Tag: Trump abroad

  • Trump tells Putin how foolish and stupid the US is

    That went well.

    President Donald Trump on Monday said at a briefing with Russian President Vladimir Putin that while he had “great confidence” in the U.S. intelligence community, Putin was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial” that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

    But Obama was born in Kenya and the Central Park 5 were guilty.

    The president blamed “both countries” for the strained relationship. When a reporter asked the president if he would denounce Russia’s efforts to interfere in the presidential election, Trump raised the issue of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

    “I think it’s a disgrace we can’t get Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 e-mails. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said.

    But Obama was born in Kenya and the Central Park 5 were guilty, and but her emails.

    Putin said that he was willing to work with the U.S. to “analyze together” any specific material related to election meddling.

    “For instance, we can analyze them through the joint working group on cyber security, the establishment of which we discussed during our previous contacts,” he said.

    Yes, let’s team up with Putin to work on cyber security. Brilliant plan.

    The president has said that he would improve the United States’ relationship with Russia. Though, in a post on Twitter on Monday, the president wrote that the relationship “has NEVER been worse.”

    “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt,” the president wrote.

    The Russian ministry of foreign affairs quoted the president’s tweet, and wrote: “We agree.” State news agencies immediately picked up on the president’s comments. A headline in the government-controlled Sputnik News on Monday read: “Trump: Ties With Russia Have Never Been Worse Due to Years of ‘US Foolishness’”

    Great great great. Trump is giving us the Putin-eye-view of US-Russia relations.

  • Donnie and Piers

    Trump talks to Piers Morgan for the Daily Mail after his meeting with Brenda:

    ‘Did you get the feeling she liked you?”

    ‘Well I don’t want to speak for her, but I can tell you I liked her. So usually that helps. But I liked her a lot.’

    ‘What were her opening words?’

    ‘Um, “Welcome”. Just “Welcome”. Just very elegant. And very beautiful. It was really something special.’

    ‘Did you mention your mother?’

    ‘I did, I said: “You know, my mother was your big fan. She was born in Stornaway in The Hebrides. And that’s very serious Scotland as you know, there’s no doubt about that.’”

    Ah, nice of him to explain about serious Scotland.

    Trump revealed the Queen told him the names of all the presidents she had met. ‘Harry Truman was the first president that she got to meet and know, and she went through a whole list. It was a very nice moment, Piers, very nice.’

    An easy way to burn up the time.

    I asked if they’d discussed Brexit.

    ‘I did. She said it’s a very – and she’s right – it’s a very complex problem, I think nobody had any idea how complex that was going to be…Everyone thought it was going to be ‘Oh it’s simple, we join or don’t join, or let’s see what happens..’

    No, nobody thought that. Nobody. Only Trump is stupid enough to think that, and he thinks it about everything. “Who knew health care was so complicated?” Everyone. Absolutely everyone.

    ‘When you got in Marine One afterwards with Melania and you talked about what you just experienced with the Queen, it must have been, even for a tough guy like you, quite an emotional thing?

    ‘It is. To have that meeting I think was really great. We met, but also watching the guard, hearing the sounds, being in that place, that very special place. it was very special there’s no question about that.’

    Top special. Top peak high special.

    They talked about Brexit and trade.

    ‘The sceptic in me would say: ‘What is the incentive for America to do a great deal with the United Kingdom?”

    ‘We would make a great deal with the United Kingdom because they have product that we like. I mean they have a lot of great product. They make phenomenal things, you know, and you have different names – you can say “England”, you can say “UK”, you can say “United Kingdom” so many different – you know you have, you have so many different names – Great Britain. I always say: “Which one do you prefer? Great Britain? You understand what I’m saying?’

    ‘You know Great Britain and the United Kingdom aren’t exactly the same thing?’

    ‘Right, yeah. You know I know, but a lot of people don’t know that. But you have lots of different names. The fact is you make great product, you make great things. Even your farm product is so fantastic.’

    And that’s not a conversation with little Donny in the first grade, that’s a conversation with the president.

    I pressed him on his ‘culture’ comment: ‘People were surprised you said that because America of course was built on immigration. The great culture of America is that it’s full of immigrants. So why do you not think it can work in Europe?’

    ‘I think it depends where they are,’ he replied. ‘Who they are, educational levels, work levels, I think it depends on a lot of things. I just see what’s happening, the crime is through the roof in some places that have never had crime.’

    I think it’s clear what “things” he means.

    There’s more, but I’ll spare you.

  • Turnberry and tweets

    The usual ethics-obliteration:

    “The weather is beautiful, and this place is incredible!” Trump tweeted Saturday morning, promoting his own money-losing property in Turnberry.

    “This place is incredible, so spend your money here!”

    Says the president of the US about his own golf club.

    Today he took a little time to assure us how great he is.

    Because the facts are not actually wonderful, seeing as how they’re entirely consistent with Kim’s having no intention of altering his nuclear plans in any way.

    Who but Trump would think in terms of being “given” a city? Also “retribution” is not “recompense”; Scavino is only slightly more literate than Trump.

    Putin jails and murders journalists, yet here is Trump again calling US journalist “enemies of the people.” The man is poison.

    Not until Trump is gone and forgotten.

  • Void calling to void

    Masha Gessen tells us the Trump-Putin date tomorrow is nothing meeting nothing.

    The deliberately empty gesture is the ultimate innovation of the Trump Presidency. Beginning with his transition-era announcement of saving American jobs at a Carrier plant—an accomplishment of no consequence for the country as a whole and little, if any, consequence for many Carrier employees—Trump has trafficked in hollow symbols. Each gesture is designed to affirm his image as a dealmaker, even though the deals are devoid of substance at best and costly at worst. In this context, the Trump-Putin summit, a meeting without an agenda, appears entirely logical.

    For his part, Putin has spent nearly two decades hollowing out Russian politics, media, and public language. His system rests on rituals devoid of content: elections in which voters have no meaningful choice, court and administrative procedures whose outcomes are preordained, and media that speak with a single, vacant voice. For the last several weeks, these media have been trumpeting the looming summit.

    They’re two different versions of emptiness. Putin is intelligent and competent while Trump is neither, but the emptiness they have in common.

    For Putin, less discussion in Helsinki is more. His power will be manifested in things not discussed: Russian interference in the election, which Trump is clearly loath to bring up, and human-rights issues that an American leader would traditionally broach at such a meeting. A political prisoner, the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a twenty-year sentence in a Russian prison colony on trumped-up terrorism charges, is in the second month of his hunger strike. He is trying to draw attention to the fate of more than sixty other Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia. American and international human-rights activists have been waging a hopeless fight to get the issue on the summit agenda—or on the White House radar at all.

    That’s a tall order, what with golf and tweeting and watching Fox News. Trump has only so many brain cells available.

  • Beware the foe

    It turns out we’re in a cold war with the EU.

    In an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Jeff Glor in Scotland on Saturday, President Trump named the European Union — comprising some of America’s oldest allies — when asked to identify his “biggest foe globally right now.”

    “Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Turnberry, Scotland.

    The first “foe” that pops into his head is the EU.

    CBS did a transcript of the interview, which doubles as a disturbing cross-section of Trump’s brain.

    I don’t expect anything. I frankly don’t expect — I go in with very low expectations. I think that getting along with Russia is a good thing. But it’s possible we won’t. I think we’re greatly hampered by this whole witch hunt that’s going on in the United States. The Russian witch hunt. The — the rigged situation. I watch some of the testimony, even though I’m in Europe, of Strzok. And I thought it was a disgrace to our country. I thought it was an absolute disgrace. Where he wants to do things against me before I was even, I guess before I was even the candidate. It was a disgrace. And then he lied about it. And you know, talking about shutting it down and ‘we, we.’ And he says ‘oh I meant the American people’ all of a sudden you know, he came up with excuses. I guess given to a lawyer, but everybody laughed at it. He was a disgrace to our country. He was a disgrace to the FBI. So when I look at things like that and he led that investigation or whatever you call it. I would say that yeah, I think it hurts our relationship with Russia. I actually think it hurts our relationship with a lot of countries. I think it’s a disgrace what’s going on. And then you look how, you know, partisan it is. You look at what’s going on where — and they know, they know that there’s no way he can get away from those horrible texts that he wrote. So the other side does. But it’s a very partisan thing.

    That’s the brain inside the man who can fire the nukes at any time.

  • It was not just the rudeness

    The Guardian view on Trump’s visit is that it was doomed from the start, because he doesn’t want what Britain wants.

    The president undermined Mrs May before he even left America. He bullied and lied at the Nato summit in Brussels. He then gave an explosive and deliberately destabilising interview to Rupert Murdoch’s Sun on the very day of his arrival in Britain.

    Deliberately. I don’t know. Maybe, but maybe it was just more loosely Trump’s unerring taste for the mean and vulgar.

    But it was not just the rudeness that mattered – though rudeness does matter, a lot, both in personal and in public things. It was the political impact and consequence. That unmistakable consequence is that Mr Trump’s America can no longer be regarded with certainty as a reliable ally for European nations committed to the defence of liberal democracy. That is an epochal change for Britain and for Europe.

    Well Trump’s America never could. If anybody said in January 2017 that America could still be regarded with certainty as a reliable ally for European nations committed to the defence of liberal democracy, anybody wasn’t paying attention. Certainty on that question wasn’t reasonable even then.

    The Guardian says Theresa May was that anybody.

    Everything about this disastrous and embarrassing presidential visit could have been avoided with more thought and more political sense. But Mrs May and her advisers rushed to Washington in January 2017 to offer a state visit to a president who had barely entered the White House, whose measure as an ally they had not yet properly taken, but who already had it in his character and his power to transform the event from a relatively harmless occasion into a deeply wounding one. It was a shameful and stupid misjudgment. The hostile public reaction was immediate and without precedent. Everything that has happened this week confirms that the Trump visit should not have taken place.

    Indeed. We said so at the time. “Why is she all over him like a cheap suit?” we said.

    Mrs May should have grasped from the very start that Mr Trump was not an ally when it came to her Brexit strategy. Mr Trump wants to break up international organisations like Nato and the EU. He embraced Brexit on that basis. He saw it as the start of a swing back towards nativist, illiberal, often racist nationalist politics, of which his own election was a further example. He made no secret of his wish to promote other nativist movements on the right. Other European leaders understood this danger, notably Angela Merkel. Mrs May failed to do so. Mrs May rightly wanted a close post-Brexit relationship with the EU, a stance that led in time to the Chequers showdown with her Brexiteer ministers a week ago. But she failed to see that Mr Trump’s US has a stronger commitment to the weakening of the EU than it does to a Britain that wants the EU to prosper.

    Out of that failure came the Sun interview. In the interview, Mr Trump expressed hatred for the EU, support for hard Brexit, unwillingness to strike a trade deal with the UK, contempt for Mrs May, support for Boris Johnson, hostility to immigration, and offered his barely coded belief that the UK – and Europe – is “losing your culture”. The interview, its content, its timing, and the fact that it was given to Mr Murdoch’s flagship anti-EU tabloid, was a deliberate hostile act. For Mrs May, fighting to control her party on the dominant issue facing Britain, it was simply a stab in the back. But it wasn’t fundamentally personal. It was a declaration of hostility to Britain and Europe and the values they stand for.

    I remain agnostic about how deliberate it was…if only because nothing Trump does is really all that deliberate. He does what he likes to do, and he likes doing things like outraging other heads of governments and doubly so if they’re women, and embracing racism, and trolling liberals.

  • 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.

  • A very sensitive man

    A slice or two from the Sun interview.

    Trump has total power. Nobody on his White House staff tells him what to say, or questions him when he says it.

    When Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced our scheduled ten-minute slot was almost up, the President swiftly interjected: “No, give them a little bit more.”

    We stayed for 28 minutes, with no more prompts to go.

    Secondly, he is a very sensitive man, constantly saying how much various people like him. It clearly pains him today that he is not being welcomed to Britain as a hero and our most important ally.

    Well, “sensitive” is putting it nicely. It could imply sensitivity toward other people too, and we know that’s not right. Outrage at slights to the self coupled with brutality to all others doesn’t really add up to “sensitive” – it’s more narcissism.

    Trump has admitted he “feels unwelcome” in London as a major ­security operation was launched for his arrival in the UK yesterday.

    But the tycoon insists real British people “love the President of the United States”.

    Mr Trump told The Sun he will be largely staying away from the capital to avoid huge street protests of up to 200,000 today.

    But he blamed them on politicians — singling out his nemesis, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

    Revealing he has been told of the 20ft “Trump Baby” blimp that will be flown above Parliament Square today, he said: “I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London.

    “I used to love London as a city. I haven’t been there in a long time. But when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?”

    Says the whiny baby who publicly insults other people constantly.

    Mr Trump added: “You know, a poll just came out that I am the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party — 92 per cent. Beating Lincoln. I beat our Honest Abe.”

    He can’t mention Lincoln without calling him “Honest Abe.” I suppose that’s the only thing he knows about Lincoln.

    He thinks quite highly of Brenda.

    Mr Trump said: “She is a tremendous woman. I really look forward to meeting her. I think she represents her country so well.

    “If you think of it, for so many years she has represented her country, she has really never made a mistake. You don’t see, like, anything embarrassing. She is just an incredible woman.”

    If only we could say “you don’t see, like, anything embarrassing” about him.

  • The insults continued for page after lurid page

    It’s going very well, very well.

    Donald Trump, straight-talking disruptor-in-chief, grants an interview to the Sun, a newspaper in so many ways the US president’s natural forum. The interviewer’s 10-minute slot stretches to 28; the interviewee is clearly enjoying himself, and the resulting headlines – “May has wrecked Brexit”, “US trade deal is off” – appear slap-bang in the middle of the prime minister’s grand opening effort to convince him of the contrary.

    The insults continued for page after lurid page, including dismissive comments about the prime minister’s new plan for Brexit (“I think the deal is not what the people voted on”); about Theresa May’s conduct of the negotiations (“I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn’t listen to me … she wanted to go a different route”); and – dear, oh dear – about the “very talented guy”, Boris Johnson, who “would be “a great prime minister”, whom he was “surprised and saddened” to see leaving government.

    Hey, he was just being honest. Fake news!

    The conundrum facing No 10 now is whether and how to respond. The sunnily cautious comments of the foreign office minister, Alan Duncan, on the BBC this morning, suggested that the official decision was to grin and bear it, rather than engage in anything more dramatic.

    Probably for reasons to do with known outcomes from descent into wet soil to combat Sus domesticus.

  • A Yank abroad

    Yes that’s a good look.

  • Poor Brenda

    Trump thinks he’s popular in the UK.

    Even as the president’s aides choreographed a visit designed to have Mr. Trump spend as little time as possible in London and to keep him out of sight of any protests, he seemed unfazed.

    “I think it’s fine,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in Brussels before setting off for a two-day working visit to England followed by a weekend in Scotland.

    “They like me a lot in the U.K.,” he added. “They agree with me on immigration. I’m going to a pretty hot spot right now, a lot of resignations.”

    Says the guy who’s had more resignations from his administration than any president ever, by a wide margin. Everybody likes him a lot, it’s just that they can’t wait to get away from him.

    Mr. Trump has expressed a fondness for British pomp and circumstance, and an admiration for Queen Elizabeth II. He is scheduled to have tea with the queen at Buckingham Palace on Friday.

    I hope the Corgis bite him.

    At Windsor Castle, west of London, where Mr. Trump and his wife are to meet Queen Elizabeth II, protests are expected. The president and the first lady will then travel to the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, where they will spend the weekend. But it will hardly be peaceful.

    “Donald Trump is not welcome here,” the Scottish Labour and Scottish Green parties said in a statement. “The horrific scenes at the Mexican border are a repudiation of decent human values. Caging children like animals is barbaric. We cannot roll out the red carpet for a U.S. president that treats human beings this way.”

    The “Trump Baby” balloon may follow the president to Scotland. Thousands of people have also signed a petition asking permission to fly the balloon over the Turnberry golf course, where the president is expected to play on Saturday.

    Please say yes. Please please please.

  • Wut thatt

    Image may contain: 12 people, people smiling

  • Portland Place tomorrow

    Southall Black Sisters is out there protesting Donald.

    Here is our banner that we have created especially for Women’s March London #BringTheNoise march, we are meeting at Portland Place from 11 onwards tomorrow, march moves off at 12.30. Join us! We stand in solidarity with all those who will be protesting against Trump’s visit to the UK. In the interlinked and globalised world we live in, Trump as the so-called leader of the so-called free world, isriding a tsunami of racism and misogyny which normalises the resurgence of right wing extremism which we are witnessing across Europe and indeed the world. The intolerable separation of migrant families from their children is not simply going on in the US but also in the UK and other parts of Europe. We want to draw attention to those links and the insidious ways in which US policies resonate internationally. As BME women, we stand up and say: No, not in our name, not on our watch.
    Banner created by Shakila Taranum Maan

    Image may contain: 1 person, text

  • Stable geniosity

    Trump continued his spoiled brat routine all the way to the end.

    Even as he declared that the American commitment to the trans-Atlantic alliance “remains very strong” ahead of his summit meeting next week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he continued to assail close partners and further strain diplomatic relations.

    In the closing hours of the two-day gathering in Brussels with leaders of the other NATO nations, he forced a last minute emergency meeting to address his grievances over spending. Then he called a news conference to claim credit for having pressured NATO members to boost their defense budgets “like they never have before.”

    That claim was quickly dismissed by the leaders of both Italy and France, who disputed that they had made any new pledges for boosting spending, adding to the sense of disarray.

    …

    The White House hastily called the news conference amid reports that Mr. Trump had unleashed a tirade at a closed-door morning meeting against member countries he complained were still not spending enough on their militaries. Mr. Trump used the news conference to hail himself, again, as a “stable genius,” saying he deserved “total credit” for pushing the allies to increase their military spending by more than previously agreed to.

    It’s funny that he picks those two qualities to insist on, when he so conspicuously lacks both of them. He’s the stupidest and most chaotic US president any of us have ever seen.

    Asked whether Mr. Trump had threatened to leave NATO, Mr. Macron said, “Generally, I do not comment on what goes on behind the scenes, but at no moment did President Trump — neither bilaterally nor multilaterally — say that he was intending to leave NATO.”

    Mr. Trump himself said, “It all came together at the end, and yes, it was a little tough for a little while.” He added, “But ultimately, you can ask anybody at that meeting, they’re really liking what happened over the last two days.”

    Well, maybe, but if so we haven’t heard about it yet.

    Mr. Trump said that, after a weekend in Scotland at Turnberry — a golf course and Trump business that he plugged in the news conference as “magical” — he would go “to a pretty hot spot” to meet with Mr. Putin.

    Not supposed to do that. Nope. Not supposed to use official news conferences in his role as president to advertise his golf courses. Nope nope nope.

    Currently he’s in the helicopter between Regent’s Park and Blenheim. I hope he’s airsick.