7, and reporters were not allowed to be present. The White House previously painted a glowing picture of his appearance at University Medical Center of El Paso, saying that the president was “received very warmly by not just victims and their families, but by the many members of medical staff who lined the hallways to meet them.” Similarly, White House social media director Dan Scavino wrote on Twitter that Trump “was treated like a Rock Star” at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, where the president met with three victims of the mass shooting that killed nine and injured dozens in the city’s entertainment district just hours after the massacre in El Paso.

Officials from Miami Valley Hospital previously told reporters that Trump met with trauma surgeons and nurses during “a very meaningful visit” that became emotional at times, and “wasn’t about politics.”

After the visit to Dayton, where Trump appears to have experienced a more hospitable reception than in El Paso, the White House released photos and a video showing the president smiling for pictures with nurses in scrubs and doctors with lab coats and stethoscopes. There was no indication, however, that any of those hospital staffers had just stepped out of the operating room. None are wearing the long-sleeved gowns, surgical masks and head coverings typically required in sterile surgical environments. (Medical personnel dressed in such attire did watch through the window as protesters gathered outside the hospital to oppose Trump’s visit, as captured by an Associated Press photographer.)

Trump’s remarks about doctors stepping away from operating rooms had drawn some skepticism on social media, given that interrupting an operation would be risky, and simply stepping outside the room for a few seconds would require surgeons to change their clothes and sterilize their hands and forearms again.

“I’m picturing surgeons dropping their scalpels as their patients lay unconscious on operating room tables,” one Twitter user commented.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It's beyond pitiful that the other members of the G-7 have to have plans to handle the mango manbaby: "France tries to orchestrate a no-drama G-7 summit, but Trump is the X factor"

Spoiler

Like an annual holiday gathering where the main goal is to get through the day without a family explosion, one of France’s main objectives as host of this weekend’s Group of Seven summit is to minimize the chances that President Trump will blow it up.

Subjects on which to tread lightly include some of the biggest problems the world’s major economies are facing — including trade, the system of international rules that has ordered the democratic world for decades and climate change, according to U.S. and other G-7 officials.

Already, Trump has shaken up the schedule, calling at the last minute for a special meeting Sunday morning to discuss the global economy. Senior administration officials said he will contrast U.S. growth with Europe’s economic doldrums and press his pro-jobs and “fair” trade messages.

Trump planned to “frankly” discuss sticking points among G-7 nations including trade, a digital services tax and NATO spending obligations, the officials told reporters in a Thursday briefing.

It is unclear how receptive the others will be to whatever thoughts Trump might offer as to how they should shift their own economic approaches. Many world leaders blame Trump’s trade war with China and his threats against Europe and Japan for a major contraction in investment and spending, and are frustrated with what they see as attempts to use weaknesses elsewhere to demand changes he thinks will benefit U.S. companies.

Trump’s refusal to agree to a joint view of the climate threat and an agenda to confront it roiled the first two G-7 meetings he attended, in Italy in 2017 and in Canada last year.

France hopes to largely sidestep that issue, relegating substantive discussion on the environment to meetings on Monday that will include invited non-G-7 leaders from Africa and elsewhere.

Unless there is unexpected harmony among the G-7 leaders, there will be no final communique. “We’re not going to focus on a communique if it’s not going to work,” said one European official.

Instead, France is tentatively planning to issue statements by leaders on separate issues and concentrate on seeking consensus on front-burner crises such as Hong Kong, Libya, Syria and terrorism. There will be an effort, with little hope of success, to find a middle ground between Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran, and Europe’s desire to preserve the Iran nuclear deal.

“When countries like Denmark are in the firing line, you just try to get through the summit without any damage,” said one G-7 diplomat, referring to Trump’s cancellation this week of a planned trip there after the Danish government rejected his interest in a U.S. purchase of Greenland.

“Every one of these, you just hope that it ends without any problem. It just gets harder and harder,” the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Europeans “are increasingly separating themselves from the U.S.” as they struggle to deal with Trump’s unconventional approach to diplomacy, said Heather Conley, the director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If that’s formulating a six-plus-one, they will do that. If that is looking to other, more-flexible calibrations to get their interests done, they will do that,” she said.

In Canada last year, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went back and forth on whether a joint communique was possible, and prepared several alternatives, according to Peter M. Boehm, the senior Canadian diplomat who served as Trudeau’s “sherpa” for the gathering.

Trump was persuaded to sign a lengthy communique only after the United States was given its own climate paragraph, separate from what the others endorsed. But after leaving the meeting early, Trump withdrew his signature from the entire document, via a tweet sent from Air Force One, in a huff over a perceived slight from Trudeau.

He later told aides that he thought the Canada summit was a waste of time — especially a lengthy discussion about plastic pollution in the oceans, and proposed support for a beach cleanup initiative.

Trump leaves Washington on Friday night for the summit in Biarritz, on the Bay of Biscay near the Spanish border, and the leaders first meet formally at a Saturday night dinner. The gathering, including Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, France and the United States, is the 45th since the group was formed in 1975. Russia joined in 1998, and it was the Group of Eight for 14 years until the Russians were kicked out after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Hosting duties are rotated among the members, and next year the United States will be in charge of setting the agenda. While its core interest remains the global economy, the group has evolved over the years to discuss all manner of international issues of concern to a membership with shared values. Its small size is designed for informality.

“What the leaders really like is the fact they can have an unscripted, fairly freewheeling discussion,” Boehm said. “They can feel free to interrupt each other and have a dialogue.”

In their plenary meetings, only the leaders are at the table, accompanied by their individual sherpas — in Trump’s case, Kelly Ann Shaw, deputy director of the National Economic Counsel and former National Security Council senior director for international trade, investment and development.

A senior administration official said Trump wants to brag about the U.S. economy and is uninterested in the many other issues that concern the G-7. During Thursday’s news briefing, however, other officials stressed that Trump was seeking to refocus the summit on the purely economic issues it was founded to address.

Trump has scheduled separate, bilateral sessions with all of the member leaders, except for Italy, whose right-wing government collapsed this week. He will also meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be attending the expanded group meetings on Monday, along with counterparts from Egypt, Rwanda, South Africa, Burkino Faso, Senegal, Australia and Chile.

The president has been briefed for this year’s gathering by national security adviser John Bolton and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.

As French President Emmanuel Macron has tried to head off conflict, he sent his chief diplomatic adviser, Emmanuel Bonne, to consult with the White House last week, and spoke to Trump by telephone Tuesday.

John Kirton, director of the G7 Research Group at the University of Toronto, said he was “somewhat optimistic” that Macron could navigate dealing with an unpredictable U.S. president and perhaps even find a way to accommodate Trump on climate change.

“Most people are serious enough to know that if you want to waste all your time and energy lecturing the president, ‘Donald, say you were wrong’ . . . then we all fry and die,” Kirton said.

Others have far lower expectations. Trump has complained repeatedly to senior aides about having to attend, White House officials said, and sees his planned meeting with Britain’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson — considered a potential ally on the world stage — as the only bright spot.

Another G-7 diplomat, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, observed that Trump likes to divide the member countries with spitballs such as his recent suggestion that Russia be readmitted, despite its refusal to reverse its annexation of Crimea. Trump made the same suggestion just before the Canada summit.

“You have to plan going into the summit that he is going to try to divide and conquer,” the second diplomat said.

Johnson has been having his own problems and may not want to be cast as a fellow disrupter. With Britain in an uproar over Brexit and his majority down to one parliamentary seat, Johnson spent much of this week as a semi-supplicant in Europe visiting Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to try to smooth the path for Britain’s imminent departure from the European Union.

The other G-7 members have their own domestic problems. Germany, after riding high for years under Merkel, is facing an economic downturn. Macron’s popularity has tanked amid the Yellow Vest labor protests across the country. Scandals threaten to derail Trudeau’s reelection bid this fall.

What Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last spring called his “unshakable bond” with Trump has been significantly shaken by threats to trade and the U.S. military presence in Japan, although Trump hopes to announce a new trade deal with Japan at the summit. Italy’s Giuseppe Conte, the man Trump hailed last year as “my new friend,” resigned Tuesday.

 

[WiseGirl]

55 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Trump’s unconventional approach to diplomacy,

Does he have an approach?  As in does he think through anything before he speaks or Tweets?  Sure he does (*/heavy sarcasm font).

In other super good news (sarcasm font again)  China retaliates with tariffs on $75 billion of US goodshttps://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/business/china-tariffs-trade-war/index.html 

How's your trade war working out mango moron?  I can only hope all this escalates for you to be voted out in a landslide.  Here comes the recession 45 says isn't happening.  Spiffy.

[Howl]

The may be the tweet that best sums up the promise and betrayal of the Trump/GOP dynamic.  It may also be my fave tweet of the year: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is flailing to blame someone, anyone, for an economy he’s increasingly anxious about"

Spoiler

President Trump labeled the chairman of the Federal Reserve — someone he chose for that job — as an enemy of America. He “hereby” ordered U.S. companies to look for ways to stop doing business with China. And he accused Democrats and journalists of some kind of Deep State theory to convince people that there is a recession.

We know Trump’s been anxious about the economy for the past few weeks, but his tweets Friday, consisting of all of the above, suggest a desperation to find something, anything, to fix the economy, or deflect blame for what can’t be fixed, before it sinks his reelection hopes.

“Everyone is nervous — everyone. … It’s not a panic, but they are nervous,” a Republican with close ties to the White House said in a deeply reported story by The Washington Post.

That was before Trump’s tweetstorm Friday morning. There is no recession yet, most analysts agree, and no guarantee of one in the next year and a half. But the totality of Trump’s tweets sure sounds closer to panic than nervousness.

Two things appeared to trigger Friday’s tweets: China announcing wide-scale tariffs on U.S. products, an escalation in the trade war. And Powell publicly saying that the trade war is “turbulent.”

Let’s start with the most egregious of the president’s blame-casting: that Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell is an enemy of the state comparable to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Fed is an independent agency charged with setting monetary policy in the United States. One of the most prominent ways it does that is by setting benchmark interest rates that help determine how much lending money to buy a house or a car or any other number of things will cost. Wall Street watches what the Fed does intensely, even obsessively. So, yes, the Fed plays a large role in the country’s economic health.

Trump has criticized the Fed for not lowering interest rates fast enough to grease the economy. But Trump’s argument that the Fed is to blame for an impending recession, and that its chairman has it out for the United States as much as a sometimes-antagonistic foreign government, is both factually and politically problematic.

Economists and analysts say a slowing global economy is what could lead to a recession here in the United States. An indicator of a potential looming recession showed up recently in the bond market. And they also say Trump’s trade war with China has exacerbated what is happening globally.

Politically, Trump is trying to make the egregious claim that someone he nominated for the job is akin to an enemy of the state. If we’re to follow that to its logical conclusion, then Trump has some answering to do for why Powell is in one of the most powerful jobs in America.

Powell may be powerful, but he’s not a household name. Which means Trump has some work to do to convince Americans that the slowing economy is the fault of someone they have never heard of whose job many Americans can’t fully understand.

Maybe that’s why Trump is also flailing for other people or institutions to blame for what he fears: a recession on his watch, just in time for his reelection campaign. In the past week alone, he has blamed journalists (for writing about the economy?); the Chinese president; and, in a way, U.S. companies. Look at this part of the tweets he sent Friday morning lashing out at the Fed:

“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA."

If it was that easy to solve what Trump has pinpointed as the United States’ economic woes (outsourcing), why didn’t he just send that tweet when he became president on Jan. 20, 2017?

Trump is also sending mixed messages here to his base. He has acknowledged in recent days that his trade war with China will hurt American consumers. Somebody had to do it, is a good summation of his new mantra. But in this fanciful version of events, Trump is nowhere to blame.

The great irony in all this is that presidents don’t have that much leverage over the economy, at least not as much as voters give them credit for. But Trump has enough of a grip on reality to understand that every president but one since the Civil War going into reelection with a recession has lost that election. Can he be the first president in modern times to reverse that trend by latching onto someone else to blame?

It seems like a long shot, but he’s trying.

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

He knows that when the economy tanks he's fucked.

[formergothardite]

35 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

He knows that when the economy tanks he's fucked.

And yet he can't stop himself from making things worse. Trump is one of those people who are truly their own worst enemy.

[fraurosena]

So after she said it, of course Trump has to prove @formergothardite right. He really is his own worst enemy.

 

[formergothardite]

He is truly incapable of not making all his problems worse. IMO he has gotten away with it(to some level) until now because of his daddy's money and being able to bully people. 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "Let’s ‘gut check’ all of Trump’s vulgar, unpresidential statements"

Spoiler

It was an exemplary week for presidential misbehavior.

President Trump had an international tantrum over Denmark’s refusal to sell him Greenland.

He invoked the anti-Semitic trope that American Jews have a dual loyalty to Israel.

He proclaimed himself the Messiah.

Along the way, he used shooting victims for self-promotion, said he wanted a medal for military valor, and more.

In this divided land, there is broad agreement on one thing: Our president is unpresidential.

A Post/ABC News poll released last month found that two-thirds of Americans find Trump “unpresidential” and only 28 percent say his actions are “fitting and proper.” Trump himself has acknowledged that some of his behavior is “not at all ‘Presidential’.”

It’s hard to say for sure whether Trump was more undignified this week compared with most others. This is, after all, a man who boasted publicly about his genitals, uses words such as “bull----,” “p---y,” “goddamn” and “little Schitt” in public, misspells tweets, talks of women bleeding, proclaims himself a “stable genius” with a “very large brain,” “fell in love” with North Korea’s dictator, paid hush money to a porn actress, shoved a prime minister, wore an ill-fitting vest to visit Queen Elizabeth and praised the “shape” of France’s first lady.

He also let Kanye West loose in the Oval Office, prayed for higher ratings for “The Apprentice” at a prayer breakfast , spoke of “raking” forests, hugged an American flag, dragged toilet paper from his shoe, suggested the Clintons murdered Jeffrey Epstein, described neo-Nazis as “very fine people,” and, when told by a rape victim that the Islamic State killed her family, replied: “Where are they now?”

But maybe there is a way to calibrate vulgarity. Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler and his team have documented more than 12,000 false or misleading statements by Trump using the Pinocchio system: from one Pinocchio for “shading” facts to four for “whoppers.” Rare, unexpectedly true statements earn a Geppetto.

Instead of a fact check, I propose a “gut check” of how unpresidential Trump is. Instead of Geppetto and Pinocchio, this uses Beauty and the Beast. Where Kessler’s work is objective and researched, this will be arbitrary and slapdash — like Trump’s policies.

One Beast: Routinely unpresidential.

Two Beasts: Extra gross, vulgar, narcissistic.

Three Beasts: Downright beastly, uncouth, uncivilized.

Four Beasts: A wild rumpus. We weep for our country.

On the rare instances when he behaves in a “presidential” manner (usually a teleprompter is involved), he will be assigned a “Beauty.”

This week, the Gut Checker awards Trump one Beast each for:

● Again describing the “evil” free press with the Stalinist phrase “Enemy of the People.”

● Promoting Sean Spicer on “Dancing With the Stars.”

● Boasting about breaking Elton John’s crowd-size record.

● Badgering the Federal Reserve chairman he appointed as the “enemy” and “a golfer who can’t putt.”

● Describing Fox News’s Juan Williams as “pathetic,” sycophantic, “nasty and wrong.”

● Threatening not to let Fox News host a presidential debate because he didn’t like his favorite network’s latest poll.

● Threatening to release Islamic State fighters into Germany and France.

● Claiming Google “manipulated” some 16 million votes in 2016.

All routine breaches of decorum for Trump. All unpresidential.

The Gut Checker awards two Beasts each for:

● Telling reporters he might not vacate the White House for “maybe 10 or maybe 14” years — regardless of what the Constitution says; and using imaginary powers to say U.S. companies are “hereby ordered” to find alternatives to Chinese markets.

● Resuming his attacks on four nonwhite women in Congress, mocking one’s “tears” and accusing her of being “violent.”

● Calling former aide Anthony Scaramucci a “highly unstable ‘nut job’ ” and a “mental wreck” guilty of “gross incompetence.”

Three Beasts:

● Saying hospitalized victims of mass shootings paid tribute to him. “They love their president,” he said, in an “unparalleled” way. “They were pouring out of the rooms. The doctors were coming out of the operating rooms.”

● Expressing desire to receive the Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor against an enemy force, despite draft deferments for bone spurs. “I wanted one, but they told me I don’t qualify. . . . I’d say, ‘Can I give it to myself anyway?’ They said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ ”

● Tweeting the words of a racist conspiracy theorist who said Israelis view Trump like “the King of Israel” and “the second coming of God.” He later claimed he’s “the chosen one.”

Four Beasts:

● Canceling his trip to Denmark and twice calling its prime minister “nasty” because she labeled as “absurd” Trump’s absurd plan to buy Greenland.

● Accusing nearly 80 percent of American Jews of ignorance or “great disloyalty,” and after an outcry by Jewish leaders, repeating the slander.

One week, zero beauties and 31 beasts — a full herd and, by any measure, an impressive stable of rude, crude and undignified behavior. But if we as a nation can agree that our president is unpresidential, experience should also allow us to agree on this: Next week might well be worse.

 

[Dandruff]

Looks like he's enroute to the G7.  I'm sure they can't wait to see him, shake his tiny hand, and discuss constructive ways to make the world a better place.

Wonder if he'll tell them he's the Chosen one.

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, Dandruff said:

Looks like he's enroute to the G7.  I'm sure they can't wait to see him, shake his tiny hand, and discuss constructive ways to make the world a better place.

Wonder if he'll tell them he's the Chosen one.

He'll get his fee fees hurt, throw a tantrum, and come back early.

[Ozlsn]

9 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

He knows that when the economy tanks he's fucked.

Unfortunately I think they'll find a way to blame it on someone else (China, Obama, immigrants, Democrats, IS, Mexico, Clinton, G7, whoever), start up a glorious militia to "protect" the USA and do an armed takeover. 

Ok, yes, everything past the end bracket is speculation - but the bit about the doctors leaving patients in theatre reminded me a bit too forcefully of the Khmer Rouge taking over Phnom Penh.

[WiseGirl]

Watching the news this morning I'm beginning to understand how this idiot bankrupted so many businesses. He sure is trying to bankrupt Americans. He is so, so, so....words fail me...I can't describe the irritation I feel when he babbles about if you are taxing us, we will tax you more...ordering American businesses to leave China, I'm hoping this one bites him in the ass and corporate America bails on him or makes it really, really hard on him to keep on keeping on.  (Don't take this dream from me).

[fraurosena]

Oh dear, Trump is attempting to gaslight everyone again. Again. And again, another fail.

Because...

 

Who else believes he tweeted that himself, by the way? It's way to literate to be him.

[Dandruff]

4 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh dear, Trump is attempting to gaslight everyone again. Again. And again, another fail.

There was trust?

I guess someone told him that he can't be both the messiah and a stable genius at the G7.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

If only he had the brains to understand...