Tag: Trump

God damn that festering piece of dung

The LA Times:

Despite mounting pleas from California and other states, the Trump administration isn’t allowing states to use Medicaid more freely to respond to the coronavirus crisis by expanding medical services.

In previous emergencies, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the H1N1 flu outbreak, both Republican and Democratic administrations loosened Medicaid rules to empower states to meet surging needs.

But not Attila the Trump.

But months into the current global disease outbreak, the White House and senior federal health officials haven’t taken the necessary steps to give states simple pathways to fully leverage the mammoth safety net program to prevent a wider epidemic.

That’s making it harder for states to quickly sign up poor patients for coverage so they can get necessary testing or treatment if they are exposed to coronavirus.

And it threatens to slow efforts by states to bring on new medical providers, set up emergency clinics or begin quarantining and caring for homeless Americans at high risk from the virus.

They hate poor people that much.

I feel murderous.

Peter Wehner at the Atlantic says Trump’s presidency is over.

Taken together, this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been. With few exceptions, what Trump has said is not just useless; it is downright injurious.

The nation is recognizing this, treating him as a bystander “as school superintendents, sports commissioners, college presidents, governors and business owners across the country take it upon themselves to shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president,” in the words of Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times.

Donald Trump is shrinking before our eyes.

The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation.

It has taken a good deal longer than it should have, but Americans have now seen the con man behind the curtain. The president, enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged. He knows nothing will be the same. His administration may stagger on, but it will be only a hollow shell. The Trump presidency is over.

I think that’s probably true.

Trump said words last night.

At 9.02pm, Trump began as presidents so often do: “My fellow Americans.” But in the next breath, he reverted to his familiar us-versus-them nationalism, referring to the coronavirus outbreak “that started in China” and is now spreading throughout the world. “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.” Not just a virus. A foreign virus.

The president touted his own sweeping travel restrictions on China and, far from expressing sympathy and solidarity with allies, argued the European Union “failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hotspots. As a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.”

Trump announced the US will be banning travelers from many European countries to the US for the next 30 days with exemptions for Americans, permanent residents and family of US citizens who have undergone screenings and, mysteriously, the UK, despite it having a higher caseload than some other European countries.

And despite the fact that people from other European countries will just nip over to Heathrow to fly here.

He went on to talk of the pathogen as if it [were] a foreign army or terrorist network. “The virus will not have a chance against us,” he said. “No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States.”

If that were true Trump would not be president.

Many observers found the address unreassuring and downright weird. Susan Glasser, a staff writer from the New Yorker, tweeted: “The militaristic, nationalistic language of Trump’s speech tonight is striking: a ‘foreign virus,’ keeping out China and Europe.”

David Litt, who wrote speeches for Obama, posted: “As a former presidential speechwriter, my careful rhetorical analysis is that he’s gonna get us all killed.”

Trump’s second Oval Office address was over in 10 minutes. Then a man off camera said: “We’re clear.” The president unbuttoned his jacket and exclaimed with relief: “OK!”

Man off camera has now been executed.

Not a joke. The Times is reporting it. BuzzFeed is reporting it.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz jokingly wore a large gas mask on the House floor when the chamber voted on a coronavirus spending bill last Wednesday.

“Mockingly” or “sneeringly” rather than jokingly.

By Monday, his office announced the Florida lawmaker was in self-quarantine after coming into contact with a person who was diagnosed with the coronavirus at CPAC, a conservative political conference, almost two weeks ago.

…

Gaetz doesn’t have any symptoms of the coronavirus, his office said on Twitter, and he has been tested for the virus, but the results haven’t come back yet. He will remain in self-quarantine until later this week, after a two-week period since coming in contact with the person expires…

Gaetz is one of four members of Congress currently in self-quarantine after interacting with a person diagnosed with the virus at CPAC last month. Republicans Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona announced Sunday night that they were going into quarantine, and Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia announced he was going into quarantine Monday afternoon.

The CDC has recommended that, as coronavirus spreads, people avoid shaking hands. Last week, after the CPAC conference, Collins visited the CDC with President Donald Trump and shook hands with the president Friday.

There’s a photo.

“This afternoon, I was notified by CPAC that they discovered a photo of myself and the patient who has tested positive for coronavirus,” Collins said in a statement Monday. “While I feel completely healthy and I am not experiencing any symptoms, I have decided to self-quarantine at my home for the remainder of the 14-day period out of an abundance of caution.”

It’s not “an abundance of caution”; it’s what the CDC is telling us to do.

Also…

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Trump right now, and not just because of contagion.

Brian Klass at the Washington Post:

The rapidly worsening coronavirus outbreak is President Trump’s Chernobyl. By putting dangerous myths above objective facts, Trump has turned the crucial early phases of government response into a disaster. Some public health experts in government have undoubtedly kept quiet, having seen repeatedly what happens to those who publicly contradict this president. And Trump himself, along with those who surround him, has tried to construct a reality that simply does not exist.

In a Chernobyl or an epidemic lies can be murderous.

Two weeks ago, today, Trump tweeted that “The coronavirus is very much under control in the United States … Stock market is starting to look very good to me!” At that point, there were a small number of cases, but public health experts clearly stated that the number was likely to spike. Nonetheless, Trump accused his critics of perpetrating a “hoax” and said their concerns was overblown. He said that the number of cases — 15 at the time — would soon be “close to zero.”

On the basis of absolutely nothing other than his wishes.

The stock market is crashing. Every indicator from bond markets predicts a serious recession. The death rate is climbing. And if the outbreak in Italy is any indication of what we should expect, everything is about to get much worse.

Trump played golf yesterday.

Mind you…it’s probably better for us that he played golf rather than trying to “fix” the problems. What it says about him is another matter entirely.

So far, Trump has been able to glide through crises of his own making because his base of support has often believed him over reality. When fact-checkers expose Trump’s lies, many of his supporters distrust the fact-checkers, not the liar.

But coronavirus is different. Spin won’t make dead bodies disappear. Recessions can’t be warded off with a blistering tweet in all-capital letters. You can’t blame Hillary Clinton for hospital overcrowding. The Trump playbook works when everything else is working. It falls apart when the world is falling apart.

“Who would have thought?” Trump asked during his recent visit to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention. In fact, public health experts were warning for years that this would happen. “The threat of pandemic flu is the No. 1 health security concern,” one official in the White House’s global health security unit warned early in the Trump administration. “Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.” The following day, Trump shut that office in a reorganization.

Dud theory of mind again. He never thought there would be a flu pandemic, and he assumes that what he thinks or doesn’t think is what everyone else thinks or doesn’t think.

For years, it has been obvious that having as president a self-aggrandizing liar who constructs his own reality is dangerous. We’re about to find out just how deadly it can be.

Lucky us.

Having a reckless ignorant self-dealing fool as president can be dangerous to the health.

On Friday, as coronavirus infections rapidly multiplied aboard a cruise ship marooned off the coast of California, health department officials and Vice President Mike Pence came up with a plan to evacuate thousands of passengers, avoiding the fate of a similar cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, which became a petri dish of coronavirus infections. Quickly removing passengers was the safest outcome, health officials and Pence reasoned.

But Trump didn’t want to do that because it’s all about him.

“Do I want to bring all those people off? People would like me to do it,” Trump admitted at a press conference at the CDC later on Friday. “I would rather have them stay on, personally.”

Stay on so that the infection can spread more and more of them can get sick and more can die. Personally.

For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration’s own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear.

Awesome. Thanks, Don.

“It always ladders to the top,” said one person helping advise the administration’s response, who noted that Trump’s aides discouraged Azar from briefing the president about the coronavirus threat back in January. “Trump’s created an atmosphere where the judgment of his staff is that he shouldn’t need to know these things.”

Interviews with 13 current and former officials, as well as individuals close to the White House, painted a picture of a president who rewards those underlings who tell him what he wants to hear while shunning those who deliver bad news. For instance, aides heaped praise on Trump for his efforts to lock down travel from China — appealing to the president’s comfort zone of border security — but failed to convey the importance of doing simultaneous community testing, which could have uncovered a potential U.S. outbreak. Government officials and independent scientists now fear that the coronavirus has been silently spreading in the United States for weeks, as unexplained cases have popped up in more than 25 states.

All because of a petulant pinhead in the White House.

As the outbreak has grown, Trump has become attached to the daily count of coronavirus cases and how the United States compares to other nations, reiterating that he wants the U.S. numbers kept as low as possible. Health officials have found explicit ways to oblige him by highlighting the most optimistic outcomes in briefings, and their agencies have tamped down on promised transparency. The CDC has stopped detailing how many people in the country have been tested for the virus, and its online dashboard is running well behind the number of U.S. cases tracked by Johns Hopkins and even lags the European Union’s own estimate of U.S. cases.

Because magical thinking cures all diseases.

After senior CDC official Nancy Messonnier correctly warned on Feb. 25 that a U.S. coronavirus outbreak was inevitable, a statement that spooked the stock market and broke from the president’s own message that the situation was under control, Trump himself grew angry and administration officials discussed muzzling Messonnier for the duration of the coronavirus crisis, said two individuals close to the administration. However, Azardefended her role, and Messonnier ultimately was allowed to continue making public appearances, although her tone grew less dire in subsequent briefings.

He wants to cover it all up so that he will look better, never mind how many of us it kills.

Earlier today:

The Guardian’s David Smith also just asked Donald Trump at the White House what he thought of Elizabeth Warren dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination yesterday, after a very disappointing performance in the Super Tuesday primaries across 14 states (she did not win any and came third in her home state of Massachusetts).

Boom! Like taking a doctor’s hammer on the knee, those misogynistic Trumpian reflexes shot up.

“I think lack of talent was her problem,” he said, of one of the most talented figures in the Democratic party and the US Senate.

While he is not one of the least talented figures in anything but THE least talented figure in anything.

“She was a tremendous debater, she destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly,” he said, of Bloomberg’s first debate with his Democratic rivals, earlier this year, when Warren skewered him on his track record of discrimination lawsuits from women employees and sexist jokes, leaving the former New York mayor and billionaire gasping.

But of course the irony is that there’s nothing Trump loathes more, is viscerally repelled by, than a strong debating female…..

He went on: “But people don’t like her. She is a mean person. They like a person like me that’s not mean.”

Some are expressing caution.

Trump says the coronavirus is a plot against him.

Trump is giving advice on how to win the primaries.

“Mini Mike—how’d he do in the debate the other day?” President Donald Trump asked, at a rally in Las Vegas on Friday. He was talking about Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York, for whom he had some advice. But first he wanted to remind the crowd of Bloomberg’s height. “Here’s a box, Mike!” Trump said. (Bloomberg did not, in fact, stand on a box for the Democratic debate in Nevada.) The crowd cheered on his derision. “He was a beauty—what happened?” Trump clutched his throat and lolled his tongue in a somewhat graphic mime of choking. Then he arrived at what he saw as Bloomberg’s central problem: “Pocahontas screaming at him.” He meant Senator Elizabeth Warren, and he knew just how Bloomberg should respond to her.

By calling her “Pocahontas,” of course.

“Why didn’t he bring that up when she was screaming at him?” Bloomberg didn’t call Warren “Pocahontas”; that was why “she won that debate.” The lapse was incomprehensible to Trump, who segued into a stream of reminiscences about how he had won his primary debates during the 2016 campaign. “That’s what they all said! I won,” he boasted.

He won by being more vulgar and belligerent and trashy than anyone else. So everyone else should out-trashy him? I guess.

No, wait a second – he won the Republican primaries. He’s telling Bloomberg what to do to Be Like Him but Bloomberg is running as a Democrat. I don’t think Democrats as a group are as wedded to trashy racist sexist insults as an election technique as the Republicans are. In fact many Republicans have switched to being Democrats because they can’t stand the trash-talk.

At a rally in Colorado, a day before his event in Nevada, he brandished printouts of old press reports touting his debating prowess. “I became President because of the debates, because unlike Mini Mike I could answer questions,” Trump said—a line that might seem delusional if one thinks that, in order to “answer questions,” a person actually needs to give answers, rather than just attack the questioner. And yet Trump has something of a point; even if he didn’t “win” all the Republican debates, he did, on the whole, dominate them, at least in terms of shaping the tone. And that domination prefigured his takeover of the G.O.P. and the Party’s abasement of itself before him. Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted, Low-Energy Jeb. The President seems amazed that the Democrats aren’t all calling one another names. That’s what he would do.

Lots of Republicans like it, lots of Democrats not so much.

More on Trump’s campaign to purge all the “bad people” by which he means people who don’t kiss his ass four times a day:

In reporting this story, I have been briefed on, or reviewed, memos and lists the president received since 2018 suggesting whom he should hire and fire. Most of these details have never been published.

A well-connected network of conservative activists with close ties to Trump and top administration officials is quietly helping develop these “Never Trump”/pro-Trump lists, and some sent memos to Trump to shape his views, per sources with direct knowledge.

Members of this network include Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Republican Senate staffer Barbara Ledeen.

The big picture: Since Trump’s Senate acquittal, aides say the president has crossed a psychological line regarding what he calls the “Deep State.” He feels his government — from Justice to State to Defense to Homeland Security — is filled with “snakes.” He wants them fired and replaced ASAP.

Again…it’s all personal. There is no detachment, no ability (much less willingness) to step back and think “this person opposes my plans and actions but is a talented and ethical person anyway.” The only test is pro-Trump or not. The nots are all evil.

The details are creepy as hell – fanatics writing memos for Trump accusing current staff of horrors and recommending clowns from Fox News and other media outlets to replace them. It’s as if the toddlers have taken over.

The Post has more on the “Trump was enraged that the intelligence people did a briefing on Russian plans to get him re-elected” story.

A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.

After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump erupted at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, perceiving him and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference.

Trump did not erupt at Russia, and vow to leave nothing undone that would block Russia’s plans to help him steal another election. No, he erupted at his own DNI because he perceived him as “disloyal”…to him, Trump. On the one hand the fate of a country of 300+ million people and many more in the rest of the world, and on the other hand the sensitive ego of one bloated ignorant greedy man. The disproportion is startling.

The shake-up at the top of the intelligence community is the latest in a post-impeachment purge. Trump has instructed aides to identify and remove officials across the government who aren’t defending his interests, and he wants to replace them with loyalists.

Across the government – people have to defend his interests. Not ours, not everyone’s, his.

I wish he would suddenly swell up like a balloon and then explode. I wish he would vanish forever.

Let’s learn more:

President Donald Trump pushed aside his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in anger over what he perceived to be an inappropriate congressional briefing by the top intelligence official in charge of election security, a former senior U.S. official familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.

What he perceived to be an inappropriate congressional briefing aka a congressional briefing that he saw as inconvenient for him. Not for us, not for the country, not for the world, not for humanity, but for him. Nothing matters except Donald Trump. The interests of Donald Trump come before anything else.

Trump’s anger cost Maguire a chance to become the permanent DNI, the former official said, confirming a report in The Washington Post.

Trump announced Wednesday he was replacing Maguire with Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, a highly partisan figure with no intelligence experience.

Maguire had been on the list for the parmanent job but then Trump got a burr up his ass.

[L]ast Thursday, the Post reported, Shelby Pierson, the intelligence official in charge of election security, gave a classified briefing to the House Intelligence Committee on 2020 election security.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Post reported that Trump “erupted” in the Oval Office the day after the meeting over what he perceived as disloyalty by Pierson.

Again – personal loyalty, loyalty to him, is all he cares about. Our interests? Pffffff.

The former official did not know what Pierson, who works for Maguire, said that set Trump off. The Post reported that the president “erroneously believed that she had given information exclusively to Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., the committee chairman, and that the information would be helpful to Democrats if it were released publicly, the people familiar with the matter said.”

Him him him, win win win. Nothing else amounts to a hill of beans.

Can we impeach him again?

The Daily Beast reports:

President Trump offered to pardon Julian Assange if he agreed to cover up the involvement of Russia in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee, which were later published by WikiLeaks, a London court was told Wednesday.

Assange’s lawyers are arguing that his case is political as opposed to criminal (so he shouldn’t be extradited).

Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, said Wednesday that a message had been passed on to Assange by former Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

Fitzgerald said a statement produced by Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, showed “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange… said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”

Prepare for another chorus of “No quid pro quo.”

Be brazen and you can get away with it.

Greg Sargent at the Post:

For Trump, the very public nature of his efforts to corrupt law enforcement is a key feature of those efforts, not a byproduct of them that he pathologically can’t control.

If he does it publicly, it’s no longer corruption, it’s policy.

Barr is getting restive because Trump keeps tweeting about DoJ matters even though Barr gave him a very strong hint that he should quit it.

But Trump “has told those around him he is not going to stop tweeting about the Justice Department,” the Post report continues. According to officials, “Trump considers highlighting what he sees as misconduct at the FBI and Justice Department as a good political message.”

Of course “what he sees as misconduct”=conduct inconvenient to him. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good political message from his point of view. (Define “good”…)

There you have it: Trump can simply claim law enforcement is guilty of misconduct when it isn’t — corrupting our discourse with disinformation — which in turn justifies whatever corrupt efforts to manipulate law enforcement he sees fit to attempt.

And the only downside is the complete destruction of the DoJ and everyone’s trust in it. It’s a no-brainer.

Trump’s insight has been that unabashedly attacking and obstructing law enforcement in plain view makes it seem less shady, reverse-reinforcing his original claim that efforts to ferret out the wrongdoing he does want concealed are illegitimate.

Trump just pardoned a string of white-collar criminals and political allies, claiming they were unfairly prosecuted by the “same people” who investigated him. This reportedly came not after a serious procedural vetting of their prosecutions, but after recommendations from friends, celebrities and campaign donors.

The elite, in short. Trump professes to hate the elite but he loves his own elite.

Trump didn’t hide this. Here again the public and unabashed declaration of the power to confer impunity on the guilty — to declare the guilty innocent simply because they were investigated for wrongdoing just as he was, meaning he is one of them — is the whole point of it.

And we’re stuck with it.

Of course he did.

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said President Trump called him to say he should not backtrack on comments he made about Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s electability as a gay man.

“Hell, the president even called me about this!” Limbaugh said Monday on his show. “He said, ‘Rush, I just got to tell you something. Never apologize. Don’t ever apologize.’”

Which is all you really need to know about him. His core philosophy of life is to be indifferent to the needs of other people, to put himself first no matter what, to be a shit and to defend being a shit, to go on being a shit no matter what.

Trump is having an explosion of pardoning convicted rich corrupt white dudes today, when he’s not too busy pumping out illiterate tweets.

He’s commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the guy who tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat for $$$$.

But Trump knows better.

Little did the shy boy from Queens ever dream he would some day be able to remedy the injustice.

Sex offenders like Donald Trump for instance?

Maybe all of those plus just, I don’t know, kicking back and doing whatever he feels like because hey why not? Embrace the random? Go where your impulses take you? Seize the day? Act like a crazy dictator in case you have a headache tomorrow?

Whoopsie – this one he thumbed himself. Always a bad idea!

U not a king though.

Not a king, and not even able to grasp that “his case of grievance, persecution and resentment” isn’t a compliment.

More on Trump’s attempt at extortion against New York:

On Thursday, Trump made a veiled threat toward the state of New York, home of multiple lawsuits against him, ahead of his meeting with New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D) to discuss the Department of Homeland Security’s freeze on its “Trusted Travelers” programs for New Yorkers. The freeze was enacted last week in response to New York’s new law that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and prevents ICE and CBP from accessing New York’s DMV records.

Trump denied that the decision was made out of political retaliation on Thursday, tweeting that Cuomo “must understand that National Security far exceeds politics.”

Then he added: “New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment [sic], start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes.”

The comment appeared to be a threat to force the state to drop the numerous lawsuits New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed against his aggressive anti-immigration policies, including the “Trusted Travelers” program freeze. She is also currently investigating the Trump Organization and has subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for the President’s financial records in her inquiry.

Any attempt to apply the laws to Trump is harassment, according to Trump.

James responded: