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

[Marc]

Okay: why did you single out the white farmers there, out of all Mugabe's human rights violations?

If we pull at this thread will we get a little closer to your problem with our critism of Trump and his fellow travellers?

Do you want us to spend more time concerned with other world events or more time criticising Africans Asians and south Americans? Is this the "hypocricy" of which you speak?

That's right.
You should be here 24/7 and complain about all bastards around the world. That's what a classical music board is about. If not, you're a hypocrite.

All humans are hypocritical btw, and some of them are bastards.
Checking the subject of this topic, I guess that this thread is about one of them.

It appears that he's been re-tweeting around some clips from spurious sources recently, about unpleasant events with violent muslim 'immigrants' in other countries.
I haven't seen a re-tweet of a white superior 'native' American who killed a bunch of innocent people in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
And it will never come.

What a hypocritical bastard.

[Florestan]

SimonNZ and Scarpia:

Nevermind. What I wanted to say and what I eventually wrote are two different things. I shouldn't have posted at all, actually, so please ignore it. I had a brainfart. 

[nodogen]

It appears that he's been re-tweeting around some clips from spurious sources recently, about unpleasant events with violent muslim 'immigrants' in other countries.

The widower of the murdered MP that I referred to:

"I think we probably got used to a degree of absurdity, of outrageous retweets and tweets from the president, but I think this felt like it was a different order.

"Here he was retweeting a felon, somebody who was convicted of religiously aggravated harassment ... an organisation that is a hate-driven organisation on the extreme fringes of the far, far right of British politics. This is like the president retweeting the Ku Klux Klan."

[Turner]

Trump tweeted at a wrong Theresa May:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-tweets-wrong-theresa-may_us_5a1f55e7e4b037b8ea1f8ae5
https://twitter.com/Peston/status/936147667863908352

[Karl Henning]

Both wicked and boring.  Gotta love the "somehow," there.

The president's performance has taught us to be both outraged, and bored of outrage, all at once.

What else is there to say? This morning, while a major tax bill was circulating through the Senate, and North Korea was adverting new portentous announcements, the president of the United States was tweeting inflammatory videos showing Muslims committing assault or anti-Christian desecrations, and then he floated a conspiracy theory that former Republican congressman and current MSNBC morning talk-show host Joe Scarborough is a murderer.

In a sense we shouldn't be surprised. The president has tweeted demagogically about race and religion before. He has floated insane conspiracies about murder when it can somehow implicate a rival. Ask Ted Cruz.

[Karl Henning]

[El Tupé] retweets hate

[drogulus]

The Chapo crew also bring this up frequently, most recently in reference to the liberal-conservative anti-Trump alliance playing out among former Obama/Hillary people and neocon columnists like Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, David Frum etc—their only objection to trump is his style, not the actual substance of what he's doing, which is the same as what Obama did except with less public facing concern about humanitarian issues.

I do think the substance is materially different though in that prior to 2017, some liberals and Rand Paul would have all agreed that there need to be serious checks on the military and intelligence agencies. Trump has not only granted those agencies more freedom but has shifted the Overton window pretty far towards the neocon side: now no one is willing to speak out against the military or intelligence agencies at all and actually gave them something like $700 billion in funds.

The historical trend is for powerful empires that are starting to lose hegemony to become increasingly militaristic abroad and repressive at home. Russia is a good contemporary example. Trump marks a shift in US politics in that direction even if we might have had the opportunity under eg a President Sanders to shift in the opposite direction. I guess we'll see what the long term trends are.

     The U.S. and its allies don't seem to be more militaristic than they were during the Cold War. Also, we haven't lost that much hegemony even though loss of hegemony rhetoric of the "pitiful helpless giant" sort is the subject of commentary. Much of the hegemonic giveaway under Trump will be seen as a blunder. His effort to "obsolete" alliances for the sake of his one-to-one dictator lovefests is not something anyone other than Firsters and fascists should applaud.

[Todd]

Much of the hegemonic giveaway under Trump will be seen as a blunder.

Given away is better than taken away by great power war.  Since it is warmongers who will see it as a blunder, it's not a real loss.

[Todd]

Army veteran says Franken groped her during USO tour in 2003

Good thing Franken said he couldn't guarantee there would not be more accusers.  It's almost like he knew he was a serial groper, that he had a problem.  However, since he's not as bad as Roy Moore, it's not a problem, and he should continue to enjoy all the powers and privileges of a sitting senator.

[drogulus]

Given away is better than taken away by great power war.  Since it is warmongers who will see it as a blunder, it's not a real loss.

     Isn't war a real loss? I think so. Trump in typical Firster fashion will give us war as a byproduct, because he has no idea how war can be prevented. Strong alliances are deterrent, dictator lovefests are not.

[Todd]

Isn't war a real loss?

Sure it is.

Strong alliances are deterrent, dictator lovefests are not.

The US has loved many dictators over the years, all through Central America, the Middle East, and Asia.  It's what we do.  It's what we've always done.  It's what we will always do.  Now, of course, you refer to one specific dictator - Putin - in Russia, because Putin is super bad.  I get it.  (Who knows, maybe you include Xi and Kim in there.)  It's rehashing the same old thing again.  You're a warmonger, so of course you love a massive military, disastrous interventions in various smaller states, and a bloated alliance with mostly deadbeat allies while clinging to Cold War thinking, and I think the Cold War is over and that the lessons of the 20th Century are purposely distorted by warmongers to perpetuate excessive military spending and commitments and damaging interventions.

[Karl Henning]

     Isn't war a real loss? I think so. Trump in typical Firster fashion will give us war as a byproduct, because he has no idea how war can be prevented. Strong alliances are deterrent, dictator lovefests are not.

He can handle it! Believe him!

[Todd]

Rep. John Conyers in the hospital, aide says

Maybe he got stuck in an elevator with a pretty young thing and his ticker couldn't take it.  Cokie Roberts on This Week this past weekend:

"Don't get in the elevator with him [Conyers], you know, and the whole every female in the press corps knew that, right, don't get in elevator with him. Now people are saying it out loud. And I think that does make a difference."

[Karl Henning]

[...] this isn't about data. It's about bug-eyed, bone-in-the-nose, bark-at-the-moon primitivism.

We like to think that we have left behind such ancient notions as divinely sanctioned kingship and rule by chieftains who propitiate the gods and therefore make the fields fertile and the livestock fecund — or else displease the gods and bring upon us drought and plague. But we haven't.

One of the great enduring stupidities of the American presidential cult is the belief, rooted in invincible ignorance, that the state of the U.S. economy at any given moment is a reflection of the intelligence and wisdom of the chief executive of the federal government and a result of the excellence or insufficiency of his administration. "Sure, Bill Clinton may have been an intern-diddling hillbilly and maybe even a violent rapist, but, man, my IRA kicked ass in the 1990s!"

So, yah, guess what El Tupé is taking credit for   

[Karl Henning]

Only tangential to the topic, as some of us like to pretend that something is false, simply because it appears in the Post:

Given that this is all supposed to be a candid, non-official conversation with someone trying their best to goad him into saying something damning — in a bar! — and that Project Veritas surely edited this as self-servingly as possible, I can only see this video as a huge win for the Washington Post.

But maybe I'm missing something. If someone here has a workable theory as to why the Washington Post shouldn't be laughing at this, I'm honestly eager to hear it.

[Spineur]

Trump has soured on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and is planning to replace him with the CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, nytimes reports

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/us/politics/state-department-tillerson-pompeo-trump.html

Why not hand US diplomacy to CIA assasination teams ?

[Karl Henning]

Because, you know, his utter failure with North Korea is the fault of Tillerson.

Nyuk-nyuk.

[Todd]

Trump has soured on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and is planning to replace him with the CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, nytimes reports

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/us/politics/state-department-tillerson-pompeo-trump.html

Why not hand US diplomacy to CIA assasination teams ?

A CIA chief in an elevated position may not be all bad.  See George HW Bush, for instance, or Leon Panetta.

The more interesting tidbit from that article is this:

"Mr. Pompeo would be replaced at the C.I.A. by Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who has been a key ally of the president on national security matters, according to the White House plan. Mr. Cotton has signaled that he would accept the job if offered, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations before decisions are announced."

[Todd]

Pelosi calls on Conyers to resign, citing 'very credible' sexual harassment allegations

Wow, that's just cold.  Pelosi calls on Conyers to quit while he's in the hospital.  She's finally done something I support.

[Karl Henning]

No liberal organ, this.

A nutty belief or theory expressed in private is pretty harmless. Putting it out on Twitter is more troubling, and what's most concerning — what the president's staffers and the American people must guard against — is the possibility that these implausible beliefs are influencing the president's decision-making.

[...]

If the president really thinks those things, then invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment doesn't seem so unthinkable.