Tag: Trump

  • And me

    Cringe

    This morning Trump tries, sort of, to pay attention to the misery of the Bahamas, but he makes it about him all the same.

    Thank you to Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis for your very gracious and kind words in saying that without the help of the United States and me, their would have been many more casualties. I give all credit to FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, & the brave people of the Bahamas.

    Oh lord. That fatal “and me.” What’s that even doing there?

    Why does he make it about kind words at all? Why does he lead with thanking the PM for kind words instead of with the tragedy of what happened to the Bahamas? Why doesn’t he make it about our sympathy for them instead of their flattery of him? How can he be so stupid-egomaniacal that he can’t even focus on an island literally flattened by a hurricane instead of on compliments to Majestic Him?

    I wish I could walk slowly and deliberately into the Oval Office and empty a bucket of puke over his head.

  • What’s in HIS wallet?

    Interesting. It seems Trump has been using the military to improve revenues at his golf resort in Scotland. What a coincidence: just the other day he used Pence’s drop-in on Dublin to improve revenues at his golf course on the far side of the country. Fun fact: he’s not allowed to do that. It’s corrupt, and he’s not allowed to do corrupt things. Sadly, though, we don’t enforce our own rules, so oh well.

    In early Spring of this year, an Air National Guard crew made a routine trip from the U.S. to Kuwait to deliver supplies.

    What wasn’t routine was where the crew stopped along the way: President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, about 50 miles outside Glasgow, Scotland.

    Since April, the House Oversight Committee has been investigating why the crew on the C-17 military transport plane made the unusual stay — both en route to the Middle East and on the way back — at the luxury waterside resort, according to several people familiar with the incident. But they have yet to receive any answers from the Pentagon.

    Any guesses as to why? Could it at all be because the Pentagon is part of the executive branch and the executive branch is currently enslaved by Trump?

    The inquiry is part of a broader, previously unreported probe into U.S. military expenditures at and around the Trump property in Scotland. According to a letter the panel sent to the Pentagon in June, the military has spent $11 million on fuel at the Prestwick Airport — the closest airport to Trump Turnberry — since October 2017, fuel that would be cheaper if purchased at a U.S. military base. The letter also cites a Guardian report that the airport provided cut-rate rooms and free rounds of golf at Turnberry for U.S. military members.

    Taken together, the incidents raise the possibility that the military has helped keep Trump’s Turnberry resort afloat — the property lost $4.5 million in 2017, but revenue went up $3 million in 2018.

    The “possibility” – they’re so polite.

    On previous trips to the Middle East, the C-17 had landed at U.S. air bases such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany or Naval Station Rota in Spain to refuel, according to one person familiar with the trips. Occasionally the plane stopped in the Azores and once in Sigonella, Italy, both of which have U.S. military sites, the person added.

    More in the general direction of travel, you see. Glasgow is in another direction altogether.

    But on this particular trip, the plane landed in Glasgow — a pitstop the five-man crew had never experienced in their dozens of trips to the Middle East. The location lacked a U.S. base and was dozens of miles away from the crew’s overnight lodging at the Turnberry resort.

    The crew’s overnight lodging at the Turnberry resort. What a breathtaking sentence that is. The crew flew in the wrong direction so that Donald Trump could charge his own government for housing the crew overnight.

    One crew member was so struck by the choice of hotel — markedly different [from] the Marriotts and Hiltons the 176th maintenance squadron is used to — that he texted someone close to him and told him about the stay, sending a photo and noting that the crew’s per diem allowance wasn’t enough to cover food and drinks at the ritzy resort.

    That’s nice. They put money in Don’s pocket, and they went hungry doing it.

    The revelation that an Air Force mission may have helped line the president’s pockets comes days after Vice President Mike Pence was pressed about his decision to stay at Trump’s property in Doonbeg, Ireland, despite its location hundreds of miles away from his meetings in Dublin.

    Yes, it does, and both cases are absolutely grotesque.

    Several weeks after being alerted to the curious overnight stop, the Oversight Committee wrote a letter to acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan asking for documents related to Defense Department expenditures at Trump Turnberry and the nearby Glasgow Prestwick Airport.

    The letter, signed by signed by House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), notes that U.S. military expenditures at the airport “appear to have increased substantially since the election.”

    Prestwick Airport has long been debt-ridden. The Scottish government bought it in 2013 for £1, but it has continued to lose money in the years since. In June, the government announced its intent to sell the airport, which the panel’s letter described as “integral” to the success of the Turnberry property, 30 miles away.

    Because of that, the lawmakers argued that the spending at the airport — in addition to the spending at the Trump property — raises concerns about conflicts of interest and possible violations of the domestic emoluments clause of the Constitution…

    Oh good grief. It’s a failing airport, and Trump made the mistake of buying a golf resort that depends on a failing airport…so he’s using his government job to try to keep the airport from folding as well as to stick money directly in his pocket. The sleaze doubles with each new fact.

  • Days of erratic behavior, wild outbursts, and bizarre fixations

    Oh great.

    Business Insider reports:

    President Donald Trump’s aides and confidants are growing more and more concerned about his mental state after days of erratic behavior, wild outbursts, and bizarre fixations.

    “No one knows what to expect from him anymore,” one former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations about the president, told Insider. “His mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet, and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window because he’s losing his shit.”

    The president’s advisers are particularly worried about his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that a tweet he sent over the weekend claiming that Alabama was going to be hit by Hurricane Dorian was false. They believe that his frustration is compounded by stress about the 2020 election and the economy’s recent downturn.

    It’s more than a refusal to acknowledge, it’s an insistence that he was right. He could have just shut up about it but noooooooo.

    “People are used to the president saying things that aren’t true, but this Alabama stuff is another story,” the former official said. “This was the president sending out patently false information about a national-emergency situation as it was unfolding.”

    Putting people in danger, in short, and then attacking anyone who said so.

    Later Friday, the president posted a misleading video that included a CNN clip from Wednesday, August 28, in which a reporter discussed how the hurricane was threatening several US states, including Alabama. The video then played the reporter saying “Alabama” on loop, cut to a clip of Trump nodding, and then to a doctored clip of CNN’s logo superimposed onto a moving truck which careened off the road and caught fire.

    Oh gawd. I missed that.

    “He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who’s in frequent contact with the White House told Insider on Friday.

    Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “you should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment.”

    Ego. Ego ego ego. An ego that blots out the sun.

    Trump often airs his grievances publicly, either on Twitter or while speaking with reporters, which means the world has an unprecedented window into the president’s stream of consciousness.

    For instance, on Labor Day weekend, as Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas and made its way to the US’s mainland, Trump took breaks in between golfing to post more than 120 tweets.

    In addition to updates on Hurricane Dorian and quote tweets of fawning praise of his presidency from Fox News, the subjects of Trump’s tweets included:

    • Former FBI Director James Comey.
    • Four freshman Democratic congresswomen of color known as “the squad.”
    • AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
    • “Failing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.”
    • “Amazon Washington Post.”
    • The “LameStream Media.”
    • The liberal actress and activist Debra Messing.

    …

    This isn’t the first time questions have been raised about Trump’s mental state and his fitness for office. In fact, Trump’s mental stability is a regular topic of discussion in the White House.

    This was confirmed by the anonymous author of a famous 2018 New York Times op-ed who said Trump’s aides routinely ignore or dismiss his orders for the good of the country. Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” and Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House” detailed similar instances.

    Well of course. His stew of egotism and stupidity and recklessness have been on display all along.

    One person who was close to Trump’s legal team during the Russia investigation told Insider his public statements were “nothing compared to what he’s like behind closed doors.”

    “He’s like a bull seeing red,” this person added. “There’s just no getting through to him, and you can kiss your plans for the day goodbye because you’re basically stuck looking after a 4-year-old now.”

    Whereas back in 2017 they were stuck looking after a 5-year-old.

  • It’s not just Sharpie-gate

    NOAA’s weird, unattributed statement is not being well received.

    The Post’s Greg Sargent:

    It’s not just Sharpie-gate. This is part of a broader pattern. I count at least seven glaring examples in which government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trump’s lies, errors and obsessions into truths.

    He wrote it up at the Post:

    Again and again, government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trump’s lies, errors and obsessions into truths, in some cases issuing “official” information explicitly shaped or doctored to do so.

    He counts at least seven times this has happened. It started on day one, with the Crowd Size issue. He made Sean Spicer tell brazen lies, and he told his Park Service chief to find pictures that would back him up.

    There were the many lies about voter fraud.

    When Trump declared before the midterm elections that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with migrant caravans, multiple officials tried to bolster this claim by offering an official-seeming statistic about terrorism arrests that was entirely spurious and proved nothing of the kind.

    When Trump vowed a surprise 10 percent middle class tax cut before the midterms, officials were caught off guard, but nonetheless sprang into action to try to create the impression this was a real promise by, for instance, discussing a nonbinding pledge. The tax cut never happened.

    To justify suspending the credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta after he annoyed Trump, then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders shared a video that experts determined had been deceptively edited to make Acosta look physically abusive toward a press aide.

    That’s like the faked weather chart – actually forging “evidence” to make his lies look true.

    He told lies about violence against migrant women to whip up support for The Wall and an official tried to find evidence that would make them true.

    To buttress Trump’s distortions of the migrant threat, the Department of Homeland Security produced a slick official presentation about the border that claimed nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists had been blocked from entering the United States. But this number had nothing whatsoever to do with efforts to cross the border, a distinction multiple officials also dishonestly fudged.

    Some time ago, Dana Milbank noted that in multiple cases such as these, government officials are using “federal resources in vain attempts to turn the president’s lies into truth.”

    Government officials are not supposed to use federal resources for that purpose.

    One interesting question is why Trump doesn’t just concede he made a mistake — or, to get even more outlandish about this, try to learn from it.

    After all, It’s not like this is one of the big, foundational lies Trump regularly tells to support the entire narrative of his presidency, such as the claims that he was totally exonerated by the special counsel probe, or that China is paying his tariffs, or that he inherited a horrible economy and converted it into the greatest economy in the history of this country.

    By contrast, this was in all probability a mistake. Yet Trump has now kept this story going again, raging on Twitter that “certain models” did say Alabama might be hit.

    Why? Because that’s how much of a jerk he is. A normal person realizes everyone makes mistakes and that it’s far better to admit them than to stick yourself with having to defend them forever. Trump is not a normal person: his ego is so precious to him that nothing is too contemptible or criminal when he wants to shield it. His vanity is more important to him than all the people alive today – he would see us all shoveled into a cosmic furnace rather than admit to a lie. Nothing on earth matters to him more than his own loathsome self.

    Can you imagine a life lived that way? Everything there is in the world – oceans, birds, music, flowers, poetry, generosity, sunsets – as dust and ashes compared to him?

    He’s the ultimate “sucks to be that guy.”

  • Blink twice for “they have a gun at my back”

    NOAA has put out a statement covering Trump’s ass for him, dated today.

    From Wednesday, August 28, through Monday, September 2, the information provided by NOAA and the National Hurricane Center to President Trump and the wider public demonstrated that tropical-storm-force winds from Hurricane Dorian could impact Alabama. This is clearly demonstrated in Hurricane Advisories #15 through #41, which can be viewed at the following link.

    The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.

    The call is coming from inside the house.

  • Trump to refugees: go home

    Trump wants the US to admit no refugees.

    In meetings over the past several weeks, one top administration official has proposed zeroing out the program altogether, while leaving the president with the ability to admit refugees in an emergency. Another option that top officials are weighing would cut refugee admissions by half or more, to 10,000 to 15,000 people, but reserve most of those spots for refugees from a few handpicked countries or groups with special status, such as Iraqis and Afghans who work alongside American troops, diplomats and intelligence operatives abroad.

    Both options would all but end the United States’ status as one of the leading places accepting refugees from around the world.

    The issue is expected to come to a head on Tuesday, when the White House plans to convene a high-level meeting in the Situation Room to discuss at what number Mr. Trump should set the annual, presidentially determined ceiling on refugee admissions for the coming year.

    The Guardian comments:

    Politico reported back in July that Trump was weighing an effective shutdown of the refugee program, at the urging of an official aligned with senior White House adviser Stephen Miller.

    Miller has been the most ardent anti-immigration official in the president’s closest circle of advisers, and his influence is reportedly only rivaled by Jared Kushner’s.

    In his two and a half years in the administration, Miller has championed a number of proposals aimed at limiting both legal and illegal immigration.

    For example, he was a major proponent of the administration’s proposal, announced last month, to penalize green-card applicants who use public benefits.

    Xenophobia rules ok.

  • But sir the real hurricane is over here and we need to warn people

    The National Weather Service wishes Trump would stop distracting people from paying attention to accurate information about the actual hurricane.

    The nation’s meteorologists saw the extended presidential eruption as an unhelpful diversion from a serious threat. The National Hurricane Center’s latest estimate on Thursday afternoon showed Dorian approaching the coast of South Carolina and then hovering over or near the North Carolina coast Thursday night or Friday.

    “There is a potentially life-threatening hurricane headed for the Carolinas, and any distraction from making people aware of the potential consequences is not doing anyone a favor,” said Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization. “This is a distraction from what the official government message should be right now.”

    Sobien said the union representing the National Weather Service has fielded numerous calls over the past 24 hours from managers from the weather service, private-sector businesses and union members asking how the National Weather Service can stop the president from continuing to repeat confusing information — or worse, undermining the fact-based reports from the Miami-based hurricane forecasters. They issue regularly scheduled hurricane reports at least four times a day.

    “What is most important is that people listen to and trust the National Weather Service,” Sobien said. “I would hate it if someone from the coast of North Carolina might have gotten a mixed message.”

    Especially if it’s because of the throbbing vanity of the world’s worst person.

  • Argue with the avocado

    Trump is still relitigating the Alabama thing.

    Two hours ago:

    Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it!

    Image

    Also two hours ago:

    I was with you all the way Alabama. The Fake News Media was not!

    Image

    Trump was warming up his arm for when they needed him to throw paper towels. UNLIKE THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA.

  • Alabama was going to

    Trump has realized his mistake, admitted error, and promised to stop doing stupid shit like that.

    I kid, I kid.

    Alabama was going to be hit or grazed, and then Hurricane Dorian took a different path (up along the East Coast). The Fake News knows this very well. That’s why they’re the Fake News!

    That’s this morning. Before that he was dealing with the serious issues like an actual president.

    Bad “actress” Debra The Mess Messing is in hot water. She wants to create a “Blacklist” of Trump supporters, & is being accused of McCarthyism. Is also being accused of being a Racist because of the terrible things she said about blacks and mental illness. If Roseanne Barr……..said what she did, even being on a much higher rated show, she would have been thrown off television. Will Fake News NBC allow a McCarthy style Racist to continue? ABC fired Roseanne. Watch the double standard!

    Did you see what he did there? The verbal genius of it? The Shakespeare-level wit and subtlety? “The Mess Messing” – daaaaaaaamn that’s good.

    Meanwhile there’s a hurricane and stuff but whatever, that’s for the bureaucrats and the Deep State to pay attention to.

  • Sharpie times

    MSNBC says there are memes:

  • To help prove his point

    When in doubt, forge something.

    Trump tried to demonstrate that he was right about the hurricane’s heading for Alabama by showing us a weather map on which he had drawn a line into Alabama. “It’s right there! The line! I put it there myself, so you can see I was right!” He actually did that.

    After facing ridicule for suggesting over the weekend that Hurricane Dorian might strike Alabama, Donald Trump showed reporters a map on Wednesday that he personally altered to help prove his point.

    “Look! Look, you fools, I altered it myself! That proves it!”

    During a briefing on the storm’s threat to the U.S. East Coast, the president held up an Aug. 29 map from the National Weather Service showing initial projections of Dorian’s track into Florida. But the map had been changed — by the president — with a black line that extended the storm’s path beyond Florida and into southern Alabama, according to people familiar with the matter.

    It’s a line. Once the line is there, the line is the truth.

    Trump speaks to the media about Hurricane Dorian in the White House in Washington on Sept. 4.

    Tom Brenner/Bloomberg

    It’s…it’s a very good line, sir. Not too wobbly at all. Why, it reaches almost to Mississippi, which just goes to show. Sir.

    Trump said later on Wednesday that he didn’t know the six-day-old map he showed reporters in the Oval Office had been altered. He said Alabama was going to be hit by the storm in the “original forecast.”

    Except he did the altering in front of people. That’s how Bloomberg and everyone else knows he did it with his own tiny hand.

    Trump has his very own special Sharpie, so that he can draw thick black lines on anything he wants to with his own royal presidential FatPen.

    “I called up the folks at Sharpie and I said, ‘Do me a favor, can you make the pen in black? Can you make it look rich?’” – Donald Trump, 2018

    Big boy special throbbing Sharrrrpeeeeee.

  • Happy annivs Poland!

    Trump congratulated Poland for having been made a slaughterhouse by the Nazis.

    Trump was asked Sunday about the trip to Poland he canceled to monitor Hurricane Dorian. Asked if he had a message for that country, which was commemorating the anniversary of the start of World War II, Trump decided to … congratulate it?

    Q: Mr. President, do you have a message for Poland on the 80th anniversary of the Second World War?

    TRUMP: I do have a great message for Poland. And we have Mike Pence, our Vice President, is just about landing right now. And he is representing me. I look forward to being there soon.

    But I just want to congratulate Poland. It’s a great country with great people. We also have many Polish people in our country; it could be 8 million. We love our Polish friends. And I will be there soon.

    For those not versed in World War II history, Sunday was the anniversary of the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland, which led France and Britain to declare war two days later (i.e. 80 years ago Tuesday). Poland would wind up losing nearly one-fifth of its population in the war, according to estimates.

    Well, ok, sure, but now it gets to have Trump visit it, sometime, maybe, if he doesn’t have emergency golf to play. So congratulations are totally due!

    Plus it has a choice between far right and even more far right, so obviously Trump is gonna high five that.

    PiS has governed Poland since 2015, when, after eight years in opposition, it became the first party to win an absolute majority in a Polish election since the fall of communism in 1989. Over its four years in power, the party has moved the country in an increasingly illiberal direction, championing a socially conservative vision of Poland, accompanied by anti-immigrant and homophobic rhetoric and efforts to control the judiciary. The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, has criticized reforms pushed by PiS to strengthen its influence over the two highest courts in the country, calling them threats to the rule of law in Poland and by extension to the EU’s core principles.

    Image result for congrats

  • The ambassador’s residence was being painted

    Corrupt at every opportunity, that’s Trump’s motto. He’s so corrupt he has Mike Pence staying at his Irish golf hotel on the far side of Ireland from where Pence needs to be to do the job he’s supposed to be doing. All to put more $$$$$ in Donnie Two-Scoops’s pocket.

    Image

    Pence spent both Monday and Tuesday nights at Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, in a small town on Ireland’s southwest coast, returning to the village after meetings with Ireland’s top elected officials.

    Southwest coast. Dublin is on the east coast. Yes Ireland is a small country but it’s not so small that that’s a sensible way to do things.

    Pence defended that decision — which required him to fly to Dublin and back on Air Force Two — by saying that he wanted to visit Doonbeg so that he could have dinner with his family at Morrissey’s, a pub here owned by a distant cousin.

    At our expense. No, that’s not how that’s supposed to work, even if it were true, which it isn’t.

    For Pence, the choice to stay in Doonbeg meant about four hours in transit. On Tuesday, he spent one hour in a motorcade from the golf resort to Shannon Airport, then another hour or so on the 140-mile flight to Dublin, then took another motorcade to his meetings. Then he did it all over again, in reverse, that evening.

    When he could have stayed at a hotel in Dublin, as a normal person would have.

    For Trump, however, that itinerary meant more revenue, as U.S. taxpayers paid for rooms for Pence and his traveling party.

    Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said that Trump himself had suggested that Pence stay at the Trump hotel, after hearing about Pence’s trip.

    “It’s like when we went through the trip, it’s like, ‘Well, he’s going to Doonbeg because that’s where the Pence family is from,’ ” Short said Tuesday. “It’s like, ‘Well, you should stay at my place.’ ”

    “It wasn’t like a, ‘You must.’ It wasn’t like, ‘You have to,’ ” Short said. He added that the government had negotiated room rates with Trump’s hotel.

    It’s still grotesquely corrupt and not how they are supposed to do things. It’s indefensible! “It’s like, ‘Well, you should stay at my place’ ” and spend lots and lots of money at my shitty golf resort hours away from where you’ll be conducting government business. Or, actually, not.

    Trump himself visited the Doonbeg golf course earlier this year, during a trip to Europe to commemorate the anniversary of the D-Day landings. Trump skipped Dublin altogether and instead met with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at an airport close to Doonbeg.

    That means twice in one year, American leaders have now visited a quiet village in County Clare and stayed at a once-obscure golf resort that Irish business filings show has not turned a profit in years.

    Because Trump is that greedy and that indifferent to the rules.

    Representative Ted Lieu:

    Hey @VP @mike_pence: You took an oath to the Constitution, not to
    @realDonaldTrump. Funneling taxpayer money to @POTUS by staying at this Trump resort is sooooooo corrupt.

    Also, I hope you don’t encounter bedbugs. Many people say there are lots of bedbugs at Trump properties.

    This isn’t even one of those tacit norms, it’s written down.

    The Constitution bars presidents from taking “any other Emolument from the United States” beyond the presidential salary. Trump’s critics have charged that he is violating that provision when his hotels take payments from the federal government.

    …

    The last vice president to visit Dublin was Joe Biden, in 2016: He stayed at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, according to news coverage.

    Considerably cheaper, and didn’t enrich his boss.

  • Sir, Category 5, sir

    Trump goes to FEMA for a briefing on the hurricane that is now hammering the Bahamas, and at that briefing he marvels at the idea of a Category 5 hurricane, says he’s never heard of a Cat 5, says he has heard of a Cat 5 but only as a concept, not as an event.

    None of that is accurate. None of it. It’s the babbling of someone whose brain is emptying out at an accelerating rate.

    Daniel Dale provides the citations:

    President Donald Trump on the existence of Category 5 hurricanes, 2017-2019.

    Image

    Fall of 2017, Category 5 a new thing on earth. This past May, Category 5 whaaaaaat who ever heard of that, big stuff. Today Category 5 whaaaaaat I knew it existed but I never knew it existed other than I knew it existed.

    Well never mind, he can remember exactly how he felt when a tv star called him “Sir” this one time.

  • Trump notices that times have changed

    Trump and priorities is a hot topic today, because on the one hand a mass shooting in Odessa, Texas plus a hurricane getting stronger as it approaches, and on the other hand a woman who said something critical about him. The underlying thought is that a normal person in Trump’s job would focus on the first hand rather than the second.

    Kyle Griffin:

    It seems noteworthy that the president was tweeting about Debra Messing and The Apprentice this morning, hours after a mass shooting in West Texas and while a hurricane that’s threatening parts of the south was continuing to strengthen.

    Donald Trump:

    I have not forgotten that when it was announced that I was going to do The Apprentice, and when it then became a big hit, helping NBC’s failed lineup greatly, @DebraMessing came up to me at an Upfront & profusely thanked me, even calling me “Sir.” How times have changed!

    Well no shit times have changed, “sir.” Then you were just a loudmouth on tv; now you’re the president of the US.

    There’s an interesting thing about this change in the times that Trump doesn’t seem to have noticed: the expectations are different. Very different, and in more than one area. Not much is expected of blowhards on tv except that they blow hard in a way that many millions of people want to watch. I’m not a fan of blowhards, myself, even if I share their politics, and I don’t really get the taste, but lots of people love them. But being president is a different kind of job and position, and it requires a different set of skills. Trump has none of the skills required for that job; not one. He can’t even look the part for the cameras, let alone actually perform it.

    So, yeah, no shit people who tolerated him when he was just a corrupt racist vulgar tv shouter are not willing to tolerate him now that he’s in a position to destroy everything. What an idiotic Gotcha it is to rage that someone who flattered him when he was a mere joke is critical of him now that he’s Godzilla.

    Plus the whole priorities issue. Mass shootings, growing hurricanes, and all Donny Two-Scoops cares about is his own precious bloated self.

    What a spectacle.

  • It might be legal, but it is grossly irresponsible

    CNN says much the same thing.

    Eric Brewer, a former NSC official who focused on Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues in both the Trump and Obama administrations, suggested that he is among those who believe the imagery was a product of the intelligence community.

    “In a normal world, we would assume the IC approved the public release of this image,” Brewer tweeted. “Yes, the President has the magic wand of declassification authority, but that is rarely (ever?) exercised without consultations with the IC to understand the risks and benefits of doing so. To do otherwise might be legal, but it is grossly irresponsible.”

    What I say. Legal authority, maybe, but absolute right, hell no.

    It’s a really terrible thing to say to us. It amounts to saying he doesn’t give a shit if it’s reckless or not, if it harms us or not – all he cares about is his personal power. He can’t get his head out of his own fucking vanity for one second, ever, no matter what.

  • Sir, please drop dead now, sir

    Trump, adult and responsible as always, says HE CAN IF HE WANTS TO.

    Maybe, but that’s not the issue, so let’s try to pay attention.

    Kaitlan Collins of CNN:

    Asked if the image of the accident at the Iranian space facility was classified, Trump only says, “I just wish Iran well. They had a big problem & we had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do.” From where? “You’ll have to figure that one out yourself.”

    He keeps saying that, and it’s not true.

    He may have the legal authority to do this particular thing, I don’t know, but “the absolute right” is a much bigger claim, and he doesn’t have that. He wants to think he does, but that’s because he has a tiny cheap empty mind, and he understands nothing that matters. Anyone with a proper understanding of life and human relations wouldn’t dream of making a hideous claim like that. It could be the case that he broke no explicit rule in doing it, but it could still be a reckless dangerous thing to do. He has no right, let alone an absolute one, to do reckless dangerous things just because he feels like showing off.

    I hope he dies in the night.

  • Another nosegay for his crush

    Trump is doing his best to plant a big wet one on Putin’s bum.

    President Donald Trump is seriously considering a plan to block $250 million in military assistance to Ukraine, a move that would further ingratiate him with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has directed senior officials to review the aid package.

    To be fair he also wanted to slash foreign aid in general and was stymied in that effort.

    If Trump ultimately decides to block the aid package, a possibility first reported by Politico, it would likely prompt a bipartisan uproar from members of Congress who believe US military support is essential to countering Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine.

    Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, voiced his strong opposition to that idea in a tweet Thursday: “This is unacceptable. It was wrong when Obama failed to stand up to Putin in Ukraine, and it’s wrong now.”

    Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez released a statement accusing the administration of circumventing Congress and “undermining a key policy priority that has broad and deep bipartisan support.”

    Nobody knows what Trump is going to do, which is unsurprising given that he doesn’t know himself.

    A US Department of State official told CNN on Thursday that the policy on Ukraine has not changed, adding the US remains committed to a robust partnership between the two countries.

    The State Department – ha – as if Trump ever paid any attention to them. They might as well be the Parks Department of a small Wyoming town.

    But Trump’s public deference to Putin and Russia has alarmed US allies and lawmakers. The issue has only been amplified by Trump’s recent comments at the G7 summit, in which he seemingly downplayed Russia’s military incursion in Ukraine and suggested that Russia be reinstated into the group of leading global economies.

    He just wants a friend. Everybody should have a friend.

  • Tell Mike to start packing

    Yesterday Trump was raging at Puerto Rico because Hurricane Dorian was headed towards it. Why did he think that was Puerto Rico’s fault? You’d have to ask him. But now the hurricane’s path has shifted, and Don has changed his tune.

    Hurricane Dorian is poised to hit Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club, so the president has canceled his trip to Poland. Bloomberg reported, “President Donald Trump has canceled a trip to Poland this weekend because Hurricane Dorian is poised to strike Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.”

    Trump is sending Pence instead.

    Trump was all set to take off for Poland when he thought that the hurricane was going to hit Puerto Rico, but he suddenly changed his plans when the storm modeling showed his private Mar-a-Lago club potentially taking a direct hit from what is projected to become a Category 4 storm.

    Puerto Rico? Bunch of whiners who brought it on themselves. Mar-a-Lago? CLEAR MY CALENDAR.

    Great to know he’s laser-focused on our needs.

    David Leavitt:

    Trump: Climate change is a hoax.

    Earth 🌍: Here’s a Category 4 hurricane with 130+ mph winds aimed right at Mar-a-Lago, with my compliments.

    View image on Twitter

    It’s almost as if he cares about no one and nothing but himself.

  • Let’s just save that money in case we want another parade

    What was that about Putin owning Trump, again?

    Trump slow-walks Ukraine military aid meant to contain Russia

    The Trump administration is slow-walking $250 million in military assistance to Ukraine, annoying lawmakers and advocates who argue the funding is critical to keeping Russia at bay.

    President Donald Trump asked his national security team to review the funding program, known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, in order to ensure the money is being used in the best interest of the United States, a senior administration official told POLITICO on Wednesday.

    By which of course Trump doesn’t mean the literal best interest of the United States, but rather the best interest of Donald Trump, disguised as the best interest of the United States.