The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Northwest]

Journalism died in 2007. Miraculously, its curiosity and skepticism is on full display again.

[Lois]

This is an opinion piece, not news.  The only part I do not agree with is the President part.  If the Electoral College elects him, then he will be the president.  I might not respect the man, but I do respect the office, even if he does his best, like Nixon, to disgrace it.

An Open Letter To ‘Mr.’ Trump: WTF Is Wrong With You!?
Andy Ostry

Dear Mr. Trump:

I refer to you as “Mr” because I do not recognize you as my president. Or anyone’s president for that matter. You lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, more than any president in United States history. And with the likely help of Russian hacks, oppressive voter ID laws, other acts of voter suppression and election fraud, and an embarrassingly neutered media, you squeaked out a measly 306 electoral votes, placing you in the bottom fifth of all presidents ever.

But in true Trumpian fashion, you’ve boasted of a “massive landslide victory.” Sorry, pal. The only “landslide” was Hillary Clinton’s, as she received more votes than any president in history except for Barack Obama in 2008. One thing’s for sure though: you were right about the election being “rigged.” For you.

Now that we’ve gotten the niceties out of the way, let me ask the most obvious question: what the fuck is wrong with you!? Seriously, do you not give a shit about your legacy, if not for yourself, at least for your kids, grandkids and future generations of Trumps? If your goal is to beat James Buchanan as the worst president in history, well then Mazel Tov, as you’re halfway there and you’ve still got five weeks till inauguration day!

Let’s start with your cabinet picks. You were supposed to drain the swamp, not restock it with self-serving corporate billionaires and other uber-rich insiders and cronies. You’ve appointed a banana-republic-worthy gaggle of unqualified, inexperienced, intellectually un-curious sexists/misogynists, racists, stabbers (ok, just one knifer, Ben Carson), fake-news-spreaders and Russian sympathizers. And your alt-right white nationalist advisor Steve Bannon sits atop this basket of deplorables. This is your idea of populism!?

And what’s with all the generals? You know, those guys you claim to be smarter than. Are you planning some kind of military coup? Besides, hanging around with generals doesn’t make you any tougher. You could hang around real-men in uniform all you want and you’re still a draft-dodging coward.

Now about that Russian hack. That you’re summarily dismissing the validity of the findings of 17 national security agencies is shameful and treasonous. You should be saying, “Yes, a Russian hack into our election process, a cyber-attack, is a major threat to our Democracy and must be subject to a full bi-partisan investigation.” Instead, you’ve disparaged our intelligence community. You blame President Obama. Or some 400-lb fat guy in his mother’s basement. What kind of message does it send to our enemies that our President-elect attacks our national security experts while defending Vladimir Putin?

Next, the conflicts of interests are not just mind-numbingly unethical, but perhaps illegal and impeachable. You’ve refused to release your tax returns and have bailed on your big press conference this week to explain how you’re going to separate yourself and your family from your business... leaving the American people with zero transparency for the first time in modern presidential history. Between your foreign investments and debt, and your domestic properties (DC hotel, for example), your conflicts are staggering. You’re blatantly putting your personal financial interests before the safety and security of the nation. Oh, and because of you I now have to add the word “emoluments” to my vocabulary.

Lastly, your utter disdain for America’s free and open press is perhaps the biggest threat to our democracy of all. Your administration’s hinted at making drastic, unprecedented changes to the media’s access to information including limiting or eliminating daily White House briefings, the Saturday morning presidential address, press conferences and the press pool. You’ve also threatened to expand our libel laws which would allow you greater ability to sue reporters and media outlets who are critical of you and your administration.

This is what fascism smells like.

Your words and actions are a constant attack on our freedoms and the progress we’ve made in our 240-year history. You are pissing all over the Oval Office and the U.S. Constitution. Shame on you. And shame on everyone who voted for you.

So no, Mr. Trump, I will never refer to you as “president.” You are not worthy of that title.

[Northwest]

Follow-up on post 976 above ("Trump's steak in America...") Trump's criticism of Vanity Fair bombs bigly, as VF sets subscription records in the aftermath:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-vanity-fair-tweet_us_5854562ce4b0b3ddfd8cb08a

PS -- If you haven't read the review that started this whole brouhaha, find it here; it's quite funny, and also, like all aspects of this strange excursion we're taking with "The Donald", more than a little sad:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/trump-grill-review

[Katiebee]

If there was ever a reason to treat a grown man like an irresponsible child, Trump has provided it.

President Fuck-up, is tweeting shit that is going to affect our international relations, as well as the economy, and our internal affairs.

Someone, please, either take his fucking phone and computer access away from him, cut his hands off, or sit on him!



He got his facts wrong.

[watcher1]

My state, Illinois, elected a Republican governor a couple of years ago.  This person never held any political office and was elected because he said he could turn Illinois around from the wasteful grips of the Democrats.  Needless to say, the Illinois legislature has been unable to pass a state budget, which they are constitutionally obliged to do, and the state is running up millions in debt every day because the legislature and the governor have been at odds since his election. Our governor is finding out that once heading a hedge fund is nothing like running a state. Politics is about compromise. Not "you do this because I am the boss". 

I just hope that the United States House and Senate will not give carte blanche to Trump and maybe question whatever it is he plans to introduce.  That is our only hope.

[Northwest]

Trump’s 17 cabinet-level picks have more wealth than one-third of U.S. households combined - 43 million households! Just one thing comes to mind . . . reptilian overlords.

Exactly; Trump is the president for the little guy.

I wonder what they're going to do when they realize that they bought snake oil and magic beans.

[Lois]

Trump is obviously playing into the hands of ISIS.

What Their Reactions to Monday's Attacks Reveal About Trump and Obama
Two sets of statements tell radically different stories about who was being attacked, and why.
Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
Peter Beinart 9:28 AM ET Global

Monday’s horrors—the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin and the assassination of a Russian diplomat in Ankara—offer a natural experiment. Since they occurred during the brief window every four or eight years in which America has both a president and a president-elect, they provoked two sets of statements, one from the outgoing administration and another from its soon-to-be successor. The differences are revealing.

The first difference, unsurprisingly, is that the Obama administration exercised caution. It said the Berlin atrocity “appears to have been a terrorist attack.” Team Trump, by contrast, simply called it a “horrifying terror attack.” The White House avoided speculation about the Turkish assassin’s motive. Team Trump, by contrast, called him a “radical Islamic terrorist.”

More significantly, the two administrations used the attacks to tell radically different stories about who was being attacked, and why. The Obama administration identified the victims as members of a nation. Its five-sentence statement about the Berlin attack used the words “Germany” or “German” four times. And the White House linked the United States and Germany strategically, declaring that, “Germany is one of our closest partners and strongest allies.”

Team Obama’s response to the Ankara assassination was also state-centric. It offered its “condolences to the Russian people and Government” and declared, “we stand united with Russia and Turkey in our determination to confront terrorism in all of its forms.”
Team Trump’s statement described the victims as members not of a nation but of a religion.

Russia and Turkey are not “partners” and “allies” of the United States in the way Germany is. Still, the Obama administration implied a world in which even nations with sharply different interests cooperate against their common foe: “terrorism in all its forms.” Taken together, the Berlin and Ankara statements gesture toward a liberal internationalist order of the kind the United States helped build after World War II: an inner circle of cooperation linking the United States and its closest NATO allies surrounded by a broader circle represented by universal bodies like the UN, in which countries band together across ideological and geopolitical lines to battle the transnational scourges that threaten them all.

Team Trump’s statement was utterly different. It described the victims as members not of a nation but of a religion. Its statement about the Berlin attack didn’t refer to the victims as Germans. (It didn’t mention the words “German” or “Germany” once.) Instead, it defined them as people killed “as they prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday.” The Obama team’s statement made no assumptions about the victims’ faith: It simply noted that the attack had occurred at “a Christmas Market.” The Trump statement, by contrast, implied that the victims all celebrated Christmas. And it linked those killed in Berlin to other “Christians” who “ISIS and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter … in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.”

The contrast grows even sharper when you add in Team Trump’s response to the Ankara attacks. Unlike Obama’s statement, which said nothing about the assassin’s faith, Trump’s called him “a radical Islamic terrorist.” The Trump statement also said nothing about working with either Russia or Turkey, let alone working with them against “terrorism in all its forms,” which implies that terrorism has forms other those rooted in Islam.

What do these statements tell us? That Team Obama defines the struggle against terrorism as a conflict pitting countries of all religious and ideological types against a common stateless foe, while Team Trump defines it as a conflict between Christendom and Islam. (That’s how ISIS defines it too. The Islamic State also views the world in terms of religious civilizations rather than nations). The natural implication of Obama’s worldview is that preventing terrorism

[watcher1]

I have to admire President Obama's eight years in office without any scandal.  What I dread is that with all the billionaires and such president-elect Trump has chosen to run the different agencies, Trump's term will be filled with one scandal after another, maybe even including himself being subject.

[staci]

In the world of conservationists and animal advocates, the disgrace already exists in his appointments of known cattle investors and enemy of organizations that have been fighting the BLM decisions.
Add to that, his two big game hunter sons that believe trophy hunting for rare and endangered species make them bigger than what they are.

[Katiebee]

In the world of conservationists and animal advocates, the disgrace already exists in his appointments of known cattle investors and enemy of organizations that have been fighting the BLM decisions.
Add to that, his two big game hunter sons that believe trophy hunting for rare and endangered species make them bigger than what they are.

His sons have never hunted the most dangerous game.

[Johnny Johnson]

In the world of conservationists and animal advocates, the disgrace already exists in his appointments of known cattle investors and enemy of organizations that have been fighting the BLM decisions.
Add to that, his two big game hunter sons that believe trophy hunting for rare and endangered species make them bigger than what they are.

His sons have never hunted the most dangerous game.

Illegal to hunt humans.

[Katiebee]

Yes it is. Hunting lions etc. is fairly safe. Humans are much more capable and dangerous. His sons (and son-in-law) also never served in the military.

They are only engaged in ego stroking. They probably also would be the type to go to a hunting preserve that is air conditioned andnheatednshioting blind, ancleared Lane of fire, and a salt lick to bring the game to them.

That's not hunting, that's killing.

[Katiebee]

Trump has declared computers are to be blamed for Russian hacking if the DNC, not Russia.

Congratulations to everyone who voted for Trump. You have placed into office as leader of our country the most incompetent, intellectually stunted, and possibly the most completely unfit, and unqualified person possible.

You have betrayed every value that the U.S. Has stood for by your dogmatic, and unthinking betrayal of America.

You have finally gotten what you deserve.

[toeinh20]

You have finally gotten what you deserve.

[herschel]

"the most incompetent, intellectually stunted, and possibly the most completely unfit, and unqualified person possible"

Sorry Katie, nobody will ever surpass W's fit to that description.

[Katiebee]

I disagree. W actually listened to his advisers and staff. He was fairly astute politically, and did attempt to follow the rule of law. He also was smart enough to realize he didn't want to borrow trouble by brashly tweeting anything that came into his head.

Trump appears to fail, or be posed to fail on all counts.

[watcher1]

In the world of conservationists and animal advocates, the disgrace already exists in his appointments of known cattle investors and enemy of organizations that have been fighting the BLM decisions.
Add to that, his two big game hunter sons that believe trophy hunting for rare and endangered species make them bigger than what they are.

Trump was considering Perry from Texas for some post.  If I remember correctly, he was in favor of bringing back horse slaughter pens.

Katie - Trump himself never served in the military but he sure talks tough about what he will do. Easy to do when one has no "skin" in the game.  Least Obama, who also didn't serve, tried to de-escalate many of the things he inherited.

[Katiebee]

Too many politicians and hawks never learned to count the cost.

I've said it before, I have seen my dad walk with ghosts. Men whom he could not bring home alive. Men who died because of his decisions and commands.

I've watched my mother deal with those ghosts.

I can count the cost.

[Lois]

In order to count the costs you have to have a heart.  Sociopathic narcissists do not have a heart.

[Northwest]