Tag: Trump

Another event Trump did, this one at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, was a kind of Stakhanovite exercise.

The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear Tuesday: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for President Donald Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay.

“Your attendance is not mandatory,” said the rules that one contractor relayed to employees, summarizing points from a memo that Shell sent to union leaders a day ahead of the visit to the $6 billion construction site. But only those who showed up at 7 a.m., scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours — through lunch but without lunch — would be paid.

Like a normal work day but the work is standing to wait for Trump and then listening to Trump as opposed to actual work. It may be a nice break from work, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem all that appropriate for a president to force himself on people that way. It doesn’t seem right for a president to do “attendance is mandatory if you want to get paid” events. Too much like Waiting For Stalin.

And it’s all the more so given that they were given strict instructions on how to behave.

The contractor’s talking points, preparing his workers for the event read:

“No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event. An underlying theme of the event is to promote good will from the unions. Your building trades leaders and jobs stewards have agreed to this.”

Hmm. They had to go or forfeit a day’s pay, and they had to act as if they liked it. No, I don’t think a president should be doing that.

Trump at his New Hampshire rally Thursday night was either worse than ever or every bit as bad as he’s always been.

His speech was at times a greatest hits album of favorite lines, replaying the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton and bashing the news media, Democrats and America’s allies in Europe. Typically rambling, veering on and off script seemingly at random over an hour and a half, he repeated points he had already made earlier in the evening as if he did not remember already making them.

So pretty typical then.

His talk was also marked by repeated inconsistencies. The same president who last year said trade wars were “easy to win” told his supporters that “I never said China was going to be easy.” The same president who compared America’s intelligence agencies to “Nazi Germany” when he took office complained that Democrats “use the term Nazi” to attack their opponents.

At one point, when a protester disrupted the speech and was escorted out of the arena, Mr. Trump belittled the man’s physical appearance. “That guy has a serious weight problem,” he said. “Go home, start exercising!” Then he shifted back to his prepared text to say that his campaign was about “love.”

Also typical. He berates and abuses people for doing things he does far more often and far more intensely himself. That’s the one way he can be made to serve a purpose of sorts: as a vivid example of what not to be and do and say and think. From here on out “don’t be like trump” can be a useful quick summary of how to be in the world.

Greenland to Donnie Two-Scoops:

No.

Greenland on Friday dismissed the notion that it might be up for sale after reports that U.S. President Donald Trump had privately discussed with his advisers the idea of buying the world’s biggest island.

“We are open for business, but we’re not for sale,” Greenland’s foreign minister Ane Lone Bagger told Reuters.

…

“If he is truly contemplating this, then this is final proof, that he has gone mad,” foreign affairs spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, Soren Espersen, told broadcaster DR.

“The thought of Denmark selling 50,000 citizens to the United States is completely ridiculous,” he said.

This is Trump we’re talking about. He thinks everything is for sale.

“I am sure a majority in Greenland believes it is better to have a relation to Denmark than the United States, in the long term,” Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, Danish MP from Greenland’s second-largest party Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA), told Reuters.

“My immediate thought is ‘No, thank you’,” she said.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod were not available for comment but officials said they would respond later on Friday. The U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen was also not immediately available for comment.

“Oh dear lord. As someone who loves Greenland, has been there nine times to every corner and loves the people, this is a complete and total catastrophe,” former U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Rufus Gifford, said in on Twitter.

Noooo, Trump is paying Greenland a compliment! Greenland is so gorgeous he wants to buy it, the way he bought the Miss Universe cattle market pageant.

Greenland is gaining attention from global super powers including China, Russia and the United States due to its strategic location and its mineral resources.

In May, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russia was behaving aggressively in the Arctic and China’s actions there had to be watched closely as well.

Our behavior on the other hand is always irreproachable, because we have no theory of mind and thus no ability to see ourselves as others see us.

Oh no, are we seeing the death of tough-guy masculinity? It seems that Trump apologized to someone for something.

President Trump called and left a voicemail apologizing to the man he mocked as overweight, a White House official says. He confused him for a protester last night in New Hampshire. “That guy’s got a serious weight problem,” Trump said. “Go home. Start exercising.”

Maybe technically that doesn’t really count as an apology, because it’s not “sorry I did the thing”but “sorry I did the thing to you, I thought you were one of the Evil People who dare to protest my rallies.”

Maybe it counts and maybe it doesn’t, but either way it’s grotesque. I suppose he raised his kids that way – “Don’t punch Bobby, he’s your friend and he’s rich; punch Sally, she’s not your friend and she’s not rich and she’s a girl.”

But wait. False alarm. The White House says he did not either you big liars.

Correction: Trump did not apologize, a White House official tells me. He phoned the supporter, left him a message thanking him for his support, but did not use the words “sorry” or “apologize.”

Tough guy masculinity is alive and well.

Trump went to Pennsylvania to say words yesterday. The White House kept a record of the words.

It’s great to be back in the incredible Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  Great place.  And this is my 13th visit to Pennsylvania during my administration, which is more than any other President to this point in the term.

……….What? That’s something to brag of? Number of visits to a particular state is something presidents are supposed to do a lot of? Why?

Today, we celebrate the revolution in American energy that’s helping make our economy the envy of the world.  This Shell petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania — I did very well here.  We did very well.  How many points did we win by?  Does anybody know?  I’ll tell you.  Isn’t it, I think, 28 points?  That’s a lot.  That’s against a Democrat — (laughter) — or whatever.

Hahahaha that’s a good one, you can see right where he veered off the script. The sentence starts with the petrochemical plant and suddenly lurches into me me me me me me me me what do you think of me?

And when the wind stops blowing, it doesn’t make any difference, does it?  Unlike those big windmills that destroy everybody’s property values, kill all the birds.  Someday, the environmentalists are going to tell us what’s going on with that.  And then, all of a sudden, it stops; the wind and the televisions go off.  And your wives and husbands say, “Darling, I want to watch Donald Trump on television tonight.”  (Laughter.)  “But the wind stopped blowing and I can’t watch.  There’s no electricity in the house, darling.”  No, we love natural gas and we love a lot of other things, too.

Is this the president of the US, or is it a little child who wandered up to the microphone and started chatting?

With your help, we’re not only unleashing American energy, we’re restoring the glory of American manufacturing, and we are reclaiming our noble heritage as a nation of builders again.  (Applause.)  A nation of builders.

I was a good builder.  I built good.  I love building.  In fact, I’m going to take a tour of the site.  They said, “Sir, we were going to do it before the speech, but we’re waiting for it to stop raining.”

Sir. Did you catch that? He wants you to. They call him “Sir.” He can’t get enough of it.

Getting this massive job done right has required more than 1,500 pieces of heavy equipment; one of the largest cranes anywhere in the world — I look forward to seeing it.  I love cranes.  I loves trucks of all types.  Even when I was a little boy at four years old, my mother would say, “You love trucks.”  I do.  I always loved trucks.  I still do.  Nothing changes.  Sometimes, you know, you might become President but nothing changes.  I still love trucks, especially when I look at the largest crane in the world.  That’s very cool.  Do you think I’ll get to operate it?  I don’t know.

And so ends another brief segment of Life With Donnie Two-Scoops. See you soon girls and boys, and don’t forget to brush with Ovaltine.

ABC News has dug up an interesting fact:

President Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to accept any responsibility for inciting violence in American communities, dismissing critics who have pointed to his rhetoric as a potential source of inspiration for some citizens acting on even long-held beliefs of bigotry and hate.

“I think my rhetoric brings people together,” he said last week, four days after a 21-year-old allegedly posted an anti-immigrant screed online and then allegedly opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 and injuring dozens of others.

But a nationwide review conducted by ABC News has identified at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.

Obama and Bush? Zero.

In nine cases, perpetrators hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically attacking innocent victims. In another 10 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.

I guess that’s what people who think he stands for “tough guy masculinity” have in mind – the fact that he incites other people to be violent.

ABC News could not find a single criminal case filed in federal or state court where an act of violence or threat was made in the name of President Barack Obama or President George W. Bush.

The 36 cases identified by ABC News are remarkable in that a link to the president is captured in court documents and police statements, under the penalty of perjury or contempt.

And this change is permanent. Even if he dropped dead right now, this malevolent effect would continue. He’s warped us for a generation.

Another nice touch:

The perpetrators and suspects identified in the 36 cases are mostly white men — as young as teenagers and as old as 75 — while the victims largely represent an array of minority groups — African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and gay men.

So, basically, KKK world.

ABC gives details on all the cases. It makes for sickening reading.

The president has issued a statement on the protests in Hong Kong.

Well no that’s not quite accurate. Donald Trump has said some words on being asked about the protests in Hong Kong. The words were random and meaningless.

Asked by a reporter if the Chinese should show restraint against the demonstrators, Trump said “the Hong Kong thing is a very tough situation. We’ll see what happens. But I’m sure it’ll work out. I hope it works out for everybody, including China, by the way. I hope it works out for everybody.”

It’s almost as if he hasn’t the faintest idea what “Hong Kong” is, let alone what’s happening there and why it’s happening and what any of it means. It’s almost as if he’s just ad-libbing like any student who hasn’t done the homework. Tuff sitch. Wull see wut happinz. M shure it will wurk out.

He also called it “a very tricky situation. I think it’ll work out. And I hope it works out for liberty. I hope it works out for everybody, including China. I hope it works out peacefully. I hope nobody gets hurts. I hope nobody gets killed.”

Deep stuff. Thoughtful. Informed. Useful.

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., tweeted, “These answers show that Trump doesn’t know about the situation in Hong Kong and doesn’t care. He sounds like he got cold-called to talk about homework he didn’t do. America’s commander in chief is asleep at the wheel and the whole world is worse for it.”

The comments — which Trump made en route to a speech in Pennsylvania — came after he tweeted that, “Intelligence has has informed us that the Chinese Government is moving troops to the Border with Hong Kong. Everyone should be calm and safe!”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., responded with one line on Twitter, saying “This is not foreign policy.”

There’s humor, however bitter, in the opening paragraph of the Times’s “back story” on Trump’s trip to El Paso.

By the time President Trump arrived in El Paso on Wednesday, on the second leg of a trip to meet with people affected by mass shootings in two cities, he was frustrated that his attacks on his political adversaries had resulted in more coverage than the cheery reception he received at a hospital in Dayton, Ohio, the first stop on his trip. So he screamed at his aides to begin producing proof that in El Paso people were happy to see him.

I can’t help laughing. It’s awful, but it’s also funny. He was frustrated that his own bad behavior drew more coverage than the cheery reception he got. Whose fault does he think that is, exactly? Is he fuming that the Fake Media Enemy of the People reported his own words and deeds?

Anyway, that explains why those terrible photos were shoved at us.

One of those people was Tito Anchondo, who had lost his brother and sister-in-law, Andre and Jordan Anchondo, when a gunman opened fire on a Walmart last Saturday and killed 22 people. Mr. Anchondo traveled to the University Medical Center of El Paso on Wednesday to meet Mr. Trump, and as the president stood by and flashed a thumbs-up during a White House photo opportunity, the first lady, Melania Trump, cradled Mr. Anchondo’s 2-month-old nephew, whose parents had both been gunned down.

By Friday, the photo had been widely disseminated after it became clear that the infant had lost his parents in a mass shooting, and had been brought back to the hospital after being discharged earlier in the week.

Brought back to be a photo op for Donnie and Mel.

The episode was one result of Mr. Trump’s frustration over his news coverage and of the angry reaction that by the end of the trip had led to a mishmash of White House-distributed photographs, tweets and videos that focused on the president instead of people affected by the shootings.

Neither a normal president (not that we really have many of those) nor a decent human being would have put concern about the publicity ahead of concern about the people shattered by what had just happened to them…but our Donnie has his own special priorities.

Mr. Trump first became aware of the negative headlines watching television aboard Air Force One, and bellowed at the small coterie of advisers traveling with him, including Mick Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff. He was especially upset after he saw footage of a news conference held by Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, and Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, a Democrat, but no positive images of himself while visiting Dayton’s Miami Valley Hospital. Not long afterward, his aides began distributing photos and video of the president at the hospital flanked by selfie-taking doctors and nurses.

Baby must be appeased.

Mr. Trump’s staff had kept reporters away from the president during his visit to avoid overwhelming patients recovering from the shooting, according to three people briefed on what took place. But when Mr. Trump saw the result, he was furious.

Naturally. Who cares about a bunch of fucking patients when Donnie’s in the house? What’s the matter with everyone?

Aides have long said that Mr. Trump is heavily reactive to news coverage, and when he does something that he believes he should have been praised for — such as Wednesday’s visits to the cities — he grows furious when he does not receive accolades. But he has not adjusted his often casual approach to tragedy, including his penchant for flashing a thumbs-up sign in photographs.

He thinks he deserved praise for going to Dayton and El Paso, and he thinks it’s reprehensible that he was denied it. It’s hard to take in that level of childish selfism in a 73 year old head of state.

Joe Lockhart, who served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton when he traveled to visit families of 13 people killed in the 1999 Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colo., said that Mr. Trump’s approach — namely his administration’s effort to showcase support for him — had failed the victims. He called the videos that Mr. Scavino distributed “disgusting.”

“If, in my readout, I said, ‘Oh, people just warmed up to the president, and they just loved him,’” Mr. Lockhart said, “I would have had my office cleaned out that afternoon.”

But now we do things differently.

USA Today did an analysis of Trump’s racist rhetoric a few days ago:

Invasion. Aliens. Killers. Criminals.

Those are among the words President Donald Trump repeatedly uses while discussing immigration during his campaign rallies, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the transcripts from more than five dozen of those events.

Not that we didn’t know that. There are many video clips of him doing so.

A USA TODAY analysis of the 64 rallies Trump has held since 2017 found that, when discussing immigration, the president has said “invasion” at least 19 times. He has used the word “animal” 34 times and the word “killer” nearly three dozen times.

The exclusive USA TODAY analysis showed that together, Trump has used the words “predator,” “invasion,” “alien,” “killer,” “criminal” and “animal” at his rallies while discussing immigration more than 500 times. More than half of those utterances came in the two months prior to the 2018 midterm election, underscoring that Trump views immigration as a central issue for his core supporters.

That’s putting it way too politely. Trump views immigration as an excellent way to whip his supporters into a frenzy of hatred for brown immigrants and loyalty to him.

Those who study political rhetoric question Trump’s insistence that his rhetoric is not aimed at stirring up divisions. The word invasion, some analysts have said, conjures up the image of an incursion by a foreign enemy force.

“Trump does nothing by accident,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who has studied propaganda.

Well he does lots of things by accident, but using racism to whip his fans into a frenzy isn’t one of them.

Trump was tweeting the term “invasion” to describe illegal immigration at least as far back as August 2015, when he appears to have quoted a supporter demanding that he “stop the invasion.” But Trump’s use of the word came under added scrutiny after the gunman in the deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue last fall posted a gripe about “invaders.”

Still, Trump continued to hammer away on Twitter and at his rallies with the word “invasion,” or some variation of it. He used the word at least four times in two separate rallies on Nov. 4, two days ahead the 2018 midterm election. There is no indication the synagogue shooter, who was critical of Trump, was responding to Trump’s rhetoric.

Trump used the word again during a rally in Iowa in March, telling supporters the nation was “on track for 1 million illegal aliens trying to rush our borders. It is an invasion.”

It’s not just a cynical political tactic though. He also does it because he likes it – because he really is an angry malevolent racist who thinks his pasty skin and gilded hair make him better than those pesky foreigners to the south.

Trump launched his White House run in 2015 with a speech alleging that foreign countries were “sending people that have lots of problems” including, he said at the time, “rapists.” But Trump dropped the word from his rally stump speech before he became president. It has occasionally cropped up during official events on immigration, including in January.

Let me guess – he dropped the word because he’s a rapist himself.

But also it’s not just his rallies.

Beyond the rally stage, Trump’s campaign has flooded social media with warnings that the U.S. is under “invasion” by immigrants coming across the southern border. That has taken place on Twitter, the president’s platform of choice, but also in a deluge of advertising on Facebook.

Facebook political advertising data analyzed by USA TODAY shows that Trump’s campaign funded the publication of more than 2,000 political ads that urged users to, for instance, “STOP THE INVASION.”

Another word Trump has frequently used to describe immigrants is “alien.” He was nearly four times as likely to use that word when describing immigrants during his rallies than “immigrants,” according to the analysis. He almost never uses the word “migrant.”

“Alien” is a word occasionally found in federal law or official documents, but it has not been uttered as frequently by Trump’s predecessors, if at all. A review of former President Barack Obama’s remarks and statements archived at the American Presidency Project at the University of California Santa Barbara found no reference to the term. A similar review for President George W. Bush’s term found only a handful of references to the word.

With good reason: it’s a very loaded word.

Trump is spending his Sunday thinking about the tragedies in El Paso and Dayton, and worrying about what Kim will do next.

I kid. He’s spending it yammering about the people on his teeeveee.

So funny to watch Little Donny Deutsch on TV with his own failing show. When I did The Apprentice, Donny would call me (along with @ErinBurnett & others) and BEG to be on that VERY successful show. He had the TV “bug” & I would let him come on though he (& Erin) had very little....TV talent. Then, during the 2016 Election, I would watch as Joe Scarborough & his very angry Psycho wife(?) would push Donny to the point of total humiliation. He would never fight back because he wanted to stay on TV, even on a very low rated show, all in the name of ambition!

President of the United States.

David Frum says that if Nixon had accused LBJ of involvement in the Kennedy assassination there would have been global outrage. I’m not sure that’s true, but his broader point is.

Today, President Donald Trump accused his predecessor, Bill Clinton—or possibly his 2016 campaign opponent, the former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—of complicity in the death of the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Many seem to have responded with a startled shrug. What do you expect? It’s just Trump letting off steam on Twitter.

Reactions to actions by Trump are always filtered through the prism of the ever more widely accepted view—within his administration, within Congress, within the United States, and around the world—that the 45th president is a reckless buffoon; a conspiratorial, racist moron, whose weird comments should be disregarded by sensible people.

If that is a widely accepted view – wtf? The weirder Trump’s comments are the less they should be disregarded by sensible people or anyone else. His “comments” demonstrate and underline how radically unfit he is to be in the job he is, with the ability to launch nuclear weapons always within reach. Nobody should be disregarding any of this.

CNN’s Jake Tapper on August 2 quoted a “senior national security official” as saying: “Everyone at this point ignores what the president says and just does their job. The American people should take some measure of confidence in that.”

Oh, yes, very confidence-inspiring, that there’s a brainless loony in charge but his stooges are ignoring him. I take no confidence from that whatsoever.

But cosmic joke or no cosmic joke, Donald Trump is the president of the United States. You may not like it. I don’t like it. Mike Pompeo doesn’t like it. Mitch McConnell doesn’t like it. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t like it. But it’s still a fact, and each succeeding outrage makes it no less a fact. Grinning and flashing a thumbs-up over an orphaned baby? Yes, still president. Tweeting that a third-tier dictator has threatened him with more missile tests unless he halts military exercises with a U.S. ally——and that he has surrendered to that blackmail? Shamefully, still president. Accusing a former U.S. president of murder? It’s incredible, it’s appalling, it’s humiliating … but, yes, he is the president all the same.

Also, casually consigning a massive watershed in Alaska to destruction by mining, canceling a program to deal with white supremacist terrorism, battling to take health insurance away from millions of people, making food stamps harder to get…

No measure of confidence available.

Trump tells us that

In a letter to me sent by Kim Jong Un, he stated, very nicely, that he would like to meet and start negotiations as soon as the joint U.S./South Korea joint exercise are over. It was a long letter, much of it complaining about the ridiculous and expensive exercises. It was………also a small apology for testing the short range missiles, and that this testing would stop when the exercises end. I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future! A nuclear free North Korea will lead to one of the most successful countries in the world!

How sweet that Kim said it very nicely. He must be a very nice man, despite all the murders and famines and stuff. I’m greatly reassured that he stated it very nicely.

Cute about the small apology, too. Is that like a miniature apology? Like a bonsai tree? Or is it a quick offhand one that the apologizer doesn’t really mean? Trump probably has no idea, but he makes up for it with all the exclamation points! Everything must be fine if he’s using happy exclamation points! Right!?

Trump at a couple of fundraisers in the Hamptons yesterday:

Trump was feted at two big-money fundraisers — first a lunch for 60 hosted by real estate guru Stephen Ross, whose company owns Equinox and Soul Cycle. Then Trump talked for an hour to a crowd of 500 at the sprawling Bridgehampton home of developer Joe Farrell. The two events raised a total of $12 million.

After Equinox members revolted over Ross’ fundraising for the president, with many threatening to cancel memberships, Trump said he had joked with Ross about how divided the nation is.

Noting the relentless attacks on himself by the media, Trump quipped, “Steve Ross got into a little bit of trouble this week, I said, ‘Steve welcome to the world of politics!’ ”

Haw haw, hee hee. It’s all hilarious. Best joke ever.

Trump also made fun of US allies South Korea, Japan and the European Union — mimicking Japanese and Korean accents — and talked about his love of dictators Kim Jong Un and the current ruler of Saudi Arabia.

He started by saying how the EU had not paid its share to NATO and he insisted it does so.

Talking about South Korea, Trump said it makes great TVs and has a thriving economy, “So why are we paying for their defense. They’ve got to pay.” He then mimicked the accent of the leader Moon Jae-in while describing how he caved in to Trump’s tough negotiations.

On his remarkable friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, “I just got a beautiful letter from him this week. We are friends. People say he only smiles when he sees me.

“If I hadn’t been elected president we would be in a big fat juicy war with North Korea.”

Turning to Japan, Trump then put on a fake Japanese accent to recount his conversations with Shinzo Abe over their conversations over trade tariffs.

This from a guy with a broad Queens accent. I’m sure he’d love it if, say, Anderson Cooper made fun of that. And that’s speaking his own language – the only one he knows. All 300 words of it.

Don is mad again. Really mad. He can’t stop fuming.

“Hollywood, I don’t call them the elites,” Trump complained to reporters at the White House on Friday. “I think the elites are people they go after in many cases, but Hollywood is really terrible. You’re talking about racists? Hollywood is racist.”

Of course he also took it to Twitter.

Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate! They like to call themselves “Elite,” but they are not Elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the Elite. The movie coming out is made in order……..to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!

But, the Daily Beast story explained, he got it wrong.

Though he did not name the movie, Trump was almost certainly referring to The Hunt, an upcoming, blood-soaked satire starring Hilary Swank, Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, and Emma Roberts, and produced by Jason Blum. The thriller takes place at “the manor,” where wealthy, liberal elites hunt and kill for sport a group of political “deplorables” who’ve been captured as prey. On Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter published a story revealing that The Hunt features “blue-state characters” selecting their targets based on whether they expressed anti-abortion opinions or uttered the N-word on Twitter.

“‘War is war,’ says one character after shoving a stiletto heel through the eye of a denim-clad hillbilly,” THR reported.

From the sound of it it’s a satire on liberals, not “deplorables.”

The nuance seemed lost on the president, whose annoyance at the picture had been brewing for days. Before his outbursts on Friday, Trump had privately complained in the White House about “the movie” made “by people who hate Trump,” according to an administration official who had heard the president make the comment this week. The official said that at the time, they had no idea what Trump was talking about, but assumed it was about something the president had seen on TV.

Lo and behold…

The Hunt has been extensively covered this week on Fox News and the Fox Business Network, two of the president’s favorite channels and sources of information and advice.

Starting with The Ingraham Angle—hosted by Trump’s close friend Laura Ingraham—on Wednesday evening, the movie has been the focus of at least 21 segments on Fox News and Fox Business Network as of Friday afternoon. (This counts late-night reruns of certain programs.)

The segments have generally portrayed the upcoming movie in an extremely negative light, especially on the president’s favorite opinion shows.

Well. Forget El Paso and Dayton, forget the floods in Kerala, forget the Greenland ice sheet, forget Bristol Bay – let’s all focus on this one movie we haven’t seen and have mistaken the point of which. That seems productive.

Oh no, how dare other countries point out that the US has a penchant for violence? Never mind, Trump is on the job, he’ll just “reciprocate” if they say it.

Countries including Uruguay, Venezuela and Japan have issued advisories surrounding travel to the US following multiple mass shootings in the country last weekend that killed 31 people.

When asked about them, according to the Hill, Trump replied: “Well, I can’t imagine that. But if they did that, we’d just reciprocate.”

“We are a very reciprocal nation, with me as the head. When somebody does something negative to us in terms of a country, we do it to them,” he added.

Yes, that always works well.

Kim sent Trump another letter – a very beautiful letter.

It was three pages.

Not only that – it was top to bottom. No seriously, right from top to bottom. He said so. “Beautiful…three page…I mean right from top to bottom.” He made a side to side gesture to illustrate top to bottom, in case we don’t understand what letters are.

Top to bottom! Kim must really love and admire Trump if he sent him a beautiful letter that was top to bottom.

Trump retweeted Katie Hopkins twice yesterday.

He also retweeted someone yelling

Retweet if you see @IlhanMN GETS A PASS By The Media says @TuckerCarlson!

“Media ignores @Ilhan Omar’s Tax Fraud with someone she wasn’t married to! Omar’s Marriage History can’t be verified by local reporters on accusations she married her brother to skip our immigration laws!”

Less than a week after the white supremacist mass murder.

Racist in chief Trump is being “I can if I want to!” today, tweeting more racism to show us who’s boss.

Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him, and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement – & be quiet!

He shouted his usual grievances at reporters.

Trump defended himself before leaving the White House, telling reporters that criticism of him was politically motivated. He placed the blame for the scourge of mass shootings that have marked his presidency on mental illness and a culture of violence.

“These are people who are looking for political gain, and as much as possible I try to stay out of that,” Trump told reporters.

Trump tries to stay out of looking for political gain? Really? What are all those rallies for then?

Trump said that he supports stronger background checks and limits on allowing people with mental illness to have access to guns. He said Wednesday that he believes Congress will be able to reach a deal on gun control legislation, but he doesn’t expect that to include limits on assault-style weapons.

“I have had many talks over the last few days, and I think we are going to come up with something that’s going to be really, really good,” Trump said.

Great. That’s all we need to know. Many talks; something; really really good. You can’t get much more substantive than that.

But alas, fake news.

“Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism,” was the correct description in the first headline by the Failing New York Times, but it was quickly changed to, “Assailing Hate But Not Guns,” after the Radical Left Democrats went absolutely CRAZY! Fake News – That’s what we’re up against…

No. The first headline was fundamentally misleading.

It’s tricky, because it’s technically accurate, in a sense. Trump did get up and grab both sides of the podium and read words off the teleprompter that urged unity. But the underlying truth is that he didn’t mean a word of it, that he barely even understood it, and that he was just haltingly and unconvincingly reading words other people had written, because he was obliged to by custom and public opinion. We know he didn’t and doesn’t mean it, even though he didn’t literally say so at the time. We know it because of his demeanor, and we know it because of his abundant history of saying and doing the opposite.

So that means the first headline was bad and misleading, though not literally fake. It wasn’t “fake” to change it in response to criticism. Trump doesn’t want unity (unless it’s unity for him), and he doesn’t oppose racism. Trump doesn’t want us to unite against racism. Everybody knows that. Some people love him for it and some don’t, but everybody knows it.

No doubt you’ve already seen them but just to pin them down for the record…Trump’s “I didn’t, he did” tweets.

“Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook. President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres.” @kilmeade @foxandfriends

“It’s political season and the election is around the corner. They want to continue to push that racist narrative.” @ainsleyearhardt @foxandfriends And I am the least racist person. Black, Hispanic and Asian Unemployment is the lowest (BEST) in the history of the United States!

He’s not the least racist person.

Obama didn’t have a “reign” and neither does Trump.

Bush didn’t condemn Obama after Sandy Hook (that I know of) for a simple reason: Obama had done nothing to incite Sandy Hook. Obama had not done rally after rally after rally screaming hate-mongering shit about school children or Connecticut children or white children.

Trump has made it very very very clear that he despises the people who live south of the US border with Mexico, that he despises and hates and rejects them and wants to prevent them from coming to the US at all. El Paso is on that border. Most of El Paso’s population is Hispanic.

Trump’s record and intentions are clear.