Tag: Trump

  • Trials

    Fintan O’Toole explains Trump’s fascism tryouts:

    To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon.

    Fascism doesn’t have to wear 1930s clothes to be fascism. It’s not a historical category, it’s a political one; it wasn’t killed, it was injured.

    Trump is ignorant of almost everything but he does grok test marketing.

    He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

    Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

    And there is no magic mechanism that is guaranteed to stop him before it’s too late. If only there were.

    One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

    That all seems accurate and it’s terrifying how closely it matches what Trump has already done. Maybe the good news is that he’s so horrible that the 60% hates him just as intensely as the 40% hate us?

    The next stage, O’Toole says, is to get people to accept outright cruelty. That’s the stage we’re in now.

    To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

    I’m not sure he’s right that it’s been a big success. On the other hand it’s hasn’t been the crushing disastrous regime-ending failure it should have been.

  • Lower

    Another masterpiece of political rhetoric:

    “I want to apologize. Pocahontas, I apologize to you. I apologize to you. To you I apologize,” he said. “To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t apologize.”

    He went on to suggest that, should Warren win the Democratic nomination in 2020 and [if] they were to debate, he would toss an ancestry test to her and dare her to take it. In doing so, he made light of the #MeToo movement.

    “We’ll take that little kit and say, we have to go it gently because we are in the Me Too generation, and we will very gently take that kit, slowly toss it” to her, Trump said, adding that he would offer $1 million to charity if she took the test and it “shows you are an Indian.”

    …

    Trump’s comments on #MeToo come on the heels of his hiring former Fox News executive Bill Shine, who left his role after being accused of mishandling a flurry of sexual harassment allegations within the network. Earlier Thursday on Air Force One, Trump also defended Republican Rep. Jim Jordan against allegations he overlooked sexual abuse during his time as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University.

    “I don’t believe them at all. I believe him,” Trump said.

    By which he means he doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether they’re true or not, he’s on Team Bully as opposed to Team Bullied. He’s one who proudly and forthrightly sides with the strong.

    Warren was far from the only Democrat who drew Trump’s acidic rhetoric on Thursday, though. The President continued a long running fight with California Rep. Maxine Waters by slamming her intelligence.

    No, that’s not “continuing a long running fight.” That’s using the power and amplification of the presidency to repeatedly call a black woman stupid. It’s disgusting. It’s not getting enough attention and it must not be normalized.

    “Democrats want anarchy. They really do. And they don’t know who they are playing with, folks,” Trump said. “I said it the other day, yes, she is a low IQ individual, Maxine Waters. I said it the other day. I mean, honestly she is somewhere in the mid-60s. I believe that.”

    That is disgusting.

  • Twinkle twinkle little trump

    More views:

    Image result for trump baby balloon

    Image result for trump baby balloon

    Related image

  • Womp womp

    A piece of good news at last:

    A gigantic balloon, branded “Trump baby”, which depicts Donald Trump as an angry Tango-coloured baby has been given the green light to fly near parliament during the US president’s controversial visit to the UK next week.

    Permission has been granted for the 20ft (6m) high inflatable to rise above Parliament Square Gardens for two hours on the morning of Friday 13 July to protesters by the Greater London Authority.

    I wish I could be there.

    London mayor Sadiq Khan has described the balloon as a symbol of ‘peaceful protest’

    Reuters

  • More than you might guess

    Jennifer Rubin points out the obvious fact that Trump is a racist, and then says the good news is that people see it and they don’t like it.

    The Quinnipiac poll released this week shows a plurality (49 percent) think he is a racist while 47 percent do not. Among the 47 percent are 86 percent of Republicans, roughly the same percentage that support him. (They simply will not believe the president they voted for is a racist.)

    Well, let’s clarify that a little. They simply will not accept that terminology. They will believe that he’s hostile to non-white people in the same way they are, but they will most definitely not accept that we get to call that “racism.” Oh no. It’s “tough on crime” or “not politically correct” or “defending our borders.” Calling it racist is just more libbrul snowflakery.

    Nevertheless, by a small margin (50 percent to 44 percent) voters are willing to believe Trump’s sincere beliefs about controlling the border, not racism, are the main motivator for his immigration policies.

    What I’m saying. They’re his beliefs, they’re sincere, they’re about the border, and they’re not at all racist no sir.

    Even more interesting, a large majority (55 percent to 39 percent) think Trump has emboldened other people to voice racist views.

    That’s interesting. You’d think they would resist that just as fiercely as the “he is racist” claim…or no, I guess the idea is that he’s not racist but these funny other people misunderstand him and misuse his ideas and his rhetoric when they voice racist views.

    But also, they really don’t like the family-separation policy.

    Americans are more resistant to racism than one might imagine. They don’t think immigrants commit more crimes, don’t like his immigration policies (58 percent to 39 percent) and by a large plurality want to make it easier to immigrate to America (49 percent to 32 percent). After two years of hearing Trump smear and dehumanize immigrants, they aren’t buying his line. Those who favor robust legal immigration and a humane, sensible policy toward illegal immigrants (including ‘dreamers’) don’t need to be defensive. They should make the case — with plenty of facts on their side — that immigrants have always made America great. It’s Trump who is making us small.

    A tiny light in a sea of darkness.

  • The first thing the president said at the dinner

    Trump loves surprises:

    As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?

    Huh? Huh? Why cannit?

    The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the previously undisclosed conversation, as reported by The Associated Press, comes from a senior administration official familiar with what was said.

    In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Mr. Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

    But Mr. Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.

    Plus he’s seen all these movies where a quick little invasion was just the ticket.

    He went on talking about it, but his people tried to convince themselves it was just his fun. Then he talked about it to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

    Then in September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length, in a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies that included Santos, the same three people said and Politico reported in February.

    The U.S. official said Mr. Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.”

    So of course he said it, because listen up, everybody, he is the boss, and those other people are just His Staff, and he can say whatever he wants to.

    Mr. Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Mr. Trump in clear terms they were sure.

    Eventually, McMaster would pull aside the president and walk him through the dangers of an invasion, the official said.

    And give him his bottle and put him to bed.

  • Many great words

    Speaking of writing ability, he’s been busy today.

    Yep, he rolls out of bed in the morning and calls a black Congresswoman “crazy.” Usually he calls her “very low IQ” instead.

    That one is very avant garde – very opaque and enigmatic, like Finnegan’s Wake.

    It’s ok to talk about infestations of human beings if you use scare quotes on the word.

    You see, he capitalized “border” and “crime” and “country” and “safety” and “security” and “law” and “enforcement” for emphasis. Notice also the fine writing.

    And then the one where he tells us what a good writer he is.

  • Ok that does it

    This is the worst outrage of all.

    HE PRIDES HIMSELF (somewhat) ON HIS ABILITY TO WRITE.

    That is simply a fucking outrage. It’s as if the screech a table saw makes prided itself on its cello-playing ability. I’m a writer in a small way myself and the sort of thing Donald Trump writes SHOULD NEVER BE A SOURCE OF PRIDE TO ANYONE.

    Plus he hasn’t written any books, he’s hired ghost writers.

    There’s also the fact that people don’t pore (he wrote “pour” with his pride-worthy ability to write but Scavino fixed it just as I was about to do a third or fourth annotation and for a few seconds I was afraid I’d been blocked because I got the “no you can’t” notification) over his tweets “looking for a mistake”…we check them out to see if he’s going to blow us all up in the next few minutes. The shit writing is way down on the list of reasons we check what he’s saying today.

    His ability to write. It’s blasphemy.

  • All going swimmingly

    If not for Trump, we would now be at war with North Korea. Why is that exactly? What is the chain of causation there? The Post attempts to figure it out.

    President Trump said Tuesday that the United States would be at war with North Korea without his efforts and that conversations with the nation’s leaders are “going well” — an assessment at odds with recent reports that North Korea is working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear weapons program.

    Well, it depends on what you mean by “going well.” Trump has idiosyncratic interpretations of a lot of words and phrases, and “going well” is probably one of them.

    The president’s comments in a morning tweet followed a report Saturday in The Washington Post that U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that North Korea does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear arms stockpile and instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and its secret production facilities.

    Maybe that’s what Trump means by “going well” – they’re hiding it so we won’t know about it so we won’t have to worry about it.

    Image result for alfred e neuman what me worry

  • Constant doses

    Charles Blow on Trump’s rage junkies:

    Trump is like a drug dealer who has addicted his followers to fear and rage and keeps supplying it in constant doses. His supporters have become rage-junkies for whom he can do no wrong.

    Let’s be clear about the demographics of this base: While the overwhelming majority of blacks and Hispanics have an unfavorable view of Trump, just as many white people have a favorable view of him as have an unfavorable view of him, according to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll conducted last month.

    Part of that is undoubtedly due to the increasingly racialized nature of our partisanship, but it is also because Trump has positioned himself as a white power president.

    And, more overtly and obviously, as a president who is happy to fire off gross insults at black and brown people. There’s white power and there’s white contempt.

    One of the things that his supporters like is the very thing that others detest: His unapologetic, unabashed crusade to fight off all efforts at racial and ethnic inclusion. They may not articulate it as such, but that is the nature of Trump’s policies: Promising to build a wall, disparaging Mexicans, separating immigrant families, the Muslim ban, decreasing even legal migration, denigrating protesting football players.

    Calling Maxine Waters “very low IQ”; calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”; hanging a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office; making it obvious that he has no clue who Frederick Douglass is; slashing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Escalante Staircase monuments; the Central Park 5; birtherism. He’s an open, shameless, enthusiastic racist insult-comic.

  • In no way, form, or fashion

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  • Among the top worst

    David Cole, national legal director of the ACLU, on today’s Supreme Court fubar:

    The Supreme Court’s approval of President Trump’s travel ban barring entry to some 150 million people from five overwhelmingly Muslim countries is likely to be judged by history as one of the court’s greatest failures — in a league with Dred Scott v. Sandford, which helped bring on the Civil War, and Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the wartime detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans and noncitizens of Japanese descent.

    Gee, what might the common element be? Singling out a particular group – a non-white group – for Special Treatment and thus general social odium? Yes, that’s the one.

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., perhaps recognizing the disturbing parallels, sought to distance the court from this critique by declaring, nearly 75 years after the fact, that Korematsu “was gravely wrong the day it was decided” and that it has “nothing to do with this case.” But it has everything to do with this case: In Trump v. Hawaii, as in Korematsu and Dred Scott, the court was asked to stand up for the rights of the vulnerable against the biases of the powerful — and failed.

    Refused. It’s not as if the 5 tried and failed; they refused.

    In Trump v. Hawaii, there was overwhelming evidence that Trump’s ban targeted Muslims. As a presidential candidate, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” because, he asserted, “Islam hates us.” He explained that he would do so by using territories as a proxy for religion, because “people were so upset when I used the word Muslim.” One week after taking office, he did just that. In case there were any doubt, he said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that day that the order would give priority to Syrian Christians over Muslim refugees.

    The foreigner has no rights which the Trump man is bound to respect.

  • In ways that are specific to incipient tyrannies

    Adam Gopnik on commensality and the culture of eating together and eating together-but-apart and how central to our lives it all is.

    On the issue of Sanders being expelled from a restaurant, mixed emotions are the only ones a rational person can have. On the one hand, one of the ritual functions of restaurants is to make a common place for commonplace civilization to proceed. They build social capital from their openness to all kinds. Think of how much the civilization of American cities depends on our being able to grab not just bite but a bit of anonymity—we eat alongside others without the others looking down too sharply upon us. It’s a fundamental liberal value, worth protecting in all partisan instances and on all partisan sides. And, no, we don’t want to set a precedent in which politics are so personalized that even simple common coexistence becomes impossible. As a moral duty, we should share the pleasures and conversation of the table with as many people of as many views as we can—and, even when we can’t, we shouldn’t grumble too nastily under our breath at our kids when someone at a nearby table takes up the case for the Donald. (A self-directed moral rule, this.)

    On the other hand, the Trump Administration is not a normal Presidential Administration. This is the essential and easily fudged fact of our historical moment. The Trump Administration is—in ways that are specific to incipient tyrannies—all about an assault on civility. To the degree that Trump has any ideology at all, it’s a hatred of civility—a belief that the normal decencies painfully evolved over centuries are signs of weakness which occlude the natural order of domination and submission.

    Yes. That. That. That’s why I keep obsessing over his constant insults, his scowls, his contemptuous nicknames, his belligerence – it’s his hatred of all those customs we have that prompt us to treat each other decently.

    It’s why Trump admires dictators. Theirs are his values; that’s his feast. And, to end the normal discourse of democracy, the Trump Administration must make lies respectable—lying not tactically but all the time about everything, in a way that does not just degrade but destroys exactly the common table of democratic debate.

    That’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s chosen role in life—to further those lies, treat lies as truth, and make lies acceptable. This is not just a question of protesting a particular policy; in the end there are no policies, only the infantile impulses of a man veering from one urge to another. The great threat to American democracy isn’t “policy” but the pretense of normalcy. That’s the danger, for with the lies come the appeasement of tyranny, the admiration of tyranny, and, as now seems increasingly likely, the secret alliance with tyranny. That’s what makes the Trump Administration intolerable, and, inasmuch as it is intolerable, public shaming and shunning of those who take part in it seems just. Never before in American politics has there been so plausible a reason for exclusion from the common meal as the act of working for Donald Trump.

    As I keep pointing out, this isn’t “partisan.” Trump is a bad human being. Sanders speaks for him. She could leave at any time but she doesn’t. She puts a pious (albeit scowling) face on the hatred of civility.

  • These things take time

    Why this is stupid:

    Kumail Nanjiani:

    I know there are a bunch of people upset at the Nazi comparisons, but the highlighting-crimes-by-immigrants move is literally what the Nazis did, with Jews instead of immigrants. A sure fire way to stop being compared to Nazis is to stop acting like them.

    Dave Rubin:

    Hi Kumail, Nazis exterminated 6 million Jews in a mass genocide. I lost family on both sides in the holocaust. The more you guys compare everyone to Nazis the more you’ll be blind when the real ones show up…

    It’s stupid because the Nazis didn’t go from being a normal democratic rights-respecting government to exterminating 6 million Jews in a mass genocide in one jump. That’s why. It’s stupid because there was a process, with steps, that took years. Pointing out that some things Trump is doing are strikingly similar to things the Nazis did during the process that led to the exterminations is, it seems to me, necessary in order to point out the seriousness and danger of those things that Trump is doing.

    Hitler didn’t come with a label REAL NAZI and neither will any other potential Nazi. Dave Rubin doesn’t know that the real ones have not already shown up; he doesn’t know they’re not on the path to full real genuine authentic 100% guaranteed Real Nazism. Germans in 1933 and 1936 didn’t know that Hitler was going to exterminate as many Jews as he could, either.

    Another little detail: Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons at his disposal. Trump does.

    We have stronger institutions than Weimar Germany did. They may be able to prevent Trump from going all the way. But is there anything in Trump that would prevent him from going full exterminate? No. It doesn’t take visible horror-movie demonic evil; the ordinary everyday kind is perfectly up to the task.

  • Steeper slope

    The Supremes (the five reactionary ones) say sure go ahead ban Muslims from the country, we’re good with that.

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld President Trump’s ban on travel from mostly-Muslim nations, delivering a robust endorsement of Mr. Trump’s power to control the flow of immigration into America at a time of political upheaval about the treatment of migrants at the Mexican border.

    In a 5-to-4 vote, the court’s conservatives said the president’s statutory power over immigration was not undermined by his history of incendiary statements about the dangers he said Muslims pose to Americans.

    Great. Flaming hate-mongering racist shit shouts his hate-mongering shit for a year and a half and the 5 Supremes say that’s a perfectly cromulent reason for him to issue orders banning entire populations from the country.

    In a passionate and searing dissent from the bench, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was no better than Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 decision that endorsed the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

    And no better than Plessy v Ferguson or Dred Scott.

    What a shithole country this has become.

  • He has ruled exclusively for his vengeful supporters

    Michelle Goldberg points out in her Times column that what we have here is not a crisis of civility but a crisis of democracy.

    [T]here’s a moral and psychic cost to participating in the fiction that people who work for Trump are in any sense public servants. I don’t blame staff members at the Virginia restaurant, the Red Hen, for not wanting to help Sanders unwind after a hard week of lying to the public about mass child abuse. Particularly when Sanders’s own administration is fighting to let private businesses discriminate against gay people, who, unlike mendacious press secretaries, are a protected class under many civil rights laws.

    That “not wanting to help Sanders unwind” is good.

    Whether or not you think public shaming should be happening, it’s important to understand why it’s happening. It’s less a result of a breakdown in civility than a breakdown of democracy. Though it’s tiresome to repeat it, Donald Trump eked out his minority victory with help from a hostile foreign power. He has ruled exclusively for his vengeful supporters, who love the way he terrifies, outrages and humiliates their fellow citizens. Trump installed the right-wing Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from Barack Obama. Gorsuch, in turn, has been the fifth vote in decisions on voter roll purges and, on Monday, racial gerrymandering that will further entrench minority rule.

    Minority, white, reactionary rule. Gorsuch is the crucial 5th vote that makes it possible for Republicans to steal elections – to continue to win despite losing the popular vote – far into the future.

    [M]illions and millions of Americans watch helplessly as the president cages children, dehumanizes immigrants, spurns other democracies, guts health care protections, uses his office to enrich himself and turns public life into a deranged phantasmagoria with his incontinent flood of lies. The civility police might point out that many conservatives hated Obama just as much, but that only demonstrates the limits of content-neutral analysis. The right’s revulsion against a black president targeted by birther conspiracy theories is not the same as the left’s revulsion against a racist president who spread birther conspiracy theories.

    Faced with the unceasing cruelty and degradation of the Trump presidency, liberals have not taken to marching around in public with assault weapons and threatening civil war. I know of no left-wing publication that has followed the example of the right-wing Federalist and run quasi-pornographic fantasies about murdering political enemies. (“Close your eyes and imagine holding someone’s scalp in your hands,” began a recent Federalist article.) Unlike Trump, no Democratic politician I’m aware of has urged his or her followers to beat up opposing demonstrators.

    Instead, some progressive celebrities have said some bad words, and some people have treated administration officials with the sort of public opprobrium due members of any other white nationalist organization. Liberals are using their cultural power against the right because it’s the only power they have left, and people have a desperate need to say, and to hear others say, that what is happening in this country is intolerable.

    It’s all we have. They’ve stolen or shut down the more official avenues of dissent and resistance, so unofficial is all there is.

  • We don’t

    Fresh Air the other day featured a book about Trump’s family, and there was one part that jumped out at me rather.

    GROSS: Each of the three women that have been married to Donald Trump, including the first lady, had some period of their life where they were models. And after Donald Trump met Melania, you say he wanted to, like, nudge forward her career, and he wanted her to pose for a photo shoot for British GQ, a special edition headlined “Naked Supermodel Special!” Tell us about that edition and Donald Trump’s role in having Melania pose for it.

    FOX: He has always wanted his wives to be famous – same with his daughter. He wanted them to be famous, and he wanted them to be lusted after. This was true for Marla, as well. The – probably the best period in their relationship – between Donald and Marla – was when she had a part in a Broadway show. And he was intoxicated with the fact that people thought she was actually kind of OK, and that she was sort of a star, and people were paying attention to her and giving her buzz. And that was – of a very rocky courtship and relationship and sort of a toxic one, that was the high point of their relationship because he felt like she was being adored and sort of elevated him because of her own stardom. And that was certainly true with Melania, as well.

    So this photo shoot was very much in line with that sort of mentality and mindset. That his new girlfriend would be pictured on the cover of a magazine in a very suggestive way meant something to him because he wanted people to lust after what he had, whether that was a building or a hotel or a girlfriend. It was important for him to be someone who people aspired to or thought was a man about town.

    He wanted people to lust after what he had…including his daughter.

    It’s so what he is, and so creepy.

    He wants us to lust after his nauseating garish yellow-metal apartment. He wants us to lust after his beautiful chocolate cake, his second scoop of ice cream just for him, his hotty wives and daughters, his hotty bits on the side, his generals (until he gets sick of them), his gorgeous hair, his power.

    Image result for room books

  • Threats now

    WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT

  • Symptomatic

    Trump loves shiny things. Really shiny. The shinier the better. Shiny shiny shiny.

    Since Bill Clinton occupied the White House, the commemorative medallions known as challenge coins have been stately symbols of the presidency coveted by the military, law enforcement personnel and a small circle of collectors.

    Then came Donald J. Trump.

    His presidency has yielded more — and more elaborate — coins that are shinier, flashier and even bigger, setting off a boom for coin manufacturers, counterfeiters and collectors, with one official Trump challenge coin recently fetching $1,000 on eBay.

    Among those produced in recent months by members of a White House military unit is a coin featuring Mr. Trump’s private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, on the front, and the presidential seal, the White House and Air Force One on the back. Another has Pope Francis on one side and the president’s face set against the White House on the other.

    Shiny. So shiny.

    Image result for trump challenge coin mar a lago

    The car is a nice touch.

    Outside ethics watchdogs say the “Make America Great Again” coins shouldn’t be distributed to military personnel — a traditional use of presidential challenge coins — since the military is supposed to be walled off from politics.

    And those watchdogs warn that coins featuring Mr. Trump’s properties, such as Mar-a-Lago, should not be produced using government resources — including funds, work hours or even phone calls and emails — since federal ethics laws prohibit the use of public resources to promote private businesses.

    The Mar-a-Lago coins are akin to “a metallic tourist brochure,” said Norman L. Eisen, a former ethics lawyer in President Barack Obama’s White House and the chairman of a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

    Killjoy.

    After The New York Times inquired about the coins, agency personnel abruptly canceled plans for a coin featuring the president’s signature Trump Tower in Manhattan and his golf course in Bedminster, N.J.

    Sad. They would have made such lovely metallic tourist brochures.

    People who have traveled with Mr. Trump say he has become enthralled by challenge coins, attributing his interest to his appreciation for military traditions and might, as well as his attraction to gaudy displays of gilded excess. That fascination grew during the presidential campaign, when he would receive coins from law enforcement and military personnel whom he encountered at stops.

    Shiny. Shiny, mama. Shiny shiny shiny shiny shiny shiny shiny shiny shiny.

  • Just kidding

    That thing Trump said after his jovial meeting with Kim? “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea”? Apparently it was one of his jokes.

    US President Donald Trump has renewed sanctions on North Korea, citing an “extraordinary threat” from its nuclear weapons – just 10 days after saying there was no risk from Pyongyang.

    “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” he tweeted on 13 June, a day after meeting the country’s leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore.

    …

    Democrats say the latest White House language contradicts the president’s earlier boasts about the success of the Singapore summit. In another tweet on 13 June, he said Americans could “sleep well tonight!”.

    Democrats say? Come on now. It’s not a party matter. Trump did say what Trump did say.

    “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” That’s what he said. Many of us pointed out at the time that the claim was ludicrous, but the claim is what it is; he said it.

    We said that was ludicrous too. He still said it.