Tag: Trump

Newt’s doing the happy dance

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Joe Scarborough & Newt Gingrich at The Richmond Forum

This fucking weasel. Via Mediaite:

Newt Gingrich just admitted that President Donald Trump has a tendency to muddle the details a bit, telling ABC’s Powerhouse Politics on Wednesday that Trump “often says things you can catch him on.” He also expressed some doubt that POTUS will change any time soon.

“They both have a tendency to say general directions that are powerful with details that are dubious,” Gingrich told hosts Jonathan Karl and Rick Klein, comparing his truth-stretching to former Republican Ronald Reagan’s. He added, though, “I’m less sanguine than I was year ago that [Trump] is going to change because he basically emphasizes his strengths and ignores his weaknesses rather than trying to fix [them].”

Then later in the interview that hit on space, the future of the GOP and of course the midterms, Gingrich noted that Trump’s “impact in the Republican party is astonishing,” and stressed that Trump was not essentially a conservative at all.

“Trump is not essentially a conservative. Trump is an anti-liberal. They’re not the same phenomenon. But he may be the most effective uprooter of liberalism in my lifetime,” Gingrich told the ABC hosts, before moving to other topics, including the praise of Vice President Mike Pence for chairing the National Space Council.

Mark Warner: ‘Buckle up’

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-Va.) hosted a dinner Friday night for more than 100 guests at his house on Martha’s Vineyard as part of the DSCC’S annual Majority Trust retreat. OVERHEARD: Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, joking to the crowd: “If you get me one more glass of wine, I’ll tell you stuff only Bob Mueller and I know. If you think you’ve seen wild stuff so far, buckle up. It’s going to be a wild couple of months.”

SHOCKER! SLEAZY TABLOID PUBLISHED PR FOR TRUMP!

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Via the Washington Post:

During the presidential campaign, National Enquirer executives sent digital copies of the tabloid’s articles and cover images related to Donald Trump and his political opponents to Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen in advance of publication, according to three people with knowledge of the matter — an unusual practice that speaks to the close relationship between Trump and David Pecker, chief executive of American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company.

Although the company strongly denies ever sharing such material before publication, these three individuals say the sharing of material continued after Trump took office.

“Since Trump’s become president and even before, [Pecker] openly just has been willing to turn the magazine and the cover over to the Trump machine,” said one of the people with knowledge of the practice.

During the campaign, “if it was a story specifically about Trump, then it was sent over to Michael, and as long as there were no objections from him, the story could be published,” this person added.

Recruiting

~ susie

Trump firmó decreto para mantener unidos a indocumentados: “No quiero niños separados de sus padres” https://t.co/Xy6etQKOn6

I had to sign some paperwork with my local bank, and there was a new guy who waited on me. We got into a conversation about Trump. He told me his wife was an immigrant.

“I really hate him,” he said. “But my wife? Whew. I come home, it’s all she wants to talk about. I tell her I hate him, too. I just don’t want to talk about it all the time.”

He said she was ranting on Facebook all the time. I suggested that she locate her local Indivisible chapter and join up. “Action always helps,” I said.

His face lit up.

The game

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Under pressure, Donald Trump ends immigration family separation

Talking Points Memo:

The President says he’s signing an executive order to end family separations. The actual aim seems to be to pick a fight with the courts and allow separations to continue while blaming judges. According to The New York Times, the President will sign an executive order allowing children to be detained indefinitely with their parents. The problem is that that violates a 1997 consent decree saying that you can’t detain/imprison children for more than 20 days (technically what’s currently happening isn’t detention). It straight up violates that order. So what will almost inevitably happen is that a court will step in, say you can’t do that and then Trump will announce that the judge is forcing him to keep separating families.

Nothing he ever does is as it seems. He will change something meaningless, make it even more cruel but in a less obvious way, and it will divert the media long enough for the whole story to die down.

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1009481718674452481

Man-baby says ‘Wahhhh!’

~ susie

He’s such a moron:

President Donald Trump is getting frustrated with his administration’s own demands for border wall funding.

In a private meeting regarding the wall Monday, Trump fumed to senators and his own staff about the $1.6 billion the Senate is planning to send him this fall, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Trump wants the full $25 billion upfront and doesn’t understand why Congress is going to supply him funds in a piecemeal fashion — even though that’s how the spending process typically works.

[…] The president said at the meeting that if Congress doesn’t give him the resources he needs for border security, he will shut down the government in September, according to one of the people familiar with the meeting. He did not give a specific number, but has been fixated on getting the $25 billion in a lump sum.

In fact, the $1.6 billion figure came from Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who was present at the meeting. Mulvaney submitted the request to Congress earlier this year, though the administration has since upped its ask to $2.2 billion.

Probably wants to pass it out in bribes before the midterms…

John Kasich is not a moderate, he just plays one on TV

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

John Kasich makes my skin crawl, because he’s very good at making people think he’s reasonable. He’s not. On MSNBC this morning with Stephanie Ruehl, they discussed the uproar over, you know, putting children in cages:

“I was reading last night about they’re putting these kids in — they called them cages. I mean, are you kidding me? This is America,” Kasich said.

“I would think a family values party, because that’s what conservatives say they are, I would think they would oppose this,” Ruehl said. “So help me understand this border policy and we’re living in a time when Republicans control the Senate, they control the House and they control the White House.”

And here’s where the bullshit begins.

“Stephanie, look, this is where you and you’re terrific, where you and I part,” Kasich said. “When the Democrats — when we had a government shutdown, I believe that the Democrats and Chuck Schumer abandoned DACA. They were not willing to make the fight.”

Wait for it….

“This is both parties. Don’t you see what’s happening? If you’re a Democrat, then you’re against everything the Republicans are doing.”

Maybe the Republicans should stop pushing policies that destroy the economy, shred our healthcare coverage, and support putting immigrant children in cages?

“If you’re a Republican, you’re against everything the Democrats are doing. I got to play to my base. You know, if you’re a Democrat today, if you don’t play to the left-wing base, then you can’t be approved by Bernie Sanders.”

Umm, no. If you don’t have progressive policies, you’re not approved by the voters. See the difference?

“Look, it’s not just Republicans. It’s the whole darn mess.”

And the only thing we can do about it is put an aw-shucks liar with a better personality in the White House, amirite?

“Am I frustrated with Republicans, the fact that they’re not standing up? Of course I am. I’ve been saluting these congressmen who were willing to have a discharge petition to break loose a vote on DACA. I don’t even know where that stands right now. it’s so confusing to me. Stand up. Be for something in life. That’s why people are frustrated and losing hope and institutions ”

Reminder: John Kasich has signed every extreme anti-abortion measure that’s reached his desk.

He’s a climate change denier.

He wants to privatize public education.

He keep raising sales taxes on poor people and cutting income taxes on the rich.

And he smiles a lot while he’s doing it, explaining to voters how gosh-darn compassionate he is.

He’s not a moderate. He just plays one on TV.

Trump hasn’t hit bottom yet

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Breaking News: 'Real Americans' Should Get 'Tough' On Russia Probe Trump

Go read the entire Salon interview Chauncy DeVega did with a psychologist:

Donald Trump’s presidency remains a global crisis and a national disaster, yet many Americans have quickly adjusted to the situation. I don’t just mean the millions of Trump supporters who are cheering on his assault on democracy and the country’s prestige and well-being. Is this learned helplessness or cowardice? How do you explain the relative non-response to Trumpism?

Part of the reason many people do this is because it really is psychologically overwhelming. It’s just almost too frightening to consider that a madman has control of the nuclear button, and he truly doesn’t care if he destroys us all. In fact, there’s a part of Trump that would almost take glee in it. He’s impulsive, he’s erratic, he’s seeing the world in a grossly distorted way. He’s only concerned with how things impact his own thriving and survival. Trump does not care about the well-being of literally anyone but himself. It really is a kind of dystopian nightmare.

You and I have closely followed Trump’s rise to power and tried to communicate the depth of this disaster to the public. You have written or edited several books on this moment. I am trying to get my Trump book project finished as well. Are there moments when you feel like ignorance is bliss?

I do find myself feeling like, “Dear God, why can these people not see it? And what can we do to open their eyes?” It is like a 1950s or 1960s horror movie where nobody would believe that there was actually a monster that’s about to destroy the town and there are these Cassandra-like figures trying to warn people. But the townspeople remain in denial and they are doomed.

Trump’s political movement meets the criteria for a political cult. You are a psychiatrist. Is it possible to reach someone who is stuck in Trump’s cult? Why does he have such influence over these people?

It does meet the criteria. You’ve got the charismatic leader, and his followers subsume their identity into his group, which makes them feel larger and more powerful. Once you have that kind of blind belief and loyalty, the leader, as Donald Trump has said, could really shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and nothing would happen. The cognitive dissonance is such that the cult members will rationalize anything. For example, something like 50 percent of Republicans say that if Trump wanted to cancel the 2020 election, that would be fine with them.

He is actually the second most popular Republican president in the history of modern polling.

Yes, that’s right. It’s really shocking and frightening. It’s shocking and frightening in a way that just makes you feel like you’re on some kind of bad acid trip.

This is what I have described as a “malignant reality.” Trump, the Republican Party, and their supporters’ sadism is a key part of it.

The sadism is very important. When I first started talking about Trump as a malignant narcissist, people could see the narcissism, the paranoia and the antisocial element. But the fourth component of malignant narcissism is sadism. You see it in everything he does, from the separating of the children at the border to how Trump tortures anyone who doesn’t give him what he wants. There’s a way in which he takes a kind of manic glee in causing harm and pain and humiliation to other people.