Tag: President Idiot

  • After our army took over the airports, it shelled CNN and MSNBC

    Amee Vanderpool breaks down all of Trump’s failures yesterday:

    What was also interesting was the arrangement of the bleachers at the very front and the placement of the tanks Trump had been going on and on about. In a grand stroke of irony, fences were placed around the Lincoln Memorial and across the Reflecting Pool to kept non-ticket-holders away from the memorial and given the potential for lightning in the forecast, the excessive use of more metal in the pool was a questionable move.

    In other words millions in public money were spent to enable Trump to throw a private party at the Lincoln Memorial. People outside the fence couldn’t see anything, including the much-vaunted tanks.

    It started to pour rain well before Trump’s scheduled speech time and a lot of attendees made a break for it when they realized they couldn’t get into the restricted area to really see anything. Once Trump began his speech, he was standing behind plexiglass-glass so even the television cameras were obscured by drizzling rain. Trump used a TelePrompTer, which might lead you to believe that this would keep him on track and be as accurate as possible, but…no.

    Well you see, for that to work he would have to be able to read, and he isn’t really. He’s able to read in the rudimentary fashion of a learner, but not in the sense of a practiced reader who can read quickly and fluently. He stumbles a lot.

    Our Commander in Chief, who received five deferments for Vietnam due to suspicious bone spurs, encouraged people to “make a great statement in life” and join the military. His cadence was awkward and broken and he looked as uncomfortable as I’m sure all of the attendees felt. His speech, which was likely written after Stephen Miller googled Colonial History rather than learning it, was riddled with errors and mispronunciations and I will summarize the biggest mistakes for you…

    Why is Trump so convinced that July 4 is all about the military?

    Oh, I bet I know why. It’s because he’s so literal, and stunted. He’s too literal and stunted to grasp abstract notions like democracy and rights (let alone incomplete democracy and rights). He can grasp the military because it’s graspable: he can grasp a tank or a fighter jet or a Marine.

    Then came the airports.

    Here is a transcript of what he actually said: “In June of 1775, the Continental Congress created a unified army out of the revolutionary forces encamped around Boston and New York and named after the great George Washington, commander in chief. The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the [unclear], it [unclear] the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under “the rockets red glare,” it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their star-spangled banner waved defiant.”

    There are so many errors here, so let’s jump right in:

    1. British General Cornwallis was defeated at Yorktown but he was from London, which would make him General Cornwallis of London.
    2. The Continental Army wasn’t named after Washington. Trump seemed very confused and disoriented throughout his speech and it was obvious the TelePrompTer was throwing him off so maybe he mis-spoke and used the wrong verb. Or maybe his speechwriter, likely Stephen Miller, really doesn’t know the accurate history.
    3. He combines two separate wars, fought decades apart. Valley Forge, crossing the Delaware and Yorktown all occurred during the Revolutionary War in 1775. But then Trump mentions Fort McHenry and the battle that inspired the national anthem, which was fought in 1814 during the War of 1812.
    4. I’m sure he means “Fort McHenry” here and is just struggling to read, but in the audio you can hear that he pronounces it “Fort McHendry.”
    5. Trump claims that the soldiers in one of these battles, either in 1775 or 1814, took over the airports. The airports.

    Who are we to say they didn’t? Were we there? Did we watch them not take over the airports? Did we?

  • We can’t take him anywhere

    That D-Day proclamation:

    Image result for d day declaration

  • Not a big fan

    One of Trump’s people told the Navy to hide a warship from Trump when he was in Japan, because…

    …because it is named USS John S. McCain.

    Not an Onion story. Repeat, not an Onion story.

    President Trump on Thursday defended as “well-meaning” a White House official who directed the Navy to obscure the warship USS John S. McCain while Trump was visiting Japan, but he said he had no advance knowledge of the action.

    “I don’t know what happened. I was not involved. I would not have done that,” Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House for Colorado, where he is scheduled to address an Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.

    He “would not have done that” because he would have pitched sixteen public fits about McCain instead.

    Trump, however, suggested that his disdain for the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) is well-known and that it was understandable that someone would try to keep a warship originally named for McCain’s father and grandfather, both Navy admirals, from his view.

    “I was not a big fan of John McCain in any shape or form,” Trump said. “Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, okay? And they were well-meaning.”

    Which is to say: “Yes, I am indeed a childish petty vengeful idiot with no concept of how to act like an adult when people are watching.”

    A senior White House official confirmed Wednesday that the person who issued the directive did not want the warship with the McCain name seen in photographs during Trump’s visit. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that the president was not involved in the planning, but that the request was made to keep Trump from becoming upset.

    That is, the request was made to keep Trump from becoming upset and having a huge showy tantrum in public thus humiliating the entire country for the forty millionth time.

    A senior Navy official confirmed Wednesday that he was aware that someone at the White House sent a message to service officials in the Pacific requesting that the USS John McCain be kept out of the picture while the president was there. That led to photographs taken Friday of a tarp obscuring the McCain name, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

    When senior Navy officials grasped what was happening, they directed Navy personnel who were present to stop, the senior official said. The tarp was removed Saturday, before Trump’s visit, he added.

    Did they pack plenty of pacifiers? Was there ice cream always at the ready? Was the officer of the blanky on duty around the clock?

    Trump says it’s all good.

  • Makes them all look good

    Ah. Smart move.

    Makes us look good! Especially when we announce that’s what we’re doing! Appearances are EVERYTHING.

  • Unkoo Tham Thaying hith pwayoows

    Trump retweeted this last night.

  • Must be offensive

    Oh god oh god oh god.

  • On an index card please

    Well, this is what you get when you have a head of state who is

    • lazy
    • stupid
    • undisciplined
    • indifferent

    You get a head of state who refuses to read intelligence briefings.

    Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.

    Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

    Good joke. “Style of learning” of course means “taste in tv channels.” Learning is not a thing Donald Trump does.

    Soon after Trump took office, analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, who is known for taking in much of his information from conservative Fox News Channel hosts. The oral briefings were augmented with photos, videos and graphics.

    After several months, Trump made clear he was not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

    Of course he’s not interested in reviewing it. It’s not interesting to him – it’s not about him. God forbid he should do anything he’s not interested in.

    Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Trump “is an avid consumer of intelligence, appreciates the hard work of his briefers and of the entire intelligence community and looks forward every day to the give and take of his intelligence briefings.”

    Frankly, that sounds like the way people talk about someone with fairly advanced Alzheimer’s. “He looks forward to lunch every day.”

    Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the “homework” that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable.

    What is this “homework” of which you speak?

    The top-secret intelligence report, which dates in its current form to the Johnson administration, is made up of individual “articles” written by career analysts, mostly from the CIA. The PDB is so tightly controlled that intelligence officials maintain a log to record when the briefers provide a copy of the document to a principal and when they retrieve it, several officials said.

    Rob Porter was seeing it, up until he resigned two days ago. No security clearance, but he was seeing it, because the Staff Secretary does.

    Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m.

    After he’s watched his five or six hours of Fox and Friends.

    One senior White House official described the Oval Office briefing as a distilled version of the sessions that senior administration officials receive earlier in the day. CIA Director Mike Pompeo usually attends the session, as does Coats.

    During Trump’s briefing, a veteran intelligence official typically describes intelligence highlights contained in a shortened, written version of the PDB. Trump has rarely, if ever, requested that the document be left behind for him to read, according to people familiar with the meetings.

    He might as well be a doll they wheel out for public occasions.

    Pompeo has said the president is briefed on current developments, as well as upcoming events — such as visits by foreign leaders — and longer-term strategic issues.

    He has to know about the visits, because he has to go to that place with the wide armchairs and sit in his on the toilet position while the cameras go click click click.

    Trump’s admirers say he has a unique ability to cut through conventional foreign policy wisdom and ask questions that others have long taken for granted. “Why are we even in Somalia?” or “Why can’t I just pull out of Afghanistan?” he will ask, according to officials.

    Ah yes, the Wise Child routine. He’s like the Buddha. He has a unique ability to be so ignorant of the world around him and the country he claimed the right to govern that he asks questions a child of four would ask. “Why is there even homework?” “Why does it have to be raining today?” “Why can’t I eat the whole box?” “Why can’t I drive the car?”

    Another person familiar with the briefing process said that, at times, Trump has been dismissive of his briefers. He has shaken his head, frowned and complained that the briefers were “talking down to him,” this person said.

    He has pouted, scowled, kicked the furniture, thrown the briefing out the window, flung himself down on the carpet and screamed. How dare the briefers “talk down to him” just because they know their subject and he knows nothing but what Fox tells him?

    Trump indicated early on that he had little interest in immersing himself in detailed intelligence documents.

    “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page,” he told Axios shortly before taking office.

    Of course he does. He likes as little as possible of everything except golf, rape, and showing off to adoring crowds.

    “He often goes off on tangents during the briefing and you’d have to rein him back in,” one official said.

    As people with immature or tau-riddled brains so often do.

  • The River of Blood just off the 15th tee

    Let’s go back a couple of years, to November 2015.

    STERLING, Va. — When Donald J. Trump bought a fixer-upper golf club on Lowes Island here for $13 million in 2009, he poured millions more into reconfiguring its two courses. He angered conservationists by chopping down more than 400 trees to open up views of the Potomac River. And he shocked no one by renaming the club after himself.

    But that wasn’t enough. Mr. Trump also upgraded its place in history.

    Between the 14th hole and the 15th tee of one of the club’s two courses, Mr. Trump installed a flagpole on a stone pedestal overlooking the Potomac, to which he affixed a plaque purportedly designating “The River of Blood.”

    Snopes has a close-up.

    The Times continues:

    “Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot,” the inscription reads. “The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as ‘The River of Blood.’ ”

    The inscription, beneath his family crest and above Mr. Trump’s full name, concludes: “It is my great honor to have preserved this important section of the Potomac River!”

    You can tell what’s coming. It’s not true. The Times asked local historians and they said no, it’s not true.

    In a phone interview, Mr. Trump called himself a “a big history fan” but deflected, played down and then simply disputed the local historians’ assertions of historical fact.

    “That was a prime site for river crossings,” Mr. Trump said. “So, if people are crossing the river, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot — a lot of them.”

    But the plaque doesn’t say “This was a popular river crossing, so it stands to reason that a lot of soldiers were shot crossing it during the Civil War.” That would look ridiculous on a plaque, so instead Trump just made shit up.

    Also, notice “Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South” – i.e. there were good people on both sides. He’s consistent on that point, at least.

    The historians said it is true that Confederate soldiers crossed the river at a nearby ford (which has its own, accurate marker), but no soldiers were killed crossing the river.

    “How would they know that?” Mr. Trump asked when told that local historians had called his plaque a fiction. “Were they there?”

    Aha, he can do skepticism when it’s someone else’s claim…just not when it’s his.

    Mr. Trump repeatedly said that “numerous historians” had told him that the golf club site was known as the River of Blood. But he said he did not remember their names.

    Also that they’d eaten his homework.

    Then he said the historians had spoken not to him but to “my people.” But he refused to identify any underlings who might still possess the historians’ names.

    “Write your story the way you want to write it,” Mr. Trump said finally, when pressed unsuccessfully for anything that could corroborate his claim. “You don’t have to talk to anybody. It doesn’t make any difference. But many people were shot. It makes sense.”

    No, not really. Armies can’t be everywhere. If the Union troops were massing at Gettysburg, then they weren’t also staking out the Potomac. It “makes sense” to think the Union army could have picked off Confederate troops on their way to Gettysburg if conditions had made that possible and useful, but that’s not at all the same thing as asserting that they did.

    Which is obvious, of course, but it’s interesting how childishly crude his thinking is.

    In its small way, the plaque bears out Mr. Trump’s reputation for being preoccupied with grandeur, superlatives and his own name, but less so with verifiable facts, even when his audience is relatively small.

    Members of what he renamed the Trump National Golf Club, and some former employees, said the plaque generally drew laughter or eye-rolls, much as when Mr. Trump periodically descends from his helicopter to walk one course or the other.

    Pause to sigh for the good old days – two years ago, when we could laugh and roll our eyes at him.

  • Trump starts second grade on a high note

    He might as well be six years old.

    Q You seem to have a fairly warm relationship with a number of —

    PRESIDENT TRUMP: I do.

    Q — totalitarian or authoritarian leaders —

    PRESIDENT TRUMP: And others.

    Q And others. So, Putin, Xi, leader of the Philippines. Do you think you — what do you think — do you think you understand them in a certain way or relate to them in a way that other Presidents haven’t?

    PRESIDENT TRUMP: I dont know. They had a story today in one of the papers about China. China likes me. China likes me. And I get along with them; I get along with others too.

    I get along very well with Angela. You people don’t write that. I actually get along really well with Angela. You know, they had that handshaking event. I was with her for a long time before that. And somebody shouts out, “shake her hand, shake her hand.” And I didn’t hear them. So by not shaking her hand, they said — I have a great relationship with her. I have a great relationship with Theresa May. I have a great relationship with Justin Trudeau, who I just left.

    I think I — I’ll be honest with you, I think I have a great relationship with every single one of them. Every person in that room today — you had what, 15, or so, or 18? Asia Pacific —

    Q Well, 21 including you.

    PRESIDENT TRUMP: Everyone in that room, I have a good relationship. They’re very different people, but everyone. And I do have a very good relationship with Xi, obviously. It’s the biggest state — it’s the biggest state entrance and the biggest state dinner they’ve ever had, by far, in China. He called it a state-plus. Like he said it — he actually said, state-plus-plus,which is very interesting.

    But he’s — you know, look, again, he’s a strong person. He’s a very smart person. I like him a lot; he likes me. But, you know, we represent two very different countries. But we get along very well. And that’s a good thing that we along; that’s not a bad thing.

    They like me! They like me! They all really really like me! They think I’m awesome! They ask me to sit with them at the popular table! They like me!

  • You hold the pencil like this

    Maggie Haberman explains what Trump doesn’t understand about the legislative process.

    Despite naming a chief of staff who is expected to bring a new sense of discipline to the White House, President Trump resorted to his old Twitter playbook on Saturday, attacking Senate Republicans who he said “look like fools” — even as he demonstrated an uncertain understanding of the legislative process.

    In a series of early morning messages, the president criticized the Senate’s filibuster rules, saying they were hampering his agenda.

    It was not clear why he was focused on the filibuster rule, a parliamentary delay tactic that requires 60 votes to overcome. Republicans have a 52-seat majority in the Senate. A proposal this week to repeal portions of the health care law, as long demanded by Mr. Trump, required a simple 51-vote majority to pass and still failed.

    Nonetheless, Mr. Trump plowed on in the flurry of Twitter posts that started shortly after 7 a.m., saying “many great Republican bills will never pass,” including health care, under the filibuster rule.

    In other words the head of state doesn’t understand the basics of his own government. The very basic basics.

  • Trump went to the G7 to learn

    The BBC on A Trump Abroad, this time at the G7, refusing to reaffirm the Paris accord.

    The final communique issued at the G7 summit in Italy said the US “is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics”.

    However, the other G7 leaders pledged to “reaffirm their strong commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Agreement”.

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the discussion on climate change had been “very unsatisfactory”, adding “we have a situation of six against one”.

    Mr Trump tweeted: “I will make my final decision on the Paris Accord next week!”

    His economic adviser, Gary Cohn, said Mr Trump “came here to learn. He came here to get smart. His views are evolving… exactly as they should be.”

    No. No no no no no no no. He should have been smart already. He should have learned long ago. The G7 isn’t School for Stupid Rich Men Who Want to Be Important. The other six heads of state are not there to educate empty-headed Donnie from Queens. It’s way too late for him to “get smart.” Being smart is a prerequisite, not a fun ornament that can be added any time.

  • All of the many

    Even when Trump tries for once not to be an asshole, he remains an asshole. That’s because he’s so inadequate and empty.

    Behold his masterpiece for MLK Day:

    Oh yes, all the many wonderful things. So many. Very wonderful. Very very wonderful.

    Honor him. Honor him for being great. So great. Very very very great. Very very great man who did many many very very wonderful things.

    Exclamation point!

  • Donnie wants to work with Russia to fix the WORLD

    Sometimes we have to start with TrumpOnTwitter to make sense of the news. So, ok.

    A couple I skipped yesterday:

    That’s a trivial but still telling item – telling because it betrays that he wants us to know that editors come to him now, even big name editors like Anna Wintour. He wants us to be impressed. He’s that needy.

    Rachel Maddow pointed out last night how absurd that is – the report was all over the news and it’s just routine for leaks like that to happen. NBC is not a special offender. But NBC…well…it’s not Fox, put it that way.

    Also Trump looks ridiculous asking Congress to investigate trivial offenses against his Presidential Self. He looks even more ridiculous telling us he’s doing so via Twitter.

    Then came his sober assessment of the Russian hacking.

    No, that’s another lie. Russia did also hack the RNC, but it didn’t share what it found with Wikileaks, because Putin wanted Trump to win.

    Why? Partly to get revenge on Clinton for dissing him, but also to get a stupid easily-manipulated patsy in the office.

    No; another lie. It did not state that. It stated that it did not investigate that question, not that “here was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results.”

    Study that one for awhile. Let it sink in. Ponder it.

    He’s saying that Russian tampering with the US election is no big deal and wouldn’t even be discussed if the Democrats weren’t red-faced about losing.

    He thinks Russia respects him.

  • The ratings machine

    Today in off-the-charts ridiculous in Trump on Twitter:

    Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got “swamped” (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for being a movie star-and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary

    Actual president in two weeks.