Trump 48: Nobody Likes Me

[fraurosena]

The positive side to this lazy do nothing schedule is that when he doesn't work, he does no harm. The negative side to this secretive, empty schedule is that we have no idea what evil things he is doing unbeknownst to the public.

 

[SassyPants]

23 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Well, yes. I mean, the shade of orange they use for prison jumpsuits would clash horribly with the orange of his skin... 

And they don't have golf courses in most prisons. (Probably any prisons, but I'm probably wrong.)

I think some fancy federal prisons might have golf courses. 

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

We need a shrug reaction  ?‍♀️ 

Or an about damned time reaction, since we've been waiting for him to be perp walked out in handcuffs.

[fraurosena]

Cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

 

[PsyD2013]

4 hours ago, SassyPants said:

4 hours ago, SassyPants said:

Well, yes. I mean, the shade of orange they use for prison jumpsuits would clash horribly with the orange of his skin... 

 

In prison the Mango Fuckstick Bunker Bitch might not have access to his day glow orange tanning spray.

[fraurosena]

42 minutes ago, PsyD2013 said:

In prison the Mango Fuckstick Bunker Bitch might not have access to his day glow orange tanning spray.

Although that might be bad, the absolute worst thing for him would be that he won’t have any Twitter access anymore. That, and no Happy Meals or KFC...

[Ozlsn]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The positive side to this lazy do nothing schedule is that when he doesn't work, he does no harm. The negative side to this secretive, empty schedule is that we have no idea what evil things he is doing unbeknownst to the public.

 

I remain curious as to who exactly is running the country and what their agenda is. Trump has been a useful idiot - less so now as it's becoming apparent that he is having cognitive issues - and enough of a distraction that the media don't seem to be asking who is actually in charge.

[GreyhoundFan]

17 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

I remain curious as to who exactly is running the country and what their agenda is. Trump has been a useful idiot - less so now as it's becoming apparent that he is having cognitive issues - and enough of a distraction that the media don't seem to be asking who is actually in charge.

I think it's a combo of people: Ivanka, Jared, Miller, etc. The former two have an agenda of enriching themselves. The latter just wants to turn the US into Nazi Germany take two.

[Ozlsn]

2 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I think it's a combo of people: Ivanka, Jared, Miller, etc. The former two have an agenda of enriching themselves. The latter just wants to turn the US into Nazi Germany take two.

I suspect the former two will find themselves shot in a cellar if the latter succeeds. Competition should always be eliminated, whether actual, potential or perceived.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why is Trump insisting, unprompted, that he hasn’t had ‘mini-strokes’?"

Spoiler

If you’re a parent, imagine you came home one day and said hello to your 9-year-old son, whereupon he shouted “I didn’t break the window in the garage why are you accusing me I didn’t do it!” You’d be pretty sure that he broke the window in the garage.

Which brings us to what President Trump tweeted on Tuesday afternoon:

Fair enough, you might say — if media organizations were reporting that Trump had a series of mini-strokes and it wasn’t true, you could see why the president would want to correct the record.

Except as far as anyone can tell, no media anywhere had reported that Trump had a series of mini-strokes. He was the one who brought it up out of nowhere.

Or not precisely out of nowhere. The event that seems to have prompted this outburst is the upcoming publication of “Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President” by New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt.

The book reports that when Trump made an unusual unannounced visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November 2019, “in the hours leading up to Trump’s trip to the hospital, word went out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.”

Which suggests it was something serious. But Schmidt reported nothing about “a series of mini-strokes.”

That’s not to say that, over the years, there hasn’t been speculation about whether Trump has a neurological problem of some kind. Some have pointed to his trouble descending a ramp, the way he sometimes struggles to drink water with one hand, or his occasional slurring of words to suggest that he is concealing a deficit or illness.

So could the behaviors Trump displays be consistent with someone who had suffered a stroke or a series of mini-strokes? Sure. For instance, stroke patients and those with diseases such as multiple sclerosis sometimes experience “foot drop,” which can cause one of your feet to drag; that would make descending a ramp difficult. But most of the time, Trump seems to walk fine.

So it’s almost impossible to know, especially because, if Trump had actually suffered a significant medical event, he and his administration would be guaranteed to lie about it.

Further complicating the matter is the way Trump constantly asserts his mental and physical superiority and hits back wildly at criticisms real and imagined. During the 2016 campaign, he dictated a letter under his doctor’s signature claiming that “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary," and that Trump would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

More recently, the president has spoken often about the neurological exam he got, apparently during that visit to Walter Reed, bizarrely using it to claim that it demonstrated his superhuman intelligence. In fact, the exam — which typically involves things like identifying pictures of animals, drawing a clock face and remembering numbers and words — is given not to assess your IQ but to learn whether you’re suffering from the sort of cognitive deficit that can come from dementia or a stroke.

But Trump claimed that when he took the test, the doctors were so impressed with his results that they said “That’s amazing. How did you do that?” His reenactment of the Einstein-level achievement (“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”) became a meme used to mock him for being such a fool.

This all has the air of chickens coming home to roost given that, in 2016, Trump repeatedly suggested that Hillary Clinton was covering up some serious illness. The Trump campaign aired ads showing her coughing and stumbling. The lie was echoed in every part of the conservative media universe, from Breitbart to Fox News to, perhaps most critically, the National Enquirer.

At the same time the Enquirer was working with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to cover up the future president’s extramarital affairs, it was splashing the then-Democratic nominee on its covers week after week with fantastical stories of her supposed illnesses, everything from Alzheimer’s disease to brain cancer to, yes, strokes.

That’s not to mention that Trump regularly says that people he disagrees with, whether it’s Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi, are mentally ill or demented. It’s fair to say there is no one in American public life who has tossed off more false accusations of illness than Donald Trump.

So I don’t claim to know whether Trump suffered, as he says, “a series of mini-strokes.” It’s extremely difficult to diagnose from afar, even if you’re a medical professional, which I am not. What I do know is that if Trump actually were the victim of a false allegation of infirmity — which, to repeat, no journalists are actually making — no one would be less justified in complaining.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting:

[Becky]

47 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Why is Trump insisting, unprompted, that he hasn’t had ‘mini-strokes’?"

  Reveal hidden contents

If you’re a parent, imagine you came home one day and said hello to your 9-year-old son, whereupon he shouted “I didn’t break the window in the garage why are you accusing me I didn’t do it!” You’d be pretty sure that he broke the window in the garage.

Which brings us to what President Trump tweeted on Tuesday afternoon:

Fair enough, you might say — if media organizations were reporting that Trump had a series of mini-strokes and it wasn’t true, you could see why the president would want to correct the record.

Except as far as anyone can tell, no media anywhere had reported that Trump had a series of mini-strokes. He was the one who brought it up out of nowhere.

Or not precisely out of nowhere. The event that seems to have prompted this outburst is the upcoming publication of “Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President” by New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt.

The book reports that when Trump made an unusual unannounced visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November 2019, “in the hours leading up to Trump’s trip to the hospital, word went out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.”

Which suggests it was something serious. But Schmidt reported nothing about “a series of mini-strokes.”

That’s not to say that, over the years, there hasn’t been speculation about whether Trump has a neurological problem of some kind. Some have pointed to his trouble descending a ramp, the way he sometimes struggles to drink water with one hand, or his occasional slurring of words to suggest that he is concealing a deficit or illness.

So could the behaviors Trump displays be consistent with someone who had suffered a stroke or a series of mini-strokes? Sure. For instance, stroke patients and those with diseases such as multiple sclerosis sometimes experience “foot drop,” which can cause one of your feet to drag; that would make descending a ramp difficult. But most of the time, Trump seems to walk fine.

So it’s almost impossible to know, especially because, if Trump had actually suffered a significant medical event, he and his administration would be guaranteed to lie about it.

Further complicating the matter is the way Trump constantly asserts his mental and physical superiority and hits back wildly at criticisms real and imagined. During the 2016 campaign, he dictated a letter under his doctor’s signature claiming that “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary," and that Trump would "be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

More recently, the president has spoken often about the neurological exam he got, apparently during that visit to Walter Reed, bizarrely using it to claim that it demonstrated his superhuman intelligence. In fact, the exam — which typically involves things like identifying pictures of animals, drawing a clock face and remembering numbers and words — is given not to assess your IQ but to learn whether you’re suffering from the sort of cognitive deficit that can come from dementia or a stroke.

But Trump claimed that when he took the test, the doctors were so impressed with his results that they said “That’s amazing. How did you do that?” His reenactment of the Einstein-level achievement (“Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”) became a meme used to mock him for being such a fool.

This all has the air of chickens coming home to roost given that, in 2016, Trump repeatedly suggested that Hillary Clinton was covering up some serious illness. The Trump campaign aired ads showing her coughing and stumbling. The lie was echoed in every part of the conservative media universe, from Breitbart to Fox News to, perhaps most critically, the National Enquirer.

At the same time the Enquirer was working with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to cover up the future president’s extramarital affairs, it was splashing the then-Democratic nominee on its covers week after week with fantastical stories of her supposed illnesses, everything from Alzheimer’s disease to brain cancer to, yes, strokes.

That’s not to mention that Trump regularly says that people he disagrees with, whether it’s Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi, are mentally ill or demented. It’s fair to say there is no one in American public life who has tossed off more false accusations of illness than Donald Trump.

So I don’t claim to know whether Trump suffered, as he says, “a series of mini-strokes.” It’s extremely difficult to diagnose from afar, even if you’re a medical professional, which I am not. What I do know is that if Trump actually were the victim of a false allegation of infirmity — which, to repeat, no journalists are actually making — no one would be less justified in complaining.

 

It would explain why he has trouble walking ramps and needs two hands to drink from a glass. 

[JenniferJuniper]

Someone wake me up when November of 2016 ends.

The night of the election, a few  friends and I went to a pub, expecting to have a few and happily watch the returns roll in.  My grandmother, born before women could vote and a huge Hillary Clinton fan, had died several years earlier and I wanted to do a toast to her.

I got raging drunk that night. Like 20-something drunk, and that's not me (anymore). I was so hungover, I went into work late that morning. It was a beautiful, sunny fall day. But I noticed when I walked outside, the birds were absolutely silent. The roads seemed empty.  When I got to the office, I saw some of my team anxiously huddled around the front of my office, speaking in low tones. I don't talk politics at work and they were looking at me like "Is she one of us?  Or is she one of THEM?"

As they were the brightest members of team, I didn't hesitate.  "Jesus Christ, I'm hoping I'm still drunk. Someone tell me this isn't happening!"

Four years ago, I don't think anyone could have imagined just how bad these years would turn out to be.  Sure, it'll will be bad, but he'll hire old Bush people and it will completely suck, but hey, presidents don't have much power and four years will fly by.

Four years have not flown by. If he wins, I can't bring myself to think about what the next four will be like. 

 

[Becky]

I am right there with you, @JenniferJuniper.  I cannot take 4 more years of this insanity, and I fear we would have civil war before his second term was out.  Consider this list of notable comments from our deranged dotard of a President, fresh from the NY Times morning update:

• Trump said on Monday that a plane “almost completely loaded with thugs” wearing “dark uniforms” had been headed to the Republican National Convention to do “big damage.” The claim is similar to a baseless conspiracy theory that spread online over the summer, well before the convention.
• He has declined to condemn the killings of two protesters in Kenosha, Wis. He instead defended the 17-year-old charged in the shootings — a Trump supporter named Kyle Rittenhouse — saying he was acting in self-defense. Trump also promoted a Twitter post that called Rittenhouse “a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.”
• He defended violence committed by his supporters in Portland, Ore., who fired paintballs and pepper spray at Black Lives Matter protesters.
• He compared the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha to missing “a three-foot putt” in a golf tournament.
• He claimed that “people that you’ve never heard of” and “people that are in the dark shadows” are controlling Joe Biden.
• He claimed Democrats were trying to “destroy” suburbs with “low-income housing, and with that comes a lot of other problems, including crime.” He added that Cory Booker — one of the highest-profile Black Democrats — would be “in charge of it.”
• He predicted that the stock market would crash if Biden won.
• He said that Biden, at the Democratic National Convention, “didn’t even discuss law enforcement, the police. Those words weren’t mentioned.” In fact, Biden held a discussion at the convention on policing, with a police chief.
• Trump claimed that he “took control of” the situation in Kenosha by sending in the National Guard. In fact, Wisconsin’s governor, not the president, sent the National Guard.
• He retweeted messages asserting that the pandemic’s death toll was overstated. Evidence indicates the opposite is true.
• He said that protests against police brutality were actually a secret “coup attempt” by anarchists “trying to take down the President.”

And late yesterday Trump encouraged voter fraud in North Carolina by telling people to vote twice to test the mail-in system.  He knows there is no real widespread voter fraud, so now he will create it.  I hope all his followers do this and have their votes invalidated, and are charged with voter fraud, as well.  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-encourages-north-carolina-residents-vote-twice-test-mail-system-n1239140   

I simply cannot take much more of this!  My own mental health is at risk at this point.  

Edited September 3, 2020 by Becky
additions

[Audrey2]

Hmmm. I seem to remember a woman in Texas who was sent to prison for five years for voter fraud because she been a convicted felon and thought that her time or probation was over and she could vote again which, sadly, wasn't the case. Maybe they need to convict anyone who tries to steal illegal voting in North Carolina and send them to prison, which would also take away their right to vote for at least 5 years if the laws are similar to Texas.

[GreyhoundFan]

Since we can all use a laugh, here is the wonderful Alexandra Petri's satirical take on Twitler's soup rant: "The terrible dangers of weaponized soup"

Spoiler

The president, sound in mind and body, is continuing to tell us important things that are worth knowing. Most recently, he wants us to know that soup is a dangerous weapon.

“And you have people coming over with bags of soup — big bags of soup," he said. "And they lay it on the ground, and the anarchists take it and they start throwing it at our cops, at our police. And if it hits you, that’s worse than a brick because that’s got force. It’s the perfect size. It’s, like, made perfect. And when they get caught, they say, ‘No, this is just soup for my family. And the media says, ‘This is just soup.’”

This is not just soup. Soup is a very dangerous substance. For instance, some soup is very hot. Alphabet soup can spell ANTIFA.

Every soup, in fact, has something threatening about it. Vichyssoise collaborated. Chowder is menacing because in Boston it ends in “AH!,” the sound you make when surprised or terrified. Avgolemono? Avgolem — OH, NO! If you are Donald Trump, you love your base; you are against anyone who would try to bouillabaisse. (If you are Donald Trump, you also definitely did not suffer a series of minestrones.) This opposition to soup is just the logical consommé-shun that follows from everything that has gone before.

Imagine this. You are walking down the street, minding your own business. Behind you, you hear the unmistakable sound of a noodle sloshing against a chunk of chicken. You are being pursued by a bag of soup. The anarchists are upon you. Could any sound possibly fill you with more terror? Or an adversary announces he is making stone soup, and suddenly reinforcements arrive with carrots where there were not carrots before.

Or think of French onion soup, covered in a layer of suppurating cheese, squelching as you prod your spoon into it. Think of cream of mushroom. Cream of mushroom held America in terror for the entire decade of the 1950s, forcing people to transform it into casseroles. Such was the whim of soup. Such was its awesome power. Chicken soup — it will heal you, but at what cost?

Soup is a liquid. Why is it wearing armor? Is this the Middle Ages? What does the soup know? In fallout shelters around the world, soup lurks in a can, ready to survive any apocalyptic event. The soup will endure long after we have expired, long after it has expired.

It is the perfect weapon. It shows no mercy, not even a ladle bit.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, Becky said:

And late yesterday Trump encouraged voter fraud in North Carolina by telling people to vote twice to test the mail-in system.  He knows there is no real widespread voter fraud, so now he will create it.  I hope all his followers do this and have their votes invalidated, and are charged with voter fraud, as well.  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-encourages-north-carolina-residents-vote-twice-test-mail-system-n1239140   

So he's committed another felony in public. Sad that the senate won't take action against him:

[SassyPants]

Trump has been getting his way and tipping the scales in an underhanded fashion his entire life. It’s his MO and the only way that he knows how to “win.”

His cheating, underhanded ways worry me more than anything else. That’s very likely how we got a POTUS Trump in the first place. And if it’s not the main reason we got him, it sure as hell contributed to it.

[fraurosena]

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. The most important thing to win in November is not the presidency.  First and foremost, you need to get rid of corrupt McConnell and take away his power. It is his absolute corruption that has soiled democracy almost beyond repair.  

If the repugliklans manage to hold on to their majority in Congress, your country is doomed. They will thwart a Biden presidency at every turn or keep on enabling Trump. Legislation will remain on McConnell's desk (or in his wastepaper basket) indefinitely. Democracy will be dealt a mortal blow.

So please, start focussing on getting the Senate majority and maintaining the majority in the House. Your survival depends on it.

Edited September 3, 2020 by fraurosena
Darned merging posts! Will I ever learn?

[Ozlsn]

Trump: Americans who died in war are 'losers'

The article has no on the record quotes, so take it with a grain of salt.  This part rang interestingly true to me though:

"Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

"He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

My bolding, but yes, this sums up Trump completely.

If there's one thing I think should come out of Trump's tenure it is that a requirement for a record of service to the community - whether that be in uniform, in politics, on school committees, whatever - needs to be shown to serve in high office, and preferably in more than one area. If you've only been in politics to enrich yourself that shouldn't count. Show us your record of volunteering before you ran for office, show us that you understand the institutions you will be required to uphold. Show us you can name all the states and territories which are part of America, ffs.

[fraurosena]

I’m willing to bet that campaign slogan will not only be used figuratively once he loses.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

His claims are ever more preposterous.

Also, what’s up with that profuse sweating?

[GreyhoundFan]

11 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Also, what’s up with that profuse sweating?

You know I have no love for Agent Orange, but to be fair,  it has been ridiculously hot and humid for the last few days, with heat index values near 100. When I took my dog out for his midday relief break, I thought I was going to pass out. And I was wearing a t-shirt and capri pants, not a suit. I was dripping sweat in about two minutes.

Edited September 4, 2020 by GreyhoundFan

[fraurosena]

16 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You know I have no love for Agent Orange, but to be fair,  it has been ridiculously hot and humid for the last few days, with heat index values near 100. When I took my dog out for his midday relief break, I thought I was going to pass out. And I was wearing a t-shirt and capri pants, not a suit. I was dripping sweat in about two minutes.

Oof! And here I am getting my sweaters and cardigans out this past week... today was quite autumnal with constant rain and a cold wind. I had to keep my walk with the dogs short and I, and the poor dogs, were dripping wet after about two minutes outside. 

Trump’s sweating was entirety preventable though, by simply staying indoors and taping his fear-mongering, violence inciting rant instead. 

He could’ve prevented this too: