Donnie admits what a fuckup it was and unreservedly apologizes and promises to do better.
The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 14, 2017
The Chicago Tribune on Trump’s idiotic recklessness:
Richard DeAgazio was already seated for dinner, on the Mar-A-Lago Club’s terrace, when President Trump entered with the Prime Minister of Japan on Saturday night. The crowd – mostly paying members of Trump’s private oceanfront club in Palm Beach, Fla. – stood to applaud. The president’s party sat about six tables away.
Then, DeAgazio – a retired investor who joined Mar-A-Lago three months ago – got a text from a friend. North Korea had just test-fired a ballistic missile, which it claimed could carry a nuclear warhead. DeAgazio looked over at the president’s table.
“That’s when I saw things changing, you know,” DeAgazio recalled in a telephone interview with the Washington Post on Monday. He said a group of staffers surrounded the two world leaders: “The prime minister’s staff sort of surrounded him, and they had a little pow-wow.”
What was happening – as first reported by CNN – was an extraordinary moment, as Trump and Abe turned their dinner table into an open-air situation room. Aides and translators surrounded the two leaders as other diners chatted and gawked around them, with staffers using the flashlights on their cellphones to illuminate documents on the darkened outdoor terrace.
An open-air situation room populated by members of a golf club, and their guests, and servers, and an alligator or two.
The scene of their discussion, Trump’s club, has been called “The Winter White House” by the president’s aides. But it is very different than the actual White House, where security is tight and people coming in are tightly screened. Trump’s club, by contrast, has hundreds of paying members who come and go, and it can be rented out for huge galas and other events open to non-members. On the night of the North Korea launch, for instance, there was a wedding reception going on: CNN reported that Trump dropped by, with Abe in tow.
What better place to discuss a security crisis? Well I suppose there’s Wal-Mart, but apart from that…
DeAgazio told the Post that, after Trump and Abe had spoken for a few minutes, they left the open terrace and spent about 10 minutes in private before conducting a joint press conference at about 10:30 p.m. Eastern time. Later, he said that Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had returned to listen to music on the terrace – which faces the Intracoastal Waterway – and shake hands and speak with club members.
DeAgazio said he’d been impressed with how the president had handled the situation.
“There wasn’t any panicked look. Most of the people [on the terrace] didn’t even realize what was happening,” DeAgazio said. “I thought he handled it very calmly, and very presidentially.”
Security experts have said this casual approach to national security discussions was very risky.
The two leaders could have discussed classified documents within earshot of waiters and club patrons. Those cellphones-turned-flashlights might also have been a problem: if one of them had been hacked by a foreign power, the phone’s camera could have provided a view of what the documents said.
But DeAgazio, for one, said he was impressed that Trump had not gotten up from the table immediately, to seek a more private (and better-lit) place for his discussion with Abe.
“He chooses to be out on the terrace, with the members. It just shows that he’s a man of the people,” DeAgazio said.
Membership at the Mar-a-Lago Club now requires a $200,000 initiation fee — a fee that increased by $100,000 after Trump was elected.
Salt of the earth. Trump is a man of the people. A crowded restaurant is an excellent place for two heads of state to discuss a security crisis. It all makes sense.
The Times has more on Trump’s dinner with Abe and a few hundred of his closest friends.
President Trump and his top aides coordinated their response to North Korea’s missile test on Saturday night in full view of diners at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida — a remarkable, public display of presidential activity that is almost always conducted in highly secure settings.
The scene — of aides huddled over their computers and the president on his cellphone at his club’s terrace — was captured by a club member dining not far away and published in pictures on his Facebook account. The images also show Mr. Trump conferring with his guest at the resort, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister.
Well it could have been worse. They could have gone to Olive Garden or Applebee’s.
The fact that the national security incident was playing out in public view drew swift condemnation from some Democrats, who said it was irresponsible for Mr. Trump not to have moved his discussion to a more private location.
“There’s no excuse for letting an international crisis play out in front of a bunch of country club members like dinner theater,” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, said in a Twitter message.
Discussions about how to respond to international incidents involving adversaries like North Korea are almost always conducted in places that have high-tech protections against eavesdropping, like the White House Situation Room. When presidents are away from the White House, they often conduct important business in a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility,” or SCIF, a location that can be made temporarily impervious to eavesdropping.
Mr. Trump and his White House aides who joined him for dinner, including Steve Bannon, his chief strategist, did not relocate the discussion to such a facility.
It’s like this. They were hungry, see? The steak and baked potatoes had just arrived, and they didn’t want to wait to dive in. They’re people too you know.
The president’s dinner with Mr. Abe was also a departure.
Mr. Trump’s predecessors have almost always held such working dinners in private facilities. In 2013, former President Barack Obama held a dinner with China’s President Xi Jinping at the Sunnylands resort in Palm Springs, Calif. But the dinner between the leaders was out of sight of members of the public.
But Mr. Trump appears to enjoy presenting the spectacle of his presidency to those at his privately held club, where members pay $200,000 to join. While the club is not open to the public, Mr. Trump’s dinner with Mr. Abe was in the club’s dining room, where any member or their guests were likely to be.
But they had to pay 20 grand to be there, or at least be the guests of people who paid 20 grand to be there. Obviously those people are not going to be agents of North Korea. That’s biologically impossible, or something.
But seriously – I want to know why Trump is not being boiled in oil over this.
The Times also notices the whole “talking about national security in a public place surrounded by people eating their highpriced dinners” issue.
By the looks of his Facebook feed, Richard DeAgazio is a big fan of President Trump’s. Witness his Facebook feed on anti-immigrant protests in Italy, courtesy of the Russian propaganda network RT, the photo of Bill Clinton with a woman that he spuriously identifies as the former president’s new girlfriend, and a caricature of Barack Obama in a sombrero.
But Mr. DeAgazio did the current president no favors with his fanboy posts from Mar-a-Lago this weekend in a public dining room as the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, and the president of the United States scrambled to respond to a North Korean ballistic missile test.
Cool for the rest of us that he took snaps though.
It was a remarkable display on Mr. Trump’s part of a lack of concern for prying eyes and security awareness.
But hey, Mr. DeAgazio also posed with the service member who carries the nuclear launch codes for the president.
“This is Rick…He carries the “football” The nuclear football (also known as the atomic football, the President’s emergency satchel, the Presidential Emergency Satchel, the button, the black box, or just the football) is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear attack.”
Public posts, too.
But hey, emails!!!
Holy shit. Trump was at din-dins with Abe at a public restaurant at Mar-a-fucking-Lago when they were told about North Korea’s latest missile-throw, and they discussed it right then and there. In public!
Sunday night, CNN reported details of the moment that Trump, joined by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, learned about a missile launch in North Korea. Trump and Abe were enjoying dinner at Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida at the time, but, CNN reported, began to discuss the details of this international incident right there at their table.
“As Mar-a-Lago’s wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the background,” CNN’s Kevin Liptak reported, “Trump and Abe’s evening meal quickly morphed into a strategy session, the decision-making on full view to fellow diners, who described it in detail to CNN.”
Are you fucking kidding me?
It’s not clear that anyone heard particulars of the conversation, but other diners certainly noticed. Richard DeAgazio was in the room and posted photos of the moment to Facebook.
The post has now been made private; a screenshot is below.
Others who were there added their thoughts in the comments beneath the post. One wrote that he “was watching very close by. Had no idea what it was about.” That’s probably not the case for the waiters, who, CNN reports, “cleared the wedge salads and brought along the main course as Trump and Abe continued consulting with aides.”
Oh but it gets worse.
Notice, though, that the photos appear to corroborate an important detail from the CNN report. “The patio was lit only with candles and moonlight, so aides used the camera lights on their phones to help the stone-faced Trump and Abe read through the documents,” Liptak writes. In DeAgazio’s first photo, you can see a phone flashlight being used in that way.
It’s a funny thing – I’m surprisingly familiar with that scenario. Just last month, when I was on the Monterey Peninsula taking care of Cooper while his humans were away, he and I took our evening walk past that scenario regularly. It’s a posh golf club with condos, and I like walking us up to the inn after dark – past the outdoor terraces that surround the restaurant, where there are fire pits and torches and people shivering in the wind off the Pacific. It’s not what you would call a secure place to discuss national security. Not even close.
Why is this important? Mobile phones have flashlights, yes — and cameras, microphones and Internet connectivity. When Edward Snowden was meeting with reporters in Hong Kong at the moment he was leaking the material he’d stolen from the NSA, he famously asked that they place their phones in the refrigerator — blocking any radio signals in the event that the visitors’ phones had been hacked. This was considered the most secure way of ensuring that the phones couldn’t be used as wiretaps, even more secure than removing the battery. Phones — especially phones with their flashes turned on for improved visibility — are portable television satellite trucks and, if compromised, can be used to get a great deal of information about what’s happening nearby, unless precautions are taken.
Precautions weren’t taken. One of DeAgazio’s photos shows Trump using a phone at the table, within view of other diners (and while sitting next to a foreign leader). It’s not clear what phone Trump is using in that picture, but it’s known that he uses a relatively old Android device, even while serving as president. As we noted last week, Trump generally uses that device when he’s not in the middle of a work day. Shortly before the dinner with Abe, he tweeted from it.
And guess what! His phone is almost certainly compromised!
Of course. Idiot Trump thought the right way to celebrate his inauguration would be with a brutalist display of tanks and missile launchers.
The military “may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump told the Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday. “That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”
Trump spoke about his vision of military parades in vague terms, suggesting it was something he might oversee in the future. But according to several sources involved in his inaugural preparations, Trump has endeavored to ensure that his first day as commander-in-chief is marked by an unusual display of heavy military equipment.
During the preparation for Friday’s transfer-of-power, a member of Trump’s transition team floated the idea of including tanks and missile launchers in the inaugural parade, a source involved in inaugural planning told The Huffington Post. “They were legit thinking Red Square/North Korea-style parade,” the source said, referring to massive military parades in Moscow and Pyongyang, typically seen as an aggressive display of muscle-flexing.
Kill the arts and humanities, but get those missile launchers out there where people can see them.
If this is our last night on earth – so long, it’s been real.
Now Trump is saying yes, hell yes, he wants another nuclear arms race. Bring it on, he says, because we have the biggest dick in the universe.
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday welcomed a new nuclear weapons arms race, vowing in an off-camera interview with a television host that America would “outmatch” any adversary. The comment came one day after he said in a post on Twitter that the United States should “strengthen and expand” its own nuclear capabilities.
The president-elect escalated his comments about nuclear weapons with the show of bravado during a brief, off-air telephone conversation from his estate in Florida, according to Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.
“Let it be an arms race,” Mr. Trump said, according to Ms. Brzezinski, who described her conversation with the president-elect on the morning news program moments later. Mr. Trump added: “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
We have a narcissist with a mental age of 3 in charge of this.
Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on The remarks were cryptic and left room for broad interpretation.
Trump: “So remind me again why I shouldn’t nuke ’em?”
General (desperately wishing he’d taken that retirement): “Well, sir, first of all, the immediate impact would involve the deaths of millions of innocent civilians.”
Trump: “But foreigners, right?”
General: “Well, yes. And there would likely be millions more casualties in the long-term due to fallout and increased cancer risks….”
Trump (eyes glazing over, tiny trigger finger itching)
General: “…uh, and also, there would likely be a reprisal.”
Trump: “Yeah, but not nuclear, right?”
General: “Actually, yes. Their nuclear capabilities consist of…”
Trump: “THEY’RE ALLOWED TO HAVE NUKES? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?”
General (pondering how to explain the history of nuclear proliferation to a man with the attention span of a mayfly): “….well…”
Trump: “IT WAS OBAMA’S FAULT, WASN’T IT?”
General: (sighs)
Trump: “Ok, so they nuke us back, we get our hair mussed a little… well, not my hair, ha ha…”
General (grasping for inspiration): “well, Mr. President, it is possible that the enemy chooses to retaliate somewhere where you own property.”
Trump: (pouts, sighs, pulls out phone) “Fine. I’ll just tweet at ’em, then.”
The Washington Post on Trump’s exciting nuclear plans that he shares on Twitter:
Trump’s tweet came shortly after Putin, during a defense ministry meeting, talked tough on nuclear weapons.
“We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems,” he said.
“He” being Putin. Trump of course would be unable to utter that sentence unless someone wrote it down first.
Russia and the United States have worked for decades at first limiting, and then reducing, the number and strength of nuclear arms they produced and maintained under a Cold War strategy of deterrence known as “mutually assured destruction.” Both Republican and Democratic presidents have pursued the policy of nuclear reduction, said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
Currently, the United States has just under 5,000 warheads in its active arsenal, and more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, a number that fluctuates. Under the New START Treaty, the main strategic arms treaty in place, both the U.S. and Russia must deploy no more than 1,550 strategic by February of 2018. Both countries are on track to meet that limit, which will remain in force until 2021, when they can decide to extend the agreement for another five years.
Since President George H.W. Bush’s administration, it has been U.S. policy not to build new nuclear warheads. Under President Obama, the policy has been not to pursue warheads with new military capabilities.
Well that’s no fun. That’s boring. Let’s go back to the days of terror when we knew the whole thing could end at any moment! Yeeha!
The BBC reminds us of the background:
Mr Trump has offered no further details on his plans but he has hinted in the past that he favoured an expansion of the nuclear programme.
He was asked in interviews whether he would use weapons of mass destruction against an enemy and he said that it would be an absolute last stance, but he added that he would want to be unpredictable.
In contrast, President Obama has talked of the US commitment to seek peace and security without nuclear weapons.
Well he’s such a girl. Manly men want to nuke everything.
In interviews before his surprise victory Mr Trump said that other countries should spend more on their own defence budgets, and forgo US protection, because “we can’t afford to do it anymore”.
He has said he is in favour of countries such as Japan and South Korea developing nuclear weapons “because it’s going to happen anyway”.
He also repeatedly said he didn’t understand why we couldn’t just use them.
There’s just nothing quite as exhilarating as having a complete novice and intentional ignoramus elected president so that he can amble around provoking war with tiny weak little countries like China.
President-elect Donald J. Trump, defending his recent phone call with Taiwan’s president, asserted in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the United States was not bound by the One China policy, the 44-year diplomatic understanding that underpins America’s relationship with its biggest rival.
Mr. Trump, speaking on Fox News, said he understood the principle of a single China that includes Taiwan, but declared, “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”
He doesn’t know, which is not surprising since he doesn’t know anything, but then his way of dealing with his lack of knowledge leaves a lot to be desired. Musing about it on Fox News in wording that sounds exactly like a threat is not ideal.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the government had “serious concern” about Mr. Trump’s remarks, renewing a debate that erupted nine days ago when he took a congratulatory phone call from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan.
At first, Mr. Trump played down the implications of the call, saying he was just being polite. Later, his aides said he was well aware of the diplomatic repercussions of speaking to Taiwan’s leader. Lobbyists for Taiwan, including the law firm of former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, spent months laying the groundwork for the call.
Wouldn’t it be funny if paid lobbyists for Taiwan, Bob Dole among them, triggered a war between China and the US? No, it wouldn’t.
An editorial on Monday in The Global Times, a Chinese state-run tabloid, said that Mr. Trump was “like a child in his ignorance of foreign policy.”
“The One China policy cannot be bought and sold,” the editorial said. “Trump, it seems, only understands business and believes that everything has a price.”
Mr. Trump, however, did not appear worried about inflaming Beijing. He repeated in the Fox News interview many of the criticisms he has made about China, emphasizing what he said was its unwillingness to help curb the nuclear ambitions of its neighbor North Korea — an issue that foreign policy experts believe could confront Mr. Trump as the first geopolitical crisis of his presidency.
The president-elect said he would not tolerate having the Chinese government dictate whether he could take a call from the president of Taiwan. He reiterated that he had not placed the call, and described it as “a very short call saying, ‘Congratulations, sir, on the victory.’”
Of course he didn’t, and of course he did. That’s Trump all over – he thinks he’s infallible, and he thinks knowledge is irrelevant to (his) decision-making.
China scholar Steven Goldstein says in the Washington Post that Trump’s blowharding will risk war with China.
In other words, the One China policy isn’t a big deal — it’s a bargaining issue, like many other issues. So is Trump right?
No. The big deal is this: The relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan is an ambiguous one, where the People’s Republic claims Taiwan as part of its national territory but is prepared for the present to let Taiwan continue in existence, while Taiwan also has an interest in not clarifying its relationship with the People’s Republic too precisely. Both the PRC and the United States adhere to the notion of One China, but they mean very different things by it. Undermining the status quo could lead to full-scale military conflict between the United States and China over an island that both see as vital to their national interests and whose unique status they have managed well up to this point.
He gives a very useful explanation of the current situation, the different understandings of Taiwan, and the careful, tricky balance that’s been working since Nixon. The US has more of a relationship with Taiwan than China would like, and less than Taiwan would like. It’s one of those “nobody breathe” things.
While the U.S. position is driven by a variety of political interests, China’s position is driven by a desire for national unity that China’s leadership has defined as existential and nonnegotiable. This means that the U.S. approach flouts essential elements of the Chinese position. Moreover, not only is Washington maintaining a relationship that contravenes China’s One China policy, but it has apparently put itself in a position of setting the conditions for the resolution of the conflict. The reason this has not led to overt hostilities is because all sides have behaved with restraint to maintain a very fragile peace. They know full well how sensitive these differences are.
Enter a conceited, ignorant blowhard who thinks he knows everything.
This is why Trump’s suggestion that One China is another bargaining chip, which the United States can play or not play as it likes, is both misleading and risky. On the one hand, it apparently misses the subtle, but extremely significant, differences between the American “one China policy” and the Chinese “one China principle.” On the other, it endangers the central tenet of American policy in the area — the maintenance of the status quo. The Trump transition team has already referred to Tsai Ing-wen as “President of Taiwan.” This publicly undermines the only aspect of the One China issue where the United States and China actually agree — that Taiwan is not a state, while starkly exposing the reality of the quasi state-to-state relationship that the American One China policy obscures. By using Taiwan’s status as a negotiating ploy, Trump is doubling down on this dangerous strategy. China’s vital national interests are in conflict with U.S. policy, and stable relations are fragile, because all the parties are unhappy with the present situation. If the incoming administration persists in its apparent careless indifference, it runs the risk of grossly destabilizing U.S.-China relations, and even risks war.
Oh well. At least Wyoming and Montana weren’t silenced by all those pesky millions of people in California and New York.
So Trump was lying about how innocent and unexpected that phone call with the president of Taiwan was.
In today’s Washington Post, Anne Gearan, Philip Rucker and Simon Denyer cite inside sources who say the call was months in the making and intentionally provocative in regard to China.
That was apparently news to Trump, who on Friday night, as the controversy erupted, dismissively tweeted as if it were a small matter in which Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen phoned him to offer her congratulations, and he took the call as a courtesy.
The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2016
And some of his team also said calm down, chill out, it was no big thing, just a couple of people dishing on the phone.
But by Sunday evening — shortly before The Post’s story went live — Trump took a decidedly new tack, talking tough on China in a way that’s more consistent with what the sources were saying about the Taiwan call.
And as The Post’s story makes clear, those close to the situation are describing it as much more than just a “courtesy call.” They aren’t saying the “One China” policy is out the window, but they do suggest it was meant to signal a substantial shift in at least the tone of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan.
Maybe if we’re really really lucky he’ll get us into a war with China. A dream come true!
The Washington Post hints that maybe possibly Trump was lying about how that phone call with Taiwan’s president happened and what was discussed when it did happen.
But a spokesman in the Taiwanese president’s office clarified to Reuters that the call was agreed to beforehand.
“Of course both sides agreed ahead of time before making contact,” spokesman Alex Huang said in response to Trump’s tweet.
Taiwan’s government also said the two sides discussed “strengthening bilateral relations” and talked about their “close economic, political and security ties” — all words likely to make China cringe and suggestive of a more in-depth conversation than just a congratulatory call.
“Cringe” is again a cautious way of putting it.
Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and potential Trump foreign policy adviser Ric Grenell said Friday night that the flap was overblown.
“It was totally planned,” Grenell said. “It was a simple courtesy call. People need to calm down. The ‘One China’ policy wasn’t changed. Washington, D.C., types need to lighten up.”
Right. People who know something about foreign affairs and diplomacy and China and Taiwan – they all need to calm down and lighten up, and let the people who know nothing whatever about any of it just get on with trying to start a war between nuclear states.
But the situation raises real questions about who is advising Trump when it comes to diplomacy with Asia, as The Post’s Emily Rauhala writes. It also came just a day after the New York Times reported on building concerns about Trump’s handling of other calls with world leaders and his preparation level. And the stakes are considerably higher with China than with Mexico and many other countries.
His preparation level is zero. We know this. He’s much too busy taking victory laps and tweeting bullshit and trying to persuade the New York Times to be nice to him to do any pesky preparation.
Even if it wasn’t meant to be a big deal, it’s clearly become a big deal to China. China has now lodged an official complaint with the United States over the matter, though it appears to be giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and blaming Taiwan. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, called it a “petty” move by Tsai. “The One China principle is the foundation for heathy development of Sino-U. S. relations,” Wang said. “We don’t wish for anything to obstruct or ruin this foundation.”
By “benefit of the doubt” I suppose Aaron Blake means “allowances because he’s such an imbecile.”
Trump fully understands what a colossal mistake it was for him to chat with the president of Taiwan, and he’s said so on Twitter.
No I’m kidding of course. Here’s what he said on Twitter:
The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2016
Actually, Bozo, that doesn’t change anything. You’re not supposed to do it that way. There’s a process, and you’re too lazy and stupid to learn it. You’ve been skipping the briefings you’re supposed to get. You’re keeping the State Department out of the loop. You’re a runaway train, and you don’t care.
At this rate we may be in a nuclear exchange with China before the New Year, let alone before he’s actually president.
Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2016
Christ. That pile of sulky suiting will be the president in a few short weeks, and he talks like a petulant child. THEY get to talk to Taiwan and I don’t, it’s NOT FAIR.
Seriously, when he’s run aground this fast, how can things possibly not get much much worse very fast?
