Thread: President Donald Trump

In case there was any doubt, the past dozen days have proved we’re at the point in his presidency where Donald Trump has become his own caricature, a figure impossible to parody, a man whose words and actions are indistinguishable from an Alec Baldwin skit on Saturday Night Live.President Trump’s pièce de résistance came during a late April coronavirus task-force briefing, when he floated using “just very powerful light” inside the body as a potential treatment for COVID-19 and then, for good measure, contemplated injecting disinfectant as a way to combat the effects of the virus “because you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on them, so it’d be interesting to check that.”

Take this past weekend, when former President George W. Bush delivered a three-minute video as part of The Call to Unite, a 24-hour live-stream benefiting COVID-19 relief.

Bush joined other past presidents, spiritual and community leaders, frontline workers, artists, musicians, psychologists, and Academy Award winning actors. They offered advice, stories, and meditations, poetry, prayers, and performances. The purpose of The Call to Unite (which I played a very minor role in helping organize) was to offer practical ways to support others, to provide hope, encouragement, empathy, and unity.

In his video, which went viral, Bush—in whose White House I worked—never mentioned Trump. Instead, he expressed gratitude to health-care workers, encouraged Americans to abide by social-distancing rules, and reminded his fellow Americans that we have faced trying times before.

“I have no doubt, none at all, that this spirit of service and sacrifice is alive and well in America,” Bush said. He emphasized that “empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery.” And America’s 43rd president asked us to “remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat.”

“In the final analysis,” he said, “we are not partisan combatants; we are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.” Bush concluded, “We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise.”

That was too much for Trump, who attacked his Republican predecessor on (where else?) Twitter: “[Bush] was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!”

So think about that for a minute. George W. Bush made a moving, eloquent plea for empathy and national unity, which enraged Donald Trump enough that he felt the need to go on the attack.
But there’s more. On the same weekend that he attacked Bush for making an appeal to national unity, Trump said this about Kim Jong Un, one of the most brutal leaders in the world: “I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!”

Then, Sunday night, sitting at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial for a town-hall interview with Fox News, Trump complained that he is “treated worse” than President Abraham Lincoln. “I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said.

By Monday morning, the president was peddling a cruel and bizarre conspiracy theory aimed at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a Trump critic, with Trump suggesting in his tweet that a “cold case” be opened to look into the death of an intern in 2001.

I could have picked a dozen other examples over the past 10 days, but these five will suffice. They illustrate some of the essential traits of Donald Trump: the shocking ignorance, ineptitude, and misinformation; his constant need to divide Americans and attack those who are trying to promote social solidarity; his narcissism, deep insecurity, utter lack of empathy, and desperate need to be loved; his feelings of victimization and grievance; his affinity for ruthless leaders; and his fondness for conspiracy theories.

None of these traits are new in Trump; they are part of the reason why some of us were warning about him long before he won the presidency, even going back to 2011. But, more and more, those traits are defining his presidency, producing a kind of creeping paralysis. We are witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of an American president. It’s something the Trump White House cannot hide—indeed, it doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. There is not even the slightest hint of normalcy.

THIS WILL HAVE ongoing ramifications for the remainder of Trump’s first term and for his reelection strategy. More than ever, Trump will try to convince Americans that “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” to quote his own words in 2018.

That won’t be easy in a pandemic, as the death toll mounts and the economy collapses and the failures of the president multiply. But that doesn’t mean Trump won’t try. It’s all he has left, so Americans have to prepare for it.

Trump and his apparatchiks will not only step up their propaganda; they will increase their efforts to exhaust our critical thinking and to annihilate truth, in the words of the Russian dissident Garry Kasparov. We will see even more “alternative facts.” We will see even more brazen attempts to rewrite history. We will hear even more crazy conspiracy theories. We will witness even more lashing out at reporters, more rage, and more lies.

“The real opposition is the media,” Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, once told the journalist Michael Lewis. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

We will see more extreme appeals to the fringe base of Trump’s party, including right-wing militias. For example, after hundreds of protesters, many of them carrying guns, descended on the capitol in Lansing, Michigan, to protest Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order, Trump, summoning the ghosts of Charlottesville, described the protesters as “very good people.” Some of these “very good people” carried signs saying Tyrants Get the Rope and Tyrant Bitch and comparing the governor to Hitler.

We will see a more prominent role played by One America News, a pro-Trump network that the president has praised dozens of times. And we will see the right-wing media complex go to even more bizarre places—not just people such as InfoWar’s Alex Jones, who literally threatened to eat his own neighbors if the lockdown continued, but more mainstream figures such as Salem Radio Network’s Dennis Prager, who declared the other day that the lockdown was “the greatest mistake in the history of humanity.”

Watching formerly serious individuals on the right, including the Christian right, become Trump courtiers has been a painful and dispiriting thing for many of us to witness. In the process, they have reconfigured their own character, intellect, and moral sensibilities to align with the disordered mind and deformed ethical world of Donald Trump.

And we will see, as we have for the entire Trump presidency, the national Republican Party fall in line. Many are speaking out in defense of Trump while other timid souls who know better have gone sotto voce out of fear and cowardice that they have justified to themselves, and tried less successfully to justify to others.

What this means is that Americans are facing not just a conventional presidential election in 2020 but also, and most important, a referendum on reality and epistemology. Donald Trump is asking us to enter even further into his house of mirrors. He is asking us to live within a lie, to live within his lie, for four more years. The duty of citizenship in America today is to refuse to live within that lie.

“The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions,” Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said in his mesmerizing 1970 Nobel lecture. “Let that enter the world, let it even reign in the world—but not with my help.”

Solzhenitsyn went on to say that writers and artists can achieve more; they can conquer falsehoods. “Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art,” he said.
But art, as powerful as it is, is not the only instrument with which to fight falsehoods. There are also the daily acts of integrity of common men and women who will not believe the lies or spread the lies, who will not allow the foundation of truth—factual truth, moral truth—to be destroyed, and who, in standing for truth, will help heal this broken land.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...tm_source=feed

yesterday trump visited a factory that is making N95 face masks....of course he wasn't wearing a face mask....listen to the song playing on the factory's sound system...

Originally Posted by raycarey

yesterday trump visited a factory that is making N95 face masks....of course he wasn't wearing a face mask....listen to the song playing on the factory's sound system...

But of course he wore the protective goggles.

What a dumb c u n t.

Reminds me of this woman who said this "made it easier to breathe".

Originally Posted by Cujo

With deaths forecast to rise to 3000 per day, cowardly shitgibbon gives up, declares it's all too hard for him. Virus won't do what shitgibbon wants regdless of how much he blusters, lies and bullies.
Virus wins.
American people lose.

Baldy orange cunto is more interested in his-relection than doing the job and protecting people.

But he can't stop the flow of information. Hopefully he goes ahead with this and gets fucked in November.

At last, baldy orange cunto has his own death clock.

Trump Death Clock

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

baldy orange cunto

genius

Originally Posted by pseudolus

genius

And really funny


The first 20 times

the orange windsock is not happy

Donald Trump lashed out a conservative super PAC that opposes his reelection bid after the group released an ad accusing the president of gravely mishandling the coronavirus crisis.

“There’s mourning in America, and under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker and sicker and poorer,” the Lincoln Project ad says—an allusion to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “morning again in America” ad. “Now, Americans are asking, ‘If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?'” the new ad concludes.

… Accusing the president of gravely mishandling the coronavirus crisis

A better way of saying that would’ve been, “accurately pointing out the president’s grave mishandling of the coronavirus crisis.”

Originally Posted by beachbound

I don’t think this is fair. There are shit loads of fuck ups, and idiotic statements by the buffoon in chief, in between those two dates.

Good point, well made!

When Trump lied and claimed credit for “the greatest economy in the history of our country,” even though it wasn’t, and even though he inherited a strong economy, and goosed it up with trillions of dollars in debt, it didn’t matter to most people

How very true.

I see baldy has sold another government position. This is the sort of thing you'd expect in a corrupt third world shithole.

So much swamp draining!

WASHINGTON (CN) – A staunch Trump supporter and North Carolina businessman will be the next postmaster general of the U.S. Postal Service, the agency’s Board of Governors announced on Wednesday.


Louis DeJoy —a North Carolina-based executive who reportedly donated to several Republican campaigns, including to President Donald Trump’s— will serve as the new postmaster general.

Top Trump Donor Named Next Postmaster General

If Trump ran the Manhattan Project, we’d all be speaking Japanese



By Dana Milbank (WaPo)
Columnist
May 7, 2020 at 6:31 a.m. GMT+7
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...king-japanese/

In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote secretly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about the potential need for “quick action” toward the development of atomic weapons.

After Roosevelt received a scientific briefing, he is said to have called in his military aide, Gen. Edwin “Pa” Watson. “Pa! This requires action!” FDR said.

Thus began what would become the Manhattan Project, a sprawling collaboration among the military, academics and corporations, ultimately employing 130,000 and spending the then-extraordinary sum of $2.2 billion in successfully building the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oak Ridge, Tenn., worked on uranium; Chicago worked on plutonium; Hanford, Wash., built reactors; Los Alamos, N.M., designed bombs; and Alamogordo, N.M., held testing.

One can imagine how things might have gone if Donald Trump had been the president who received Einstein’s letter: After two months, he would have congratulated himself for a “phenomenal job,” wound down his atomic task force and left the whole nuclear thing to the states.

Texas would compete with Florida for uranium, while New Jersey and Ohio bid up plutonium prices.

New York, making bombs, wouldn’t be in touch with Washington state, which would be retrofitting the B-29 without specs.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, complaining about the lack of coordination, would be demoted and denied whistleblower protection.

The bombs wouldn’t work properly in tests, the bombers would take off without enough fuel, Trump would blame the governor of Michigan — and we’d all be speaking Japanese.

Trump has declared himself a “wartime president” and on Wednesday afternoon he asserted that “we went through the worst attack we’ve ever had on our country,” calling the pandemic “worse than Pearl Harbor.”

Yet, incredibly, he is declaring a premature cease-fire against a virus that has killed more than 70,000 Americans — by coincidence the same number killed the day the bomb fell on Nagasaki. Congratulating his coronavirus task force for a “phenomenal job,” Trump indicated Tuesday that he would shut it down — then reversed himself Wednesday after a resulting furor, saying he “had no idea how popular the task force is.”

Instead of mobilizing the nation for testing, contact tracing, antivirals and vaccines, he declared that his administration did a “phenomenal job” and applauded the reopening of workplaces, while calling for schools to reopen without adequate protections in place. Vice President Pence thinks “we could largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us” in just a few weeks.

On Capitol Hill on Wednesday, scientists again pleaded for a stronger response. “We risk complacency in accepting the preventable deaths of 2,000 Americans each day,” Caitlin Rivers of Johns Hopkins University told a House panel. She said the country is doing only a third of the testing needed “to gain control of this outbreak” and warned that we could “again create the conditions that led to us being the worst affected country in the world.”

Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that “governments and private companies must join forces to make massive continued investments in testing.”

And the Trump administration? It boycotted the hearing, refusing to let top doctor Anthony Fauci testify. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the panel’s ranking Republican, protested, saying Fauci’s testimony would have been “useful to this country.”

But Trump talks about the pandemic as if it has passed. “We have saved millions of lives, but now we’re going to make our comeback,” he said in the Oval Office on Wednesday, as a nurse standing behind him, protected neither by mask nor social distancing, twiddled his thumbs.

Trump congratulates himself for “an incredible job on testing,” backing that up once again Wednesday with his wildly false claim that the United States has tested more than all other countries combined. He said states “have everything they need” and that if any American worker is nervous about possible exposure and wants to get a test, “they should have no problem.”

Perhaps because the White House has loads of tests — those coming near Trump are tested repeatedly — Trump doesn’t realize most Americans who want tests still can’t get them. On Wednesday, I tried — and failed — to arrange a test for an 85-year-old family member with cancer and diabetes.

Trump’s idea of a Manhattan Project is apparently to install a Manhattan real estate investor — Jared Kushner — in charge of a group of volunteers prioritizing protective-equipment requests from Fox News personalities. Without a federal government empowering a real Manhattan Project, some scientists, billionaires and industrialists have tried to form their own, the Wall Street Journal reports. But group members recognize their ideas “could be ignored altogether by the Trump administration.”

Of course they’ll be ignored. Trump has already declared an early and unilateral cease-fire with the virus. In his perverse version of a Manhattan Project, the Enola Gay has taken off, but the pilot has no flight plan and the bomb is still a prototype in the model shop.

Quite astounding, actually.
He lacks any type of credible intelligence [even common everyday intelligence], and compounds this with the obvious and numerous sociopathic and psychotic character traits.

Almost a truer [if not subliminal] reflective character of the culture - in a round about way.

Originally Posted by tomcat

If Trump ran the Manhattan Project, we’d all be speaking Japanese

what a ridiculous article, jesus christ, those anti-Trump snowflakes are NOT running out of ideas to demonstrate their own stupidity

At least we all know that Trump is smarter than you.

He he tells the American people what they want to hear. You tell the posters on here what no one except Americans want to listen to.

Originally Posted by Switch

At least we all know that Trump is smarter than you.

He he tells the American people what they want to hear. You tell the posters on here what no one except Americans want to listen to.

Good morning Chass, how is your day today? still waking up in a pool of piss?

not sure what this means (or if i'm misinterpreting it).....but it really seems like drudge has turned on trump in the last few months.

and if it is true, that's really bad news for trump going forward because he's a key part in the right-wing echo chamber.

Originally Posted by tomcat

In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote secretly to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about the potential need for “quick action” toward the development of atomic weapons.

So, Einstein had forced Roosevelt to build nuke? S

The truth is that Einstein was forced to add his signing to letter of others - quite different meaning than "wrote secretly to..." Many times later he regretted his signing...

Anyway, if the Manhattan project hadn't been finished, Japan would not be occupied by USA but obviously by Russians, when Stalin started his invasion against Japan exactly 3 months after Berlin fall - in compliance with the treaty all Allies approved...

double post

Originally Posted by Switch

He tells the American people what they want to hear.

Only those with an IQ under 40.

Originally Posted by Switch

You tell the posters on here what no one except Americans want to listen to.

Rather listen to fingernails on a chalkboard.

Originally Posted by KlonDork

So, Einstein had forced Roosevelt to build nuke? S

The truth is that Einstein was forced to add his signing to letter of others - quite different meaning than "wrote secretly to..." Many times later he regretted his signing...

Anyway, if the Manhattan project hadn't been finished, Japan would not be occupied by USA but obviously by Russians, when Stalin started his invasion against Japan exactly 3 months after Berlin fall - in compliance with the treaty all Allies approved...

Tell us more, Herodotus!

Originally Posted by beachbound

Tell us more, Herodotus!

When I was a kid, I was taught in school, that the japanese gave up after the Nagasaki bomb.

It was cold war times then

Try to google: 'Why did the japanese surrender' or such

There might be other explanations out there