Tuesday Reads: Trump Being Trump Is Going To Kill Us All
Posted: March 27, 2018 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: baby elephants, Donald Trump, evangelical Christians, Islamophobia, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Rob Porter, Ryan Costello, Stormy Daniels 35 CommentsGood Morning!!
I’ve been feeling almost catatonic with shock for the past few days, ever since Trump appointed John Bolton as National Security Adviser. And that was on top of his nomination of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State.
It just feels as if we’re inching closer and closer to a real world-wide disaster. With those two in charge, it seems likely Trump will pull us out of the Iran agreement and maybe even get us into wars in Iran and North Korea. The joke’s over, folks. This is getting way too real.
The photos of baby elephants in this post are an attempt to keep me from going completely around the bend.
At The Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky writes: Trump Does Trump, and Things Get Worse. Tomasky notes that Trump appears to have concluded that he doesn’t need advisers who tell him he can’t do what he wants to do. He’s decided to run the country the way he the business that he repeatedly drove into bankruptcy.
The hiring of John Bolton highlights Donald Trump’s instability, his total lack of any coherent worldview, and most of all—and most dangerously of all—his need to feel that no limits are being imposed on him. Here’s what I mean. When talking foreign policy, sometimes Trump sounds like Bolton, with all that overheated rhetoric he’s thrown at Kim Jong Un. But at other times, he’s an isolationist. At still other times, like when he’s agreeing to meet with Kim with no preconditions, he’s a Neville Chamberlain in the making. (By the way, is Lloyd’s of London taking odds yet on whether that summit will actually happen?)
So if he wasn’t happy with H.R. McMaster and wanted new blood, he could have gone in any number of ways. That he chose the guy who will reinforce his worst instincts tells us, I think, that what he values most (aside from unquestioning loyalty) is someone who won’t hem him in; in other words, Trump may decide to launch a first strike against North Korea, or he may not. But if he does, by God, he doesn’t want some globalist ninny telling him not to. So the principle at work here is not hawkishness per se. It’s having someone who won’t tell him no.
Tomasky discusses Trump’s ludicrous handling of economic issues, and his total lack of knowledge and understanding of how legislation is crafted. Now Trump is facing the Stormy Daniels problem, and it may get him into real trouble:
The Stormy Daniels story was kind of non-newsy on certain levels. That Trump slept with a porn star and behaved crudely toward her is about the least shocking thing in the world. But the threats made against her are the real story here. That’s going to be the new iteration of this story, and depending on how it plays out it stands the chance of reminding the country of something that many have forgotten, or never knew: The president of the United States has mob ties.
Here’s David Cay Johnston cataloguing a few of them, like how Trump went out of his way to use Mafia-controlled companies to pour the concrete for Trump Tower. The great Wayne Barrett was the master chronicler of all this, going back to the 1990s. All you need to know for now is that back in the day, the government of Australia denied him a permit to open a casino in Sydney because the government deemed him to be too mobbed up. Trump will say of this failure that he lost interest in Australia, but Australia also lost interest in him.
How can anyone who is paying attention not be frightened to have this idiot running our government?
At Vox, Zach Beauchamp writes about one serious problem with Trump’s two recent appointments: How John Bolton and Mike Pompeo mainstreamed Islamophobia.
John Bolton, President Trump’s pick for his next national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick to be the next secretary of state, are well-known hawks. Less well known are their deep and extensive ties to an organized group of anti-Muslim writers and activists.
The members of the so-called “counter-jihad” movement aren’t exactly household names. But its leading lights — people like Reagan Defense Department official Frank Gaffney, activist Brigitte Gabriel, and blogger Pamela Geller — are surprisingly well-financed and influential. Their major arguments include the idea that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion and that most mainstream American Muslim organizations are involved in a secret plot to replace American law with Islamic law. One “study” published by Gaffney’s organization, the Center for Security Policy, argued that 80 percent of mosques in America “are incubators of, at best, subversion and, at worst, violence and should be treated accordingly.”
Neither Bolton nor Pompeo has endorsed views this radical, though both have come relatively close. In February 2015, Pompeo appeared on Gaffney’s radio show and warned darkly of an Islamic conspiracy against America.
“There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” Pompeo said in a February 2015 interview on Gaffney’s radio program. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”
Bolton, for his part, has defended the Islamophobic attacks against Huma Abedin, a Muslim American who spent years as a top aide to Hillary Clinton. Some Republican members of Congress accused Abedin being a secret Islamist operative (which, it goes without saying, is wholly unfounded) in 2012; that July, Bolton went on Gaffney’s show and said there was nothing wrong with that line of attack. “What is wrong with raising the question?” Bolton asked.
Read all the scary details at Vox.
The Economist on Pompeo’s religious views:
Even among broadly conservative watchers of American foreign policy, there is worry that Mr Pompeo’s apparent sectarian sentiment might be a problem. In the words of Robert D. Kaplan, a veteran global-affairs writer, Mr Pompeo “emblemises an increasingly theological bent in American politics, and in particular in a strand of American conservatism.” This contrasted with earlier eras when “American leaders were often churchgoers but their governing spirit was refreshingly secular.”
As is noted by Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution think-tank, Mr Pompeo comes across as an educated person whose negative ideas about Islam are more thought-through, and hence perhaps more worrisome, than the “visceral, almost incoherent” suspicion of that faith which Mr Trump exuded as a candidate. “It is not a good thing when the public face of American diplomacy holds views which demean an entire religion,” says Mr Hamid.
Several things have earned Mr Pompeo the reputation of being a kind of latter-day Crusader. One is a video clip in which he argues vigorously that at least some individuals are motivated by their Muslim beliefs, and by things they read in the Koran, to commit terrible violence. Watched closely, the video does not show him to believe that all Muslims think that way. What is more striking is the remedy of Christian solidarity he proposes: Islam-inspired terrorists “will continue to press against us until we make sure…we know that Jesus Christ is the only solution for our world.”
There is also concern about Mr Pompeo’s reaction to the bomb attack on the Boston marathon in 2013. As a Congressman, he said Muslim leaders who failed to condemn the outrage, and to call it incompatible with Muhammad’s teaching, were “potentially complicit”. Arsalan Iftikhar, a writer and lawyer who helps run an anti-Islamophobia programme at Georgetown University, was one of many Muslim-Americans who found those comments insulting to leaders of Islam in America, who used all their authority to excoriate the bombing.
Read the rest at link.
Could Trump’s behavior with women finally be causing serious problems for the GOP? The New York Times: After Stormy Daniels, Republicans Face a Referendum on Trump’s Conduct.
When Representative Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania announced on Sunday that he would join more than 40 other congressional Republicans not seeking re-election in November, he left no doubt about the reason: President Trump’s conduct made it impossible to talk about anything else.
Were he running, Mr. Costello said in an interview, he would be inundated with questions about Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels, who has said she had an affair with Mr. Trump and was threatened to stay silent about it.
“If I had a town hall this week, it would be question after question,” Mr. Costello said. “‘Do you believe him or do you believe her? Why don’t you believe her?’”
While Republicans have been bracing for months for a punishing election in November, they are increasingly alarmed that their losses may be even worse than feared because the midterm campaign appears destined to turn more on the behavior of the man in the White House than any other in decades.
As much as gun control, immigration, the sweeping tax overhaul and other issues are mobilizing voters on the left and the right, the seamy sex allegations and Mr. Trump’s erratic style could end up alienating crucial blocs of suburban voters and politically moderate women who might be drawn to some Republican policies but find the president’s purported sex antics to be reprehensible.
Some funny quotes from the article:
“Trump is way more than the proverbial elephant in the room — he’s the elephant in the room with political bad breath, B.O. and a foul mouth,” said Ace Smith, a veteran Democratic consultant, who argued that the last time a president’s conduct loomed so large in congressional midterms was in the post-Watergate election of 1974….
“I don’t see headlines with: ‘Porn star sues Nancy Pelosi,’” said Representative Cedric Richmond, a Louisiana Democrat, when asked about his party’s polarizing House leader.
Trump’s new “trust his gut” approach has talking about bringing back fired staffer Rob Porter. I’ll bet that would be a big hit with women voters. Wonkette reacts: Sad And Lonely Trump Misses His Old Wife-Beaty Friend Rob 😦
A few days/years back, the White House unceremoniously fired a guy whose main fault seems to be that he loves Donald Trump for some reason. His name was Johnny Feelgood, Johnny Right On, Johnny Miss You, Johnny Light On, Johnny Makes Me Feel Strangely Good About Myself, AKA Johnny McEntee. He was Donald Trump’s body man, and he is very pretty, and UH OH seems to have gotten himself into some fraudy financial trouble of some sort, for which he is being investigated by the Secret Service.
We only bring up Johnny McEntee to point out that that he would be a completely reasonable person for Donald Trump to be pining for, wandering the halls of the West Wing with a Big Mac stuffed down the front of his pants and a lost look in his eyes. Instead, Donald Trump is reportedly broken-hearted and lost without Rob Porter, the guy who got fired from the White House because he couldn’t stop beating his wives all the time, which meant he couldn’t get a permanent security clearance. Yeah, THAT guy.
Maggie Haberman reports, because of course it is Maggie Haberman:
President Trump has stayed in touch with Rob Porter, the former White House staff secretary who stepped down after allegations that he had abused his two former wives came to light, according to three people familiar with the conversations, and has told some advisers he hopes Mr. Porter returns to work in the West Wing.
Oh for Christ’s sake. Without a security clearance? Because remember how Rob Porter can’t get a security clearance because he’s a rage douche who couldn’t stop beating his wives all the time?
Haberman reports that Trump ‘n’ Rob are always on the phone talking about clothes and boys and tariffs because, big sadface, Trump has fired everybody else, or else they have quit. Hope-y Hicks is gone, McMaster has cleared out his office to make room for John Bolton’s mustache grooming table, and of course Johnny Feelgood is off being hot in greener pastures, and though many of the people who have left the White House were fired in petulant fits of rage by the historically stupid man known as President Poop Waffle, that doesn’t mean the president doesn’t hate to see them go. This is because the president of the United States is a pathetic and lonely person who doesn’t have real friends.
Now look, don’t assume Trump is going to let his head get ahead of his heart and sneak Rob into the White House or anything:
The president has told the advisers he has talked with that he knows he probably cannot bring Mr. Porter back.
Because of the whole wife-beater thing. 😦
This is our reality now. This moron is the “president.” What stories are you following?
More links to check out:
WaPo: The story behind 11-year-old Naomi Wadler and her March for Our Lives speech.
NYT: John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment.
WaPo: ‘Not in a punch-back mode’: Why Trump has been largely silent on Stormy Daniels.
The Daily Beast: The Allegedly Murderous Oligarch, the Duped CIA Chief, and the Trumpkin.
Politico: How Trump favored Texas over Puerto Rico.
Buzz Feed: Christopher Steele’s Other Report: A Murder In Washington.
Those baby elephants are adorable!
I love the happy face on that first one and the one dipping his trunk in the water trough??? That is too adorable for words.
I guess they’re all great, but Elephants and giraffes are wonderful animals.
Hey BB. Thought you might like to read this:
http://blogs.wgbh.org/on-campus/2018/3/23/campus-radio-purdues-mitch-daniels-kaplan-acquisition/?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=social&utm_term=20180327&utm_content=1440941250
http://blogs.wgbh.org/on-campus/2018/3/24/purdue-kaplan-make-unconventional-bid-reach-adult-students/
Thanks, will read!
BB listed it but I want to reiterate: Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-met-stevens-2nd-amendment-0328-chicago-inc-20180327-story.html
Whew!
There is a plague on this land by the name of Trump. Nothing is safe from this scourge. Just be certain that anything that bears the signature of Barack Obama is poised to be obliterated as soon as the document is presented to the virus named Trump who will gladly scrawl his name across the document, feeling as if he has achieved something during his miserable stewardship.
Today the military transgender people are once again on the chopping block. This directive from a man who never served. The environment is at risk as he goes about deregulating everything in sight in response to the greedy corporations and CEOs he admires.
Tax laws have been enacted that swell the coffers of the already rich while the middle and working class scramble. Healthcare has been repeatedly threatened and hangs on by a thread. Hurricane victims in Puerto Rico are summarily ignored. DACA is still undecided while voting rights take hit after hit in order to appease the POTUS.
Porn stars and Playmates have invaded the Oval Office. Treaties have been torn up. War talk trickles down with dubious appointments of hawkish advisers being named. Cabinet members continue to drain the treasury and the public with their preferred tastes of privilege.
The gun lobby continues to flourish. Military weapons are still available with few age limits imposed. White supremacy has found a home in this current atmosphere of hate and distrust. Our allies distrust us. Our enemies are embraced. Democracy has taken hit after hit by this man who is without intelligence, compassion or integrity. His word cannot be trusted. His is a fake and a dangerous one at that.
This makes so many of us uneasy. Strictly speaking I am not concerned by his various infidelities since he was elected with the knowledge of the Access Hollywood tape. His idiot supporters saw nothing wrong then or now. They are hypocrites. Totally without value who could and still do support this vacant, hollow, evil man.
I would much prefer to see and hear from those whose businesses were ruined by Trump’s failure and refusal to pay his bills. Those who suffered monetary loss at the hands of a lawyered up deadbeat. These people running a small business were also threatened with lawsuits because Trump found it enjoyable to cheat those who were unable to fight back. Let us hear from them.
Someday there may be an antidote for the plague that is Trump. Meanwhile, we must patiently sit back and hope that the day may soon arrive. I fear it will require a lot of patience and hard work to rid us of this infection called Trump.
Justice must be brought to bear against this stain. I never thought I would live to see anything this horrendous in my lifetime.
I’m seeing more and more articles about some of his fed-up constituency. They turned on him in the PA special election and the coal miners are waking up now that their health care is threatened.
I would also like to see these voters – who he never cared a nickel for in the first place – to wake the fk up.
Pat, your comment should have been on the front page!
In fact we should all forward it to our ‘representatives’ in a huge barrage
I think that the purpose is to do as much damage as possible in order to convince his authoritarian would be fascist minion that good ( democratic ) government is impossible and that an America First strong man is needed.
Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans, is awarded the Kennedy Profile in Courage Award
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/03/27/mitch-landrieu-mayor-of-new-orleans-is-awarded-kennedy-profile-in-courage-award/?utm_term=.fea90d375d66
What’s your on the ground take on Landrieu, Dak?
He’s been key in touristifying everything. Most of us are pretty pissed at him.
https://newrepublic.com/article/144446/democrats-deserve-better-mitch-landrieu9
9
Where is Mary?
Is she still in politics?
Mary’s a lobbyist now. I think she is totally out of it. I haven’t seen her do anything public since she lost her re-election to that moron Cassiday
NPR: ‘They Don’t Care’: Whistleblower Says Cambridge Analytica Aims To Undermine Democracy
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/27/597279596/they-don-t-care-whistleblower-says-cambridge-analytica-seeks-to-undermine-democr
I worked for the Atlanta Fed. It’s not hotbed of liberal economists there.
Hmmm, sounds like Krugman et al. were right all along. Of course.
Trump knows nothing about economics, and even if he did the whole tax scam was designed to make rich people even more rich.
I love elephants!
60 Minutes did a piece one year on saving baby elephants whose mothers had been murdered and it showed their “human emotions” up close.
They weep and mourn their dead. The easily show affection. They parent well. They are glorious creatures who must be protected at all costs.
Those who hunt them are murderers. There is no reason on earth that could possibly be warranted.
Long live these noble and amazing animals.
Amen, Pat.
Read the letter Kraft left on plane for Parkland students
https://sports.yahoo.com/read-letter-kraft-left-plane-173849746.html
That link took me to a security warning. Here’s another link.
https://www.boston.com/sports/new-england-patriots/2018/03/27/read-the-letter-robert-kraft-wrote-to-the-parkland-students-and-families
Zuckerberg is a coward. And no, he has no care for the people who use Facebook.
Zuck is an amoral bundle of inadequacies. Faceblot was *started* to track the “hotness” of “chicks.” (Those being women smart enough to get into Harvard.) With a mentality like that, in what universe could he ever be expected to care about what anyone else needs or wants? The only potentially decent thing I know about him is that he married his college sweetheart and hasn’t made an exhibition of himself humiliating her.
As for testifying: in the UK there are mostly people, politicians, media, who don’t get money from NRA, Russia, etc etc etc. He’d face real questions, plus European privacy laws (until Brexit, March 2019). In the US? Tons of Repub (and Dem?) congresscritters are complicit in taking tainted money, and they’d never be rude to a billionaire in any case.
He expects to skate through it here and he knows he wouldn’t there.
As far as we know. Yet.
I recall that back when FB and MySpace were both things, FB had the reputation of being for mainstream whites whereas MySpace attracted more POC and non-mainstream people — possibly because of the music focus. Then FB shot past them with memberships and MySpace dived downhill.
I like a lot about Twitter, but not some of its recent changes. Especially irking is the lack of customizability in what you’re sent. Can’t restrict the feed to only the people you follow — it puts in lots of what other people liked and that can drown out the tweets from people you do follow. It’s often a good way to get news and links to info, assuming you follow legit people and not Faux News.
Another nauseating chronic sexual assaulter.