Tag: Trump

Another woman reports another sexual assault by the current president of the US – this one a full-on rape as opposed to a mere grab her by the pussy.

The woman is E. Jean Carroll, advice columnist for Elle magazine.

25 years ago she ran into Trump at Bergdorf’s, and he enlisted her to help him shop for “a girl.” She suggested a hat, a purse, he said underwear. He finds a filmy item and tells her to try it on, she says you try it on, they go back and forth with her thinking he’s bantering.

“But it’s your size,” I say, laughing and trying to slap him back with one of the boxes on the counter.

“Come on,” he says, taking my arm. “Let’s put this on.”

This is gonna be hilarious, I’m saying to myself — and as I write this, I am staggered by my stupidity. As we head to the dressing rooms, I’m laughing aloud and saying in my mind: I’m gonna make him put this thing on over his pants!

At that point she asks and answers some questions – were there no salespeople around, did she tell anyone, did she go to the police, why hasn’t she said anything until now.

So now I will tell you what happened:

The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights.

I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.

The whole episode lasts no more than three minutes. I do not believe he ejaculates. I don’t remember if any person or attendant is now in the lingerie department. I don’t remember if I run for the elevator or if I take the slow ride down on the escalator. As soon as I land on the main floor, I run through the store and out the door — I don’t recall which door — and find myself outside on Fifth Avenue.

It doesn’t sound like the best sex ever, even from his point of view, so one has to wonder what his point was. Just vulgar dominance display? I guess. Just…entitlement, aggression, misogyny, engorged ego, “when you’re a celebrity they let you.” Whatever.

So now it’s her turn to be pilloried by every MAGA clown on the planet.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson on the current mess:

Since Richard Nixon, Republican presidents have pushed the envelope of acceptable behavior under the guise of patriotism, and Democrats have permitted their encroaching lawlessness on the grounds of civility, constantly convincing themselves that Republicans have reached a limit beyond which they won’t go. Each time they’ve been proven wrong.

Nixon obstructed justice. Ford pardoned him.

When Ronald Reagan’s administration was exposed for having illegally sold arms to Iran to raise money covertly for the Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, Reagan acknowledged that the evidence was damning – yet defended the principle behind the scheme. Reagan’s successor, George HW Bush, pardoned the six leading figures of the Iran-Contra affair because, he said, “whether their actions were right or wrong”, they were motivated by “patriotism”. The investigation into their actions was “a criminalization of party differences”.

Seeing a pattern, are we?

[W]hen George W Bush, a Republican, took office, Republicans once again deferred to executive lawlessness. In order to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, administration officials falsely argued that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. To silence opposition, “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Dick Cheney, unmasked a CIA officer. Libby was ultimately convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice; no one else was held criminally responsible for the disinformation used to justify the Iraq war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

…

Even before the 2016 election, Republican officials told reporters that they planned to impeach Democrat Hillary Clinton as soon as she was elected for her misuse of an email server or her ties to the Clinton Foundation. McConnell then led Republicans in refusing to join President Obama and Democratic leaders in a bipartisan statement alerting the public that Russian intelligence was attempting to throw the 2016 election to the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. This forced Democrats to accept the tilted playing field to avoid the appearance of partisanship.

Democrats kept largely quiet in the face of such bullying, afraid that Republican rhetoric would alienate voters and hurt their chances in 2016. Then Trump won.

And immediately the lawlessness became a 24/7 thing. The Republicans just smile complacently while Trump steers us over a cliff.

Trump is certainly aware of the power that acquiescent Republicans have afforded him and that as soon as he is out of office, he can be charged with crimes. He recently told reporters he was different from Nixon because Nixon left. “I don’t leave,” Trump said. “Big difference. I don’t leave.”

If only he would.

H/t Omar

“Dreyfuss était coupable!”

Trump says “You have people on both sides of that” when asked if he has any plans to apologize for trying to get the Central Park 5 executed.

WATCH: President Trump declines to apologize to the exonerated Central Park Five, and asserts that “you have people on both sides” of their exoneration.

The case has received renewed attention in light of Ava DuVernay’s ‘When They See Us’. https://t.co/Sk2vHNmWsT pic.twitter.com/UFX7GIbF5D

— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 18, 2019

H/t Acolyte of Sagan

The BBC pulls out a few items from Trump’s 30 hours of talking.

Mr Trump argued that no president has ever been as mistreated as himself, including Abe Lincoln, who was shot dead.

“If you can believe it, Abraham Lincoln was treated supposedly very badly,” he said. “But nobody’s been treated badly like me.”

Mr Trump, who calls himself a student of history, has previously drawn comparisons with the 16th president. During a rally last September in Montana, Mr Trump said Lincoln’s legendary Gettysburg Address “was excoriated by the fake news”.

And during his first election campaign, Mr Trump claimed: “With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office.”

He’s heard of Lincoln…and that’s about it.

The transcript shows how it came up. It was all about the tweets.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The other thing we’re hearing from these– again, these are voters who support you, still say they’re proud of you. They wish you’d cut back on the tweets.

TRUMP: You know, I have it both ways. I have a very unfair press. It’s a fake news. It’s a corrupt news. I have people that are so dishonest. I mean, I had a case of it recently with the New York Times where they’re writing things knowing it was wrong. Knowing. If I don’t put it out– I don’t call it tweets. I call it social media. If I don’t use social media, I do not get the word out. I have some people that do say that, but I have far more that say– just today in the– in the speech I had a woman, “Please don’t stop tweeting. Please. That’s the only way you’re getting the message out.” I have so many people that would go– that would be very unhappy if I ever stopped. And it’s not tweet. It’s social media. I put it out, and then it goes onto your platform. It goes onto ABC. It goes onto the networks. It goes onto all over cable. It’s an incredible–

A long clump like that is helpful for focusing on just how impoverished and empty his speech and his mind are. Watching and hearing him is also helpful for that, but when it’s in front of your eyes in one clump you can see how few words are in play, how much pointless repetition there is.

So that’s how they got to Lincoln – how Trump got to Lincoln.

TRUMP: Well, it’s– it– how can I communicate like that? I put one out this morning. And as soon as I pressed the button, they said, “We have breaking news.” Every network, every station. “We have breaking news.” They read my tweet. Why is that bad? And when I’m treated badly by the press– and nobody’s ever been treated badly like me. When I’m treated so badly–

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know that every president says that.

TRUMP: I– I disagree. Look, it’s been acknowledged. Although they do say Abraham Lincoln was treated really badly. I must say that’s the one. If you can believe it, Abraham Lincoln was treated supposedly very badly. But nobody’s been treated badly like me. And this way I can fight the dishonest media, the corrupt media, the fake news.

Supposedly.

Interesting.

Blockbuster story buried in this NYT report.

Pentagon, intelligence officials fear they cannot trust Trump enough to brief him fully on new US cyber operation against Russia for fear he will "countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials" as he did before with Russians. pic.twitter.com/BgSF3zi8nm

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) June 15, 2019

It turns out there are drawbacks to having a president who is too childish and reckless and self-serving to be trusted with…anything, basically.

The US military is not briefing the US president on major cyber warfare operations against a hostile foreign power because they do not trust the president not to betray those operations to that hostile foreign power.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) June 16, 2019

But hey, happy Flag Day, or something.

pic.twitter.com/c40BQpZFtW

— The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) June 14, 2019

Oh good, another official ruling for Trump to flout and mock and disparage:

White House Deputy Press Secretary Steven Groves responds: pic.twitter.com/k6aU0nTxjn

— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) June 13, 2019

Talking Points Memo summarizes:

A report attached to the statement labels Conway a “repeat offender,” and says that her violations, “if left unpunished, would send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions.”

The Hatch Act bans federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. The Office of Special Counsel is a federal watchdog agency that monitors federal employees.

The OSC report states that “If Ms. Conway were any other federal employee, her multiple violations of the law would almost certainly result in removal from her federal position by the Merit Systems Protection Board.”

“Her actions erode the principal foundation of our democratic system – the rule of law,” a letter prefacing the report reads.

So many actions of Trump and his administration do that. It should have been his campaign slogan – “WILL MASSACRE THE RULE OF LAW.”

Investigators cite a May 29, 2019 media appearance in which Conway appeared to downplay the law’s significance. “If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work,” Conway said. “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”

“If you’re trying to silence me” – as if she were Solzhenitsyn or Politkovskaya rather than the publicity chief for a mob boss. She’s a hack doing a hack job for a corrupt head of state, not an embattled independent journalist trying to get the truth out.

A Trump nominee — Henry Kerner — is in charge of the OSC. “OSC respectfully requests that Ms. Conway be held to the same standards as all other federal employees, and, as such, you find removal from federal service to be appropriate disciplinary action,” Kerner wrote in the Thursday letter to Trump.

Kerner’s decision to call for Conway’s revealed a behind-the-scenes battle between the OSC and White House that appears to have been playing out over the past few weeks. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said in a June 11 letter to Kerner that a draft of the report was “based on multiple fundamental legal and factual errors, makes unfair and unsupported claims against a close adviser to the President, is the product of a blatantly unfair process that ignored statutory notice requirements, and has been influenced by various inappropriate considerations.”

In other words, how dare you try to hold Trump accountable, much less try to make him obey the rules.

I was just standing in an office in the WH press office when Kellyanne Conway came in. I asked for her reaction to this. She pointed to the door and said “can you leave, please?” Later, I asked her again, and she said: “I have no reaction. Why would I give you a reaction?“ https://t.co/DZWKJsQLQb

— Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) June 13, 2019

How dare a reporter ask Kellyanne Conway a question? These peasants know no limits, do they.

The recommendation comes more than one year after a March 2018 finding by the same office that Conway violated the Hatch Act by advocating for Roy Moore during the 2017 Alabama special Senate election.

The March 2018 report concluded that Conway repeatedly violated the Hatch Act during multiple television appearances. That report cites her as saying that Trump “doesn’t want a liberal Democrat in the Senate. He wants a reliable vote for taxes, for life.” The OSC then states that after two 2017 television appearances, Conway “received Hatch Act guidance” from the White House Counsel.

But Conway continued to ignore that guidance, according to the report out Thursday.

They are our new mob monarchy. The rules don’t apply to them.

Much of Conway’s conduct cited in the report is related to the 2020 presidential election. While “promoting the President’s agenda” is consistent with her official duties, the OSC said, weighing in on the 2020 nominees is not.

The OSC castigates Conway for making comments “directed at persuading voters not to support the Democratic Party candidates in the 2020 presidential election and garnering support for the President’s candidacy.”

The report goes on to cite dozens of media appearances Conway made from February 2019 until the present. In one April 30 appearance, for example, a reporter told Conway: “You brought up Joe Biden several times unprompted. Do you guys see him–?” Conway cut the reporter off, saying “How was it unprompted? He’s the frontrunner!”

After another question, Conway called Democratic voters “sexist” and “racist” due to Biden’s popularity and that of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT). The White House adviser went on to say that “two old white straight men career politicians” were ahead in polling because voters have “a problem with the rest of the field.”

The OSC also cites Conway’s use of Twitter, accusing her of “engag[ing] in a pattern of partisan attacks on several Democratic Party candidates shortly after they announced” their campaigns. Those attacked include Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX), and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Conway accused Warren of “lying” about her ethnicity in one interview, for example, and referred to the Democratic presidential field as “woodchips.”

The report also cites Conway’s tweets calling Biden “Creepy Uncle Joe.”

But none of that applies, because [see above].

Towards the end of the report, the OSC describes why “Conway’s conduct warrants her removal.”

Calling the Hatch Act violations “persistent, notorious, and deliberate,” the OSC says that her conduct has “created an unprecedented challenge to this office’s ability to enforce the Act.”

“She has willfully and openly disregarded the law in full public view,” the report reads.

Well it’s no fun if you do it in secret.

Trump still doesn’t get it.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the president admitted that he would accept information on a political opponent from a foreign government.

“It’s not an interference, they have information – I think I’d take it,” President Trump said. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI – if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressman, they all do it, they always have, and that’s the way it is. It’s called oppo research.”

Knowing the nickname for it doesn’t make it legal.

Stephanopoulos asked about Donald Trump Jr. and the regretable role he played in the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. He asked if Trump’s son should have brought the Russians’ offer for “dirt” on Hillary Clinton to the FBI.

“Somebody comes up and says, ‘hey, I have information on your opponent,’ do you call the FBI?” Trump responded.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do,” Trump continued. “Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.”

“The FBI director said that is what should happen,” Stephanopoulos replied. (During congressional testimony last month, FBI director Christopher Wray told lawmakers “the FBI would want to know about” any foreign election meddling).

“The FBI director is wrong, because frankly it doesn’t happen like that in life,” Trump said. “Now maybe it will start happening, maybe today you’d think differently.”

The fact that Trump thinks life doesn’t work that way doesn’t make it legal to accept campaign help from a foreign government.

This is the president, and he appears to have no understanding of the law, even though it’s been discussed endlessly for the past three years, even though it applies to him, even though he swore an oath to uphold the constitution.

Does he really think he can violate a law with impunity simply by saying what he thinks the law should be?

Watch Stupid being stupid.

EXCLUSIVE: Pres. Trump tells @GStephanopoulos he wouldn't necessarily alert the FBI if approached by foreign figures with information on his 2020 opponent: "It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it." https://t.co/7gvoAViw9r pic.twitter.com/k5Yqd9YxdC

— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) June 12, 2019

We can actually watch him say it. We can watch, and we can hear reporters erupt with questions when he says it, and we can see him make the “shutupImtalking” gesture at them. We can watch him say that he too would murder a brother who was talking to the CIA. We can watch him drivel about what a warm letter Kim sent him. We can watch him exclaim about how much better he’s made everything. We can watch his hair flap jump up and down in the wind.

Trump: I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un. I can't show you the letter obviously, but it was a very personal, very warm, very nice letter.. North Korea has tremendous potential and the one that feels that more than anybody is [Kim]. He gets it. He totally gets it pic.twitter.com/6ZQvafrOTV

— POLITICO (@politico) June 11, 2019

Trump totally gets why Kim Jong Un had his brother murdered. He says he would have done the same.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he had received a very warm letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling the correspondence “beautiful.”

…

Trump spoke a day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Kim’s slain half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, was a source for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Kim Jong Nam was killed at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2017.

“I did receive a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un … I appreciated the letter. I saw the information about CIA with respect to his brother, or half-brother. And I will tell him that will not happen under my … I wouldn’t let that happen.”

Jeezus.

John Dean is trolling Trump – who has nothing on his schedule today so is free to watch all the tv.

Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel John Dean just began his testimony with a bang.

He first notes that he last appeared before the House judiciary committee on July 11, 1974, at the impeachment inquiry into president Nixon (who resigned in August, 1974).

Dean says: “I hope I can give a little historical perspective on the Mueller report. In many ways it is to Donald Trump what the ‘Watergate road map’ was to Nixon.”

He’s referring to the evidence Congress used to support its impeachment of Nixon, leading ultimately after the whole Watergate scandal, to the downfall of the president.

“Stated a little bit differently, Robert Mueller has provided this committee with a road map,” Dean said.

The Watergate ‘road map’ was the report that Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to Congress in 1974 and that informed its impeachment proceedings, which were already underway.

Mitch McConnell wasn’t there then.

Remember that time Trump went to meet with Obama during the transition period? And came away raving about what a great guy he is and what rapport they had and how much Obama liked him? Now he’s doing it about the queen. He thinks the queen liked him.

Mind you, he hadn’t previously spent years insisting the queen was born in Kenya and shouldn’t even be the queen, so that commonality is missing. But the rest is unpleasantly reminiscent.

The US president, Donald Trump, has boasted about having “automatic chemistry” with the Queen during his state visit to the UK.

Trump, during an interview with Fox News, said people had noticed how well he and the Queen had connected.

He said: “The meeting with the Queen was incredible. I think I can say I really got to know her because I sat with her many times and we had automatic chemistry, you will understand that feeling. It’s a good feeling. But she’s a spectacular woman.”

He thinks she liked him. He thinks that wasn’t her trained skilled ceremonial politeness to any head of state she’s required to schmooze with, he thinks it’s personal. Dude, if it were personal you wouldn’t get any closer than Hoboken.

“There are those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time, a more animated time. We had a period we were talking solid straight, I didn’t even know who the other people at the table were, never spoke to them. We just had a great time together.”

Are there. Really. Are there really those that say they have never seen the Queen have a better time? I’m gonna go with “no,” because what are the odds? Unless he just means that everyone in his retinue said that, in which case it’s literally true because they have never seen the queen have any kind of time, better or worse or indifferent, on account of how they don’t hang out with her. But if he means people who actually know the queen and see her having times, then no. They don’t say that.

And this is a good look too. This is a very good look. Really very very very good look – the vulgar mob boss squatting in sight of a field full of the graves of soldiers who died in the fight to defeat Nazism, and talking smack about the special counsel and the Speaker of the House. Very dignified, very impressive, very somber, very devoted to the public good. I don’t think.

https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1136653145369526272

Oh dear god. At the end he just starts explaining what an election is and what will happen with Brexit and how excellent it will all be, as if anyone had asked him to explain all the things. He is so BIZARRE.

He also explains to Leo Varadkar what a border is and what kind of border there is between Northern Ireland and Ireland. The taoiseach makes a brief attempt to set him straight but Trump just plunges on, talking nonsense as if reading it from The Big Book of Nonsense.

Trump, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, waded into the Brexit debate minutes after Air Force One touched down at Shannon airport on Wednesday afternoon.

“I think it will all work out very well, and also for you with your wall, your border,” he said at a joint press conference. “I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here. But I hear it’s going to work out very well here.”

Varadkar interjected that Ireland wished to avoid a border or a wall, a keystone of Irish government policy.

“I think you do, I think you do,” Trump said. “The way it works now is good, you want to try and to keep it that way. I know that’s a big point of contention with respect to Brexit. I’m sure it’s going to work out very well. I know they’re focused very heavily on it.”

In other words Trump explained what Ireland wanted to Varadkar. He did. You can see him do it.

In London on Tuesday Trump met the Brexiter politicians Nigel Farage, Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, all of whom have played down the idea that the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland will be a problem after the UK leaves the EU.

Trump echoed their confidence in Shannon. “There are a lot of good minds thinking about how to do it and it’s going to be just fine. It ultimately could even be very, very good for Ireland. The border will work out.”

The Irish government has mounted an intense, three-year diplomatic effort arguing the opposite, that Brexit threatens peace and prosperity on the island of Ireland.

Never mind that, Trump knows better.

The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, made an unexpected intervention on the eve of the visit by calling Trump’s policy on the climate emergency “regressive and pernicious”, a critique protesters will echo at rallies in Shannon and Dublin.

Trump told reporters he was unaware of Higgins’ comments and reiterated that the US had enjoyed cleaner air and water since he became president, a claim he also made in London.

Which would be a miracle if it were true, since he repealed various clean water regulations.

We can watch him saying the unbelievably stupid and ignorant things.

Does the US President believe in climate change?

Trump says he discussed climate change with Prince Charles, who he believes is 'a very good person' who 'wants to have a world that's good for future generations'. pic.twitter.com/QNlXhiS1mO

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) June 5, 2019

At .40 Morgan asks what Choss said to him about climate change. There’s a pause while Trump struggles to engage his brain, and then he manages to think of the word “future.” Ah yes, that will help – future. It’s about the future. “What he really wants,” Don says ponderously, “and what he really feels warmly about, is…the future.” Pause for deep thought about this stunning insight. Choss isn’t warm about what climate change did to the Carthaginians, he’s warm about the future. New idea for our boy; he hadn’t thought of it in that light before.

Then some more deep thinking to come up with the magisterial summary that “What he wants” – hands doing the accordion gesture energetically – “is to make sure that future generations have climate that is good climate as opposed to…a disaster.” The accordion hands approach each other on this solemn thought.

“Good climate.” He doesn’t of course mean good climate as in stable climate that won’t produce huge changes in everything we and all other living creatures depend on for survival, because hunnhhhhhhh?? He means a nice day to play golf, for future generations.

How Piers Morgan managed to sit there and not scream “Are you serious??” in his face is beyond me. I know they’re buddies, I know they go way back, but just the same. (I wonder how Choss felt, trying to talk to that brick wall of stupid. Choss isn’t a genius himself, but compared to Trump he’s fucking Heisenberg.)

Morgan does at least cut him off when he starts babbling about crystal clear water – though he doesn’t, sadly, interrupt to remind him that he repealed several clean water regulations about five seconds after his inauguration. No, Morgan interrupts him to ask if he accepts that almost every scientists that looks into it thinks climate change is a real and present danger and that if we don’t tackle it now along with Chiner and India we’re gonna be in serious trouble, do you accept that.

Trump grabs it and runs – “You said it yourself – China, India, Russia.” Yes? What about them? We’re going to work with them?

No. “They have not very good air, not very good water, in the sense of pollution and cleanliness.”

He still has no idea what they’re talking about! Even though Morgan just spelled it out for him very clearly. I’ve never seen anything like it. He simply can’t take in new information. We knew this of course, but this is an opportunity to watch him failing to understand what is said to him before our disbelieving eyes.

It’s terrifying.

Then he confidently tells Morgan that climate change is now called “extreme weather,” and then he babbles about tornadoes. There were a lot of them in the 1890s, didja know that?

At the end we get his philosophy of life. Priss Choss doesn’t have to care about future generations…but he does because he’s a good person. It’s an extra, caring about future generations. Trump pretends to be impressed that Choss does, as a “very good person” – but really he thinks it’s just crankish. Future generations! Dude! Nobody has to care about them. You bring them with you on trips so they can impress the world with how nicely they clean up, but other than that…who cares.

Pass the bottled water.

One of Trump’s top annoying habits is attributing his own ignorance to everyone else.

When Donald Trump says, “A lot of people don’t know that” – or its rhetorical cousin, “People don’t realize” – he’s generally referring to things many people already know, but which he only recently learned.

They also tend to be things anyone in his job ought to have learned fifty years ago at least. His lifelong ignorance of just about everything is not a good qualification for that job.

There are, however, occasional exceptions. For example, Trump used the phrasing a couple of years ago to reflect philosophically. “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” the president said in 2017.

Yeah, if you think about it, but who has ever thought about it, really, you know, because, I mean, why?

He also often says it about things that nobody knows because they aren’t true.

This morning, Trump added to his greatest hits collection with remarks to British Prime Minister Theresa May before a business roundtable discussion in London.

“We are your largest partner. You’re our largest partner. A lot of people don’t know that. I was surprised. I made that statement yesterday, and a lot of people said, ‘Gee, I didn’t know that.’ But that’s the way it is.

“And there’s an opportunity – I think a great opportunity – to greatly enlarge that, especially now, in light of what’s happening, to tremendously enlarge it and make it a much bigger trading relationship. So we’re going to be working on that today and even a little bit tomorrow and probably into the next couple of weeks. But I think we’ll have a very, very substantial trade deal.”

Of course, “a lot of people don’t know that” that about the trade partnership because it’s not true.

For us it’s China; for the UK it’s Germany. Oops.

But hey, that’s ok, because Sadiq Khan is “a stone cold loser” and Meghan Markle is “nasty.”