Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Florestan]

Trump says people 'flush the toilet 10 times' and seeks solution

"Americans are in the midst of a toilet-flushing epidemic, according to the president.

Speaking to the press on Friday, with the hammer of impeachment poised to fall and countless domestic and international crises to consider, Donald Trump took on a pressing enemy: poor water pressure caused by conservation laws.

"People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. They end up using more water," Trump said while talking with business owners about what he called ''commonsense" steps to end overregulation.

The government, Trump said, was investigating: "We're looking very strongly at sinks and showers," he said, prompting listeners to picture him staring as hard as he could at a tap."[...]

Simple, common-sense solution: shit 10 times, flush only the 10th time. 

What a moron!

[Todd]

Nancy sure did get testy and wag her finger a lot.  Oh no.

[Herman]

Pelosi was right to reject the "Do you hate Trump?" question. Large parts of the media, getting tired of the issues at stake in the impeachment proceedings, are trying to cast this as a sort of junior high spat. X doesn't want Y to be the most popular girl in class, etc, supposedly because this would make it more palatable to the tv viewers. In reality though it's a GOP strategy to keep the people away from what's happening. "The hearings are so boring nobody's watching," "It's  nothingburger," "They've got nothing"  -  that kind of stuff. So that's why Pelosi reacted the way she did.

[Todd]

Pelosi was right to reject the "Do you hate Trump?" question. Large parts of the media, getting tired of the issues at stake in the impeachment proceedings, are trying to cast this as a sort of junior high spat. X doesn't want Y to be the most popular girl in class, etc, supposedly because this would make it more palatable to the tv viewers. In reality though it's a GOP strategy to keep the people away from what's happening. "The hearings are so boring nobody's watching," "It's  nothingburger," "They've got nothing"  -  that kind of stuff. So that's why Pelosi reacted the way she did.

This is what passes for thoughtful analysis on GMG.

67.

[SimonNZ]

This is what passes for thoughtful analysis on GMG.

67.

groan...

this is what passes for a clever response in Todd's mind

If you've got a different perspective then share it, otherwise would you please just fuck off

[Todd]

groan...

this is what passes for a clever response in Todd's mind

If you've got a different perspective then share it, otherwise would you please just fuck off

So much powerful writing.  Wow.  Who knew you had it in you?

[dissily Mordentroge]

Purely academic at this point. The Russians own Trump's ass. Only idiots don't know this.

Totally agree but I do wish you could avoid summoning up such nauseating imagery.
Just seeing this nausiating little Putin puppet fully clothed is enough to induce vomiting.

[JBS]

Trump says people 'flush the toilet 10 times' and seeks solution

"Americans are in the midst of a toilet-flushing epidemic, according to the president.

Speaking to the press on Friday, with the hammer of impeachment poised to fall and countless domestic and international crises to consider, Donald Trump took on a pressing enemy: poor water pressure caused by conservation laws.

"People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once. They end up using more water," Trump said while talking with business owners about what he called ''commonsense" steps to end overregulation.

The government, Trump said, was investigating: "We're looking very strongly at sinks and showers," he said, prompting listeners to picture him staring as hard as he could at a tap."[...]

I deduce from this that our Fearless Leader has not figured out that when using dual flush toilets one pushes button number 2 after doing number 2, and that one only uses button number 1 after doing number 1.

[dissily Mordentroge]

investigating: "We're looking very strongly at sinks and showers," he said,

[SimonNZ]

Trump: Fox News 'panders' to Democrats by having on liberal guests

"President Trump on Sunday renewed his criticism of Fox News, claiming that the network was pandering to the Democratic Party by repeatedly hosting liberal lawmakers to discuss the impeachment inquiry.

"Don't get why @FoxNews puts losers on like @RepSwalwell (who got ZERO as presidential candidate before quitting), Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline and others who are Radical Left Haters," Trump said on Twitter just hours after Fox News anchor Chris Wallace hosted Cicilline, a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, on "Fox News Sunday."

"The Dems wouldn't let @FoxNews get near their bad ratings debates, yet Fox panders," Trump added, referencing the Democratic National Committee's decision to block Fox News from hosting a Democratic presidential primary debate. "Pathetic!"

Trump has repeatedly gone after Fox News and its hosts in recent months over their coverage of the impeachment inquiry and their willingness to talk to Democratic lawmakers about it. He singled out Fox News host Shannon Bream in late November, asking why she would "waste airtime" by hosting Swalwell, a Democratic congressman from California and a member of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

"Fox should stay with the people that got them there, not losers!" Trump said.

He also attacked Wallace as "nasty" and "obnoxious" earlier that month after the broadcaster aggressively questioned House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) over Trump's dealings with Ukraine.

On Sunday, Wallace and Cicilline, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, discussed Democrats' movement on drafting articles of impeachment against the president. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last week that she had directed the panel's chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), to move forward with that step.

Cicilline said on "Fox News Sunday" that the House had seen "a classic example of an impeachable offense."

"The focus is on the president's misconduct, asking a foreign government to interfere in our elections. ... I think all of the potential articles of impeachment are on the table. That will be a decision the Judiciary Committee makes, but the Judiciary Committee will have all the evidence," he said.

Most of Fox News's hosts have not commented on Trump's attacks. But Fox News host Neil Cavuto delivered a vigorous defense of Wallace after the president lashed out in November, saying in a monologue on his show that journalists are "obligated to question" the president and his defenders, even if it means "inviting your wrath."

"The best we can do as journalists is be fair to all, including you, Mr. President," Cavuto said. "That's not fake doing that. What is fake is not doing that. What is fake is saying Fox never used to do that. Mr. President, we have always done that."

The Hill has reached out to Fox News for comment.

"While you're busy tweeting insults, we're busy working to honor our oath of office to protect and defend the constitution and safeguard our democracy," Cicilline said in a tweet featuring Swalwell and Jayapal, a Democratic congresswoman from the state of Washington.  "[...]

[SimonNZ]

Trump called for Seoul evacuation at height of North Korea tensions, new book says

"Donald Trump called for the population of Seoul to be moved during an Oval Office meeting when tensions between the US and North Korea were at their height, according to a new book about the president's relations with the US military.

In Trump and his Generals: The Cost of Chaos, the national security and counter-terrorism expert Peter Bergen also gives new details of Trump's demands that the families of US service members in South Korea be evacuated, which the North Korean regime would have interpreted as a clear move towards war. In both cases, Trump's impetuous diktats were ignored by his top officials.

Bergen's book, the latest in a string of accounts of the president's erratic leadership on national security issues, is being published on Tuesday at a time when friction between Washington and Pyongyang is once more on the rise, after more than 18 months of detente and summitry. The North Korean leadership is threatening a resumption of missile tests, and a war of words between Trump and Kim Jong-un is simmering once more.

Trump has resurrected his nickname for Kim, "rocket man". North Korea conducted a missile engine test at a site that it had previously mothballed, and on Monday a senior regime official called the US president a "heedless and erratic old man."

The level of mutual hostility is still some way off from the worst period in 2017 when a conflict looked a real possibility.

In his book, Bergen – a vice-president of the New America thinktank – describes an Oval Office meeting on North Korea in mid-April 2017, after a string of North Korean missile tests. Trump's top national security officials were present and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency had made a model of a secret North Korean facility the size of coffee table, to illustrate the regime's covert programmes.

According to Bergen, Trump was also shown a satellite image of the Korean peninsula at night, showing the lights of China and South Korea and the blackness of North Korea in between. Trump initially mistook the void for an ocean. When he was shown the bright lights of Seoul just 30 miles south of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, the president asked: "Why is Seoul so close to the North Korean border?"

Trump had been repeatedly told that US freedom of action against North Korea was constrained by the fact that the regime's artillery could demolish the South Korean capital in retaliation for any attack, inflicting mass casualties on its population of 25 million.

"They have to move," Trump said, according to Bergen, who adds that his officials were initially unsure if the president was joking. But Trump then repeated the line. "They have to move!"

No action was taken in response to Trump's bizarre remark, but the situation grew steadily worse, with a series of North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile tests and a hydrogen bomb test in September 2017.

After watching a retired four-star general, Jack Keane, interviewed on Fox News in late January 2018, saying that US troops deployed to South Korea should not take their families with them, Bergen reports that Trump told his national security team: "I want an evacuation of American civilians from South Korea".

A senior official warned that such an evacuation would be interpreted as a signal that the US was ready to go to war, and would crash the South Korean stock market, but Trump is reported to have ignored the warning, telling his team: "Go do it!"

Alarmed Pentagon officials ignored the order, and – according to Bergen – Trump eventually dropped the idea. It was one of a number of occasions that the defense secretary at the time, James Mattis, ignored direction from the White House. He also refused to send defense department officials to a planned Korea war game at Camp David in the autumn of 2017, or to provide military options for intercepting North Korean ships suspected of sanctions busting."

[dissily Mordentroge]

Trumps behaviour might be explicable after several years of intensive psychotherapy ( if anyone qualified was willing to undertake it). However, nothing can explain the support he receives from Republicans in Congress.

[Herman]

Alternatively one could say that the course of the Republican Party has pointed towards the Useful Idiot type president since 1980.

Reagan and Bush junior were earlier iterations of the figurehead President who charms the electorate and delivers the judicial (longterm) changes. Plus deregulation and starve-the-beast deficit.

[SimonNZ]

Democrats to unveil 2 articles of impeachment Tuesday morning
They plan to charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

[drogulus]

Democrats to unveil 2 articles of impeachment Tuesday morning
They plan to charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

     GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz Says It's 'Weird' About Rudy Giuliani's Trip to Ukraine

Gaetz repeatedly argued it would be beneficial to Trump for Giuliani, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to testify on his behalf in front of the House impeachment inquiry. However, Trump has forbidden all of his top former and current officials from providing testimony to investigators.

     When Trump is impeached it will be because Trump refused to let his officials exonerate him. So sayeth Gaetz. Trump will martyr his innocent self for a higher cause.

[SimonNZ]

two via Wonkette:

IG Report Takes 476 Pages To Destroy Every Conspiracy Theory In Trump's Stupid Leaking Brain

Just When You Thought You Couldn't Respect Bill Barr Any Less

[SimonNZ]

Donald Trump Jr killed rare endangered sheep in Mongolia with special permit

"On a hunting trip to Mongolia earlier this summer the US president's son Donald Trump Jr killed a rare species of endangered sheep. A permit for the killing was retroactively issued after Trump met with the country's president, according to new reporting from ProPublica.

Trump was accompanied by security from both the US and Mongolia on the trip, the outlet reported. The argali sheep, with its large horns, is considered a national treasure there, and permission to kill one is "controlled by an opaque permitting system that experts say is mostly based on money, connections and politics"[...]

[SimonNZ]

Trump called the FBI 'scum' and hit out at the report that discredited his theory the Russia probe was a deep-state plot at a wild Pennsylvania rally

[JBS]

Donald Trump Jr killed rare endangered sheep in Mongolia with special permit

"On a hunting trip to Mongolia earlier this summer the US president's son Donald Trump Jr killed a rare species of endangered sheep. A permit for the killing was retroactively issued after Trump met with the country's president, according to new reporting from ProPublica.

Trump was accompanied by security from both the US and Mongolia on the trip, the outlet reported. The argali sheep, with its large horns, is considered a national treasure there, and permission to kill one is "controlled by an opaque permitting system that experts say is mostly based on money, connections and politics"[...]

I will have to remember that the next time I go hunting in Mongolia..

[JBS]

Trump called the FBI 'scum' and hit out at the report that discredited his theory the Russia probe was a deep-state plot at a wild Pennsylvania rally

When the FBI uncovered evidence showing that we did absolutely nothing wrong, which was right at the beginning, they hid that exonerating, you know that, they hid it," Trump said.

The report exonerated (more or less) Carter Page, and found the FBI acted improperly in several things, and criminally in one thing. It did not exonerate Trump...