Wut.
https://twitter.com/Patriot_Drew/status/833091742568157184
Lugenpresse
Feb 18th, 2017 3:39 pm | By Ophelia BensonLittle Hitler is ranting about the media at his Nazi rally. I heard him squawk “But despite all their lies” before I turned the sound off. He’s a fascist piece of crap and he’s going to keep on with this shit until he gets it, or drops dead trying.
In his speech, Mr Trump said he wanted to speak to Americans “without the filter of fake news”.
Describing the media as “dishonest”, he repeated his assertion that some outlets “don’t want to report the truth” and were making up their stories about him.
“We will continue to expose them,” he said, pledging to “win, win, win”.
In his speech, the president also:
- Repeated his campaign pledge to keep America “safe” and said the country would “have strong borders again”
- Said Americans would have “a great healthcare plan” and Obama reforms would be repealed
- Stressed that the White House was running “so smoothly”, dismissing claims that his administration was in disarray
It is unusual for a sitting president to hold a rally in the style of those held during election campaigns.
Yes, it’s unusual for a sitting president to carry on like a fucking Nazi.
Throughout the week, Mr Trump launched attacks on the media while indicating his excitement at facing crowds in Florida again.
On Thursday, he held a 76-minute press conference where he told reporters their level of dishonesty was out of control, citing coverage of his campaign’s alleged contacts with Moscow.
Because he’s a Nazi.
Nobody is hungry for the shit sandwich
Feb 18th, 2017 11:28 am | By Ophelia BensonSo Trump’s insatiable need for total, uncritical admiration, or worship, is messing up that “fine-tuned machine” in a very tangible sense: it’s making it impossible for them to fill their thousands of vacancies.
During President Trump’s transition to power, his team reached out to Elliott Abrams for help building a new administration. Mr. Abrams, a seasoned Republican foreign policy official, sent lists of possible candidates for national security jobs.
One by one, the answer from the Trump team came back no. The reason was consistent: This one had said disparaging things about Mr. Trump during the campaign; that one had signed a letter opposing him. Finally, the White House asked Mr. Abrams himself to meet with the president about becoming deputy secretary of state, only to have the same thing happen — vetoed because of past criticism.
That’s a massive obstacle. There aren’t many intelligent people who uncritically worship Donald Trump. They’re narrowing their hiring pool down to a vanishing point. And there are a lot of vacancies still.
In some cases, the Trump administration is even going in reverse. A senior political appointee at the housing department, who had already started the job, was fired this past week and marched out of the building when someone discovered his previous statements critical of Mr. Trump. The State Department laid off six top career officials in recent days, apparently out of questions about their loyalty to Mr. Trump.
“Many tough things were said about him and by him” before last year’s election, Mr. Abrams, who served as Ronald Reagan’s assistant secretary of state and George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, said in an interview. “I would have hoped he would have turned toward just hiring the most effective people to help him govern rather than looking back to what we said in that race.”
But that’s not the kind of human he is…which is another reason intelligent people won’t want to work for him…so the hiring pool shrinks again.
The ill will between Mr. Trump and much of the Republican establishment works both ways. Many Republicans who might have agreed to work for the president have been turned off by what they consider his sometimes erratic behavior and the competing power centers inside his White House. After firing his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump found that his initial choice for a replacement, Robert S. Harward, a retired vice admiral, would not take the job without assurances that the president was ultimately unwilling to make.
Harward said it was a shit sandwich.
Contributing to the discomfort among potential officials was Mr. Trump’s rambling, disjointed news conference on Thursday, which several Republicans said made them worry about what life in the White House or agencies would be like.
Right? Can you imagine wanting to work in his administration? Even if you agreed with him politically? Nobody wants to work for a giant furious baby.
One criterion
Feb 18th, 2017 10:51 am | By Ophelia BensonLife in the Trump administration – if they find out you wrote something critical of Trump in the past, they physically remove you from the premises.
A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser. He was preparing a cross-country tour for Mr. Carson, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate this month.
But they hadn’t quite finished his background check yet. Oh no, oh no, what’s that – a deviation in thought.
Mr. Trump’s advisers turned up public writings by Mr. Singleton that appeared during the later stages of the campaign in which he was deeply critical of the candidate.
“My party in particular has allowed itself to be taken over by someone who claims to be a Republican but doesn’t represent any of our values, principles or traditions,” he wrote in The Hill in October 2016.
Call Security!!
The firing was reminiscent of the decision by the White House to block a senior Republican foreign policy adviser, Elliott Abrams, from becoming deputy secretary of state. The move came after Mr. Abrams’s anti-Trump writings came to the president’s attention. Mr. Abrams had been the choice of Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson.
This administration has one core belief: that Donnie Trump is the best human who has ever lived.
A chummy affair
Feb 18th, 2017 9:59 am | By Ophelia BensonI do wish journalists would learn to stop portraying Milo Yiannopoulos as some sort of legit commentator or thinker or even forsooth fellow journalist. He’s a Twitter troll. That’s it. That’s all he is, that’s his only claim to fame, and it’s not something anyone should be taking seriously.
Despite a brief flare-up of controversy that preceded it, a conversation between Milo Yiannopoulos, the incendiary right-wing author and lecturer, and Bill Maher, the comedian and host of HBO’s “Real Time,” on that program Friday night was a largely docile, chummy affair. There was little conflict or cross-examination, as both men chided the political left for avoiding or drowning out Mr. Yiannopoulos’s views rather than engaging with them.
He’s not an author and lecturer. He’s a troll. He’s a verbal sadist who makes a career of bullying women. He is not any kind of substantive thinker. He doesn’t have “views”; he has a taste for bullying.
Introducing Mr. Yiannopoulos, 32, an openly gay editor at Breitbart News, Mr. Maher said: “I think you’re colossally wrong on a number of things. But if I banned everyone from my show who I thought was colossally wrong, I would be talking to myself.”
Blah blah blah they laughed when Beethoven sat down to play. Yes it would be foolish for Bill Maher to decide to talk only to people he thinks are right about everything, no it does not follow that he should talk to people whose only claim to fame is bullying women off the internet. That’s another thing I wish people would stop being so dense about. It’s generally good to interact with a wide range of ideas and people; that does not mean it’s generally good to seek out the worst, meanest, shallowest bullies on Twitter and interact with them.
Mr. Yiannopoulos began the interview by cracking jokes about gay people (whom he said he did not hire because they did not show up to work on time) and women, and telling Mr. Maher’s audience that they were “very easily triggered.”
“All I care about is free speech and free expression,” Mr. Yiannopoulos explained. “I want people to be able to be, do and say anything. These days, you’re right, that’s a conservative issue.”
Bullshit. Milo Yiannopoulos is not another Voltaire or Tom Paine or John Stuart Mill. Milo Yiannopoulos is another random shithead who gets his jollies from bullying women in public.
Describing himself as “a virtuous troll,” Mr. Yiannopolous said, “I hurt people for a reason.”
He said people “want to police humor” because “they can’t control it.”
“Because the one thing that authoritarians hate is the sound of laughter,” Mr. Yiannopolous said.
Milo Yiannopoulos is not Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. Milo Yiannopoulos is a court jester for authoritarians.
Maybe it’s the commentary you spike
Feb 17th, 2017 5:56 pm | By Ophelia BensonSilencing of the press doesn’t have to be as crude as an actual armed shutdown. It can be just a constant stream of implicit threats of an actual armed shutdown.
Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism “fake.”
Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail).
Or, maybe it’s the commentary you spike because you’re a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing.
Or the commentary you never write in the first place, which I think is the case with public broadcasting. They are very timid.
A PBS station in San Antonio came very close.
The story began with a Jan. 24 speech that Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, gave on the House floor regarding what he described as the unfair way the national media was covering President Trump. He said for instance that the media ignored highs in consumer confidence, which of course it did not. And he ended with an admonition for his constituents: “Better to get your news directly from the president. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.”
His remarks caught the notice, and the ire, of a longtime San Antonio-area journalist and commentator, Rick Casey, who hosts a weekly public affairs program “Texas Week” on KLRN. He ends each week’s show with his own commentary, which also runs in The San Antonio Express-News.
Mr. Casey has been able to work for “40 years as a professional smart ass,” he told me, because “I’m not really a bomb thrower — I’ve watched politicians for so many years that I know how to be strong about something without being unfriendly.”
But Mr. Smith’s comments bothered him enough that he wrote up a stemwinder of a closing commentary. “Smith’s proposal is quite innovative for America,” it went. “We’ve never really tried getting all our news from our top elected official. It has been tried elsewhere, however. North Korea comes to mind.”
The station promoted the commentary before it aired. Lamar Smith’s office saw the promo and called the station.
Forty minutes before the show aired, the station’s president and chief executive, Arthur Rojas Emerson, left a message for Mr. Casey saying he was pulling the commentary and replacing it with an older one. Mr. Casey told me he missed the call, but saw what happened with his own eyes.
At a meeting the next Monday, Mr. Casey said, Mr. Emerson expressed concern “that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was under attack and that this would add to it.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides financing for public stations, including KLRN, and Mr. Trump’s election has heightened fears that its financing will be cut.
It also happens that Mr. Emerson had left journalism for several years to run his own advertising firm and that Mr. Smith had at one point been a client.
Eeeeeeuccccccchhhhhhh. Sleaze piled on sleaze piled on sleaze.
But then:
when Mr. Casey’s commentary ran as planned in The San Antonio Express-News, astute readers noticed it was different than the previous night’s televised commentary. The story of what happened began traveling around San Antonio journalism circles, making its way to the Express-News columnist Gilbert Garcia, who shared the details last Friday.
Another titan of Texas journalism, Evan Smith, who co-founded The Texas Tribune and regularly appears on Mr. Casey’s program, noticed Mr. Garcia’s column while he was in Washington. “I had a hot coffee in my hand and I came very close to dropping it,” Mr. Smith told me. “Holding people accountable in public life is so fundamentally important that this idea that somehow we’re going to stop doing that because we’re worried about what the government’s going to do to us, I so unbelievably reject that.”
As it happened, Evan Smith was in Washington for a meeting of the PBS national board, on which he sits, and “I certainly got into the board room and talked to people in the system.” He also called Mr. Emerson, and told him “I didn’t see why The Tribune or I should continue to be associated with this show or this station.”
By late last week, Mr. Emerson had agreed to let Mr. Casey’s original segment run this Friday, as long as it included a new “commentary” label that will run with his opinion segments.
But in all the cases where there is no Evan Smith, the commentary will stay spiked.
Mr. Casey is satisfied with the result. But he acknowledged that it was a close call and that he was uniquely qualified to push back in a way others might not be. “I’m lucky to be in the position of being 70 years old, and not in the position of being 45,” he said, meaning that job security was not the same issue. “There’s no level of heroism here.”
In a week in which Congress is calling for a leak investigation into stories in The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN that led to Michael T. Flynn’s forced resignation as national security adviser, heroism is what’s called for. Hopefully there’s enough of it to go around.
We’re in big trouble.
The result is to undermine the independence of the press
Feb 17th, 2017 5:40 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump this morning escalated his attack on the free press: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” he tweeted.
Even if most Americans understand that a President of the United States calling the media the “enemy of the American people!” is unprecedented, delusional and dangerous, there will be some percentage of Americans who are becoming persuaded by his ever more strident attacks.
The result is to undermine the independence of the press in our society — making Trump the arbiter of truth in our society.
Last night, the Republican Party and Trump’s campaign websites posted a 25-question “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey,” asking: “Do you believe that the mainstream media has reported unfairly on our movement?” and then asking whether the survey-taker believes that MSNBC, CNN or Fox News “report fairly on Trump’s presidency,” allowing for answers of “yes,” “no” or “no opinion.
The survey formalized Trump’s attacks and his insinuation that media outlets are working against the American people.
The ads driving people to the survey are paid for by the “Trump Make America Great Again Committee,” a joint fundraising committee of Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. People who fill out the questionnaire are taken to a donation page, which states: “President Trump is asking you to go the extra mile and make a contribution to help defend our movement from the outrageous attacks from the media coming our way. Contribute now to help us fight back against the media’s attacks and deceptions.”
Trump is dangerous.
Rush Limbaugh said
Feb 17th, 2017 4:15 pm | By Ophelia BensonToday in TrumpOnTwitter.
Thank you for all of the nice statements on the Press Conference yesterday. Rush Limbaugh said one of greatest ever. Fake media not happy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
Oh well if Rush Limbaugh said so.
Since then he’s been busy with stuff like that Rally at the Orlando airport. But then a couple of hours ago he went Full Fascist.
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
The press is the enemy of the people, according to him. Once again he’s inciting hatred and, potentially, violence.
Let’s go back to October 1933:
On October 4th 1933 the Reich Press Law stated that all journalism had to be “racially clean”. Any Jewish and liberal editors and journalists were sacked and all remaining editors had to take a Nazi citizenship test and prove that they were not married to a Jew. Any Jew who owned a newspaper was pressurised into selling out. If any Jewish owner refused to do this, the government banned the production of his newspaper for a few days that could then become weeks and months.
Trump would do that if he could. He wouldn’t hesitate.
He can’t, yet, and I don’t think it’s likely that he’ll be able to. But am I confident about that? No.
"One of the most effective press conferences I've ever seen!" says Rush Limbaugh. Many agree.Yet FAKE MEDIA calls it differently! Dishonest
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
A value judgment can’t be “FAKE.” A value judgment isn’t the same as a fact claim.
More toxic mercury pollution please
Feb 17th, 2017 3:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonWell then they should have the decency to rename it the Environmental Destruction Agency.
Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma’s attorney general spent years suing the Environmental Protection Agency over its efforts to regulate various forms of pollution, was confirmed Friday as the agency’s next administrator.
Pruitt cleared the Senate by a vote of 52-46, winning support from two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Only one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted against him, saying he had “fundamentally different” views than she about the EPA’s role.
She probably thinks the P stands for protection, while he thinks it stands for…passivity? Poisoning? Polluting?
Pruitt has sued the EPA more than a dozen times during the Obama administration, challenging the agency’s authority to regulate toxic mercury pollution, smog, carbon emissions from power plants and the quality of wetlands and other waters. In Oklahoma, he dismantled a specialized environmental protection unit that had existed under his Democratic predecessor and established a “federalism unit” to combat what he called “unwarranted regulation and systematic overreach” by Washington.
And as the one-time leader of the Republican Attorneys General Association and the privately funded Rule of Law Defense Fund, he spearheaded a group of attorneys general that fought the Obama administration on such issues as the Affordable Care Act, Wall Street reforms and efforts to extend overtime pay to more workers.
And that is how you drain the swamp – you make sure poor people can’t get health insurance, you make sure bankers and hedge fund managers can destroy bankrupt millions of people, you make sure workers don’t get paid for working overtime. In short you make poor people poorer and sicker, and you make rich people richer. That’s the Republican political philosophy on a postage stamp.
$81 million a year
Feb 17th, 2017 11:49 am | By Ophelia BensonTrump has gotten rid of that pesky rule that said coal companies couldn’t dump all their waste products into streams. Another victory for filthy water! The People, in all their glorious peoplehood, love filthy water; they thrive on it. It’s only coastal elites who look down on it from their spotless mansions in the sky.
President Donald Trump signed legislation repealing a regulation meant to protect streams from the effects of coal mining.
The congressional resolution killing the so-called Stream Protection Rule, which was issued in the waning days of the Obama administration, follows similar action by Trump overturning an anti-corruption rule that would have required oil companies to disclose payments to foreign governments.
We must protect corporations’ rights to make secret payments to foreign governments. It’s the American way. MAGA!
“In eliminating this rule I am continuing to keep my promise to the American people to get rid of wasteful regulations,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony.
Companies such as coal producers Foresight Energy LP and Murray Energy Corp.stand to gain from repeal of the mining rule, which would have required those companies to monitor water quality and restore streams once their mining is complete.
So wasteful. It’s much more economical to dump the coal waste into the streams and let the locals die quietly up there in the hills.
The Interior Department, which spent seven years crafting the rule, had said the regulation, which updates 33-year-old regulations, will protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, primarily in Appalachia. It is meant to stop the practice of dumping mining waste in streams and valleys during mountaintop mining. They estimated compliance with the regulation would cost $81 million a year, or 0.1 percent or less of aggregate annual industry revenues, it said.
“Leaders in Congress and the administration chose to put coal-mining profits over the health and safety of Appalachian communities,” said Deborah Murray, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Limiting the toxic waste coal companies can dump in our rivers and streams is not a burdensome government regulation; it is common sense and, quite frankly, the job of our federal government.”
What is the point of rivers and streams if it’s not waste disposal?
Unfounded
Feb 17th, 2017 11:14 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Toronto Globe and Mail has been doing a huge investigation into law enforcement’s handling of sexual-assault cases.
National policing data, compiled and reviewed by The Globe as part of its 20-month investigation, reveal that one of every five sexual-assault allegations in Canada is dismissed as baseless and thus unfounded. The result is a national unfounded rate of 19.39 per cent – nearly twice as high as it is for physical assault (10.84 per cent), and dramatically higher than that of other types of crime.
True unfounded cases, which arise from malicious or mistaken reports, are rare. Between 2 per cent and 8 per cent of complaints are false reports, according to research from North America, the United Kingdom and Australia. The Globe’s findings suggest that police in Canada are closing a disproportionate number of rape cases as unfounded, a phenomenon that distorts the country’s crime statistics.
It’s almost as if misogyny is a thing.
“What does unfounded mean to you? What does unfounded mean to anybody? It means ‘You’re lying,’.” says Ottawa criminologist Holly Johnson, who has extensively studied that city’s unfounded cases. She believes that high rates send a message that police don’t believe large numbers of complainants, “which reinforces damaging myths that women lie about sexual victimization, and could act as a deterrent to already low reporting.”
…
The 1980s and 1990s were watershed decades for sexual-assault legislation and jurisprudence in Canada. The crimes of rape and indecent assault were replaced with three tiers of sexual-assault offences, encompassing a fuller spectrum of sexual violence. Restrictions were put on the circumstances in which a victim’s sexual history could be introduced in court. The corroboration requirement was removed, meaning that a complainant’s word, even without third-party testimony or physical evidence, became enough to secure a conviction. And restrictions were put on a suspect’s ability to claim that he had “mistakenly believed” a complainant had consented to sexual activity. Alongside other changes, these decades gave Canada some of the most progressive sexual-assault laws in the world, in theory.
The handling of sexual assault has again become the subject of a vigorous public debate: The spectacle of Jian Ghomeshi’s sex-assault trial; the unprecedented public disciplining of an Alberta judge who questioned why a woman didn’t “keep your knees together” to prevent an attack; the cases of Bill Cosby and of Brock Turner, the Stanford student who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 23-year-old woman who lay unconscious on the ground.
And although discussion is often focused on the fact that fewer than one in 10 victims report their assault to police, and that fewer than half of the cases that do go to court end with a conviction – among the lowest conviction rates of any type of violent crime – The Globe’s reporting has shown there is an equally pressing statistic that has yet to enter the debate in Canada.
Every year, an average of 5,500 people are reporting sexual violence to Canadian police, but their cases are dropping out of the system as unfounded long before a Crown prosecutor, judge or jury has a chance to weigh in.
The result is a game of chance for Canadian sex-assault complainants, whose odds of justice are determined not only by the facts of their case, but by where the crime took place, which police force picks up their file, and what officer shows up at their door.
Misogyny never goes out of style.
Are they friends of yours?
Feb 17th, 2017 10:34 am | By Ophelia BensonOne of the worst bits of that “press conference” that was really just a therapy session for Donnie was when April Ryan asked him if he planned to collaborate with the Congressional Black Caucus.
Ryan asked Trump if he would include the CBC in discussions about his agenda for addressing urban policy. The CBC, for those unaware, is the Congressional Black Caucus, a group of African American legislators that is often a leading voice on the Hill for issues dealing with the black community. Trump appeared briefly to be unaware of what the initials stood for, and so Ryan asked more pointedly.
I didn’t recognize the initials either, partly because “the CBC” is also short for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, partly because it sounds so similar to the CDC, and partly because it’s not particularly standard if you’re not an insider. But that’s irrelevant to how Trump carried on.
“Am I going to include who?” he asked.
“Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus,” Ryan, who is black, asked, “and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus as well as …?”
“Well, I would,” Trump interrupted. “Tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours? Set up a meeting.”
Ryan pointed out to the president that she is a journalist and that, while she does know members of the CBC, that’s not her role. “I’m sure some of them are watching right now,” she added.
That doesn’t capture what it was like. Trump asked those three rapid-fire questions in a rude, challenging, truculent way, as if she had done something wrong by asking her question. They were hostile questions, for no earthly reason other than the fact that he’s a prickly reactive asshole.
Notice, also, that he basically talked to her as if she were The Maid. “Set up a meeting.” She’s a reporter asking him a question, not his fucking servant. He does not get to bark out orders at her.
Trump went on to say that he had been trying to set up a meeting with Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and a CBC member. He then claimed that Cummings had balked at following through, but the CBC tweeted its side of the story.
Hi, @realDonaldTrump. We’re the CBC. We sent you a letter on January 19, but you never wrote us back. Sad! Letter: https://t.co/58KiuHmITF
— The CBC (@OfficialCBC) February 16, 2017
Trump lied about Elijah Cummings, too. He said Cummings had agreed to meet with him but then the White House “called called called” and Cummings totally stood them up. Then he embroidered the lie some more.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings swatted away President Trump’s claim that the Baltimore Democrat wouldn’t meet with him after repeated calls from the White House.
Trump made the comment during a wide-ranging news conferenceThursday and speculated that Cummings may have been dissuaded from coming to the White House for political reasons, perhaps by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), whom Trump dismissed as a “lightweight.”
“I have no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me like he did today. Of course, Senator Schumer never told me to skip a meeting with the President,” Cummings said in a statement.
I have an idea why he did it. My idea is that he’s a defensive abusive asshole, and he was irritated by April Ryan’s question, so he proceeded to talk a lot of shit in response. Why was he irritated by her question? I don’t know…because she’s both black and a woman? Because it was a hard question? Because he wanted to talk more shit about the “carnage” in Chicago and he didn’t want to talk about the Black Congressional Congress? All those?
Trump said Cummings “was all excited and then he said, ‘Well, I can’t move, it might be bad for me politically. I can’t have that meeting.’ ”
Trump continued: “But he probably was told by Schumer or somebody like that — some other lightweight. . . . He was probably told: ‘Don’t meet with Trump. It’s bad politics.’ And that’s part of the problem with this country.”
The musings came in response to a question about whether Trump would meet with the Congressional Black Caucus — of which Cummings is a high-profile member — to discuss crime in poor, urban areas.
Ok maybe that’s what set him off. If he had to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss crime in poor, urban areas, he would be on the back foot, because they would know more about the subject than he does. That idea probably makes him go all wiggly inside, so he lashes out to show everyone who’s boss and make the wiggly feels go away.
I suspect this could be an ongoing problem.
Pricey
Feb 16th, 2017 6:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump’s eagerness to get away from the White House is going to cost us all hundreds of millions of dollars – hundreds of millions that could have gone to more urgent things than Trump’s ability to spend a lot of time at his Florida golf club.
On Friday, President Trump and his entourage will jet for the third straight weekend to a working getaway at his oceanfront Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.
On Saturday, Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr., with their Secret Service details in tow, will be nearly 8,000 miles away in the United Arab Emirates, attending the grand opening of a Trump-brand golf resort in the “Beverly Hills of Dubai.”
Meanwhile, New York police will keep watch outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, the chosen home of first lady Melania Trump and son Barron. And the tiny township of Bedminster, N.J., is preparing for the daunting prospect that the local Trump golf course will serve as a sort of northern White House for as many as 10 weekends a year.
Barely a month into the Trump presidency, the unusually elaborate lifestyle of America’s new first family is straining the Secret Service and security officials, stirring financial and logistical concerns in several local communities, and costing far beyond what has been typical for past presidents — a price tag that, based on past assessments of presidential travel and security costs, could balloon into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a four-year term.
But in return we get…well, Trump.
Trump’s three Mar-a-Lago trips since the inauguration have probably cost the federal treasury about $10 million, based on figures used in an October government report analyzing White House travel, including money for Coast Guard units to patrol the exposed shoreline and other military, security and staffing expenses associated with moving the apparatus of the presidency.
Palm Beach County officials plan to ask Washington to reimburse tens of thousands of dollars a day in expenses for deputies handling added security and traffic issues around the cramped Florida island whenever Trump is in town.
In New York, the city is paying $500,000 a day to guard Trump Tower, according to police officials’ estimates, an amount that could reach $183 million a year.
This month, The Post reported that Secret Service and U.S. embassy staffers paid nearly $100,000 in hotel-room bills to support Eric Trump’s trip to promote a Trump-brand condo tower in Uruguay.
And bonus – a lot of that money goes to him!
The Defense Department and Secret Service, for instance, have sought to rent space in Trump Tower, where leasing a floor can cost $1.5 million a year — though neither agency has disclosed any details. In addition, Trump’s travel to his signature properties while trailed by a press corps beaming images to the world allows the official business of the presidency to double as marketing opportunities for his brand.
Jingle jingle jingle.
So he’s a bit of a Nazi, so what
Feb 16th, 2017 5:32 pm | By Ophelia BensonA Trump goon bullshits Evan Davis on Newsnight.
“I’m sad to say that you and your colleagues have fallen into this trap of fake news,” the goon says.
Sebastian Gorka, his name is. He’s been news himself lately.
Donald Trump’s Deputy Assistant has angrily denied being anti-Semitic after he was spotted wearing a military medal associated with Hungarian Nazi sympathisers.
Sebastian Gorka, who is of Hungarian descent but was born and raised in the UK, was pictured wearing the controversial badge at an inaugural ball for Mr Trump and several other events.
According to the LobeLog blog, the medal was given to Mr Gorka’s father by the group Vitezi Rend – meaning Order of Heroes – that consisted of supporters of Miklos Horthy, the former ruler of Hungary, who collaborated with the Nazis during World War Two. The US State Department lists the group as being directed by Nazi Germany.
Gorka ranted at Evan Davis about talk of anti-Semitism at the White House, and used Kushner as his shield. Nope. There are women working for Trump, too; that doesn’t mean he’s not a misogynist pig. He is a misogynist pig, and women who work for him are working for a misogynist pig. Kushner is working for an ignorant bully who has no objection to anti-Semites working for him. So it goes.
Why is Trump Adviser @SebGorka wearing medal of Nazi collaborating group? And why won't he answer ?'s about it? https://t.co/FTbzN0DwHT
— Eli Clifton (@EliClifton) February 14, 2017
Before joining Mr Trump’s team, Mr Gorka worked as a professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington and as national security editor of Breitbart.
He was arrested in January 2016 after trying to board a plane with a 9mm pistol, charged with a weapons offence and is set to appear before a judge later this month.
Yes but Trump got 304 votes. Boom.
Yes it’s a tu quoque, sue me
Feb 16th, 2017 4:48 pm | By Ophelia BensonOne thing that stood out in that horrifying “press conference” was his whines about the “hatred” at CNN.
It’s very important to me and especially in this position. It’s very important. I don’t mind bad stories. I can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it’s true and, you know, over a course of time, I’ll make mistakes and you’ll write badly and I’m OK with that. But I’m not OK when it is fake. I mean, I watch CNN, it’s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred.
…
And I’ll tell you what else I see. I see tone. You know the word “tone.” The tone is such hatred. I’m really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is such — I do get good ratings, you have to admit that — the tone is such hatred.
I watched this morning a couple of the networks. And I have to say, Fox & Friends in the morning, they’re very honorable people. They’re very — not because they’re good, because they hit me also when I do something wrong. But they have the most honest morning show. That’s all I can say. It’s the most honest.
But the tone, Jim. If you look — the hatred. The, I mean, sometimes — sometimes somebody gets…
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Well, you look at your show that goes on at 10 o’clock in the evening. You just take a look at that show. That is a constant hit. The panel is almost always exclusive anti-Trump. The good news is he doesn’t have good ratings. But the panel is almost exclusive anti-Trump. And the hatred and venom coming from his mouth; the hatred coming from other people on your network.
…
You know, I said to him yesterday this whole Russia scam that you guys are building so that you don’t talk about the real subject which is illegal leaks, but I watched him yesterday working so hard to try and get that story proper. And I’m saying “here’s my chief of staff,” a really good guy, did a phenomenal job at RNC. I mean, he won the election, right?
We won the presidency. We got some senators, we got some – all over the country, you take a look, he’s done a great job. And I said to myself, you know – and I said to somebody that was in the room, I said “you take a look at Reince, he’s working so hard just putting out fires that are fake fires.” I mean, they’re fake. They’re not true. And isn’t that a shame because he’d rather be working on healthcare, he’d rather be working on tax reform, Jim (ph).
I mean that. I would be your biggest fan in the world if you treated me right. I sort of understand there’s a certain bias maybe by Jeff (ph) or somebody, you know – you know, whatever reason. But – and I understand that. But you’ve got to be at least a little bit fair and that’s why the public sees it. They see it. They see it’s not fair. You take a look at some of your shows and you see the bias and the hatred.
Emphasis mine.
That’s eight times he complained of “hatred” – Donald Trump, complaining of “hatred” directed at him. Donald Trump is the worst bully ever elected to that office, and he’s complaining about hatred in the commentary on him.
Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016
There is no sex tape, there never was any sex tape.
Trump was a birther for several years.
Trump insisted the Central Park 5 were guilty after they were exonerated by DNA evidence.
Trump publicly calls women ugly.
Trump calls people “losers.”
Trump spews hatred whenever he opens his mouth – and he has the gall to complain of CNN’s attitude to him. Talk about entitled…
A stunning moment
Feb 16th, 2017 1:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonCNN found the press conference startling – which is perhaps to be expected, given how much of it was about or rather aimed at CNN.
President Donald Trump launched an extraordinary denunciation Thursday of his critics and media reports that his White House is in chaos, complaining he inherited a “mess” and slamming stories that his campaign was constantly in contact with Russia as “fake news.”
It will immediately go down as a stunning moment in modern American political history, as presidents have rarely betrayed such a sense of anger and grievance so graphically or so early in their administrations.
And they have never done it in such a flailing, barking, self-interrupting way. They have never looked like such redfaced button-eyed pooch-mouthed accordion-playing imbeciles.
Trump’s appearance betrayed apparent deep frustration not just with the media coverage of his White House and a desire to talk directly to the American people but also possibly dismay with aides charged with defending him.
“I don’t mind a bad story if it’s true,” Trump said, but complained much of what was reported about his administration was unfair.
Trump also accused holdovers from the Obama administration of leaking out information about his alleged contacts with Moscow to hammer his administration.
“I own nothing in Russia, I have no loans in Russia, I don’t have any deals in Russia,” Trump said.
“Russia is fake news.”
There is no Russia!
The leaks are real but the news is fake
Feb 16th, 2017 12:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonI just watched the last 40 minutes or so of Trump’s press conference. It was unbelievable. He’s always worse than it’s possible to imagine ahead of time. He’s incoherent – spasmodic – irascible – ignorant – boastful – truculent – prickly – vain – hyperbolic – absurd – mendacious of course – unctuous – clueless – childish –
I don’t see how anyone can watch him in action without wondering how in hell he managed to get the job he has and why we can’t kick him out right this second.
The Post has a transcript with annotations by Aaron Blake.
We have had great conversations with the United Kingdom, and meetings. Israel, Mexico, Japan, China and Canada, really, really productive conversations. I would say far more productive than you would understand.
He says that kind of thing a lot – you wouldn’t understand, you don’t know, you’re not involved. He understands less than almost anyone, yet he’s always turning it around that way. Dunning-Kruger on steroids.
I’m here following through on what I pledged to do. That’s all I’m doing. I put it out before the American people, got 306 electoral college votes. I wasn’t supposed to get 222. They said there’s no way to get 222, 230’s impossible.
270 which you need, that was laughable. We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes.
That’s exactly what he said yesterday to the Israeli journalist who asked what he would say to people worried about the surge in Antisemitism since the election. He’s obsessed with it.
We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare. Obamacare is a disaster, folks. It is’s disaster. I know you can say, oh, Obamacare. I mean, they fill up our alleys with people that you wonder how they get there, but they are not the Republican people our that representatives are representing.
Yeah I don’t know. No idea.
In response to a question he explained about Flynn and leaks and all that there.
As far as the general’s concerned, when I first heard about it, I said huh, that doesn’t sound wrong. My counsel came, Don McGahn, White House Counsel, and he told me and I asked him, he can speak very well for himself. He said he doesn’t think anything is wrong, you know, really didn’t think.
It was really, what happened after that but he didn’t think anything was done wrong. I didn’t either because I waited a period of time and I started to think about it, I said “well I don’t see” — to me, he was doing the job.
The information was provided by — who I don’t know, Sally Yates. And I was a little surprised because I said “doesn’t sound like he did anything wrong there.” But he did something wrong with respect to the vice president and I thought that was not acceptable. As far as — as far as the actual making the call, fact I’ve watched various programs and I’ve read various articles where he was just doing his job.
That was very normal. You know, first everybody got excited because they thought he did something wrong. After they thought about it, it turned out he was just doing his job. So — and I do. And by the way, with all of that being said, I do think he’s a fine man.
Clear?
The reporter nudged him about the leaks.
Yes, we’re looking at them very — very, very serious. I’ve gone to all of the folks in charge of the various agencies and we’re — I’ve actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks. Those are criminal leaks. They’re put out by people either in agencies — I think you’ll see it stopping because now we have our people in. You know, again, we don’t have our people in because we can’t get them approved by the Senate.
We just had Jeff Sessions approved. In justice, as an example (ph). So, we are looking into that very seriously. It’s a criminal act. You know what I say, when I — when I was called out on Mexico, I was shocked because all this equipment, all this incredible phone equipment — when I was called out on Mexico, I was — honestly, I was really, really surprised.
But I said “you know, it doesn’t make sense. That won’t happen” but that wasn’t that important a call, it was fine, I could show it to the world and he could show it to the world, the president who’s a very fine man, by the way. Same thing with Australia. I said “that’s terrible that it was leaked” but it wasn’t that important. But then I said to myself “what happens when I’m dealing with the problem of North Korea?”
Oh I’m glad you asked us that. What happens when you’re dealing with the problem of North Korea is that you do it in a public dining room at Mar-a-Lago while the people around you illuminate the documents with their phones. That’s what happens.
Them leaks though.
Well the leaks are real. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake. So one thing that I felt it was very important to do — and I hope we can correct it. Because there’s nobody I have more respect for — well, maybe a little bit but the reporters, good reporters.
It’s very important to me and especially in this position. It’s very important. I don’t mind bad stories. I can handle a bad story better than anybody as long as it’s true and, you know, over a course of time, I’ll make mistakes and you’ll write badly and I’m OK with that. But I’m not OK when it is fake. I mean, I watch CNN, it’s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred.
I don’t watch it any more because it’s very good — he’s saying no. It’s OK, Jim (ph). It’s OK, Jim (ph), you’ll have your chance. But I watch others too. You’re not the only one so don’t feel badly. But I think it should be straight. I think it should be — I think it would be frankly more interesting. I know how good everybody’s ratings are right now but I think that actually — I think that’d actually be better.
People — I mean, you have a lower approval rate than Congress. I think that’s right. I don’t know, Peter (ph), is that one right? Because you know I think they have lower — I heard lower than Congress. But honestly, the public would appreciate it, I’d appreciate it — again, I don’t mind bad stories when it’s true but we have an administration where the Democrats are making it very difficult.
A reporter asked how it makes sense to say the leaks are real but the news is fake.
You know what it is? Here’s the thing. The public isn’t — you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don’t know if it’s true or false because they’re not involved. I’m involved. I’ve been involved with this stuff all my life. But I’m involved. So I know when you’re telling the truth or when you’re not. I just see many, many untruthful things.
And I’ll tell you what else I see. I see tone. You know the word “tone.” The tone is such hatred. I’m really not a bad person, by the way. No, but the tone is such — I do get good ratings, you have to admit that — the tone is such hatred.
I watched this morning a couple of the networks. And I have to say, Fox & Friends in the morning, they’re very honorable people. They’re very — not because they’re good, because they hit me also when I do something wrong. But they have the most honest morning show. That’s all I can say. It’s the most honest.
But the tone, Jim. If you look — the hatred. The, I mean, sometimes — sometimes somebody gets…
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Well, you look at your show that goes on at 10 o’clock in the evening. You just take a look at that show. That is a constant hit. The panel is almost always exclusive anti-Trump. The good news is he doesn’t have good ratings. But the panel is almost exclusive anti-Trump. And the hatred and venom coming from his mouth; the hatred coming from other people on your network.
Now, I will say this. I watch it. I see it. I’m amazed by it. And I just think you’d be a lot better off, I honestly do. The public gets it, you know. Look, when I go to rallies, they turn around, they start screaming at CNN. They want to throw their placards at CNN. You know.
I — I think you would do much better by being different. But you just take a look. Take a look at some of your shows in the morning and the evening. If a guest comes out and says something positive about me, it’s — it’s brutal.
And why is that? It’s because he’s 1. a terrible human being and 2. totally unqualified to be president and incompetent at being president.
It’s true that the coverage is out of the ordinary – but there are reasons for that. The reasons have to do with Trump, not with the wickedness of the news media.
No, that’s how I won. I won with news conferences and probably speeches. I certainly didn’t win by people listening to you people. That’s for sure. But I’m having a good time.
Tomorrow, they will say, “Donald Trump rants and raves at the press.” I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you. You know, you’re dishonest people. But — but I’m not ranting and raving. I love this. I’m having a good time doing it.
But tomorrow, the headlines are going to be, “Donald Trump rants and raves.” I’m not ranting and raving.
Hahahahaha oh yes he was. He absolutely was ranting and raving.
Jim Acosta asks him if he doesn’t worry at all about undermining the free press.
Here’s the thing. OK. I understand what you’re — and you’re right about that, except this. See, I know when I should get good and when I should get bad. And sometimes I’ll say, “Wow, that’s going to be a great story.” And I’ll get killed.
I know what’s good and bad. I’d be a pretty good reporter, not as good as you. But I know what’s good. I know what’s bad. And when they change it and make it really bad, something that should be positive — sometimes something that should be very positive, they’ll make OK. They’ll even make it negative.
So I understand it. So, because I’m there. I know what was said. I know who’s saying it. I’m there. So it’s very important to me.
Look, I want to see an honest press. When I started off today by saying that it’s so important to the public to get an honest press. The press — the public doesn’t believe you people anymore. Now, maybe I had something to do with that. I don’t know. But they don’t believe you. If you were straight and really told it like it is, as Howard Cosell used to say, right?
Of course, he had some questions also. But if you were straight, I would be your biggest booster. I would be your biggest fan in the world, including bad stories about me. But if you go – as an example, you’re CNN, I mean it’s story after story after story is bad. I won. I won. And the other thing, chaos because zero chaos. We are running – this is a fine-tuned machine and Reince happens to be doing a good job but half of his job is putting out lies by the press (ph).
That place where he says “I won, I won.” The paragraph should end there, because he did a dramatic pause there. He said “I won,” then a little pause, then more emphatically “I won!” with a wide accordion-gesture and a long pause. He said it meaningfully – as in, “I won, so what’s all this about saying I do bad things? How can the things be bad when I won?” He’s that stupid.
You know, I said to him yesterday this whole Russia scam that you guys are building so that you don’t talk about the real subject which is illegal leaks, but I watched him yesterday working so hard to try and get that story proper. And I’m saying “here’s my chief of staff,” a really good guy, did a phenomenal job at RNC. I mean, he won the election, right?
We won the presidency. We got some senators, we got some – all over the country, you take a look, he’s done a great job. And I said to myself, you know – and I said to somebody that was in the room, I said “you take a look at Reince, he’s working so hard just putting out fires that are fake fires.” I mean, they’re fake. They’re not true. And isn’t that a shame because he’d rather be working on healthcare, he’d rather be working on tax reform, Jim (ph).
I mean that. I would be your biggest fan in the world if you treated me right. I sort of understand there’s a certain bias maybe by Jeff (ph) or somebody, you know – you know, whatever reason. But – and I understand that. But you’ve got to be at least a little bit fair and that’s why the public sees it. They see it. They see it’s not fair. You take a look at some of your shows and you see the bias and the hatred.
And the public is smart, they understand it.
That’s the president.
Andrew Jackson presiding
Feb 16th, 2017 9:53 am | By Ophelia BensonToday in Donnie Disgusting:
Venezuela should allow Leopoldo Lopez, a political prisoner & husband of @liliantintori (just met w/ @marcorubio) out of prison immediately. pic.twitter.com/bt8Xhdo7al
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017
So now we do diplomacy on Twitter, is that it? And what’s with the thumb? And why is he telling us this? And does he think he can do the whole thing one person at a time? Is this really what he thinks the job is – dispensing miraculous interventions to individual people by broadcasting their cases on Twitter?
Stock market hits new high with longest winning streak in decades. Great level of confidence and optimism – even before tax plan rollout!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017
Leaking, and even illegal classified leaking, has been a big problem in Washington for years. Failing @nytimes (and others) must apologize!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017
The spotlight has finally been put on the low-life leakers! They will be caught!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017
Hmm. On the one hand Leopoldo Lopez is a political prisoner (politics unelucidated), on the other hand catch (and punish) the leakers. Unless they’re wikkyleeks and what they’re leaking is gossip about Hillary Clinton.
FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and "sources," is far more effective than the discredited Democrats – but they are fading fast!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017
The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story – RUSSIA. Fake news!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017
And that’s Today in Donnie Disgusting for now.
Persistence through obstacles, little lady
Feb 15th, 2017 4:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump-light.
I recognize women hear such things. Others hear different things meant to suppress, etc. Success depends on persistence through obstacles. pic.twitter.com/LTtVCo53y8
— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) February 9, 2017
“Success depends on persistence through obstacles.” Well duh – success depends on persisting through for instance the obstacle of wanting to sit still and eat gelato instead of doing some sort of work. Obviously “success” depends on effort, which is what that fatuous banality boils down to. But does that mean some people should get lots of extra obstacles, so that they have to work much harder to persist through obstacles? No it fucking does not, and it’s only smug gits who aren’t subject to extra obstacles of that kind who can be smug enough say such stupid things.
Nobody should have to “persist” through the obstacle of an onslaught of messages telling her she is second rate, feeble, inferior, not good enough, stupid, a joke, there for other people’s sexual jollies, so ugly she should stay home, and fundamentally wrong and bad. That’s not like exercise equipment, it’s like a pool full of piranhas between her and what she’s trying to do.
