Trump 44: Finally on Trial

[fraurosena]

27 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

At this rate flying Australia to Europe is going to become... tricky.

You can fly to Europe just fine, even though planes avoid flying over Ukraine... they just fly over Sweden instead. And over my neighbourhood, ever since the routes changed after MH17. 

[Ozlsn]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

You can fly to Europe just fine, even though planes avoid flying over Ukraine... they just fly over Sweden instead. And over my neighbourhood, ever since the routes changed after MH17. 

Well it's the heading south more than east bit that's been the problem. Between bits of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Himalayas and occasional dust ups between India and Pakistan there have been some route changes. The latest apparently only affects the Perth-London route, but adds about 40 minutes and decreases the number of seats due to the additional fuel needed.

[47of74]

Another bit of satire that is very plausible

Quote

President Donald Trump has reportedly inked a deal with Shire US, Inc, who manufactures the drug Adderall. The terms of the deal have not been fully disclosed, however in exchange for an unspecified investment in the Trump organization, Shire will have corporate sponsorship and naming rights over the next State of the Union Address given by President Trump, which is scheduled for February.

“At this time, we’re finalizing the details, but we have a couple of ideas for naming the event,” Shire deputy junior spokespusher Craig Kentleberry told the press today. “One thing is for certain, we at Shire truly appreciate any opportunities we’re afforded for marketing synergy, and you don’t get a much better marketing opportunity than having the President of the United States use your product.”

“Clearly he loves our product,” Kentleberry said. “Just watch him during any important speech he gives. He’s huffing and sneezing the whole time he’s speaking. We’re proud that Adderall is fueling not just his rage tweet marathons, but also plays a vital role in him having the guts to actually stand on a global stage and speak, because he knows deep down what an utterly stupid idiot he is, empirically speaking. Imagine how terrible his speeches would be without Adderall pumping through his veins.”

How do ya like your Adderall, Donald?  Uh, by the quart. (H/T MST3K).

[Naga Viper]

7 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Another bit of satire that is very plausible

How do ya like your Adderall, Donald?  Uh, by the quart. (H/T MST3K).

Great, now I'll forever equate 45 with Joe Don Baker.

...actually, that kind of works.

[47of74]

Great, now I'll forever equate 45 with Joe Don Baker.
...actually, that kind of works.

Actually Mitchell would have made a much better President than the orange butt plug.

[Naga Viper]

Well, almost anyone could do a better job. But that's true—for all his fuck-ups, Mitchell ultimately got things done, and on the right side of the law.

Now I'll be recasting the entire movie in my head. Melania = Linda Evans, naturally. And Greta Thunberg is clearly that kid Mitchell gets into a battle of wits with.

[Smash!]

I just listened to the latest Gaslit Nation Podcast and it left me startled about the parallels between 45 and Hitler. It's not new I know but hearing those two highly skilled women report that Hitler and his Final Solution of the Jewish question was also not taken seriously and even smiled at, gave me goose bumps.

[GreyhoundFan]

He is such an idiot:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is from the WaPo's daily roundup. I thought it was interesting: "The Daily 202: Trump’s compulsion to take credit deepens his credibility gap amid questions about Iran intelligence"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump boasted on Thursday morning about the declining cancer death rate in the United States. “A lot of good news coming out of this Administration,” he tweeted. That night, during a rally in Ohio, Trump also took credit for the prime minister of Ethiopia receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump had nothing at all to do with either development. In fact, he proposed cutting federal funding for cancer research. Perhaps because Trump is such a serial exaggerator – or maybe because everyone’s focused on Iran, impeachment and Iowa – these baseless claims passed with little notice. But they help illustrate why Trump’s credibility gap is so wide, which has hobbled him during the 10 days since he ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani and prevented him from getting the bounce in the polls he reportedly hoped for.

-- The president claiming credit for good news that he had little or nothing to do with has become a running joke over the past three years. For example, the United States has gone several years now without a U.S. commercial airline fatality. When that streak continued during the first year of his presidency, Trump credited himself. “Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation,” he tweeted. “Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!”

Trump said over the holidays that people are proudly wishing each other “Merry Christmas” again because of his leadership.

In November, Trump took credit for Apple opening a Texas plant to assemble Mac Pros. In fact, the facility has been operational since 2013. He’s made similar declarations, from Pennsylvania to Louisiana.

That same month, Trump signed a bipartisan act to mint a commemorative coin for the centennial of women gaining the right to vote under the Constitution. “I’m curious: Why wasn’t it done a long time ago?” he said during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office. “I guess the answer to that is because now I’m president. We get things done.” Another plausible explanation: The centennial wasn’t until now.

Trump has taken credit for the success of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea and for North America’s winning bid to host the 2026 World Cup. In May, the Boston Red Sox came to the White House to celebrate winning the World Series. After the team swept the Seattle Mariners in a subsequent three-game series, Trump hinted that their visit might have something to do with it:

But Boston tanked again after the tweet. They finished the season with an 84-78 record, 19 games behind and a distant third in the American League East.

The president has claimed that one of his proudest moments was getting a Veterans Choice program approved. In fact, the plan was sponsored by Bernie Sanders and John McCain, then signed into law by Barack Obama, in 2014. He’s taken credit for border barriers that existed before he took office. He’s claimed credit for getting countries to contribute to NATO what they had already planned to spend on their own militaries.

Trump has also taken credit for fixing things that aren’t fixed. For instance, he touted North Korea’s denuclearization when it was not happening. Another Trump M.O. is to take credit for addressing crises he created. He has said it was his idea to bail out farmers suffering from Chinese tariffs, not mentioning that he started the trade war. The president has also said he deserves credit for reuniting families who were torn apart because of his own immigration policies.

It’s often situational. Trump demands credit when stocks go up, but he said it was not his fault when markets corrected. He’s also taken credit for coming up with words and phrases such as “caravan,” “fake” and “prime the pump” that long predate him.

-- Trump’s fusillade of falsehoods on so many topics casts a shadow of doubt over his claims that he says are based on top secret intelligence. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker database has documented more than 15,413 false or misleading claims by Trump since he took office.

The Sunday shows starkly displayed the consequences of the president’s decision to squander his credibility by playing so fast and loose with the truth throughout his tenure. Trump’s own top aides declined to confirm his declaration on Friday that intelligence showed the Iranians were looking to “blow up” four U.S. embassies.

“I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on CBS, referring to intelligence reports. “What I’m saying is I share the president’s view that probably — my expectation was – they were going to go after our embassies.”

National security adviser Robert O’Brien said on Fox that it’s difficult “to know exactly what the targets are,” but it’s not unreasonable to anticipate a future Iranian attack “would have hit embassies in at least four countries.” 

On CNN, Esper said “there was intelligence that … there was an intent to target the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.” He said the details been shared with the Gang of Eight. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the group, said that’s not true. 

O’Brien acknowledged on NBC that that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was not informed of an imminent threat against it, something that would be standard operating procedure. “As soon as it looked like there was going to be some sort of action against a U.S. Embassy,” he said, “the president was decisive and bold in his action.”

-- When Trump appeared to take credit for fewer people dying of cancer, the American Cancer Society said the trendlines from 2016 to 2017 “reflect prevention, early detection, and treatment advances that occurred in prior years.”

The cancer death rate fell in the United States in 2017 – the last year for which data is available – by 2.2 percent, and experts said it’s largely because of fewer lung cancer deaths. This is the result of people choosing to stop smoking over the past few decades, as well as more advanced treatments. The cancer death rate has fallen 29 percent overall since its 1991 peak, with declines every year from 1991 through 2017.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a breast cancer survivor, noted that Trump’s budget for the current fiscal year proposed cutting more than $4.5 billion in funding from the National Institutes of Health, but a bipartisan coalition in Congress blocked his request and instead appropriated a $2.6 billion increase in support.

Chris Lu, a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center who worked in the Obama White House, said the president is trying to have it both ways. Lu said that, if Trump wants to take credit for the cancer rate falling, “he also needs to own” that income inequality is the highest ever recorded, that the United States has suffered the most mass killings since at least the 1970s, that hate crimes are at a 16-year high, that July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded and that air pollution is getting worse.

-- Trump taking credit for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed earning the Nobel Peace Prize apparently stemmed from confusion about African affairs. “I made a deal, I saved a country and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country,” Trump told his supporters in Toledo. “I said, ‘What, did I have something to do with it?’ Yeah! But, you know, that’s the way it is. As long as we know, that’s all that matters.”

Ahmed was recognized for his work securing a peace treaty with Eritrea after decades of hostilities. “Trump played no apparent role in the Eritrea peace deal, but Washington has played a convening role in another deal [Ahmed] is seeking with Egypt that will regulate how quickly Ethiopia can fill a new dam it has built in the upper reaches of the Nile River that has major implications for the flow of water Egypt relies on economically,” our Nairobi bureau chief Max Bearak explains. “The apparent conflation of the two led to widespread befuddlement on social media in Ethiopia and elsewhere, though by and large the comments were not taken seriously.”

“He was talking about Egypt and Ethiopia,” a senior Ethiopian government official told the Associated Press. “President Trump really believes he avoided a war as such … but that was not the case.”

 

[47of74]

In case there was any doubt that fuck face is a truly awful and evil person

The President of the United States shared a photo of a man’s body draped over a metal fence on Monday morning. The image is apparently that of an anti-government protester killed in Iran.

Metro has chosen to pixelate the image, which is too disturbing to share uncensored as President Trump did.

The original tweet which Trump shared said:

‘Question: Who in America supports this mullahs’ crime? ‘Answer : Nancy Pelosi #NancyPelosiFakeNews #IranProtests2020 #IranPortests’ (sic)

[GreyhoundFan]

Someone, please take his phone away: "Trump retweeted Pelosi in Muslim garb. The White House made it worse."

Spoiler

After President Trump retweeted a doctored image of Democratic leaders dressed in Islamic garb, the White House offered a curious justification: Trump retweeted that image to send the message that Democrats are on the side of terrorists.

This was apparently intended as a defense.

Which would appear to mean the White House’s official message is now that depictions of Democrats in Muslim garb denote Democratic support for terrorists.

This blog will not reproduce the disgusting tweet that Trump retweeted. It shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in an image photoshopped to depict them wearing Islamic head coverings. They are standing in front of the Iranian flag. The message in the tweet accuses Democrats of “trying their best to come to the Ayatollah’s rescue.”

In response to the ensuing blowback, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham defended Trump’s actions on Fox News. Watch:

“I think the president is making clear that the Democrats have been parroting Iranian talking points and almost taking the side of terrorists and those who were out to kill the Americans,” Grisham said.

It’s important to note that this came right after Grisham was asked a question about an Islamic tweeter’s lament that Trump’s tweet discriminated against Muslims. The Fox anchor read aloud from a tweet asking why Trump was wielding the “dress” and “religious beliefs” of millions of Muslim Americans as a “slur.”

Grisham’s response was to openly say that Trump was doing this for the express purpose of illustrating Democrats’ sympathy with terrorists.

It’s true that the tweet in question also included the Iranian flag and a direct reference to the ayatollah. But part of the criticism here is over the use of general imagery of Islamic head coverings to symbolize alleged Democratic support for terrorists.

In response, nowhere in the interview did Grisham send a broader message to Muslims that Trump didn’t intend to equate Muslim garb with terrorism. If anything, she actively reinforced that equating of the two. And her message sounded pre-scripted to do just this.

By the way, the larger message that Trump is trying to send here is utter, steaming nonsense. The Republican Party is broadly attacking Pelosi right now over her Sunday interview on ABC News, in which she was asked about Iranian protests in the wake of the news that an Iranian missile brought down a commercial airliner.

Pelosi’s response was convoluted, but she condemned the Iranian government for allowing commercial flights at the time and said she would “love to see the aspirations of the people of Iran realized,” while quite properly worrying aloud about “escalating” the situation. Republicans have absurdly turned this into siding with the Iranian regime against protesters.

There was a time when Republican lawmakers felt obliged to condemn such naked expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry as the one we just saw in Trump’s amplification of that despicable tweet. Remember back in 2015, when Paul D. Ryan — then the House Speaker — gave a widely praised speech condemning candidate Trump’s proposed Muslim ban? Ryan stood up for all the Muslims serving in our armed forces and said the “vast, vast, vast, vast majority” of Muslims are “peaceful” and that many are our “allies” against radical terrorism.

Let’s see how many such condemnations we hear now. We’ll probably hear as many as we did when Trump tweeted out a video that wrenched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) comments out of context to portray her as trivializing 9/11, or when Trump retweeted the lie that Omar partied on the anniversary of the attacks.

 

[Alisamer]

28 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

In case there was any doubt that fuck face is a truly awful and evil person
 

This is nothing less than a threat. If one of his deplorables attacks Pelosi or any other democrat in congress, Trump should be charged, and the tweets shown in that article (among others) entered into evidence. He's inciting violence and actively courting the worst possible people in order to get votes. He's shown now that he's not above killing to win favor with others, and it's not a big step toward ordering killing to punish his opponents, and from there to making it clear if his opponents are killed he'll pardon the perpetrator.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Five questions about Trump’s company in 2020"

Spoiler

As Donald Trump enters his fourth year in office, there is still a blind spot at the heart of his presidency.

The blind spot is Trump’s business, which he still owns but divulges little about.

Through the Trump Organization, the president has a web of relationships with customers, lenders and investors that remains largely out of sight. That could mean President Trump is exposed to problems — such as struggling properties or debts coming due — that would put private pressure on a man with immense public power.

We know a bit more about that business after this past year of reporting but plan to dive deeper in the coming year.

Among the things we learned in 2019: Some of the Trump Organization’s key properties are struggling. The company’s brand has become toxic to an array of customers. The company has pushed out dozens of undocumented workers it was employing. And lawsuits surrounding Trump’s possible conflicts of interests are piling up.

Trump also showed a greater willingness last year to boost his business from the White House, the most stunning move being a decision to award the Group of Seven summit to his own club. Trump later backed off that decision under pressure.

This is what we will look to learn about the Trump Organization in 2020:

1. How will the company adapt now that it has let go of many undocumented immigrant workers?

As a politician, Trump talks tough about stopping illegal immigration. As a businessman, it has been a different story.

One thing we learned last year is that Trump’s business was built with the help of the labor of undocumented immigrants, even as Trump denounced them in public.

The Washington Post spoke with nearly 50 undocumented workers who had been employed by the Trump Organization, some for as long as two decades, across 11 of the company’s golf courses and resorts in the United States. They drove machines that built fairways and greens. They cleaned clubhouses and the Trump family’s personal villas. They cooked Trump’s burgers the way he liked them and carried the food to his table.

And they drove tractors and picked grapes at Trump’s winery in Charlottesville, where Trump’s company fired at least seven workers on Dec. 30, more than a year after the Trump Organization’s reliance on the undocumented first came to light.

These workers said they suffered many of the same problems millions of undocumented immigrants face in the United States: lower pay, a lack of benefits, shortchanged hours and the precarious sense they could not stand up for themselves to their employers without risking their jobs.

We still do not have a full accounting of how many undocumented workers the Trump Organization employed or how many people it fired after these revelations came to light.

Since reports on the Trump Organization’s undocumented employees appeared, the company has instituted new measures to verify applicants’ documents.

Eliminating these workers from the payroll could mean the company has to increase salaries or offer more benefits to attract replacements who are legal to work. That, in turn, could further strain the company’s finances. How the Trump Organization moves past revelations about its undocumented workforce will be key in 2020.

2. How is Trump’s business doing financially?

Last year, The Post revealed that three of Trump’s key properties — in Miami, Chicago and Washington — were lagging behind their competitors. Those three properties carry more than $300 million in debt, a large chunk of Trump’s outstanding loans, according to financial disclosures he files annually with the government.

In Miami, the Trump Organization’s filings with local tax authorities showed that profitability at the Trump Doral resort had fallen 69 percent from 2015 to 2017.

At Trump’s hotel in Chicago, the company reported an even steeper drop in profits last year: 89 percent.

The reason? Trump’s tax consultants blamed politics, saying Trump’s politicized brand seemed to be driving customers away. In Chicago, they cited a quote from a Post report in which an investor called Trump’s foray into politics an “embarrassment.”

There was other bad news: Trump’s golf course in New York City lost money. Revenue at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida dropped 10 percent. Apartment buildings in Manhattan stripped off Trump’s name. Trump golf courses in Scotland and Ireland all reported financial losses for the year, again.

The company’s planned expansion of its hotel operation with two new lines of lower-cost hotels fizzled. Early last year, the company canceled its plans for “Scion” and “American Idea” hotels, saying that the hotels would inevitably be dogged by concerns about conflicts of interest.

But the biggest news was in Washington, where Trump’s D.C. hotel had seemed like a bright spot, buzzing with Republican allies. Behind the scenes, the hotel was lagging behind its peers in occupancy rates and room revenue, according to Trump Organization documents obtained by The Post.

This fall, the Trump Organization made a surprising decision: It said it was exploring a sale of the D.C. hotel’s lease.

3. Will selling be a new strategy?

The company’s old plan had been to put itself in a kind of stasis during Trump’s presidency: It would stop seeking large-scale deals and just run its consumer-focused businesses. The company said this arrangement would limit the potential for any conflicts of interest: Any new customers Trump attracted would be small potatoes. A new club member, a new hotel guest — nothing big enough to raise concerns about potential corruption.

This arrangement “effectively put me out of work,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in his book “Triggered.” Trump Jr. was theoretically running the business with his brother, Eric. But with no new deals to seek, Trump Jr. seemed to indicate that it did not need much running: “All that was left for me to do was spend my time campaigning for my father.”

But the auto­pilot plan works only if the existing Trump businesses can sustain themselves.

In Washington, the company is reportedly asking $500 million for the Trump hotel, which would be an unusually high price for a luxury D.C. hotel.

Trump Jr. has said one reason for seeking a sale is concern about conflicts of interest and the lawsuits filed over its foreign-government customers. But the sale itself could present a far larger potential for conflict — it could allow a single person or company to pay the president’s company a massive lump sum.

In Europe, the Trump Organization’s plan is to start selling homes.

The Trump Organization won approval from local councils last year to build more than 550 homes in Scotland and Ireland. Many of the homes that the company wants to build are high-end residences that could attract foreign buyers.

The home-building strategy will be a big new challenge for the company, especially in such fraught political times. At one of Trump’s Scottish golf clubs, he faces neighbors determined to be a thorn in his side, to preserve their pastoral lifestyle and to prevent crowded roads and schools. At the other Scottish course, a local council has blocked the company’s construction drive thus far.

None of the European courses have made a profit in the years since Trump purchased them. The combination of golf tourism and private events has not been enough to get over the hump. Selling vacation homes might be, but it is still a long road to get there.

4. How is Trump changing his tactics when it comes to promoting or distancing himself from his business?

In October, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney made a stunning announcement. Trump had awarded the contract to host next year’s Group of Seven summit to himself.

The summit would be at Trump National Doral Miami, Mulvaney said. That would mean hundreds of guests, and a lot of federal spending, all arriving during the hotel’s traditional slow month of June.

Mulvaney said Trump did not intend to profit.

“He has no interest in profit from being [president],” Mulvaney said.

But the move was so concerning that even Republicans objected, and Trump canceled the plan a few days later. The summit was moved to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland (which Mulvaney had earlier dismissed as “a miserable place to have it”).

But beyond that episode, Trump also took smaller steps that used the power of the presidency to boost his business. He attended GOP fundraisers at four Trump properties, meaning that he was simultaneously raising money as a candidate and taking in revenue for ballroom rental and catering. Trump visited his Doonbeg resort in July — taking in $110,000 selling food to the Irish police sent to protect him — and then, according to Vice President Pence’s chief of staff, encouraged Pence to visit the same resort a few months later.

Trump also used his Twitter account to tout one of his golf courses and his for-profit Mar-a-Lago Club — where membership reportedly costs $200,000.

“I will be there in two weeks, The Southern White House!” Trump wrote on Twitter in December.

5. Who will try to influence the Trump administration by patronizing Trump’s businesses?

Last year, The Post obtained “VIP Arrivals” logs that the Trump hotel in Washington handed out to prepare its staff for arriving guests. They showed that some of the hotel’s most valued customers also wanted something from the Trump administration.

In April 2018, for instance, wireless providers T-Mobile and Sprint announced a landmark merger that needed approval from the Trump administration.

The day after that announcement, nine of T-Mobile’s top executives — including CEO John Legere — had reservations at the Trump hotel. After that stay, executives returned repeatedly, spending $195,000 at the hotel over 10 months.

“It’s become a place I feel very comfortable,” Legere said when a Post reporter found him in the Trump hotel’s lobby.

T-Mobile denied it was seeking influence. After the Post report appeared online, Legere moved to the Four Seasons.

Trump administration officials did not comment about the executives’ hotel stays. Trump’s Justice Department later approved the merger.

The VIP Arrivals logs also showed another big-spending guest who wanted influence in Washington. Nahro al-Kasnazan, a wealthy Iraqi who wants the United States to take a hard line against Iran, stayed 26 nights in one of the hotel’s suites in 2018.

Kasnazan said he did not expect that stay — which probably cost tens of thousands of dollars — to buy him influence in Trump’s Washington. But he still used his trip to socialize with State Department officials and to raise his profile among people in Trump’s orbit.

“We saw all the Trumpers,” his spokesman said.

The Trump Organization said it had donated the profits from Kasnazan’s stay but did not say how much those were.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[apple1]

58 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

This thing of his of consigning people (who are no longer living) to hell seems relatively new for him (or maybe I just didn't know about it until recently). It's not a good trait, to say the least.

[Dandruff]

1 hour ago, apple1 said:

This thing of his of consigning people (who are no longer living) to hell seems relatively new for him (or maybe I just didn't know about it until recently). It's not a good trait, to say the least.

The dead can't defend themselves.  Perfect targets and tools to stir his crap with.

[Smash!]

This thing of his of consigning people (who are no longer living) to hell seems relatively new for him (or maybe I just didn't know about it until recently). It's not a good trait, to say the least.

He needs the evangelical voters who already think he‘s godsent. In this context it makes sense IMO.

[GreyhoundFan]

"New book portrays Trump as erratic, ‘at times dangerously uninformed’"

Spoiler

President Trump reveals himself as woefully uninformed about the basics of geography, incorrectly telling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border.” He toys with awarding himself the Medal of Freedom.

And, according to a new book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, Trump does not seem to grasp the fundamental history surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asks his then-chief of staff John Kelly, as the men prepare to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which commemorates the December 1941 Japanese surprise attack in the Pacific that pulled the United States into World War II.

“Trump had heard the phrase ‘Pearl Harbor’ and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else,” write the authors, later quoting a former senior White House adviser who concludes: “He was at times dangerously uninformed.”

“A Very Stable Genius” — a 417-page book named after Trump’s own declaration of his superior knowledge — is full of similarly vivid details from Trump’s tumultuous first three years as president, from his chaotic transition before the taking office to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation and final report.

The story the authors unfurl, as they explain in the prologue, “is intended to reveal Trump at his most unvarnished and expose how decision-making in his administration has been driven by one man’s self-centered and unthinking logic — but a logic nonetheless.”

The book by the two longtime Post reporters — who were part of the paper’s team that won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Trump and Russia — was obtained ahead of its scheduled release on Tuesday.

Many of the key moments reported in the book are rife with foreign policy implications, portraying a novice commander in chief plowing through normal protocols and alarming many both inside the administration and in other governments.

Early in his administration, for instance, Trump is eager to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin — so much so, the authors write, “that during the transition he interrupts an interview with one of his secretary of state candidates” to inquire about his pressing desire: “When can I meet Putin? Can I meet with him before the inaugural ceremony?” he asks.

After the two leaders do meet face-to-face for the first time — 168 days into his presidency at the Group of Twenty summit in Hamburg — Trump promptly declares himself a Russia expert, dismissing the expertise of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had worked closely with Putin since the 1990s, when Tillerson was working his way up the Exxon corporate ladder and doing business with Russia.

“Tillerson’s years of negotiating with Putin and studying his moves on the chessboard were suddenly irrelevant,” the duo writes. “‘I have had a two-hour meeting with Putin,’ Trump told Tillerson. ‘That’s all I need to know … I’ve sized it all up. I’ve got it.’”

In spring of 2017, Trump also clashed with Tillerson when he told him he wanted his help getting rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that prevents U.S. firms and individuals from bribing foreign officials for business deals.

“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump says, according to the book. “We’re going to change that.”

The president, they go on to explain, was frustrated with the law “ostensibly because it restricted his industry buddies or his own company’s executives from paying off foreign governments in faraway lands.”

The book, the duo writes in an author’s note, is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 sources, corroborated, when possible, by calendars, diary entries, internal memos and even private video recordings. (Trump himself had initially committed to an interview for the book, the authors write, but ultimately declined, amid an escalating war with the media).

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

One government aide tells the authors that Trump has destroyed the gravity and allure that used to surround the presidency, regardless of the Oval Office occupant.

“‘He’s ruined that magic,’ this aide said of Trump,” Rucker and Leonnig write. “‘The disdain he shows for our country’s foundation and its principles. The disregard he has for right and wrong. Your fist clenches. Your teeth grate.’”

Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s communications director for just 11 days, recounts the president’s response when he asks him, “Are you an act?”

“I’m a total act and I don’t understand why people don’t get it,” Trump replies, according to Scaramucci.

Yet the people in Trump’s administration and orbit don’t behave as if the president is simply playing a part or acting a role. At the Justice Department, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and other senior officials run through private fire drills in case Trump triggers a “Saturday night massacre” — an allusion to the series of resignations under President Richard Nixon following his order to his attorney general to fire the Watergate independent special prosecutor.

“They prepared for several scenarios: If Trump fired [then-Attorney General Jeff] Sessions, if Trump fired Rosenstein, and if Trump ordered the firing of Mueller,” the authors write.

The officials have reason to be concerned, according to the authors, who report that Trump muses about using a memo by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) as the justification for firing Rosenstein and reigning in Mueller’s investigation. He also rails against his own Justice Department, furious that the agency isn’t being sufficiently loyal to him personally.

At one point, after the department blocks the release of what the president believes was a pro-Trump memo, he calls Kelly ranting. “‘This is my Justice Department. They are supposed to be my people,’ Trump told Kelly,” the authors write. “‘This is the ‘Deep State.’. . Mueller’s all over it.’”

Some details are more harmless than disconcerting. Early in his presidency, Trump agrees to participate in an HBO documentary that features judges and lawmakers — as well as all the living presidents — reading aloud from the Constitution. But Trump struggles and stumbles over the text, blaming others in the room for his mistakes and griping, “It’s like a foreign language.”

In another scene, after Axios reported in December 2018 that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Trump met privately to discuss Christie possibly becoming his next chief of staff. After Christie respectfully turns down the job, he asks Trump how the details of their meeting leaked out, since it was just the two of them and first lady Melania Trump in the room.

“Oh, I did it,” said Trump, who has long vented about leakers, revealing himself to be among them.

Other moments have a darker tinge. Rucker and Leonnig write that during the early days of the Mueller investigation, both Donald McGahn, then the White House counsel, and Stephen K. Bannon, then a senior White House adviser, try to convince Ty Cobb — the lawyer tasked, at the time, with overseeing the White House ‘s involvement in the probe — to remove Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both senior advisers, from the White House staff, to protect the president during the ongoing investigation.

“‘You need to shoot them in the [expletive] head,’ Bannon jokingly told Cobb,” the authors write.

Trump was “verbally and emotionally abusive” toward former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the book reports, and routinely complained she was not doing enough about illegal immigration and the border.

According to the book, “He made fun of her stature and believed that at about five feet four inches she was not physically intimidating. ‘She’s so short,’ Trump would tell others about Nielsen. She and Kelly would try to make light of it. Kelly would rib her and say, ‘But you’ve got those little fists of fury!’”

When Nielsen — who had received threats against her life as the public face of the administration’s hard-line immigration policy — eventually left the government, she did so without any prearranged continuing security detail, which must be requested by the chief of staff and authorized by the president.

“When some of her international counterparts visited Washington, they offered to hire personal security for Nielsen to protect her, but she declined,” write the authors. “‘That would look horrible,’ Nielsen told them. ‘Can you imagine the story? Foreign governments provide security because the U.S. won’t?’”

The duo opens one chapter with the case of Rob Porter — the former White House staff secretary who was ultimately pushed out of his job amid allegations of domestic abuse from his two ex-wives. After a photo surfaces on the Internet of Colbie Holderness, one of his ex-wives, sporting a black eye that she alleges Porter gave her, Trump offers a competing theory.

“Maybe, Trump said, Holderness purposefully ran into a refrigerator to give herself bruises and try to get money out of Porter?” they write.

Near the end of the book, Rucker and Leonnig delve into tensions between Mueller and Attorney General William P. Barr. Mueller and his team are frustrated when Barr releases an initial, four-page letter summarizing the “principal conclusions” of Mueller’s 448-page report, which they do not believe sufficiently captures the context, nature and substance of Mueller’s full investigation.

“Inside the bunker of Mueller’s lawyers, Barr’s letter stung,” write the authors. “Members of the special counsel team would later describe Mueller’s reaction: He looked as if he’d been slapped.”

After Mueller writes a letter to Barr expressing his frustrations, the authors report that Barr calls Mueller, resulting in a testy phone conversation.

“‘What the hell, Bob?’ Barr asked,” they write. “‘What’s up with this letter? Why didn’t you pick up the phone and call me?’”

Barr complains that his team offered Mueller’s team an opportunity to review his letter before it went out and they declined — “We’re flabbergasted here,” Barr says, according to the book — but the call ultimately ends on “an uplifting note.”

Some of the modest details in the book end up having larger consequences. After Trump bungles his India-China geography and seems to dismiss the threat China poses to India, for instance, the authors write that “Modi’s eyes bulged out in surprise.”

“Modi’s expression gradually shifted, from shock and concern to resignation,” they continue, adding that one Trump aide concludes Modi likely “left that meeting and said, ‘This is not a serious man. I cannot count on this man as a partner.’”

After the meeting, the aide explains to them, “‘the Indians took a step back’ in their diplomatic relations with the United States.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why Trump can’t stop talking about dishwashers"

Spoiler

The president of the United States is obsessed with dishwashers. Also toilets, but dishwashers have really moved to the top of his list. At a moment when his impeachment trial is soon to begin and we’re still in a crisis with Iran that could lead to war, this is what he was ruminating on at a rally on Tuesday night:

But I’m also approving new dishwashers that give you more water, so you can actually wash and rinse your dishes without having to do it 10 times — four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. [Here he mimes pressing a button over and over as the crowd’s cheers grow louder.]

Anybody have a new dishwasher? I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for that. It’s worthless! They give you so little water. You ever see it? Air comes out, so little water. So what happens? You end up using it 10 times, and the plates, then you take them out and do them the old-fashioned way, right? But what do you do? You’re spending 10 times for the electricity, right? So I’m putting the water back. Most places have so much water they don’t know what the hell to do with it. A lot of people don’t realize that.

So dishwashers, now, you’re going to have just as much as you’ve ever had, and you’re going to use now one shot, your dishes are going to be beautiful.

This is part of a group of complaints about household items Trump is now repeating at every available opportunity: In addition to poor dishwashers, lightbulbs make you look orange, you have to flush toilets 10 times, showers and sinks don’t give any water.

As far as I know, he has not addressed America’s toaster crisis.

As utterly bonkers as it is that this is what the most powerful person on Earth is spending his time thinking about, there’s a logic here, one that connects right back to the way Trump won the presidency in 2016, even though this one is far less likely to hit its mark. In fact, dishwashers that don’t wash your dishes are intended to be the “Build the wall!” of 2020.

But before we explore that, let’s just clarify for the record that his beef with household appliances is a Trumpian combination of an almost legitimate point mixed in with outdated beliefs and outright fabrications.

The one true element in what Trump is saying is that since 1992, federal regulations have mandated lower flow rates on showers than was the case before then. Lots of people don’t like that. As for lightbulbs, some people don’t like the light produced by fluorescent lights (including, presumably, people who put on orange concealer every day). But measures to encourage energy-efficient lighting have produced a drastic decline in the price of more pleasing LEDs, which are rapidly replacing the compact fluorescents that enjoyed a brief popularity a few years ago.

As for dishwashers and toilets, anyone who has bought one in the past 10 years or so knows they are far, far more effective than they ever have been, regardless of how much water they use.

No one needs to run their dishwasher cycle 10 times, and the president, who has surely not washed a dish in 50 years, is under the impression that the way to get cleaner dishes is to maniacally press the start button on the dishwasher over and over again, which is not how dishwashers work.

But the most important part of that clip, and the reason Trump is not going to stop talking about this, is the reaction of the crowd. They know the truth about dishwashers and toilets, but they react as though this is a hilarious comedy routine (which it is supposed to be), laughing and cheering vigorously. They’re telling Trump not only “That’s so right, ha ha — do airplane food next!” but also “You’re the best!”

As those cheers wash over Trump like the spray of a pre-1992 shower, he knows — or at least believes — he has found something resonant, which is why he keeps talking about it. This is the connection to 2016 and “Build the wall.”

As the New York Times reported last year, talking about building a wall was an idea hatched by Trump’s aides as “a mnemonic device of sorts” that would help Trump “remember to talk about getting tough on immigration, which was to be a signature issue.” But when Trump saw the enthusiastic reaction it got from crowds at his rallies, he realized they had hit upon something powerful.

It became the centerpiece of his campaign, a way of tapping into not just xenophobia and fearmongering but a sense of lost potency and stature that was prevalent, particularly among certain white people. In a changing world, Trump said, we’ll put up a big, beautiful wall and make Mexico pay for it, winning back our manhood by subjecting them to humiliation. It all started because when Trump said it, his audience of supporters loved it.

These days, Trump has a number of sources of information he trusts: Fox News, Breitbart … other shows on Fox News. But none provides him the kind of immediate, visceral feedback that his rally crowds do. And when he riffs about dishwashers, they react with a joyful enthusiasm that can be easy to misinterpret. It’s not because they’re grateful for a president who promises better dishwashers, but because Trump obviously loves the riff, so they send the love right back, encouraging him to keep going.

If you want to discern a logical message here, it would be that Trump understands your petty gripes about modern life and is fixing them for you. Don’t like your dishwasher? Trump’ll give you a better one! Having a hard time in the can? Trump is on it! As long as he’s in charge, government may not solve big problems like inequality or climate change, but you’ll have a faucet that could fill a swimming pool.

But people aren’t really that angry about their dishwashers. It doesn’t strike at their sense of self and their place in the world the way his voters’ anger about immigration did. If they keep cheering at the dishwasher routine, they’re only fooling him into thinking this is an electorally meaningful issue that will help him win another term.

So keep on talking about dishwashers, Mr. President. It’s what the people want!

 

[47of74]

Fuckstick opened his trap again

Donald Trump has come under fire for comments he made during a Q&A with retired veterans Tuesday morning.

Speaking with the Retired American Warriors PAC in Virginia, the Republican nominee suggested veterans suffering from PTSD are not “strong” and “can’t handle” the stresses of war.

“When people come back from war and combat and they see things that, maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments received swift criticism from leaders of veterans organizations. Jon Soltz, an Iraq War Veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, said Trump’s statements perpetuate the stigma around mental health and PTSD in the military.

Fuckhead would shit himself if he faced 2 percent of what some people in this country face every day.

[Dandruff]

6 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Fuckhead would shit himself if he faced 2 percent of what some people in this country face every day.

He handled his bone spurs pretty well.

I hope his comment to the vets is distributed far and wide and loses him lots of votes.

[fraurosena]

Once again Trump proves just his utter stupidity and ignorance. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Jack's description of Agolf Twitler's hair:

 

[WiseGirl]