Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by liminalOyster » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:01 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:35 pm
by liminalOyster » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:46 pm
seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:35 pm wrote:you must not be poor or have children who will not get medical care they need ..
you must not be black
you must not be Muslim
you must not be a woman
you must not be from Puerto Rico
you must not be Mexican
are you OK with a president who is a sexual predator?
by seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:52 pm
by liminalOyster » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:54 pm
seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:52 pm wrote:well at least you clarified..sorry to have misunderstood you ....but if you are implying that I am autocannibalizing my own energy because I document everything this bastard is doing you are mistaken.... I am perfectly fine
by norton ash » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:58 pm
It is wrong for the president to have done this.
— Office of the UK Prime Minister Theresa May
Paul Joseph Watson @PrisonPlanet
Yeah, someone might want to tell whoever is running Trump's Twitter account this morning that retweeting Britain First is not great optics.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 29, 2017 3:05 pm
liminalOyster » Wed Nov 29, 2017 1:54 pm wrote:seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 29, 2017 2:52 pm wrote:well at least you clarified..sorry to have misunderstood you ....but if you are implying that I am autocannibalizing my own energy because I document everything this bastard is doing you are mistaken.... I am perfectly fine
No, nothing was implied. Speaking only of/for myself.
WH Defends Trump Reposting Anti-Muslim Videos: ‘The Threat Is Real’
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/w ... bic-videos
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:46 am
Donald Trump is a madman: The President's Wednesday Twitter spasm confirms what many Americans have long suspected
After his latest spasm of deranged tweets, only those completely under his spell can deny what growing numbers of Americans have long suspected: The President of the United States is profoundly unstable. He is mad. He is, by any honest layman’s definition, mentally unwell and viciously lashing out.
Some might say we are just suffering through the umpteenth canny, calculated presidential eruption designed to distract the nation from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, or perhaps from unpopular legislation working its way through Congress.
Quite possible. But Occam’s razor, and the sheer strangeness of Trump’s behavior, leads us to conclude that we are witnessing signs of mania.
Early Wednesday morning, Donald Trump or whomever was manning his Twitter account retweeted, seemingly at random, three videos of supposed violence against Christians by Muslims.
Trump tweets 'fake news' anti-Muslim video from far-right leader
At least one of those was long ago debunked. The words of the tweet spread to Trump’s 43.6 million followers referred to a violent young man pictured in a video as a “Muslim migrant.” The perpetrator appears to have been neither a Muslim nor a migrant.
Trump is broadcasting discredited hate videos even as he now tells multiple people in his inner circle that the real, verified “Access Hollywood” video in which he boasted of grabbing women “by the p---y” — words for which he has already publicly apologized — was falsified.
The most powerful man in the world
(Susan Walsh/AP)
By engaging in the little Islamophobia-fest, Trump amplified the handiwork of a leader of Britain First, a fringe, far-right political movement that is the rough equivalent of America’s white nationalist alt-right.
Trump wasn’t done. Just before 7 a.m., he urged the nation to “boycott Fake News CNN” — the nation’s most powerful person targeting a media company that happens to be locked in a legal fight with his own Justice Department over a merger.
GOP senators advance Trump's picks for top environmental posts
Then, upon learning of the firing of NBC’s Matt Lauer for workplace sexual harassment, came the real unraveling.
“When will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past!” he tweeted, aiming unhinged ire at the network’s news boss.
This is a day after North Korea fired what was, by all accounts, an ICBM. During a week when Congress is in the throes of delicate negotiations on taxes and the budget.
And before our eyes, the President is spinning in a Tasmanian devil’s rage about American news networks.
Trump speaks with China, vows 'major sanctions' on North Korea
There was more.
“When will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin?” Trump then tweeted — demanding the firing of a private citizen who happens to run MSNBC, a news channel he hates.
“And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the ‘unsolved mystery’ that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!”
Stop. Read it again. Google it if you must.
President Trump revives birther claims against Obama
President Donald Trump thanked members of the US military via video teleconference on Thanksgiving day on Nov. 23, 2017, from his residence in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Soldiers listened in from Afghanistan, Iraq, on the USS Monterey, and in Turkey and Bahrain. The president is spending the Thanksgiving holidays in his Florida private residence until November 26.
Donald Trump in the White House
The President of the United States just casually accused a congressman-turned-TV-host of murder because an intern died in his Florida office in 2001.
It is a terrible shame that we have to address the substance of this base smear, but these are the indignities forced upon all of us in the age of Donald Trump.
Lori Klausutis, 28, was found dead behind a desk. An autopsy was conducted: She had been feeling unwell; she had heart problems that caused her to fall and hit her head. That is what the medical examiner concluded, finding no signs of foul play.
There is no evidence connecting Scarborough, who barely knew Klausutis, to her death. None. Zero. Zip.
Macron mum on Obama meal plans to avoid angering Trump: report
Just like there is no credible evidence connecting Donald Trump to the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1996, a crime of which he was accused in a since-dropped civil lawsuit that has never held up to scrutiny.
One might think a man falsely accused of such a serious crime, who pledged to “open up” libel laws to make it easier for public figures like him and Scarborough to sue people who spread lies about them, would think twice before hurling such an incendiary false charge at someone else.
To think that is to assume that Donald Trump is well. He is not well.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/dona ... -1.3665163
Trump Bragged: ‘Nothing in the World Like First-Rate P**sy’
Years before the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, the president crassly bragged about a woman’s private parts during a golf weekend at Mar-a-Lago.
Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
In a previously unreported comment to the now-defunct Maximum Golf magazine, Donald Trump singled out a “young socialite” at his club at Mar-a-Lago by telling a reporter, “there is nothing in the world like first-rate pussy.”
The remark never made its way to print, as a top editor of the magazine forbade the reporter from putting it in the publication. But the former journalist who wrote the article, Michael Corcoran, and another editor, both confirmed that it was said by Trump as Corcoran followed him around at his Florida golf club for a profile.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s use of the word fits a pattern he exhibited before he found himself at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. In the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump took great pleasure in repeating a comment yelled from a supporter about Ted Cruz. “You’re not allowed to say… She said he’s a pussy! Terrible. Terrible,” he said to an elated crowd. And Tucker Carlson remembers Trump responding to a jab about his hair with the observation, “But I get more pussy than you do.”
As president, however, Trump has sought to downplay or even deny this part of his past. He has reportedly floated the notion that the infamous Access Hollywood tape—which caught him bragging that his stardom allowed him to grope women without their consent—is a fake. Despite a pre-election public apology for the 2005 recording, Trump has backtracked, according to The New York Times. It’s not his voice, the president told a senator. And “Grab ’em by the pussy,” he’s told aides, just does not sound like something he would say.
Trump has also liberally shared allegations of sexual impropriety aimed his political enemies, including executives at NBC, where Matt Lauer was just fired for misconduct. He also called out Democratic Sen. Al Franken for a photo where he appeared to grope a woman.
In 2000, Corcoran was a guest on Trump’s 727 that weekend, and he wasn’t the only one. The article published in Maximum Golf magazine notes Trump had to wait at the marine terminal for now-disgraced pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his society gal-pal Ghislaine Maxwell—who have since been accused by dozens of women of running what amounted to a “sex slave” ring. Corcoran, who didn’t know the pair at the time, remembers Trump standing in the doorway of the plane yelling to them, “You broke the cardinal rule, Jeffery! Never be late for someone else’s plane!”
Though not mentioned in the article, Corcoran now recalls a young woman boarding with them. “I honestly couldn’t guess her age, but she was young made up to look a bit older,” he says, adding that nothing “untoward” happened during the flight.
Trump’s friendship with Epstein isn’t news. Before the mysterious financier was jailed for operating a sexual pyramid scheme where he allegedly paid minors around $200 for sexual massages that included groping and rape, Epstein was a regular at Mar-a-Lago and had, according to a sworn deposition from Epstein’s brother, ferried the future president at least once on his plane. It has never been reported that Trump returned the favor.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002, calling Epstein a “terrific guy,” and “a lot of fun to be with.”
“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said at the time.
The remainder of the Maximum Golf article is an account by Corcoran of a couple of anodyne days with Trump in which the future president brags about the superiority of his properties, takes mulligans freely, waves off a photographer (“I feel fat”), asks his golf buddies whether they like the look of his then-girlfriend Melania (“Is that as good as it gets?”), and throws his club in the water over a missed putt.
At dinner that evening, Corcoran describes Trump scanning the diners on the veranda and a “young socialite” catching his eye, inspiring the vulgar quote.
Corcoran used the quote as the kicker in his piece, but says it was changed by the editor in chief, who replaced the obscenity with the word “talent.”
Joe Bargmann, Corcoran’s editor at Maximum Golf, confirmed Corcoran’s account.
“I was asked to change the last word of the story from ‘pussy.’ When I refused, my top editor changed the quote,” Bargmann told The Daily Beast.
Maximum Golf’s top editor at the time, Michael Caruso, now the editor-in-chief of Smithsonian Magazine, has not responded to requests for comment.
The article ran in Maximum Golf’s August 2000 issue. The magazine was News Corp’s sexy answer to the stodginess of other golf publications. An earlier issue features a 26-year-old Melania Trump (then still Melania Knauss) pouting in a bathtub filled with just enough golf balls to keep the magazine edgy, but on the proper side of the magazine stand.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-bra ... itter_page
Donald Trump’s unhinged Islamophobic tweetstorm suggests he may be divorced from reality
Trump complained of “fake news” online, then retweeted a misleading video
President Donald Trump has used his Twitter account as a platform to attack others, embellish his own accomplishments and mislead the public to a degree that makes it difficult to argue it's not deliberate. His deceptive Islamophobic tweets on Wednesday morning were no different.
The president retweeted three unverified videos posted to Twitter by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right ultranationalist political organization that is opposed to multiculturalism and campaigns against Islam.
"Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!" Fransen wrote in the first video the president retweeted. Except the origins of the video tell a different story than the deliberately manipulative and provocative caption used by Fransen.
The video was originally posted in May on the Dutch video sharing website, Dumpert, which was launched by GeenStijl, a Dutch blog.
After the video was published, Dutch police detained a 16-year-old. However, "there was no word about the origin or religion of the young suspects" after police reported the arrests in a press release at the time, according to De Telegraaf, the largest newspaper in the Netherlands. At the request of the victim, and the police, the video was removed.
"The perpetrator was not a Muslim, let alone a migrant, but simply a Dutchman," GeenStijl wrote.
But Trump retweeted two other videos posted by Fransen titled, "Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!" and "Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!" origins of which have not yet been verified
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/29/donald ... m-reality/
We met the British right-wing bigot Trump retweeted
By Vice News Nov 29, 2017
Donald Trump has made what could be his most controversial tweets yet — and that’s saying something.
The Twitter fanatic, who is also president of the United States, hit the retweet button early Wednesday, circulating three tweets from extreme-right group “Britain First.”
The tweets, from the group’s deputy leader Jayda Fransen, show unverified videos with the titles “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”, “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!”, and “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”
Jayda Fransen has already been convicted of hate crimes in the U.K., and is facing more charges.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is currently in Iraq, but a spokesman for Downing Street said it was “wrong” for President Trump to have retweeted Fransen. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the tweets, saying: “Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real and that is what the president is talking about.”
“Britain First” was launched in 2011 by former members of a failed nationalist political party. It’s mainly known for its flag-waving marches and publicity stunts outside mosques, all in the name of campaigning, in its own words, for “patriotic resistance” and against “the rapid growth of militant Islam.”
Many of its posts online end up reaching several million people. But its influence on British remains questionable.
https://news.vice.com/story/we-met-the- ... ewstwitter
Theresa May just woke up to a shitbagging from the White House
Your guide to the world (that doesn’t include Trump)
Donald Trump may be a world of chaos all by himself, but the world beyond Trump is changing in dramatic ways, often with little notice. We’d like to tell you about it and we’re keeping track of these global changes, from the incremental to the monumental, so that you don’t have to.
London — November 30, 2017
Theresa May just woke up to a shitbagging from the White House
Theresa May meets Turkish PM. Prime Minister Theresa May meets with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim Monday November 27, 2017. Matt Dunham/PA Wire
Theresa May awoke Thursday to a new kind of special relationship — one in which the Donald Trump berates her for criticizing his tweets, and demands she “focus” on Britain’s problem of “destructive radical Islamic terrorism.”
May is desperate to keep Trump onside knowing the president’s whims could hold the key for a new anglo-American trade deal after Britain exits the European Union.
Yet she had little choice but to condemn Trump Wednesday after he retweeted three anti-Muslim videos posted by deputy leader of the far-right group Britain First.
May said it was “wrong for the president to have done this.”
In a late-night post, Trump snarled back:
He initially tweeted the message to the wrong account, one with just six followers. This was later deleted and a fresh Twitter bomb was correctly dispatched to Downing Street.
May, whose leadership has been under pressure since a disastrous general election earlier this year, has grounded the UK’s post-Brexit economic success on a strong relationship with Washington.
So important is the kinship that she rushed Stateside in January to claim the coup of becoming the first foreign leader received at the Trump White House.
But now the relationship appears to have turned toxic, with calls from politicians on all sides of Westminster to cancel Trump’s forthcoming visit to Britain, though Downing Street said Wednesday the invitation still stood.
During a parliamentary debate Thursday about the videos, Home Secretary Amber Rudd endorsed the suggestion that Trump should give up tweeting entirely.
https://news.vice.com/story/theresa-may ... tain-first
The darkest day of Trump's presidency
Incited violence against Muslims without reason or regret by retweeting unverified anti-Muslim videos.
Insinuated Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of a former intern.
Insinuated TV heads and critics should be investigated for unknown reasons.
The most incendiary of Trump's tweets were his retweeting of anti-Muslim videos of questionable origin. A senior White House official expressed shock and dismay at the tweets — which purport to show videos of a "Muslim migrant" beating up a Dutch boy on crutches and a Muslim destroying a statue of Virgin Mary. They are perhaps his most indefensible tweets as president; and have the obvious potential to incite violence against Muslims living in America.
You know you've crossed a line when you give the Infowars editor pause.
And Piers Morgan:
Some open questions:
How does Trump's national security team feel about this, given their Middle East strategy rests on the cooperation of Muslim-majority countries like Saudi Arabia?
Chief of Staff John Kelly likes to say he ignores Trump's tweets, but when you have the British Prime Minister releasing a highly unusual statement condemning Trump, it's impossible to ignore them. They are now directly affecting foreign policy and can't be dismissed as fluff.
What reaction can we expect from the moderate / liberal wing of the administration — White House officials like Gary Cohn, who condemned Trump's response to Charlottesville?
Be smart: Many Arab and Muslim countries will continue to work with the U.S. because it's in their interests. But these tweets make it harder, not easier.
https://www.axios.com/the-darkest-day-o ... 71795.html
Politics
Trump veers past guardrails, feeling impervious to the uproar he causes
The Debrief: An occasional series offering reporters’ insights
President Trump walks across the South Lawn of the White House to board Marine One on Nov. 29, 2017, as he heads to Missouri to pitch the Republican tax plan. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker November 29 at 7:31 PM
President Trump this week disseminated on social media three inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos, took glee in the firing of a news anchor for sexual harassment allegations despite facing more than a dozen of his own accusers and used a ceremony honoring Navajo war heroes to malign a senator with a derogatory nickname, “Pocahontas.”
Again and again, Trump veered far past the guardrails of presidential behavior. But despite the now-routine condemnations, the president is acting emboldened, as if he were impervious to the uproar he causes.
If there are consequences for his actions, Trump does not...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 377537f4ab
WHITE HOUSE BARS ONE OF FEW BLACK JOURNALISTS FROM ATTENDING CHRISTMAS PARTY
http://www.newsweek.com/april-ryan-dona ... 6364?amp=1
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:34 pm
British lawmaker: 'Trump should be arrested for inciting racial hatred'
http://thehill.com/policy/international ... ial-hatred
British MPs Condemn ‘Racist,’ ‘Incompetent’ Trump for Endorsing ‘Vile Fascist’ Group
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... trump.html
MPs want Donald Trump to be arrested over his retweets
http://metro.co.uk/2017/11/30/mps-want- ... to=cbshare
Nadhim ZahawiVerified account
@nadhimzahawi
Follow Follow @nadhimzahawi
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My letter to @realDonaldTrump regarding today's retweets
Donald Trump Could Run Afoul of U.K. Law for Retweeting British Fascists
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/29/pre ... -fascists/
by JackRiddler » Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:41 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 01, 2017 8:09 am
Donald Trump is a madman:
The President's Wednesday Twitter spasm confirms what many Americans have long suspected
After his latest spasm of deranged tweets, only those completely under his spell can deny what growing numbers of Americans have long suspected: The President of the United States is profoundly unstable. He is mad. He is, by any honest layman’s definition, mentally unwell and viciously lashing out.
Some might say we are just suffering through the umpteenth canny, calculated presidential eruption designed to distract the nation from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, or perhaps from unpopular legislation working its way through Congress.
Quite possible. But Occam’s razor, and the sheer strangeness of Trump’s behavior, leads us to conclude that we are witnessing signs of mania.
Early Wednesday morning, Donald Trump or whomever was manning his Twitter account retweeted, seemingly at random, three videos of supposed violence against Christians by Muslims.
Trump tweets 'fake news' anti-Muslim video from far-right leader
At least one of those was long ago debunked. The words of the tweet spread to Trump’s 43.6 million followers referred to a violent young man pictured in a video as a “Muslim migrant.” The perpetrator appears to have been neither a Muslim nor a migrant.
Trump is broadcasting discredited hate videos even as he now tells multiple people in his inner circle that the real, verified “Access Hollywood” video in which he boasted of grabbing women “by the p---y” — words for which he has already publicly apologized — was falsified.
The most powerful man in the world
The most powerful man in the world
(Susan Walsh/AP)
By engaging in the little Islamophobia-fest, Trump amplified the handiwork of a leader of Britain First, a fringe, far-right political movement that is the rough equivalent of America’s white nationalist alt-right.
Trump wasn’t done. Just before 7 a.m., he urged the nation to “boycott Fake News CNN” — the nation’s most powerful person targeting a media company that happens to be locked in a legal fight with his own Justice Department over a merger.
GOP senators advance Trump's picks for top environmental posts
Then, upon learning of the firing of NBC’s Matt Lauer for workplace sexual harassment, came the real unraveling.
“When will the top executives at NBC & Comcast be fired for putting out so much Fake News. Check out Andy Lack’s past!” he tweeted, aiming unhinged ire at the network’s news boss.
This is a day after North Korea fired what was, by all accounts, an ICBM. During a week when Congress is in the throes of delicate negotiations on taxes and the budget.
And before our eyes, the President is spinning in a Tasmanian devil’s rage about American news networks.
Trump speaks with China, vows 'major sanctions' on North Korea
There was more.
“When will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin?” Trump then tweeted — demanding the firing of a private citizen who happens to run MSNBC, a news channel he hates.
“And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the ‘unsolved mystery’ that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!”
Stop. Read it again. Google it if you must.
President Trump revives birther claims against Obama
President Donald Trump thanked members of the US military via video teleconference on Thanksgiving day on Nov. 23, 2017, from his residence in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Soldiers listened in from Afghanistan, Iraq, on the USS Monterey, and in Turkey and Bahrain. The president is spending the Thanksgiving holidays in his Florida private residence until November 26.
Donald Trump in the White House
The President of the United States just casually accused a congressman-turned-TV-host of murder because an intern died in his Florida office in 2001.
It is a terrible shame that we have to address the substance of this base smear, but these are the indignities forced upon all of us in the age of Donald Trump.
Lori Klausutis, 28, was found dead behind a desk. An autopsy was conducted: She had been feeling unwell; she had heart problems that caused her to fall and hit her head. That is what the medical examiner concluded, finding no signs of foul play.
There is no evidence connecting Scarborough, who barely knew Klausutis, to her death. None. Zero. Zip.
Macron mum on Obama meal plans to avoid angering Trump: report
Just like there is no credible evidence connecting Donald Trump to the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1996, a crime of which he was accused in a since-dropped civil lawsuit that has never held up to scrutiny.
One might think a man falsely accused of such a serious crime, who pledged to “open up” libel laws to make it easier for public figures like him and Scarborough to sue people who spread lies about them, would think twice before hurling such an incendiary false charge at someone else.
To think that is to assume that Donald Trump is well. He is not well.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/dona ... -1.3665163
This is getting worse
How long are we going to pretend that President Trump is fully rational? How long are we going to ignore the signs that he is dangerously out of control?
Trump’s supporters comfort themselves with the idea that he’s being crazy like a fox — that all the outrageous lies, abrupt reversals, bizarre pronouncements and vicious personal attacks are calculated to achieve some rational goal. He’s just playing to his base, perhaps, or distracting everyone from unpopular legislation cutting taxes for the rich, or trying to deceive other world leaders into thinking he might be unhinged and therefore should be accommodated.
But what evidence is there of calculation? Congress may indeed pass a slapped-together tax bill, but there is no indication Trump even knows what’s in it. That would be his first and only significant legislative accomplishment. His approval rating plummeted after the inauguration and has been stuck at 40 percent or below since June, according to Gallup. He has managed to alienate our closest allies — even drawing a rare rebuke this week from British Prime Minister Theresa May — and created a vacuum in world leadership that China is happily beginning to fill.
The logical thing to do, at this point, would be to come up with a new strategy. But Trump stays his wild and erratic course, as if he simply cannot help himself.
The most alarming development is the revelation that Trump continues to entertain paranoid conspiracy theories of the kind usually found beneath tinfoil hats. According to both The Post and the New York Times, Trump still clings to the ridiculous “birther” theories about where former president Barack Obama was born. The papers also reported that Trump has privately claimed the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he bragged about harassing and assaulting women, was somehow forged or doctored.
Opinion | The national security risks of Trump's tweets? A national embarrassment at a minimum.
Post opinion writers Jonathan Capehart, Jo-Ann Armao and Ruth Marcus discuss the national security risks of President Trump's tweets. (The Washington Post)
You will recall that Obama’s birth in Hawaii has been definitively proved; and also that Trump acknowledged the “Access Hollywood” tape when it surfaced last year and gave a video address apologizing for it. “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize,” then-candidate Trump told the nation.
It would be one thing if Trump were broadcasting this nonsense for a reason. I’d feel better even if he had a nefarious reason — to appeal to racists who cannot accept the legitimacy of the first black president, say, or to encourage his base to doubt everything they see and hear in the media and instead to trust only him. But Trump has raised these off-the-wall subjects in private conversations with aides, associates and a sitting U.S. senator — settings in which the president is likely to say what he truly believes.
It is one thing to create a fantasyland for political ends — appealing to some voting group’s prejudices or giving supporters a reason to excuse bad behavior. It is another thing altogether, however, for Trump to fall into his own rabbit hole and actually believe what he once knew to be untrue.
For decades, when he was a publicity-seeking developer and social-climbing Manhattan playboy, Trump’s method was to fabricate his own reality; he even called gossip columnists and pretended to be a publicist named “John Miller” or “John Barron” in order to sing his own praises. But he employed this shtick with a wink and a smile, knowing it was all a game. Increasingly he sounds and acts as if he thinks his make-believe is real.
One of the things that first drew attention to Trump as a presidential candidate was his public speaking style — free association, basically, with no discernible filter between brain and lip. Follow one of his speeches and you can track how his mind works. On Monday, at a White House ceremony honoring Navajo code talkers, he bizarrely slipped in his “Pocahontas” slur against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who wasn’t there and had nothing to do with the event. On Wednesday, at a Missouri rally touting the tax bill, he came to a line about how it would add “rocket fuel” to the economy, paused a second, and then reprised his “rocket man” insult of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom Trump went on to call a “sick puppy.”
Kim’s state-controlled media has called Trump an “old lunatic.” That the rival nuclear-armed leaders speak the same language is not comforting.
Maybe Trump is rattled by the Great Reckoning on sexual harassment and assault. Maybe he is worried about the steamrolling Robert S. Mueller III investigation. Or maybe his mental state is just deteriorating.
Whatever the problem is, it’s serious — and it’s getting worse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... b1faf29aa3
by Elvis » Fri Dec 01, 2017 3:19 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 01, 2017 3:27 pm
by liminalOyster » Fri Dec 01, 2017 3:28 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 05, 2017 12:53 am
Brianna BodilyVerified account
@BriannaBodily
7h7 hours ago
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Jonathon Nez, VP of Navajo nation says the announcement today showed @POTUS doesn't respect indigenous people. He thanks @BarackObama for honoring their nation.
Tomorrow, NY Judge could order Trump to testify in sexual assault case.
By subir
Monday Dec 04, 2017 · 3:24 PM CST
The Mueller investigation isn’t the only legal issue Trump is facing. He is also being sued by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on the Apprentice:
In October 2016, Zervos accused Trump of aggressively kissing her and groping her breasts during a 2007 meeting that took place when she was seeking a job at his company. Her lawsuit claims that he made defamatory statements by describing as liars women who came forward last year to accuse him of misconduct. [...]
Trump denied the allegations, calling them “pure fiction” and labeling the women “horrible, horrible liars.” He vowed to sue his accusers and promised evidence that would refute their claims, although nearly a year later, neither the lawsuits nor such evidence has materialized.
— www.washingtonpost.com/...
Trump’s team has presented many novel defenses for this suit. They’ve claimed that when Trump called his accusers “liars”, he was expressing a “political opinion”. They’ve also claimed as president Trump is immune from civil suits in state courts.
The interesting thing is that Zervos’ team has asked for a broad range of documents in discovery, including all communications in the Trump campaign and camp about any of the 16 women who have been accusations.
The defamation suit filed in January in the New York State Supreme Court by Zervos, a short-lived contestant on “The Apprentice,” has reached a critical point, with oral arguments over Trump’s motion to dismiss scheduled for Tuesday, after which the judge is expected to rule on whether the case may move forward.
If it proceeds, Zervos’s attorneys could gather and make public incidents from Trump’s past and Trump could be called to testify, with the unwelcome specter of a former president looming over him: It was Bill Clinton’s misleading sworn testimony — not the repeated allegations of sexual harassment against him — that eventually led to his impeachment.
“It’s almost a train you can’t stop going down the tracks, said Joseph Cammarata, who represented Paula Jones against Clinton and, more recently, represented seven Cosby accusers in a defamation suit. “It opens him up to have to answer questions about sexual relations, other relationships, what might have been said, to open up your whole life.” — www.washingtonpost.com/...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1 ... e-tomorrow
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