Tag: Trump

  • Don has a festive day out

    Oh christ. You think he can’t go any lower and then…

    My god he is standing there grinning and doing a thumbs up gesture!

    He’s standing by a victim’s hospital bed in a sea of forced grins for his photo op!

    He’s clapping his hands!

    He collected all the nearby staff and made them grin next to him and his horrible thumb!

    And, to top it off, he again treats the slaughter at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas school as if it were an earthquake or a tornado rather than a human act that better laws could have prevented.

    Ugh god I have seldom seen such a disgusting quartet of photos.

    Updating to add: I was wrong about the clapping. A larger version of the photo reveals that Melania is making an open hands gesture while listening to the white coat person, while Donald has his folded in front of him.

  • It’s sad something like that could happen

    Trump is back at Mar-a-Lago, and on the way there he stopped off at a hospital in Pompano Beach that took in eight of the victims of Nikolas Cruze.

    The president and Mrs. Trump, visited the Broward Health North Hospital “to pay their respects and thank the medical professionals for their life-saving assistance,” according to a statement related by a White House spokeswoman on Friday evening.

    When asked if he met with victims, President Trump said: “Yes, I did. I did indeed.”

    “It’s sad something like that could happen,” he said.

    Mr. Trump did not respond when he was asked if gun laws needed to be changed. He then walked into another room.

    The Trumps, according to the statement, were also scheduled to travel to the Broward County Sheriff’s office to meet with “the law enforcement officials whose bravery helped save lives.”

    Thanks, Mr President.

  • The indictment

    Rosenstein announced the indictment about 2o minutes ago.

    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is announcing Friday the indictment of Russian nationals and entities accused of breaking U.S. laws to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, CBS News’ Paula Reid reports.

    On Friday, a D.C. federal grand jury returned an indictment against the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization which has connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin — it names 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities that accuses them of violating U.S. criminal laws to meddle in U.S. elections and political processes. According to a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, the indictment charges all of the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., as well as “three defendants with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.”

    According to the indictment, “Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.”

    Working with the Internet Research Agency, the defendants “posted derogatory information” about several candidates, the indictment says, and by mid-2016, their efforts included “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the indictment says.

    In other words they did things that genuine US citizens were doing, but they gave those doings an artificial outside-actor boost…and given how tight the election was and how carefully targeted the boosting was, they are why we are stuck with this immoral empty hateful monster of a “president.”

    Starting around 2014, the defendants began to track and study groups on U.S. social media dedicated to American politics and social issues.  They used metrics to track the performance of various social media groups. They then travelled to the U.S. (or in some cases, tried to travel to the U.S.) to collect intelligence for their interference operations.  They posted [probably “posed”] as Americans and contacted U.S. political and social activists and learned they should target “purple” states, those that were undecided in the campaign.

    And by god it worked, damn them to hell.

    They created hundreds of social media accounts and used them to develop fictitious U.S. personas into “leaders of opinion in the U.S.” The defendants worked day and night shifts to pump out messages, controlling pages targeting a range of issues, including immigration, Black Lives Matter, and they amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. They set up and used servers inside the U.S. to mask the Russian origin of the accounts. The Internet Research Agency employed hundreds of people for these purposes — administrators, creators of personas, technical support — and spent the equivalent of millions of dollars for these efforts.

    In addition to disparaging Clinton, they denigrated other candidates, “such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio,” and they supported Bernie Sanders and then Donald Trump. In the latter half of 2016, they used groups to discourage minorities from voting in the 2016 presidential election.

    They what?

    They used groups to discourage minorities from voting in the 2016 presidential election. 

    We’re living in Putin’s world.

  • The random and the predictable

    Conor Friedersdorf reminds us that Trump specifically and explicitly promised that what happened at that Florida school yesterday would not happen under his regime.

    In his inaugural address, Donald Trump declared, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” He knew it would not. We know it did not.

    “I’ll be able to make sure that when you walk down the street in your inner city, or wherever you are, you’re not going to be shot,” he declared during the campaign. “Your child isn’t going to be shot.” He has not been able to make sure of that––ask any parent whose children were caught up in any of the recent school shootings.

    Trump gave those credulous enough to believe him false hope.

    “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end,” he vowed at the Republican National Convention. “Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored.” But safety was not restored that day. Neither crime nor violence ended. The vow was a cynical ploy to get votes.

    It was that, but it was also a dogwhistle for the racists and anti-immigrants. We were meant to think “crime and violence”=brown people.

    Earlier in his tenure, a gunman in Las Vegas killed 58 and injured 851 in the deadliest mass shooting ever committed in the United States. Trump had no plan to stop such an attack, nor did he do anything after the fact that would prevent a similar attack. Such attacks are beyond anyone’s capacity to wholly eliminate, but no one else rose to power falsely promising they could stop such things.

    Well, the gunman in Las Vegas was a white guy. White guys aren’t murderers or criminals, they’re Totally Random Insane People Who Just Go Pow All of a Sudden. They’re a force of nature that no one can accurately predict because they’re Just Too Random.

  • The gang that couldn’t walk straight

    Oops.

    An adult film star who has been embroiled in allegations of an affair with President Donald Trump is free to tell her story, her manager has said.

    Stormy Daniels is no longer bound by a non-disclosure contract after Mr Trump’s lawyer admitted he paid her, manager Gina Rodriguez says.

    Mr Trump’s personal lawyer confirmed in a statement to media he privately paid Ms Daniels $130,000 (£95,000) in 2016.

    Ms Rodriguez says that acknowledgement allows her client to speak freely.

    Oopsie oops.

  • An embarrassing situation could quickly morph

    So Trump’s lawyer admits he paid Stephanie Clifford aka “Stormy Daniels” the 130k but says he wasn’t reimbursed by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign. Ok but what about by Trump himself? That he doesn’t mention. Lawyers gonna lawyer.

    Why, in his generosity, would Mr Cohen give $130,000 to Ms Daniels? The Wall Street Journal has reported that it was in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement about a decade-old affair between Mr Trump and Ms Daniels. Circumstantial evidence – that Ms Daniels had been in contact with media outlets prior to the transfer and has since gone silent – lends credence to this line.

    But hey, maybe it was just a kind present from a nice man who wanted Stephanie Clifford to take a really nice vacation on a yacht for a week or two. We just don’t know.

    Even though the alleged affair is long since past, a story about possible hush money and an attempted cover-up just weeks before the presidential election is much more dangerous for a White House already on its heels. And if it turns out there’s more to the money trail than has been disclosed, an embarrassing situation could quickly morph into a criminal inquiry.

    Well it will have to get in line.

  • A broad swath

    The world according to Trump – science and scientific research should Just Go Away so that we can spend more and more and more billions on guns and subs and planes.

    The Trump administration wants to eliminate a broad swath of the nation’s climate change research infrastructure, including satellites, education programs and science centers.

    Though it has little chance of being enacted, the Trump administration’s budget proposal unveiled yesterday targets hundreds of millions of dollars in climate science, renewable energy research and climate mitigation efforts across a variety of federal agencies, including NASA, NOAA, U.S. EPA and the departments of the Interior and Energy.

    Because why try to slow and mitigate the effects of climate change? Why not just party hard now and let the next generations deal with the result?

    Once again, the administration has proposed eliminating a number of climate-related satellite programs, including the functions of some already in orbit. The total savings would be $133 million for the five missions, including the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, which is scheduled for a 2022 launch. As with most satellites, PACE has multiple functions and can be used to forecast harmful algal blooms, which have plagued the Great Lakes in recent years. Trump’s proposal would also eliminate the Earth-observing abilities of the Deep Space Climate Observatory, which was proposed by then-Vice President Al Gore and also measures solar storms.

    Or he could just take fewer trips to Mar-a-Lago at a cost of millions.

    At NOAA, the budget would be trimmed 20 percent, by about $1 billion, to $4.6 billion in 2019. The White House called for the elimination of $273 million in grants, something that congressional appropriators have also rejected. Those include the National Sea Grant College Program, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System, coastal zone management grants, the Office of Education and the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund.

    Who needs salmon? Who cares if salmon recover or not? Salmon should get up off its ass and get a job.

    The Interior Department’s chief science agency would take a major hit under the proposed budget. The U.S. Geological Survey is the lead federal agency in providing science and mapping on ecosystems, energy and mineral resources, water use and natural hazards like earthquakes and volcanoes. It would receive just under $860 million, about a 20 percent decrease from funding levels enacted for fiscal 2017. The White House’s proposal is $62 million less than it asked for last year to fund USGS (see related story).

    Who needs to know any of that stuff? Just send out an intern or something.

    The budget request includes $13 million to fund only three of the eight regional climate science centers and one national climate adaptation science center—the others would presumably close. That is $4.4 million less than the administration allocated in its fiscal 2018 budget proposal and less than half of what Congress enacted for fiscal 2017. Established by Congress in 2008, the climate science centers develop science and tools to help land managers address climate change-related impacts to land, water, fish and wildlife, and cultural sites.

    Who cares what happens to land, water, fish and wildlife, and cultural sites? They’re not gold-plated, you can’t have sex with them, they don’t MAGA. Fuck’em.

    Trump’s budget proposal would also slash funding for EPA’s Office of Science and Technology to $449 million, down from $714 million in fiscal 2017 enacted levels. The number of full-time-equivalent staff positions would also fall to 1,481 in fiscal 2019 from 2,124 under fiscal 2017 enacted levels.

    Because we don’t need to protect the environment. We need to protect stockholders and donaldtrumps.

    Congressional Democrats widely panned the administration’s spending plan.

    Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said the plan shows that the Trump administration has no appreciation for the role that research at federal agencies plays in driving the economy or protecting the environment and public health.

    Well that’s because his skill is conning people into paying him $$$ for slapping his name on their buildings, aka “branding.” You can’t expect him to interrupt that highly skilled work by paying attention to the role that research at federal agencies plays in driving the economy or protecting the environment and public health.

  • Least surprising news ever

    Eugene Robinson at the Post underlines what we’ve always known: Trump was always lying to his “base.” Of course he was. Trump is a corrupt real estate marketer who defrauds his contractors; what does he care about the working class?

    Voters who thought President Trump would at least try to fulfill his populist, America-first campaign promises were cynically and cruelly deceived. Trump placates these supporters with rhetoric, distracts them with cultural warfare and encourages them to seek refuge in cultural chauvinism. What he doesn’t do for them is deliver.

    Well he does deliver on the racist rhetoric and policies. Maybe watching people being deported is compensation enough?

    So is there more money for everybody? No, not for programs that provide important support to Trump’s base. The president pledged to maintain or strengthen the social safety net, but — sit down, you won’t believe this — he lied.

    His budget cuts $554 billion in Medicare spending over 10 years, which is of concern to anyone over 65. It cuts up to $250 billion in Medicaid spending, which has implications for anybody who has a loved one in a nursing home. Trump wants to cut $214 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, a vital source of help for the working poor.

    The idea of Donald Trump as some sort of Man of the People was laughable from the start — a boastful plutocrat who lives in a gold-plated aerie above Fifth Avenue, claiming lunch-bucket solidarity with factory workers and coal miners. He sold it, though, largely by cementing a racial and cultural kinship and shamelessly misrepresenting his intentions.

    Was there ever any reason to think otherwise? Nope.

  • Not July but March

    Oh look, Wray tells us that Trump and his gang have been lying about when they knew about Rob Porter.

    Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, contradicted on Tuesday the White House timeline about the domestic abuse scandal involving Rob Porter, the president’s former staff secretary. Mr. Wray said that the bureau delivered to the White House a partial report on problems in Mr. Porter’s background in March, months earlier than the White House has admitted receiving the information.

    In March. They’ve known for nearly a year.

    But hey, they’ve come up with a plan to make poor people eat canned food instead of fresh, so they can’t be all bad, right?!

  • Blue apron full of holes and covered in cat food

    Of course. Trump and his gang want to get rid of food stamps and replace them with a box of “staples” of the kind that exclude all perishables i.e. fresh vegetables and fruit, milk, cheese, eggs – you know, anything you’d actually want to eat.

    The Trump administration wants to slash food aid to low-income families and make up the difference with a box of canned goods — a change that Office of Management and budget director Mick Mulvaney described in a Monday briefing as a “Blue Apron-type program.”

    “What we do is propose that for folks who are on food stamps, part — not all, part — of their benefits come in the actual sort of, and I don’t want to steal somebody’s copyright, but a Blue Apron-type program where you actually receive the food instead of receive the cash,” Mulvaney said. “It lowers the cost to us because we can buy [at wholesale prices] whereas they have to buy it at retail. It also makes sure they’re getting nutritious food. So we’re pretty excited about that.”

    What a grotesque lie. A box of canned goods is nothing like Blue Apron and it’s also far from the best way to get nutritious food.

    On Monday, the Trump administration proposed cutting food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, by $17 billion in 2019 and more than $213 billion over the next decade. The dramatic reductions came as part of a budget proposal that made sweeping, across-the-board cuts to popular safety net programs,including federal housing subsidies and Medicaid.

    This is who and what they are: make the poor poorer and the rich richer. That’s their emaciated version of A Better World.

    [U]nder the Trump proposal, which the Agriculture Department has dubbed “America’s Harvest Box,” all households receiving more than $90 per month in benefits — 81 percent of SNAP households overall — would begin receiving about half their benefits in the form of government-purchased, nonperishable food items.

    Those foods would include shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned meat, fruits and vegetables, according to the USDA. The department estimates that it could supply these goods at about half the cost of retail, slashing the cost of SNAP while still feeding the hungry.

    “USDA America’s Harvest Box is a bold, innovative approach to providing nutritious food to people who need assistance feeding themselves and their families – and all of it is home grown by American farmers and producers,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “It maintains the same level of food value as SNAP participants currently receive, provides states flexibility in administering the program, and is responsible to the taxpayers.”

    No it doesn’t. Canned fruits and vegetables are no substitute for fresh ones.

    Many anti-hunger advocates and analysts are equally skeptical of the proposed “food box,” which — if approved — would affect 16.4 million households. They say it’s unclear how USDA would deliver the boxes and how much that would cost. Equally unclear is whether USDA would allot the same foods to, say, an elderly diabetic and a family with young children.

    “It boggles the mind how that would play out,” said Kathy Fisher, policy director at Philadelphia’s Coalition Against Hunger. “We know SNAP works now, when people can choose what they need. How they would distribute foods to people with specialized diets, or [to people in] rural areas … It’s very expensive and very complicated.”

    It’s punitive. That’s the only point, really – telling poor people they’re worthless and bad and deserve nothing better than canned spinach and stale pasta.

  • He wants the best for EVERYONE

    These people.

    White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was tasked Monday with explaining President Trump’s sympathetic comments about alleged spouse abuser Rob Porter. It went about as well as might be expected.

    Sanders beat back one question after another about why Trump has suggested that Porter might be innocent but has said nothing about the domestic violence of which Porter stands accused. Then she was asked why Trump opted to go even a step further and wish Porter success in his career — a comment that seemed odd given that this is a man accused of horrible things.

    Behold the spin:

    “I think the president of the United States hopes that all Americans can be successful in whatever they do,” Sanders said. “And if they’ve had any issues in the past — I’m not confirming or denying one way or the other — but if they do, the president wants success for all Americans.”

    She concluded: “He was elected to serve all Americans, and he hopes for the best for all American citizens across the country.”

    Men who beat up women included! Would you want him not to wish those men well? Would you want him to wish injury and torment and death on them? What kind of person are you? Are you some sort of sadistic perverted monster???

    Porter has been convicted of no crimes, of course, but wishing someone well inherently suggests that you think they are worthy of good things in the future. Trump didn’t say, “I wish Rob Porter well if he didn’t actually beat his wives.” Instead, the president just came out and said he hoped Porter would find success. “Well, we wish him well,” Trump said Friday. “He worked very hard. I found out about it recently, and I was surprised by it. But we certainly wish him well.” Trump added of Porter that “hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him.”

    There’s been no reporting that I’ve seen that he wished Porter’s ex-wives well. Did he ever express good wishes toward the women who said he assaulted them? Has he expressed good wishes toward any Democrats lately? How about Don Lemon or Rachel Maddow? James Comey? Robert Mueller?

    Image result for spin

  • We may do something in Moscow

    Don’t forget, Trump knows nothing of Russia, never had any dealings with Russians, never did any business there, just dropped in for a few minutes to grope the pussies at the Miss Universe Pajjunt.

  • Is that a rat we smell?

    I was thinking of Rachel Brand’s departure as another humiliation for Trump, but that appears to be wrong.

    Going to Walmart did seem like a squalid option, but I didn’t push it beyond that.

    Oh. Duh. Of course.

    The search is on for a replacement for Brand who will happily fire Mueller if asked…or else already waiting in the wings.

  • Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?

    Trump today.

    A response.

    The Times on Trump and the Central Park Five in October 2016:

    Donald J. Trump rarely apologizes. When it comes to the case of the Central Park Five, he has never even come close.

    In 1989, after these black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were accused of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park, Mr. Trump spent $85,000 placing full-page ads in the four daily papers in New York City, calling for the return of the death penalty.

    “Muggers and murderers,” he wrote, “should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.” Though he didn’t refer to the teenagers by name, it was clear to anyone in the city that he was referring to them.

    Incredibly, 14 years after their sentences were vacated based on DNA evidence and the detailed and accurate confession of a serial rapist named Matias Reyes, Mr. Trump has doubled down.

    “They admitted they were guilty,” he said in a statement to CNN this month. “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous.”

    They “admitted” they were at the scene after hours of coercive questioning without a lawyer or a parent present.

    The teenagers faced hours of intense interrogations with no lawyers present and often with no parent or guardian, even though they were just 14, 15 and 16 years old. They were denied food, drink and sleep over many hours. And they were terrified.

    The young men were all led to believe that they would be allowed to go home only if they said what the police wanted to hear. The four who gave statements admitted to having been present but blamed others for the rape, which they naïvely thought would not incriminate them.

    And then years later DNA evidence showed they hadn’t done it. So…it’s a “mere allegation” when it’s a white guy who works for Trump, and “the police say they were guilty” when it’s five black teenagers who don’t work for Trump. Sounds fair.

  • We hope he has a wonderful career

    Trump is feeling dismayed and ashamed that his administration hired a guy who beats up women.

    Just kidding. He’s feeling the opposite of that. Out loud.

    President Trump on Friday afternoon lavished praise on one of his former top aides, Rob Porter, who resigned earlier this week amid accusations that he physically, verbally and emotionally abused his two ex-wives.

    “We wish him well, he worked very hard,” Trump said to a small group of reporters at the White House, providing his first public comments on the topic. “We found out about it recently, and I was surprised by it, but we certainly wish him well, and it’s a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House, and we hope he has a wonderful career, and he will have a great career ahead of him. But it was very sad when we heard about it, and certainly he’s also very sad now. He also, as you probably know, says he’s innocent, and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent, so you have to talk to him about that, but we absolutely wish him well, he did a very good job when he was at the White House.”

    He’s very sad now, because he doesn’t have that plum job any more. The women he abused? Oh who cares about them, we’re talking about the feelings of the man here. He’s got a major sad because of that nice job he no longer has. Those bitches took it away from him. By the way they’re liars, I think you have to remember that.

    This is not the first time that the president has continued to embrace men close to him who have been accused of assault. In July 2016, Trump called his longtime friend Roger Ailes — who had just been ousted from Fox News amid accusations that he sexually harassed at least two dozen women — “a very, very good person” and cast suspicion on the accusers. In April 2017, Trump said that Bill O’Reilly — who, it had recently been revealed, paid millions in settlements to five women who accused him of sexual or verbal abuse — “a good person” who should not have settled because “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.” Late last year, Trump continued to support Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore — who was accused of sexual misconduct with teenagers — and noted that Moore “totally denies it.”

    And Trump himself has been accused of abuse by 13 women who have publicly claimed that Trump touched or kissed them without their permission. Trump has denied all of these accusations and cast all of his accusers as liars. In a 2005 “Access Hollywood” interview caught on a hot microphone, Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”

    And that’s the president of the United States.

  • On an index card please

    Well, this is what you get when you have a head of state who is

    • lazy
    • stupid
    • undisciplined
    • indifferent

    You get a head of state who refuses to read intelligence briefings.

    Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.

    Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

    Good joke. “Style of learning” of course means “taste in tv channels.” Learning is not a thing Donald Trump does.

    Soon after Trump took office, analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, who is known for taking in much of his information from conservative Fox News Channel hosts. The oral briefings were augmented with photos, videos and graphics.

    After several months, Trump made clear he was not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

    Of course he’s not interested in reviewing it. It’s not interesting to him – it’s not about him. God forbid he should do anything he’s not interested in.

    Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Trump “is an avid consumer of intelligence, appreciates the hard work of his briefers and of the entire intelligence community and looks forward every day to the give and take of his intelligence briefings.”

    Frankly, that sounds like the way people talk about someone with fairly advanced Alzheimer’s. “He looks forward to lunch every day.”

    Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the “homework” that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable.

    What is this “homework” of which you speak?

    The top-secret intelligence report, which dates in its current form to the Johnson administration, is made up of individual “articles” written by career analysts, mostly from the CIA. The PDB is so tightly controlled that intelligence officials maintain a log to record when the briefers provide a copy of the document to a principal and when they retrieve it, several officials said.

    Rob Porter was seeing it, up until he resigned two days ago. No security clearance, but he was seeing it, because the Staff Secretary does.

    Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m.

    After he’s watched his five or six hours of Fox and Friends.

    One senior White House official described the Oval Office briefing as a distilled version of the sessions that senior administration officials receive earlier in the day. CIA Director Mike Pompeo usually attends the session, as does Coats.

    During Trump’s briefing, a veteran intelligence official typically describes intelligence highlights contained in a shortened, written version of the PDB. Trump has rarely, if ever, requested that the document be left behind for him to read, according to people familiar with the meetings.

    He might as well be a doll they wheel out for public occasions.

    Pompeo has said the president is briefed on current developments, as well as upcoming events — such as visits by foreign leaders — and longer-term strategic issues.

    He has to know about the visits, because he has to go to that place with the wide armchairs and sit in his on the toilet position while the cameras go click click click.

    Trump’s admirers say he has a unique ability to cut through conventional foreign policy wisdom and ask questions that others have long taken for granted. “Why are we even in Somalia?” or “Why can’t I just pull out of Afghanistan?” he will ask, according to officials.

    Ah yes, the Wise Child routine. He’s like the Buddha. He has a unique ability to be so ignorant of the world around him and the country he claimed the right to govern that he asks questions a child of four would ask. “Why is there even homework?” “Why does it have to be raining today?” “Why can’t I eat the whole box?” “Why can’t I drive the car?”

    Another person familiar with the briefing process said that, at times, Trump has been dismissive of his briefers. He has shaken his head, frowned and complained that the briefers were “talking down to him,” this person said.

    He has pouted, scowled, kicked the furniture, thrown the briefing out the window, flung himself down on the carpet and screamed. How dare the briefers “talk down to him” just because they know their subject and he knows nothing but what Fox tells him?

    Trump indicated early on that he had little interest in immersing himself in detailed intelligence documents.

    “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page,” he told Axios shortly before taking office.

    Of course he does. He likes as little as possible of everything except golf, rape, and showing off to adoring crowds.

    “He often goes off on tangents during the briefing and you’d have to rein him back in,” one official said.

    As people with immature or tau-riddled brains so often do.

  • Punch and Bam Bam

    Michelle Goldberg is forced to conclude that the Trump administration thinks violence against women just doesn’t matter all that much.

    Even if you put aside questions of morality — which most people working for Donald Trump have already done — a staff secretary who can’t qualify for a security clearance because of his personal life is a serious security risk. Among other things, such a person could be subject to blackmail.

    The staff secretary reads everything that goes to the president’s desk; it’s one of the most sensitive jobs in government. Rajesh De served as Barack Obama’s staff secretary from 2010 to 2012, after which he joined the National Security Agency as general counsel. “I was exposed to a far wider array of classified and sensitive information in the White House job than as the top lawyer at the National Security Agency,” he told me.

    It’s hard to see why Kelly, who was supposed to be the disciplined adult in this administration, would cover for Porter. Unless, that is, he genuinely couldn’t grasp that domestic violence is a big deal.

    He doesn’t think it’s a big deal to tell ugly lies about an African-American member of Congress and then refuse to withdraw or apologize for them after journalists document what lies they are. His moral compass points to Whatev.

    To be fair to Kelly, this administration has made it clear that it’s not. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery and dissuading a witness after a 1996 altercation with his second wife; the case was dismissed when she didn’t show up to testify against him. According to reporting by Politico’s Eliana Johnson, the abuse charges were the origin of Trump’s derisive nickname for Bannon: “Bam Bam.”

    Hoho, isn’t that adorable. What’s Bannon’s nickname for Trump, Yanky?

    Porter and both of his ex-wives are Mormons, and, speaking to The Intercept, Willoughby described confiding in a Mormon official about her husband’s fits of rage. She was told to think about how Porter’s career might suffer if she spoke out. Powerful people in Washington seem to have been similarly worried, first and foremost, about protecting the ambitious and pedigreed young man.

    Porter once worked for Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, and in The Daily Mail, the senator categorically dismissed the accusations and, whether he meant to or not, the women making them. “Shame on any publication that would print this — and shame on the politically motivated, morally bankrupt character assassins that would attempt to sully a man’s good name,” he said.

    Sullying a woman’s face with punches is apparently a much smaller infraction.

  • To make Donald Trump feel big and strong

    More thoughts on Trump’s parade-envy.

    We should note that while Trump was impressed with the Bastille Day parade he attended in France, he has been hoping for a military parade for a lot longer. As Trump told The Post before taking office a year ago:

    “That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”

    I remember that. I think I probably ranted about it here. I remember the disgust I felt.

    The news of this urgent parade mobilization comes just after Trump complained at a rally that Democrats who failed to applaud sufficiently for him during the State of the Union address had committed a crime punishable by death. “Shall we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much,” he said.

    It can be hard not to get inured to the stupid, appalling and despicable things that come out of Trump’s mouth, but linger for a moment on that. The president said that not applauding him is treason against America.

    No doubt he thinks of the military as his personal set of soldiers, just as he thinks of the Justice Department as his Justice Department. None of it is ours, all of it is his.

    This parade is surpassingly dumb for any number of reasons both practical and symbolic. It will not only cost millions of dollars, it will divert the participants and planners from their actual jobs defending the country. How many hours of practicing, how many personnel pulled from their duties to handle the logistics, how much in transport costs and cleanup costs and repairs to streets ripped up by tank treads will the whole thing involve?

    Many many many hours of practicing – I saw a senior military dude pointing that out with emphasis on CNN last night. The troops hate parades, he said, because it takes endless practice to get it right, and they have things to do other than marching. Marching doesn’t actually accomplish anything, he noted.

    We all know what the real purpose of a parade is: not to show that the American military is big and strong, but to make Donald Trump feel big and strong. Don’t be surprised to read afterward that Trump had to be talked out of appearing in a military dress uniform complete with decorative medals and a golden sash.

    Talked out of it? Are we confident that he will be talked out of it?

    n reality, like everything Trump orders, this will be about him, not about the troops or America or anything else. He is the most self-focused president we’ve ever had. This is a man who regularly refers to “my generals and my military” and says things such as “I’ve created over a million jobs since I’m president,” who slaps his name on everything in sight, who is so childishly self-centered that his national security briefers make sure to mention him every few paragraphs in any document they give him, knowing that’s the only way he’ll read it.

    And many Republicans can’t get enough of it. They cheer his attacks on any media outlet that doesn’t give him glowing coverage, they join in the assault he launches on whoever he decides is his enemy today, they pretend it’s no big deal when a hostile foreign power meddles in our elections so long as it helps Trump, they proclaim him the great and noble leader America has been thirsting for. They do all this for a man who possesses not a single identifiable human virtue.

    And so far it’s not even harming them all that much. Why? Partly, at least, because so many of us actually like that kind of thing.

    This guy for instance.

    https://twitter.com/jeanneheo/status/958120713147228162?lang=en

  • Of course he does

    Oh christ.

    Trump wants a military parade.

    President Trump’s vision of soldiers marching and tanks rolling down the boulevards of Washington is moving closer to reality in the Pentagon and White House, where officials say they have begun to plan a grand military parade later this year showcasing the might of America’s armed forces.

    Just like China! And Russia! And Nazi Germany!

    Shows of military strength are not typical in the United States — and they don’t come cheap. The cost of shipping Abrams tanks and high-tech hardware to Washington could run in the millions, and military officials said it was unclear how they would pay for it.

    And why would we do it? What for? It’s well known that we have a massive military, so what could the point possibly be? Just because Little Trumpy likes a spectacle and what baby wants baby gets?

    [T]he official said Trump is determined to have a parade. “The president wants to do something that highlights the service and sacrifice of the military and have a unifying moment for the country,” the official said.

    I can think of other, better, more meaningful, less militaristic ways of doing the first, and the second is just insulting coming from him. If he really wants a unifying moment he could stop being such a pig.

    He wants one because he saw one for Bastille Day when he was in Paris last summer, and he’s jealous.

    “It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” Trump told reporters. “It was two hours on the button, and it was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France.”

    Couldn’t they just have a circus for him instead? Or he could go to the Winter Olympics? Or the opera? Does it really have to be about the guns and tanks and planes and bombs?

    If he wanted all that he could have enlisted back in the day, bone spurs and all.

    Even before he was sworn in as president, Trump was dreaming of America’s war machine on display for the country and the world in front of the White House or Capitol.

    “We’re going to show the people as we build up our military,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post before his inauguration. “. . . That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”

    Of course he was. He’s that stupid and childish and empty. “Ima be president, Ima have lotsa sojers marching in front of me alla time!”

    With a few exceptions — such as President George H.W. Bush’s 1991 parade down Constitution Avenue celebrating victory in the Persian Gulf War — presidents have avoided displays of military hardware that are more associated in the American mind with the Soviet Union’s Red Square celebrations or, more recently, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s efforts to show off his Taepodong missiles.

    “I don’t think there’s a lack of love and respect for our armed forces in the United States,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “What are they going to do, stand there while Donald Trump waves at them? It smacks of something you see in a totalitarian country — unless there’s a genuine, earnest reason to be doing it.”

    Trumpy’s excitement about the big toys does not count as that genuine reason.

    The White House official said a parade would have nothing to do with Trump’s feuds with Kim, but would be designed as a broad show of strength to send a warning to all of America’s adversaries.

    Yeeeeeeeah those two things are pretty much the same.

    One of George W. Bush’s biggest blunders as president came in 2003 when he landed on an aircraft carrier bearing a “Mission Accomplished” banner to claim victory in the Iraq War.

    Former aides say Bush would have loved a big parade, but they recognized a problem: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never ended. Such subtleties — the U.S. is now dropping bombs in seven countries — don’t seem to have factored into Trump’s calculations.

    Trumpy doesn’t do subtleties. He wouldn’t recognize one if it bit him.

    Image result for military parade

  • Unpatriotic and servile

    The first Roosevelt president, Theodore, in May 1918, when Woodrow Wilson was in the office:

    The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

    — The Kansas City Star, 7 May 1918

    The bolded bit is popular right now, thanks for instance to Senator Tammy Duckworth: