Tag: Trump

  • Guest post: Violent jihadis need Trump, and he needs them

    Originally a comment by AJ Milne on They cried all day.

    I do not, for an instant, believe the Trump administration has any real interest in reducing tensions with the Muslim world, nor actually encouraging modernisation, secularisation, there or anywhere else, nor undercutting the appeal of violent Islamism. Let alone, of all things, encouraging women to succeed in STEM disciplines, in Afghanistan or anywhere else.

    … on that former thing: it’s no more in his interest than it’s in the interest of any would-be strongman who relies upon a perceived/created need for ‘security’ to maintain power. An infinite supply of visceral but largely ineffectual terror events supplies that need perfectly. Polarised, broken, angry, powerless populations supply these, in turn.

    There’s always been a hand-in-glove relationship between extremists at odds with a security state and its masters. Violent jihadis need Trump, and he, in turn, needs them. He doesn’t want education, development, opportunities that make good on the promise of a prosperous, plural, healthily interdependent world. He wants missiles, death, and photo-opportunities in which he can strut the power of his security services. Violence overseas or at home, stirring the fear of his domestic population, either way, that’s a message he can use. Women who build robots? Hardly. Two strikes, right there. Smart women–probably among his greatest fears–and technology that doesn’t deliver missiles? Neither goes anywhere helpful for him.

    And yeah, it’s an obscenity. What these women do and have done should be hope for the world, hope for the future…

    So, there’s a certain horrific, depressing perfection in this story, in short. For my money, this is Trumpism in a nutshell.

  • A hostile environment for performing artists

    Sackbut alerted us to this infuriating clusterfuck:

    Immigration lawyers believe the State Department has been denying more artist visas after President Trump ordered heightened vetting for all visa applications earlier this year.

    In a March 6 memo, released after Trump issued his second executive order on immigration, the president directed “immediate implementation of additional heightened screening and vetting protocols and procedures for issuing visas.” The memo, according to some prominent attorneys who specialize in artist travel, has further complicated the subjective process international artists must navigate to perform in the U.S., and in some cases, [had an impact on] programming for local arts organizations.

    Programmers at the Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF), a Grammy-winning event that caters to Renaissance and Baroque music enthusiasts, were surprised and dismayed in May, when, for the first time, U.S. immigration services denied four of the 26 visa applications BEMF applied for. The visas were for the four young women of the German group, Boreas Quartett Bremen. The group, who plays handmade recorders, had to cancel their performance in Boston.

    What.the.hell. What’s the thinking here? One of them might be a terrorist on the side? You just never can tell with people weird enough to play handmade recorders?

    “I was rather shocked. Our audience has really missed out on a unique and beautiful performance,” said Shannon Canavin, the festival’s visa specialist. Canavin has been filing artists’ applications for more than 20 years and had not encountered a denial until this year.

    In 2016, the U.S. issued more than 63,866 O and P visas, which enable athletes, entertainment groups or other people with extraordinary abilities in the sciences or business and those traveling with them to visit the U.S. for short term contractual employment and performances. In March and April of this year, the only months the State Department has released data for, the U.S issued only 697 of those visas. (Monthly tallies for visas issued in 2016 are not available.) A State Department spokesperson said the government released information on the number of visas issued in March and April after the president ordered the department to “quantify the national security work of our consular operations around the world.”

    S0 last year the monthly rate was 5322, so 10,644 for two months, compared to 697 for two months this year. Bit of a drop.

    It’s insane. It’s appalling. Cultural exchanges of this kind are good things, and piggy ignorant philistine vulgarian Trump is stamping them out, because he’s so stupid he thinks “foreigner=likely terrorist” – except of course for the citizens of our beloved ally Saudi Arabia.

    “What we’re seeing right now is an awful lot more skepticism from officers,” said Matthew Covey, an immigration lawyer and the co-founder of Tamizdat, a nonprofit that advises and advocates for traveling artists. “The delays that you’re going to be experiencing in getting those visas are longer than they would have been a year ago… What is a broader effect, I think, is that there is a pervasive sense in the international community that the U.S. is becoming a hostile environment for performing artists.”

    Of course.

    He shames us all. He shames the country and he shames us.

  • “Their agenda is not your agenda”

    Jim Acosta of CNN tweets what Trump said at the theocratic fascist rally at the Kennedy Center (of all places) last night:

     

    My administration is transferring power outside of Washington and returning it to where it belongs, the people. The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them. The people know the truth. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, but I’m president and they’re not.

    The fact is the press destroyed themselves because they went too far. Instead of being subtle and smart, they used the hatchet, and the people saw it right from the beginning.

    The dishonest media will not stop us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of the American people. Their agenda is not your agenda.

    He’s hate-mongering, in a very fascist way. He is inciting violence, and he’s not going to stop.

  • “Isn’t pro wrestling fake?”

    The view from overseas:

    The US President has tweeted a short video clip of him wrestling a person with the CNN logo for a head.

    The clip is an altered version of Donald Trump’s appearance at a WWE wrestling event in 2007, in which he “attacked” franchise owner Vince McMahon in a scripted appearance.

    …

    After the president’s tweets, Reddit users expressed disbelief at the president’s use of the clip.

    It was also retweeted by the official presidential Twitter account, @POTUS, operated by the White House.

    Mr Trump has repeatedly clashed with the CNN news network, which he calls “fake news”.

    CNN’s top White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who has been critical of the White House’s attitude to the press, simply tweeted: “Isn’t pro wrestling fake?”

    Isn’t Trump fake? He’s about as authentic a president as he is a pro wrestler.

    Rajini Vaidyanathan says Trump’s insults of women journalists inspire others to join in.

    During the election Donald Trump often taunted female reporters who covered him, which in turn encouraged a small section of his supporters to follow suit.

    The most high-profile example of this was NBC’s Katy Tur, who was dubbed “Little Katy” and “third rate” by Mr Trump, who said her tweets were lies.

    It led to her having secret service protection, for fear of attacks.

    It wasn’t just Katy Tur. Other reporters, myself included, have been at the receiving end of online abuse, when covering Mr Trump. Some of his supporters have sent me racist and sexist messages, calling me everything from a “whore” and a “bitch”, to a “terrorist” and a “tea girl”.

    And while men are targeted too, women bear the brunt of it when it comes to remarks about appearance, and judgements about intellect.

    This has been a trend which pre-dates President Trump’s time in office, but Soraya Chemaly, the director at the Women Media Center’s Speech Project, argues the president’s language legitimises this behaviour.

    “It falls into a pattern of him displaying a disgust for women and their bodies. This kind of examination of women is pretty standard in our culture – public commentary on women and the way they look fuels major sectors of the economy, so there’s really nothing that will stop the president,” she says.

    We have always been at war with Women.

  • “No one would perceive that as a threat”

    Trump’s tweet about CNN is making headlines because it’s a threat of violence. The Washington Post for instance:

    A day after defending his use of social media as befitting a “modern day” president, President Trump appeared to promote violence against CNN in a tweet.

    Trump, who is on vacation at his Bedminster golf resort, posted on Twitter an old video clip of him performing in a WWE professional wrestling match, but with a CNN logo superimposed on the head of his opponent. In the clip, Trump is shown slamming the CNN avatar to the ground and pounding him with simulated punches and elbows to the head. Trump added the hastags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN, for “fraud news network.”

    He’s unfit. Period. He’s not fit for this job. He’s disgracing the whole country and he should be speedily removed from office.

    The video clip apparently had been posted days earlier on Reddit, a popular social media message board. The president’s tweet was the latest escalation in his beef with CNN over its coverage of him and his administration.

    No. It was the latest outburst of inappropriate childish taunting and inappropriate dangerous incitement to violence against the free press from a sitting president.

    On ABC’s “This Week,” homeland security adviser Tom Bossert dismissed the idea that the tweet might be a threat, while he praised the president for “genuine” communication.

    “No one would perceive that as a threat; I hope they don’t,” Bossert said, referring to the tweet.

    Can you imagine if Obama had done the equivalent? They’ll excuse anything, these fascism apologists.

    In a statement tweeted out by CNN media reporter Brian Stelter, CNN called it “a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters.” The network cited Trump’s “juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office. We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”

    The company’s communications department Twitter account responded to Trump’s tweet by quoting White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders during a briefing last week when she said: “The president in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary.”

    In the statement, CNN said: “Clearly, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied when she said the President had never done so.”

    We’re living in a sewer in this country.

    Trump also spent a chunk of a speech at the Celebrate Freedom rally for veterans and religious freedom at the Kennedy Center on Saturday night denouncing and taunting the media.

    “The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them. The people know the truth,” Trump said. “The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, but I’m president and they’re not.”

    Neener neener, he finished, and then he curled up in a ball and put his thumb in his mouth and went to sleepy-byes.

  • The cornered animal

    I generally avoid Maureen Dowd, but she summons some eloquence on the Monster in Chief:

    The 71-year-old president’s pathological inability to let go of slights; his strongman reflex to be the aggressor and bite back like a cornered animal, without regard for societal norms; his lack of self-awareness about the power he commands and the proportionality of his responses; his grotesque hunger for flattery and taste for Tony Soprano tactics; his Pravda partnership with David Pecker, the head honcho at The National Enquirer, which has been giving Trump the Il Duce treatment while sliming his political opponents, the “Morning Joe” anchors and Megyn Kelly — these are all matters that should alarm men and women equally.

    Trump has moved his shallow kiddie wading pool of gossip and ridicule from Trump Tower to the White House, where it is so outlandishly out of place that it often feels like we have a Page Six reporter as our president.

    The cornered animal and the kiddie wading pool are good metaphors.

    Before he got to D.C., Trump was used to media that could be bought, sold and bartered with. He is not built for this hostile environment and it shows in his deteriorating psychological state. Even though he’s in the safest space of all, he’s not in a safe space.

    Trump has always been obsessed with looks — his own, men’s and women’s. One of his favorite phrases is “Here’s the beauty of me.” He walks through life as though he’s the judge in an ’80s swimsuit contest — even with his own wives and older daughter. “She’s got the best body,” was his typical refrain about Ivanka.

    Or as though he’s Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, grading all the female students on their looks. Word is he’s thinking about running for president next time.

    Then we get a bit of new information:

    I gave Trump the benefit of the doubt after his comment on Megyn Kelly about “blood coming out of her wherever” when he claimed he meant her nose. But later, a longtime Trump associate told me that Trump had practiced that line before he said it on CNN and that it was meant to evoke an image of Kelly as hormonal.

    No low is too low.

  • Dispatches from the White House

    Still ringing the same bells.

    He thinks Trudeau likes him. He always thinks people like him if they’re not openly rude to him. For awhile he was telling us Obama liked him, because Obama was polite to him in their meeting. Yeah, right, Don, Obama likes you in spite of the whole birther thing. Sure he does.

    The president of the Yooonited States, everyone, gossiping about a Fox News personality.

    Attacking the free press again. (Also getting it wrong a Fake News outlet would not have fired the reporters. Just look at Fox.)

    And, finally, the screaming toddler makes yet another appearance.

  • Evidence

    Brian Stelter clarifies what Mika Brzezinski actually looked like last New Year’s.

  • Imagine

    It’s being a tragic day. Let’s play a popular game I just invented called Fantasy Headlines.

    Trump Dragged Away Screaming by Federal Marshalls

    Trump Extradited to ICC for Crimes Against Humanity

    Trump Convicted on Multiple Counts of Fraud, Corruption, Perjury, Witness Tampering

    Sentenced to 375 years

    Rape Victim Wins Case Against Trump

    Awarded 7 billion dollars in damages, vows to share with Trump’s other victims

    Trump’s Hair Sculpture Blown Off in Sudden Unexpected Gale

    Trump Addresses Rally in Omaha

    Crowd laughs, heckles, throws popcorn

    Trump Found to Owe the US Public 3 Trillion Dollars

    Judge draws up payment plan

    Trump Tower on the market for 600k

    Mar-a-Lago Alligator Attacks Trump

    Nothing left but the red baseball cap

  • Trump’s true self

    Michelle Goldberg points out that Trump is a pig.

    There’s a lot you can say about these tweets; among other things, it’s striking that Trump thinks that when journalists seek access to him, it means they like him. But I was most struck by Trump’s raw misogyny. Obviously, that’s not because Trumpian misogyny is anything new, but because, from the time he was inaugurated until this week, he’s mostly been holding it in.

    Trump does not get much credit for being disciplined, but for the last five months, he’s mostly checked his tendencies to leeringly appraise women’s looks, at least in public. (Vanity Fair did report in April that during a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister, “the president told an acquaintance that he was obsessed with the translator’s breasts.”) So far, there’s been no reported pussy-grabbing in the Oval Office, no stumbling in[to] women’s changing rooms or fantasizing aloud about female subordinates on their knees. Instead Trump, like other Republicans before him, has sublimated his misogyny into policies: expanding the global gag rule, sabotaging federal family planning programs, eroding enforcement of the law against gender discrimination in education.

    But the pressure and stress have been steadily increasing.

    When you’re under pressure, it can be harder to hide your true self. And Trump’s true self is a pig.

    She read my mind. President Pig is what I’ve been calling him all morning.

    On Tuesday, Trump interrupted a phone call with Ireland’s Prime Minister to sexually harass an Irish journalist named Caitriona Perry. Calling her forward, he said, “And where are you from? Go ahead. Come here, come here. Where are you from? We have all of this beautiful Irish press.” She stepped forward awkwardly and he looked her over. Then, returning to the call, he said with a smirk, “She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well.”

    Trump’s insult of Brzezinski is the other side of this connoisseurship. To Trump, women’s worth lies in their fuckability; it’s why he’s praised his own daughter by saying he’d sleep with her if they weren’t related. Trump’s tweet was meant to make Brzezinski seem grotesque and pathetic, a failure in the struggle to remain attractive—the only struggle that, in his eyes, really matters for women.

    Plus the bleeding thing, which again betrays his piggish revulsion at women for menstruating.

    I’m not sure that even well-intentioned men understand how relentlessly degrading this presidency is for many women. Having a man who does not recognize the humanity of more than half the population in a position of such power is a daily insult; it never really goes away. Perhaps this is why many women found the TV version of The Handmaid’s Tale so resonant, even though Trump, the former owner of a casino strip club, is the last person one can imagine instituting a Calvinist theocracy. Gilead’s fictional dystopia captures our constant incredulous horror at finding ourselves ruled by thuggish, unaccountable woman-haters who appear to revel in their own impunity.

    Yep. It’s not an accident that I keep citing the way he talks about Elizabeth Warren and Alicia Machado among others.

    It is an incredible horror living in a country with that man as its executive.

  • Ten times harder

    The more I think about it the more staggering – and yet all too predictable – it is that Melania Trump’s people think it’s fine to justify his vulgar sexist vicious tweets by saying: “As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder.”

    In fact you could read that as a captive Melania signaling to the rest of us. “I keep telling you – he’s an authoritarian bully who thinks he’s the only important person in the world.”

    But you can also read it more straightforwardly as his wife dutifully saying what he would say: nobody has any right to criticize The Great and Awesome Donald Trump, and if anyone does dare to criticize him, he will retaliate not with an equivalent response but with ten times more venom. You criticize him, he will tear you into pieces and feed you to the alligators.

    He has everything backward. He’s ignoring the fact that taking the job of head of state means having to put up with endless criticism and dissent and indeed mockery. He thinks it works the other way – that once you’re head of state  you have the power to force people to say you’re awesome.

    Not yet you don’t, Donnie. Not yet.

  • In unusually personal and vulgar terms

    The Times on Trump’s vulgar attack on a woman tv host:

    President Trump assailed the television host Mika Brzezinski on Thursday in unusually personal and vulgar terms, the latest of a string of escalating attacks by the president on the national news media.

    And women. There’s more than one pattern here. There’s Trump’s loathing and disgust at women as well as his hatred of independent journalism.

    The graphic nature of the president’s suggestion that Ms. Brzezinski had undergone plastic surgery was met with immediate criticism on social media. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, wrote on Twitter, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And a spokesman for NBC News, Mark Kornblau, wrote on Twitter: “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘It is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’ ”

    In a statement Thursday morning, MSNBC said, “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

    Ms. Sanders, in an interview on Fox News, defended Mr. Trump’s tweets.

    “I don’t think that the president has ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back,” she told the Fox anchor Bill Hemmer. “This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media, and the liberal elites within the media.”

    No, this is not a president who fights fire with fire. It’s a president who fights criticism with vulgar sexist trashy personal insults.

    Jenna Johnson at the Post:

    President Trump lashed out at the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in two vicious tweets on Thursday morning, calling Mika Brzezinski “I.Q. Crazy” and claiming that she had a facelift late last year.

    Brian Stelter at CNN:

    Even by President Trump’s standards, these tweets were shocking.

    On Thursday morning, while MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was on the air, Trump posted a pair of hateful tweets about co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

    …

    Trump claimed that Scarborough and Brzezinski courted him for an interview at Mar-a-Lago around the New Year’s Eve holiday.

    “She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” the president wrote.

    He actually said yes, according to accounts of their meeting. Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski mingled with guests and had a private chat.

    For the record, photos from Mar-a-Lago do not show any blood or bandages on Brzezinski’s face.

    Imagine my surprise to learn it was a lie as well as a vulgar trashy insult.

    Stunned commenters on social media noted that Trump targeted both hosts with his barbed tweets, but only opined on the physical appearance of the woman involved.

    Democratic commentator Maria Cardona, speaking on CNN, said it was part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior by Trump.

    And not what you’d call a subtle or stealthy one.

    Melania Trump is fine with it though.

    First lady Melania Trump is standing by President Donald Trump’s Thursday morning tweets criticizing MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski.

    No no no – don’t normalize it. He wasn’t “criticizing” them.

    “As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” the first lady’s communications director Stephanie Grisham said in a statement to CNN when asked about the tweets.

    Er…? That’s the definition of a bully.

    Also, it’s wholly inappropriate for an elected head of state. We’re allowed to criticize him, indeed it’s our civic duty to criticize him if he’s wrong or incompetent or a vulgar trashy misogynist bully.

    We’re living in a sewer in this country. A sewer.

  • A nation’s pride

    Ladies and gentlemen – the PRESident of the UNIted STATES!

    Hail to the Chief plays in the background

  • Call your office, sir

    Another abusive Trump lie mocked.

    I don’t think we’ve ever had a president who lied so openly and shamelessly and frequently and repeatedly. In fact it may be logistically impossible for us to have had such a thing, since Twitter was founded in 2006 and Bush and Obama used it only sparingly (and formally). Before Twitter there was no medium to lie this openly and repeatedly. Nixon may for all I know have told more lies in total, or more on a daily basis, but he didn’t also do it so openly, because he had no mechanism to do it that way. He could have given multiple press conferences every day but that would have been weird. No, Twitter is unique this way, and Trump loves him some Twitter.

    He degrades himself and us every day with this childish lying.

  • Textbook paternalistic sexism

    Was Trump’s revolting condescension to the Irish reporter Caitriona Perry sexist? Did Hitler have a silly moustache?

    The exchange, which was captured on video and widely shared on social media, drew criticism about how Mr. Trump treats women and the message it sent about the attitude toward women as professionals in their fields.

    Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation, said on Wednesday that she had heard about the episode in passing.

    After a transcript of the exchange was read to her over the phone, she said: “Oh, Lord. I wish I could say this is a surprise.”

    She said such occurrences were not limited to Mr. Trump, adding that female journalists are frequently called out for their appearance, their hair and the way they dress.

    Comments like the president’s detract from a woman’s value as a professional, she said.

    “We absolutely do not see that happening with male reporters,” she said. “I don’t know what the solution to this is. It does need to be called out. It does need to stop.”

    But if it stops there will never be sex ever again!! Look out!!!

    Kris Macomber, an assistant professor of sociology at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., said in an email that Mr. Trump’s comments reflect “textbook paternalistic sexism,” which is often couched in a “ ‘playful’ tone, as if she should feel flattered.”

    “Donald Trump’s track record for sexist remarks is well documented, and this particular case fits right in line with his previous remarks,” she wrote. “He didn’t say those things for Perry’s sake; rather he said those things to show all the people in the room (and the cameras) that he’s the kind of man who flirts with women he considers attractive.”

    And bullies and attacks women he considers unattractive. He’s a Smart Consumer who Knows what he Likes.

  • “I bet she treats you well”

    A weird little incident in the weird life of weird Donnie, that shows how weird he is even – or especially – when he’s trying to be Pleasant.

    While President Trump spoke over the phone with Ireland’s new prime minister Leo Varadkar Tuesday, congratulating him on his recent win, he made eye contact with a female reporter in the room.

    “We have a lot of your Irish press watching us right now,” President Trump told Varadkar, informing him that the whole conversation was taking place in a room full of journalists with cameras running.

    He pointed at Irish reporter Caitríona Perry, U.S. bureau chief for RTÉ News, telling her to come over to his desk.

    “We have all of this beautiful Irish press,” Trump said to the prime minister, and asked Perry, “Where are you from?”

    Are you thinking Perry is middle-aged and journalistically rumpled? Of course you’re not. She’s what you would guess from the fact that Trump ogled her and called her over and babbled about “this beautiful Irish press” – on the phone to the Taoiseach of Ireland.

    Perry approached Trump and introduced herself.

    “She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well,” Trump said.

    Yeah, she gives him blow jobs, even though he’s gay. Nicely put, Don.

  • Fake news

    This is making me laugh. Trump has fake covers of Time magazine with none other than Donald Trump himself hanging in some of his golf clubs. Fake ones. Fake.

    The framed copy of Time Magazine was hung up in at least five of President Trump’s clubs, from South Florida to Scotland. Filling the entire cover was a photo of Donald Trump.

    “Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” the big headline said. Above the Time nameplate, there was another headline in all caps: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS . . . EVEN TV!”

    This cover — dated March 1, 2009 — looks like an impressive memento from Trump’s pre-presidential career. To club members eating lunch, or golfers waiting for a pro-shop purchase, it seemed to be a signal that Trump had always been a man who mattered. Even when he was just a reality-TV star, Trump was the kind of star who got a cover story in Time.

    Except he wasn’t.

    Look at that handsome important successful steely-eyed man of steel. Not a trace of fish-mouth, the absurd hair-sculpture obscured by the word TIME, the arms folded in Power Mode – at a quick glance he looks every bit as important and businessy as your average manager of an insurance office in Tulsa. Every bit. He’s an ornament to the cover of Time. Only it’s fake.

    Fake.

    The Time cover is a fake.

    There was no March 1, 2009, issue of Time Magazine. And there was no issue at all in 2009 that had Trump on the cover.

    In fact, the cover on display at Trump’s clubs, observed recently by a reporter visiting one of the properties, contains several small but telling mistakes. Its red border is skinnier than that of a genuine Time cover, and, unlike the real thing, there is no thin white border next to the red. The Trump cover’s secondary headlines are stacked on the right side — on a real Time cover, they would go across the top.

    And it has two exclamation points. Time headlines don’t yell.

    Hahahaha and where are they? On the flattering headlines about Trump. This is the guy who used to call reporters using a fake name to tell them what that guy Donald Trump had been up to lately.

    “I can confirm that this is not a real TIME cover,” Kerri Chyka, a spokeswoman for Time Inc., wrote in an email to The Washington Post.

    At 5 p.m. Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Time said that the magazine had asked the Trump Organization to remove the phony cover from the walls where it was on display.

    So how did Trump — who spent an entire campaign and much of his presidency accusing the mainstream media of producing “fake news” — wind up decorating his properties with a literal piece of phony journalism?

    Oh that’s easy. He’s an unselfconscious liar who simply doesn’t care that he has one law for himself and another for everyone else. Another word for that is “psychopath.”

    Trump’s corporation didn’t answer questions on the subject. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said can’t comment.

    He is such a dork.

  • They know an empty suit when they see one

    In news that will surprise no one, Pew has found that Trump does not inspire confidence around the world.

    Faith in American leadership has plunged in many nations around the world in the months since President Trump took office, according to a new survey, underscoring the challenges facing the new president as he prepares to make his second overseas trip next week.

    Just 22 percent of those interviewed outside the United States expressed confidence in Mr. Trump to do the right thing, compared with 64 percent who had similar confidence in the late stages of President Barack Obama’s administration, according to the Pew Research Center. In only two of 37 countries in the survey did Mr. Trump fare better than Mr. Obama: Russia and Israel.

    “Trump and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe, and ratings for the U.S. have declined steeply in many nations,” the center said in a report released on Monday. “The sharp decline in how much global publics trust the U.S. president on the world stage is especially pronounced among some of America’s closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada.”

    The findings come despite concerted efforts by Mr. Trump to build relationships with world leaders. On Monday, he met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at the White House and he is scheduled to host President Moon Jae-in of South Korea for a two-day visit starting on Thursday. As president, he has brought the leaders of China and Japan to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and telephoned other world leaders dozens of times.

    Yes, he apparently loves to call them up and shmooze, just as he did with Comey. He apparently thinks this is effective and winning, on account of how he has such a lovable charismatic personality. Me? I think world leaders must dread hearing that Donnie is on the phone again.

    He’s off to Poland and Germany next week. Vlad will be there, so maybe the BFFs will finally get the chance to huddle together and really cement their bromance. Trump will have no clue that Vlad is toying with him.

    Mr. Trump’s first international trip, last month, won him praise from Arab and Israeli leaders in the Middle East but alienated America’s traditional allies in Europe over issues like trade, climate change and the role of NATO.

    Not to mention his unbelievably bad manners, and his ignorance, and his stupidity.

    Sixty-two percent of those surveyed by Pew disapproved of the travel restrictions and more than 70 percent opposed the United States’ withdrawing from major trade and climate change agreements. Ninety-four percent of those interviewed in Mexico opposed Mr. Trump’s proposal for a border wall.

    But it is not just his specific policy agenda that creates antipathy in other countries. Seventy-five percent of those surveyed described Mr. Trump as arrogant, 65 percent called him intolerant and 62 percent said he was dangerous. Still, in a metric that may appeal to Mr. Trump, 55 percent characterized him as a strong leader.

    Not necessarily a compliment of course. A strong leader can be an authoritarian leader. Trump is not really strong, but he by god is authoritarian.

    The collapse in confidence in the president echoed that of the last phase of President George W. Bush’s tenure, when the Iraq war and the global financial crisis had sapped international faith in American leadership.

    The falling support was most pronounced among longtime American friends. While 93 percent in Sweden had faith in Mr. Obama to do the right thing, only 10 percent had such confidence in Mr. Trump, a drop of 83 percentage points. The drop was also large in Germany and the Netherlands (75 percentage points), South Korea (71 points), France (70 points), Spain (68 points) and Britain (57 points).

    In Mexico, only 5 percent expressed positive feelings about Mr. Trump, the least in any of the 37 countries. In Canada, confidence in the president fell from 83 percent to 22 percent, the lowest it has been in the 15 years that the survey has been conducted. In addition to the border wall, Mr. Trump’s threat to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement unless it is renegotiated to his liking has soured America’s closest neighbors.

    Make America great again, eh?

  • Ivanka Trump tries to stay out of politics

    Oh lordy the disconnect, the obliviousness, the lost up a tree with no map itude.

    Ivanka Trump, special assistant to the president, told Fox News on Monday: “I try to stay out of politics.”

    Trump was speaking to Fox & Friends, the morning show which this weekend broadcast an interview with Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

    “I try to stay out of politics,” Ivanka Trump said in answer to a question about her father’s use of Twitter to bypass most normal channels of presidential communication. “His political instincts are phenomenal. He did something that no one could have imagined he’d be able to accomplish.

    “I feel blessed just being part of the ride from day one and before. But he did something pretty remarkable. But I don’t profess to be a political savant.”

    Hey, here’s a fun fact – it’s not a ride. It’s not a family gig. It’s not perks and positions for the whole clan. Ivanka and the rest of the kids are not supposed to be on that ride. It’s a very serious job and the job is the job of one person, not one person and family. Ivanka Trump is in her 30s and was not living at home when Don was elected and she has no business setting herself up in the White House as if anybody had voted for her. Hello? Did no one ever bother to tell them this?

    Asked in the interview broadcast on Monday if she ever disagreed with her father – who has, for example, pursued policies on climate change, pulling out of the Paris agreement, that might be thought anathema to a registered New York Democrat, which she until recently was – the first daughter said: “So naturally, there are areas where there is disagreement.”

    Climate change, with women’s rights, is part of Ivanka Trump’s White House brief.

    “We’re two different human beings,” she continued. “I think it’s normal to not have 100% aligned viewpoints on every issue. I don’t think anyone operates like that with a parent, or within the context of an administration.

    “And I think that all different viewpoints being at the table is a positive thing. And I think one of the things that, in this country we

    And one thing we have a great deal too much of is the presence of random relatives of a raging narcissist incompetent in the White House.

  • Epithets

    Sometimes…I don’t know, I just want Donald Trump to be tied hand and foot to a chair while each of us is given five minutes to explain into his face exactly what is so terrible about him.

    It’s this.

    “Crazy” Bernie Sanders. “Crooked” Hillary. “Cryin’” Chuch Schumer. “Pocahontas.”

    That man. That man with the hideous facial expressions, the ludicrous hair sculpture, the flapping too-long tie, the inability to utter an intelligent sentence, the non-stop lies, the pushing people out of his way, the bullying handshakes, the mockery of a disabled reporter, the abuse of women he considers not attractive enough, the corruption, the incompetence, the fraud – the extra scoop of ice cream Just For Him – that man has the gall to use insulting epithets for other people.

    I would like 5 minutes to tell a pinioned Trump exactly why that makes him so contemptible and disgusting.