Tag: President Pig

  • While Ivanka nods like a wind-up doll

    A tiny yet significant item – Trump gives the finger to the woman astronaut who had the audacity to correct (in a tactful way) his assertion that she and her colleague were the first women ever to work outside the space station.

  • He never did

    Dana Milbank says he believes all Trump’s lies, because the alternative is…what it is.

    I believe all this and more because the alternative is unthinkable: that our great nation inflicted on the world a president who is, well, a stone cold loser, boorish and ignorant.

    Therefore I plan to do as Trump does: live today as if yesterday never happened. But it’s not enough to imagine away this week’s name-calling. To preserve national dignity, Americans must accept that none of the following ever happened:

    Trump did not shove the prime minister of Montenegro and he didn’t declare that he “fell in love” with the dictator of North Korea. He didn’t hang up on the Australian prime minister, nor attack the pope on Twitter. He didn’t use aphony accent to imitate the Indian prime minister, nor make fun of Chinese leaders’ eyewear. He didn’t refer to African nations and Haiti as “shithole countries.”

    It goes on, for paragraph after paragraph.

    Wewillneverliveitdown.

  • If that’s the hand of friendship…

    No, he’s not offering America’s hand of friendship. Don’t be silly. For one thing the two countries were already friends, before he was elected, before he ran, before he was even born. The relationship has deteriorated since and because he became president. And for another he comes offering nothing, he’s there for his own glory and nothing else.

    For another thing he’s not democratically elected; he’s undemocratically elected. Big empty states get to overrule smaller fuller states.

    And the bit about giving him a welcome to match the office and the country as opposed to the festering pustule that he himself is? No. The two can’t be separated and he’s an evil, cruel, genocide-ready man. He should not be welcomed anywhere by anyone.

    Image result for trump uk

  • 11 is not 91

    When he wasn’t giggling joyously at the plan to shoot immigrants at the border, Trump was lying about Puerto Rico. Of course he was.

    President Donald Trump spent the opening minutes of a campaign rally in Panama City Beach, Florida on Wednesday attacking hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico for not sufficiently appreciating his administration’s relief efforts—which critics have decried as grossly inadequate—and attempting to use a bar graph to bolster his repeatedly debunked claim that the island has received a record amount of storm aid.

    “I brought a chart. Would you like to see a chart?” Trump said, pulling a piece of paper from his jacket pocket to cheers from the audience.

    “That’s Puerto Rico and they don’t like me,” said the president, pointing to a section of the bar graph purporting to show that Puerto Rico has received $91 billion in hurricane relief funding.

    As The Associated Press reported, Trump’s “number is wrong, as is his assertion that the U.S. territory has set some record for federal disaster aid. Congress has so far distributed only about $11 billion for Puerto Rico, not $91 billion.”

    Well what’s a little difference of 80 billion dollars between friends? A mere blip.

    As Common Dreams reported in March, over a million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico have faced large cuts to food stamps and other services in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria as a relief package—which also includes disaster aid to Florida and other states—remains stalled in Congress due to opposition from Republicans and the Trump administration.

    Even in the face of the island’s devastating circumstances, Trump has reportedly said that he “doesn’t want another single dollar” going to Puerto Rico.

    How long will it be before he cheers on suggestions to shoot them?

  • Trip’s off, neener neener

    He thinks this is all a game.

    President Donald Trump said Thursday he was denying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a military plane for a trip to Afghanistan that was set to begin in the afternoon, a tit-for-tat retaliation that deepened the divide between the leaders and brought the government no closer to reopening.

    …

    Pelosi had been scheduled to leave within the hour that Trump’s letter was made public, making for the awkward site of a large blue Air Force bus idling outside the Capitol as the implications of the President’s missive came into focus.

    This is what it is to have a stupid malevolent narcissistic child in the executive role in government.

    The administration “worked with the Air Force and (the Defense Department) and basically took away the rights to the plane from the speaker,” one White House official said.

    Image result for brat

    “Due to the Shutdown, I am sorry to inform you that your trip to Brussels, Egypt, and Afghanistan has been postponed,” Trump wrote Pelosi on Thursday. “We will reschedule this seven-day excursion when the Shutdown is over.”

    Later, Pelosi’s spokesman said the stop in Brussels was mainly to allow the pilot to rest and that Egypt was not on her itinerary.

    “Excursion.” As many people are heatedly pointing out, it wasn’t an “excursion,” it was a visit to troops in a combat zone…which Trump exposed. The trip was classified.

    Pelosi’s spokesman said the stop in Brussels was mainly to allow the pilot to rest and that Egypt was not on her itinerary.

    Even though Afghanistan — an active US combat zone — was one of the countries on her planned itinerary, Trump suggested she fly commercial.

    “Obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative,” Trump wrote.

    Right now I would like to jump up and down on his face wearing heavy boots with chains on them.

    White House officials, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, began discussing canceling Pelosi’s trip early Thursday morning, according to two people with knowledge of how the day unfolded. Aides felt caught off guard when Pelosi publicly released her letter calling on Trump to postpone his State of the Union address, or deliver it in writing, and felt canceling the military air travel would be an ideal response.

    How stupid can they be?! You’d think it was a fucking shopping trip. She was leading a Congressional delegation to visit troops in a combat zone. That’s not a junket or a treat or a perk, and it’s not something Donnie Heel Spurs looks good grabbing away out of stupid toddlery spite.

    “The purpose of the trip was to express appreciation & thanks to our men & women in uniform for their service & dedication, & to obtain critical national security & intelligence briefings from those on the front lines,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill tweeted.

    Oh, really? I thought it was to eat truffles and sip champagne in Monte Carlo.

    https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1085992119658000389

  • $1000 a ticket

    While federal workers go unpaid and soybean farmers wonder who will buy their crop now, we are paying for the tents at Trump’s party at Mar-a-Lago.

    While the president has vowed to remain in Washington as the government shutdown continues, his swanky party at the Florida resort will go on regardless. And, as Quartz reported, it will be funded in large part by American taxpayers. The news outlet found expenses for the party on government spending records, showing that a little more than $54,000 went to a tent rental company from Delray Beach, Florida, which confirmed that it was for Trump’s New Year’s Eve party. The purchase was officially made by the U.S. Secret Service, which is in charge of security arrangements when Trump travels to his resort.

    Donald Trump’s exclusive New Year’s Eve party came under fire last year, especially after taxpayers picked up a bill of more than $26,000 for renting lights, generators, tables, and tents at the soiree. Trump has also cashed in big since becoming president, the Press Herald reported. Ticket prices for the party jumped by 25 percent, reaching $1,000 for those who are not members of Mar-a-Lago. Members will still have to pay $650 to attend, which is on top of the club’s $200,000 initiation fee, which doubled the year Trump became president.

    Interesting. He’s raking in the bucks for the party, while we help pay the party’s expenses. Nice little grift he’s got there.

    “This type of naked profiteering off of a government office is what I would expect from King Louis XVI or his modern kleptocratic equivalents, not an American president,” said Norm Eisen, former White House ethics lawyer under Barack Obama.

    Image result for money

  • Decorum

    In his Fox News performance this morning Trump gave himself an A plus as president and asked if he could go higher.

    An hour ago he called Representative Adam Schiff “Adam Schitt” in a tweet. Yes, the president of the United States really did that.

    On Friday, when a judge ruled that the White House had no business taking away Jim Acosta’s press pass, Trump responded that there had to be decorum.

    https://twitter.com/RyanHillMI/status/1064231003227607040

  • What he always does to women

    Even more disgusting.

  • A very scary time for young men

    Jennifer Rubin points out how rich it is for Trump to start manscreaming about the presumption of innocence.

    President Trump on Tuesday cranked up the volume on his white male base’s primal scream to ear-shattering decibels. He worries that this is a “very scary time for young men” in America, who are at risk of being accused of things they didn’t do. He insists, “My whole life I’ve heard you’re innocent until proven guilty, but now you’re guilty until proven innocent. That is a very, very difficult standard.” The president — with more than a dozen accusers claiming he engaged in unwanted sexual conduct — knows a thing or two about victimhood, he’d have you believe.

    As he demonstrated in his mockery of Christine Blasey Ford at a fascist rally last night.

    Trump’s concern for the falsely accused doesn’t extend to either Bill or Hillary Clinton, whom he’d like to “lock up” without further ado. His concern for false accusations did not extend to the Central Park Five, the African American teenagers whom he initially wanted executed — and 14 years after the fact still claimed were guilty despite DNA evidence exonerating them. His concern about the presumption of innocence doesn’t extend to Mexican immigrants (“rapists!”), Muslim immigrants (“terrorists!”), FBI agents (liberal schemers), President Barack Obama (tapped his wires) or really anyone except privileged, rich white men whose lives and politics resemble his own.

    And who don’t get in his way or contradict him or give him advice he doesn’t like.

    We know false accusations of sexual assault are no higher than false accusations of other crimes (2 to 8 percent). The percentage of unreported sex crimes is estimated to be over 60 percent and perhaps as high as 77 percent. Trump is more concerned about the 2 to 8 percent than the reported or unreported cases of rape. Eighty-four percent of sex crime victims are women. It’s a scary time for men, you see.

    That’s because women are comparable to mosquitoes while men are comparable to Nobel Prize-winning Olympic medalist billionaire king-emperors. It’s a difference in value, you see. Mosquitoes are abundant plus they’re a pest while Nobel Prize-winning Olympic medalist billionaire king-emperors are rare and precious. If a billion mosquitoes die we’re better off, if one Nobel Prize-winning Olympic medalist billionaire king-emperor is accused of rape the world might end.

    Playing victim is a transparent attempt in many instances to avoid responsibility for one’s actions. It often aims to deprive actual victims of sympathy and help. (And by mocking Ford, he victimized her once more while sending a warning to other women that they too will be ridiculed if they come forward.) Playing victim can give one license to engage in discriminatory behavior toward others (e.g., not serving LGBTQ customers, insulting women) and to be cruel as Trump and his hooting, hollering crowd was Tuesday night at Ford’s expense.

    That’s why DARVO is a thing – deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. Trump is darvoing like mad.

  • It should disgust us all the same

    https://twitter.com/B_Ehrenreich/status/1047478640022360066

  • The Bully-in-chief

    CNN on Trump’s sneers at Ford last night:

    President Donald Trump for the first time directly mocked Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by casting doubt on her testimony during a campaign rally.

    Before the crowd Tuesday night in Southaven, Mississippi, Trump imitated Ford during her testimony, mocking her for not knowing the answers to questions such as how she had gotten to the high school party where she says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.

    “I had one beer. Well, do you think it was — nope, it was one beer,” Trump said, mimicking Ford’s testimony last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    “How did you get home? I don’t remember. How’d you get there? I don’t remember. Where is the place? I don’t remember. How many years ago was it? I don’t know.”

    Trump’s comments were met with laughter and applause from the crowd.

    “I don’t know. I don’t know,” the President continued. “What neighborhood was it in? I don’t know. Where’s the house? I don’t know. Upstairs, downstairs — where was it? I don’t know — but I had one beer. That’s the only thing I remember.”

    This is the president talking. The president.

    Trump had previously been conciliatory toward Ford, calling her a “good witness” earlier on Tuesday and on Monday saying he respected her position very much.

    “With all of that you cannot say that we’ve done anything but be respectful, and I do. I respect her position very much. I respect her position very much,” Trump said to reporters on Monday.

    And made a liar of himself the next day.

    The President said Tuesday night that Kavanaugh’s “life is in tatters. A man’s life is shattered. His wife is shattered, his daughters. … “

    That ” … ” replaces the bit where he slavers over the beauty of Kavanaugh’s daughters.

    He called Democrats who are against Kavanaugh “evil people” who want to “destroy people.”
    He reiterated his earlier claims Tuesday that nowadays you are “guilty until proven innocent,” and stepped up his line of argument that men are under attack in America, without mentioning survivors of sexual assault.

    “Think of your son. Think of your husband,” Trump told the rally, noting he has had “many false allegations” against him.

    Very true, except for the “false” part.

    Flake and Collins were not impressed. Trump is making it so unpleasant for them to stay loyal and vote for Kavanaugh.

    “There’s no time and no place for remarks like that. To discuss something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right. It’s just not right. I wish he hadn’t had done it,” Flake told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on “Today,” adding, “It’s kind of appalling.”

    Collins, a Republican from Maine, similarly condemned Trump’s comments, telling CNN’s Manu Raju they “were just plain wrong.” She would not say if the remarks would affect her vote.

    And, I’m guessing, it won’t.

  • Another way wealth and privilege work

  • Look out, me first

    Piggy goes visiting.

    https://twitter.com/mcgregormt/status/1017823574407700481

    Never even mind that she’s a monarch. She’s his host, she’s his senior, she’s a great deal smaller than he is.

    Piggy should stay at home until he can learn to behave.

  • But everyone tried to be rational and calm

    Further reporting on how vulgar, racist, crude, disgusting, and obnoxious Trump was at the G7 last week.

    Trump told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe he’d be “out of office” if he had to deal with “25 million Mexicans,” and told French President Emmanuel Macron that “all the terrorists are in Paris,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

    Claiming that migration is a huge issue in Europe, he reportedly told Abe: “Shinzo, you don’t have this problem, but I can send you 25 million Mexicans and you’ll be out of office very soon,” a senior European Union official in the meeting in Quebec, told the Journal.

    But Trump, who has followed up on his campaign promise to restrict immigration into the U.S., didn’t stop there.

    During talks about terrorism and Iran, the U.S. president told Macron: “You must know about this, Emmanuel, because all the terrorists are in Paris,” the EU official said.

    Irritation with Trump was in the air, “but everyone tried to be rational and calm,” added the official.

    It sounds like everybody’s worst nightmare Christmas family get-together dinner when drunken mean angry racist shithead Uncle Don throws down half a bottle of gin and starts picking a fight with everyone at the table.

    Trump seemed wary of coming off as isolated, people in the room told the newspaper, and apparently said, “Oh, well, then it’s five versus two,” when Abe expressed opposition in wording for a joint statement on addressing plastic waste.

    Aw, diddums, did diddums feel left out? Well then maybe diddums shouldn’t be such a foul hate-filled belligerent fascist pig. Just a thought.

  • Boom! Come over here.

    Oh lord.

    The BBC explains:

    US President Donald Trump has outraged French opinion by suggesting the 2015 attacks on Paris could have been stopped by giving people guns.

    He mimicked gunmen summoning and shooting victims one by one, saying “Boom! Come over here!” and using his hand to imitate a gun being fired.

    Oh christing fuck.

    It’s not even the first time – he said it then.

    In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, Donald Trump and other American conservatives repeated a familiar and predictable response to mass shootings in other countries: France has a gun problem. If Parisians could legally carry weapons, they could have fought back against the assailants.

    That argument doesn’t have much support in France — a country that has around 1,800 firearms deaths every year, as opposed to the more than 33,000 in the United States.

    The US has more people, of course – 326 million compared to France’s 67 million. Call it five times as many, then multiply 1,800 by 5: 9000. 33,000 is quite a lot more than 9000.

    Back to the BBC:

    The French foreign ministry called for the victims’ memory to be respected.

    “France expresses its firm disapproval of the comments by President Trump about the attacks of 13 November 2015 in Paris and asks for the memory of the victims to be respected,” the foreign ministry said.

    François Hollande, who was French president at the time of the attacks, said Mr Trump’s remarks were “shameful”. They “said a lot about what he thinks of France and its values”, he added.

    Manuel Valls, who was France’s prime minister in 2015, tweeted: “Indecent and incompetent. What more can I say?”

    …

    “Paris, France, has the toughest gun laws in the world…” he told the NRA.

    “Nobody has guns in Paris, nobody, and we all remember more than 130 people, plus tremendous numbers of people that were horribly, horribly wounded. Did you notice that nobody ever talks about them?

    “They were brutally killed by a small group of terrorists that had guns. They took their time and gunned them down one by one. Boom! Come over here. Boom! Come over here. Boom!

    “But if one employee or just one patron had a gun, or if just one person in this room had been there with a gun, aimed at the opposite direction, the terrorists would have fled or been shot.”

    They wouldn’t have fled, they were on a suicide mission. One employee or patron wouldn’t have been able to shoot many of them, if any.

    But more to the point it’s just so disgusting – pantomiming it, saying “Boom.”

    The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted that President Trump’s depiction of the 2015 attacks was “scornful and unworthy”.

    The Latin is Paris’s motto: It is tossed by the waves but doesn’t sink.

    Trump’s motto is: “I can’t keep my mouth shut.”

    https://youtu.be/YecDQQbiC_s

  • We hope he has a wonderful career

    Trump is feeling dismayed and ashamed that his administration hired a guy who beats up women.

    Just kidding. He’s feeling the opposite of that. Out loud.

    President Trump on Friday afternoon lavished praise on one of his former top aides, Rob Porter, who resigned earlier this week amid accusations that he physically, verbally and emotionally abused his two ex-wives.

    “We wish him well, he worked very hard,” Trump said to a small group of reporters at the White House, providing his first public comments on the topic. “We found out about it recently, and I was surprised by it, but we certainly wish him well, and it’s a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House, and we hope he has a wonderful career, and he will have a great career ahead of him. But it was very sad when we heard about it, and certainly he’s also very sad now. He also, as you probably know, says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent, so you have to talk to him about that, but we absolutely wish him well, he did a very good job when he was at the White House.”

    He’s very sad now, because he doesn’t have that plum job any more. The women he abused? Oh who cares about them, we’re talking about the feelings of the man here. He’s got a major sad because of that nice job he no longer has. Those bitches took it away from him. By the way they’re liars, I think you have to remember that.

    This is not the first time that the president has continued to embrace men close to him who have been accused of assault. In July 2016, Trump called his longtime friend Roger Ailes — who had just been ousted from Fox News amid accusations that he sexually harassed at least two dozen women — “a very, very good person” and cast suspicion on the accusers. In April 2017, Trump said that Bill O’Reilly — who, it had recently been revealed, paid millions in settlements to five women who accused him of sexual or verbal abuse — “a good person” who should not have settled because “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.” Late last year, Trump continued to support Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore — who was accused of sexual misconduct with teenagers — and noted that Moore “totally denies it.”

    And Trump himself has been accused of abuse by 13 women who have publicly claimed that Trump touched or kissed them without their permission. Trump has denied all of these accusations and cast all of his accusers as liars. In a 2005 “Access Hollywood” interview caught on a hot microphone, Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”

    And that’s the president of the United States.

  • Beautiful women that become a horror

    When you have an ego that blots out the sun, everything is for you and nothing is for anyone else. Other people owe you whatever you demand of them, and you owe no one anything. You are Just That Special.

    Seven months before an alleged tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump told radio host Howard Stern that he would give his pregnant wife, Melania, a couple of days — or maybe a week — to regain her model figure after giving birth.

    “You know, Howard, she’s got the kind of a body and makeup where, about one day after the baby, it’s going to be the same as it was before,” Trump said during an appearance on Stern’s show on Dec. 7, 2005.

    What a lovely way for a man to talk about the woman he’s married to, to another man, on a broadcast radio program. “I tell you, Howard, she’s got such a great rubber body that I’ll be able to poke it only 24 hours after she pushes out a baby. Is that awesome or what?!”

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Speaking generally about his appearances on Stern’s show, Trump told The Washington Post in April 2016: “I never anticipated running for office or being a politician, so I could have fun with Howard on the radio, and everyone would love it. People do love it. I could say whatever I wanted when I was an entrepreneur, a business guy.”

    He could grab them by the pussy. He could do whatever he wanted – and he still can, because you can’t stop him, so ha!

    Trump also said in the 2005 interview that he had seen “beautiful women that for the rest of their lives have become [a] horror” after giving birth.

    “You know, they gain like 250 pounds,” he told Stern. “It’s like a disaster.”

    Seriously. Goddam sex dolls, what do they think they’re doing?

    At the time of the interview, Melania Trump was five months pregnant with her first child, Trump’s fifth. Barron Trump was born March 20, 2006.

    Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told In Touch magazine that she had sex with Trump in July 2006 at a golf tournament in Nevada. The In Touch interview was conducted in 2011 but published for the first time this week.

    Well you know how it is. Melania had snapped back in 24 hours all right, but still…she wasn’t new, and Trump wants his new. And he’s Trump, so he gets to have his new, because he can do anything.

    Trump’s comments to Stern fit a pattern of public remarks and alleged behavior during and after Melania’s pregnancy. The infamous “Access Hollywood” video, in which Trump boasted about groping and kissing women without their consent, was recorded in September 2005, when Melania was about two months along.

    Celebrity journalist Natasha Stoynoff claims that Trump pressed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her in December 2005, around the time of the Stern interview. At the time, Stoynoff was interviewing the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago for a People magazine feature. She wrote about the alleged encounter in October 2016.

    He’s a manly, entrepreneurial kind of guy, who needs to slam women up against walls and grope them to keep his manly entrepreneuriality fresh and flowing.

  • He would apologize, if only he could find the time

    Question of the hour: can Trump apologize? Answer: no. If he tried his head would snap off his neck and roll away.

    The ineffable Piers Morgan asked him to in a cozy little chat they had.

    In an interview with the “Good Morning Britain” television program, Trump was pressed by Piers Morgan, the presenter, about his November retweet of three videos by a far-right fringe party called Britain First. The retweets caused outrage in Britain and brought a rebuke from Prime Minister Theresa May, who described the president’s posts as “wrong.”

    Trump said repeatedly Friday that he knew “nothing” about the group’s politics. He said the tweets showed his concern over the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

    His exact words were pure Trump:

    It was done because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terra. This was a depiction of radical. Islamic. terra.

    It was done because – not I did it because, but it was done because. That’s the weasel right there: he will not use the first person pronoun when he’s talking about a shitty thing he said or did. The first person pronoun is The Holiest Word to him, and he will not sully it with any vocalization of wrongdoing. The Trump “I” cannot do a Bad Thing. The Bad Thing he did always becomes a thing that was done, with no agent present.

    When Morgan outright asked him to apologize, he didn’t. He did another verbal feint – this time the sacred “I” was uttered but the tense changed to the conditional. He would apologize…some far off day when we’re all dead and gone.

    “If you are telling me they’re horrible people, horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologize if you’d like me to do that,” the president told the ITV broadcaster.

    Morgan didn’t have the wit to say “When?” or “Do it now.”

    Reaction in Britain was mixed to Trump’s rare offer to concede a mistake. Many Britons noted that it wasn’t really an apology; others said it was close enough.

    Well the actual apology never did take place, unless it happened off camera and out of anyone’s hearing. Trump just said he would apologize and then proceeded not to. That’s definitely a notpology.

    Trump listened as the interviewer described Britain First, which presents itself as a political party but is widely seen as an extremist group targeting Muslims, as “racist.”

    He denied having any knowledge of the group when he shared three videos from Jayda Fransen, its deputy leader.

    “Of course I didn’t know that. I know nothing about them, and I know nothing about them today other than I read a little bit,” Trump said. “I don’t know who they are. I know nothing about them, so I wouldn’t be doing that.”

    He added, “I am often the least racist person that anybody is going to meet.”

    He always says that (without the “often” qualification), and he’s not. Nope. He’s not the least racist person that anybody is going to meet, not often, not ever. Of course nobody knows what that would even be, but given the ease with which we can find scorching examples of Trump’s explicit racism, we don’t need to understand what “least racist” would be; we know he’s not it.

  • Which country is the real shithole?

    Robin Wright at the New Yorker on Trump’s “tough” words about African countries:

    President Trump’s credibility as a world leader has been, to borrow his vulgarity, shot to shit. With one word—just the latest in a string of slurs about other nations and peoples—he has demolished his ability to be taken seriously on the global stage. “There is no other word one can use but ‘racist,’ ” the spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said at a briefing in Geneva. “You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes,’ whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome.”

    That’s what the US stands for at this moment – hateful racist contempt said aloud by our head of state, rebuked by the UN human rights body. The shame of it is scalding.

    As I’ve found (to an embarrassing degree) over the past two years, many senior officials in foreign capitals and in embassies across Washington believe that he is simply articulating his intolerant and prejudiced world view. The White House signalled as much in its damage-control statement, on Thursday, explaining that the President wants to “make our country stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation.”

    Some “damage control.” What the White House is saying there is that Trump’s “shithole countries” blurt is his way of saying that citizens of said “shithole countries” are – all, to a person – unable to contribute to our society and our economy. The explanation just makes the remark more insulting. “He didn’t mean anything insulting, he just meant we don’t want people from African countries immigrating here because they have nothing to contribute. That’s all.”

    Trump is now preparing to attend the World Economic Forum, a gathering of global leaders in politics and business, held annually in Davos, Switzerland. Many American allies have long been wary of the President’s “America First” framework. After his remarks this week, the danger is that his counterparts will also view his agenda as “White First”—not a viable strategy in a world that places growing value on racial diversity.

    I hope they make his life hell. I do. I hope he feels ostracized and shamed and humiliated. There’s clearly no hope of changing his mind, but maybe we can at least show him what it’s like.

    Africa is home to 1.2 billion people and more than fifty countries. A whole continent can’t simply be stereotyped or dismissed. A cursory glance of Africa’s achievements includes Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, and peace. (That’s one award Donald Trump will surely never win.) Africa is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Nigeria has built a vibrant film industry. South Africa’s peaceful transition from apartheid is a model for nations worldwide. Egypt includes a quarter of the Arab world’s population. Rwanda, once ravaged by genocide, is today a model for gender equality in politics: the East African nation has the world’s highest percentage of female lawmakers—more than sixty per cent. (As of last month, the United States ranked ninety-ninth among a hundred and ninety-three countries, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.)

    We’re a shithole country ourselves, if you notice. Our rankings on items like maternal mortality and inequality are terrible; we don’t have a national health service; we have more people in prison than any other country; we have a grotesque rate of gun deaths. Shithole much?

    Finally, the President’s coarse language will make it harder to make gains in his diplomatic agenda worldwide. Pity American diplomats, especially in non-white countries. The top U.S. envoy in Botswana was summoned to clarify whether the southern African nation is considered a shithole country, the Washington Post reported.

    That was yesterday; today the US ambassador to Panama has quit because Trump.

  • No apology forthcoming

    The African Union is displeased with Donald “shithole” Trump.

    The organisation representing African countries has demanded that US President Donald Trump apologise after he reportedly called nations on the continent “shitholes”.

    The African Union mission in Washington DC expressed its “shock, dismay and outrage” and said the Trump administration misunderstood Africans.

    But, the Beeb continues, he denies it. Of course he does, the Beeb does not reply to itself, but he lies almost as often as he speaks, and he doesn’t hesitate to deny things we’ve all seen and heard. His denial is, epistemically speaking, pretty much worthless.

    On Friday, Mr Trump on Friday tweeted that his language he used at the private meeting with lawmakers to discuss immigration legislation had been “tough”.

    As if Africa were a naughty teenager who borrowed his car and put a dent in the fender. He loves to excuse his outrages with the label “tough,” as if he were the justifiably angry daddy of everyone on the planet.

    [The African Union] said the “remarks dishonour the celebrated American creed and respect for diversity and human dignity”.

    It added: “While expressing our shock, dismay and outrage, the African Union strongly believes that there is a huge misunderstanding of the African continent and its people by the current Administration.

    “There is a serious need for dialogue between the US Administration and the African countries.”

    It wouldn’t make any difference though. Part of his cognitive disability is the fact that he can’t learn. He’s stuck in a groove of repeating what he thinks he knows, and new knowledge can’t get a purchase.