October 21, 2019: Trump's Totally Bonkers Cabinet Meeting

 

10/21/19: The president’s recent decision to abandon the Kurds, but save the Kurds’ oil, makes many Americans want to vomit their lunch. If Kurdish children get killed, the fool in the White House remains unmoved. 

But Kurdish oil. Yeah. 

Save that.

Trump says the Kurds will love it. 

 

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“I’m the one that did the capturing. I’m the one that knows more about it than you people or the – or the fake pundits.” 

President Trump

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Monday afternoon, we were treated to a bonkers view inside a Trump cabinet meeting. In a rambling diatribe, lasting well over an hour, with cabinet heads and reporters looking on, we were treated to vintage Trump. The economy, he said, was the best it’s ever been. He was doing way better than his immediate predecessors, Bush 43, and Obama, and, really, all the presidents going back to 1789. He had created record numbers of jobs. “We’ve never had – there’s close to 160 million people [working now]. So it’s – some incredible things are happening,” he crowed. 

We did have a record number of jobs. We also had a record number of people. A check of Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that the percentage of Americans at work was 63.2 percent. That was the same as September 2013, when a much thinner gentleman was seated in the Oval Office. Still, the economy was doing well. The unemployment rate had fallen to a fifty-year low. 

Unfortunately, glaring inequities remained. Income inequality had also reached a fifty-year high.

 

It wasn’t long before the president went over the right-wing rainbow and got lost in the fluffy clouds. After touting his economic success, Trump decided to focus on his brilliant moves in Syria. He insisted his plans were working perfectly. “We are having very good news coming out. The ceasefire is holding. The Kurds are moving out to safer areas beyond the ‘safe zone,’ as we call it,” Trump said. “Having the safe zone is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing.”  

Anyone who reported differently – for example camera crews that showed Kurds throwing rocks and potatoes, as U.S. forces left them to the mercy of the Turks – was peddling “Fake News.”

Had Trump mentioned lately that he hated reporters? He thought he should mention it again. His political opponents were corrupt, he said. The press wouldn’t say that, because “the media is corrupt also. Much of the media – so much of it, such a big percentage of it. It’s such a shame. Some great reporters and great journalists, but some really bad people. So, that’s the story.” 

The president also wanted to boast about ISIS. When he took over, he complained, he inherited a mess.  

Because President Obama – it was a mess. And I was told and you were told, and everybody told it would be years before you ever did what I did in about a month and a half after I started. I went over to Iraq, I met with our generals, and we figured out a plan, and it was done within a month and a half. I’m the one that did the capturing. I’m the one that knows more about it than you people or the – or the fake pundits.

 

Trump wanted everyone to know how great he was. He went over to Iraq. He basically didn’t mess up the plan that was already in place before he took office. That plan was to let the Kurds do most of the fighting. 

And they did. 

That didn’t bother the president. He continued to prattle: 

Now, all of a sudden, people are starting to say, “You know, what Trump is doing is great.” And we have tremendous – a tremendous power. Because since the election of 2016, November – since that beautiful day, our country has picked up in value trillions and trillions of dollars of worth. Trillions and trillions of dollars. Numbers that nobody would believe. Numbers, if I would have said it on the campaign trail, I would’ve been – I would’ve been excoriated by the fake media. Excoriated.

 

Plus, the Kurds – Trump wasn’t sure he liked them. And Obama. No. He didn’t like that fellow at all. 

As you know, most of the ISIS fighters that we captured – “we.”  We. Not Obama. We. We captured them. Me. Our country captured them, working with others, including the Kurds. And we helped them, don’t forget. We helped the Kurds. Everyone said the Kurds helped us; that’s true. But we helped the Kurds.  They’re no angels, but we helped the Kurds.

 

And we never gave the Kurds a commitment that we’d stay for the next 400 years and protect them. 

 

“But we’re going to bring our soldiers back home,” Trump added. “So far, there hasn’t been one drop of blood shed during this whole period by an American soldier. Nobody was killed. Nobody cut their finger.” 

That was the plan – the plan before he took over. 

All Trump had to do was let the Kurds keep fighting ISIS until we won, and then ditch them after they suffered thousands of casualties. Then he could watch the Russians, among others, fill a vacuum in Syria that he left behind. Next time, of course, he would find that no one wanted to fight on our side. 

Who cared about a few thousand dead and maimed Kurds? “We’ve secured the oil,” Trump bragged. He always said, he reminded everyone, that if you were going into the Middle East, you should, “Keep the oil. We want to keep the oil.”

Kurdish war dead.

 

Wasn’t that the kind of inspired language that stirs idealistic young men and women, but not transgender folks – who are no longer allowed – to don the uniform! You can get shot at in Iraq – Afghanistan – or northern Syria – maybe Saudi Arabia next, so that the U.S. can keep the oil! 

“Ask not what your country can do for you,” Trump might say. “Ask if you can help your country keep a few more barrels of petroleum.” 

Finally, Trump insisted that even the Kurds would eventually love what he was doing. “And we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, they have some cash flow,” he explained. “Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.” 

Yeah, that should work out great. Save for the fact that many more of the Kurds will already be dead.

 

* 

TRUMP TURNED NEXT in his nutty little rant, to the impeachment inquiry. He insisted the Democrats had no reason to impeach him. 

 

“Word for word, comma for comma.” 

He made a call to President Zelensky, “a perfect phone call. I made a perfect call – not a good call; a perfect call.” 

Trump wanted all Americans to know who the real villain was. It was “Shifty Schiff,” the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff had “fabricated” a story. He “made up a lie.” Trump was no chump. “So he made up a lie, and I released – they never thought that I’d do this – I released a transcription, done by stenographers, of the exact conversation I had. And now, the game was up.” 

That “transcript,” he said, was completely accurate, “word for word, comma for comma.” Only that wasn’t true. 

What had been released was a call memorandum, not “the exact conversation.” Even then, the memorandum contained multiple ellipses. 

“There was no pressure whatsoever,” put on Ukraine, Trump said again. 

Yet, for some strange reason, U.S. military assistance to Ukraine was held up for months, just for fun. 

Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch

All of these witnesses and more will testify that President Trump held up military aid 

to Ukraine, to force them to investigate a political opponent.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.

Diplomat George Kent.

Ambassador Gordon Sondland.

Ambassador Bill Taylor.

Besides, Democrats didn’t dare impeach him, the president said. The people loved him! In Dallas, at a recent rally, he “had a record crowd.” His crowds were huge, he repeated. He filled “massive basketball arenas.” He filled them without even bringing a band. “I don’t have a band,” he said. “I set the world record for somebody without a guitar. Okay? I don’t have bands. All right?”Okay, Donald doesn’t have a band. 

He can’t play the guitar. 

Well, then, did Trump want to talk about “Shifty Schiff?” You bet! He’s “a phony guy, a corrupt politician,” Trump complained. Trump wanted everyone to know. He wasn’t phony. He wasn’t corrupt. He hardly knew Rudy Giuliani, or the four men Rudy was working with in Ukraine.

  

We let the Turks come in and shoot at them for a few days. 

Trump switched topics once more. He said that if Turkey stomped the Kurds, the United States would use our incredible power. “We’ll tariff the hell out of their products coming here.” The Kurds, of course, would already be stomped. “I don’t want to use that as a threat,” Trump added, having just made the threat. “But our power is – our power of economics, it’s very powerful.” 

Got it. Our power is very powerful. 

A reporter asked if we were going to leave troops in Syria. Trump said we weren’t. We “only had 28 troops” in Syria that he had pulled out. So, we’ll just leave a few troops in a different section of Syria. Near Israel. Where all the oil is. “We’re working with the Kurds,” he continued. “We have a good relationship with the Kurds. But we never agreed to, you know, protect the Kurds. We fought with them for three and a half to four years. We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.”

 

Trump’s explanation of how we were dealing with the Kurds made even less sense than his usual babbling. 

And our relationship with the Kurds is good, and they’re going to be safe. And I will say this: If shooting didn’t start for a couple of days, I don’t think the Kurds would have moved. I don’t think, frankly, you would’ve been able to make a very easy deal with Turkey.

 

I think when it started for a few days, it was so nasty that when we went to Turkey and when we went to the Kurds, they agreed to do things that they never would have done before the shooting started.

 

In other words, we got a good deal for the Kurds, and they’re “going to be safe” because we let the Turks come in and shoot at them for a few days. 

And the Kurds love it. Now they’re going to “move.”

 

A reporter asked another question. The president had said that Republicans needed to fight harder to protect him. What about Democrats? Did Trump have anything to say about them? 

He did: 

Well, I think the Democrats fight dirty. I think the Democrats are lousy politicians with lousy policy. They want open borders. They don’t care about crime. They want sanctuary cities. They don’t care about drugs. They don’t care about almost anything. 

 

The Democrats were, in other words, terrible human beings.

 

Trump said he knew he might be facing impeachment charges soon. The real threat, he said, came from the people investigating him. Democrats! Trump hated them. And, also, he hated Sen. Mitt Romney. “They’re vicious and they stick together,” he said. “They don’t have Mitt Romney in their midst, they don’t have people like that. They stick together.” 

Trump wanted to be clear. He hated whistleblowers almost as much as he hated Shifty Schiff, and physical exercise of any kind. 

Except golf. 

“So do we have to protect somebody that gave a totally false account of my conversation?” Trump asked rhetorically. The whistleblower lied. Not Trump. “I don’t know. You tell me,” he persisted. “Do we have to protect the informant? Now, I happen to think there probably wasn’t an informant….So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff. It could be Shifty Schiff. In my opinion, it’s possibly Schiff.” 

By the same bizarre logic, it could “possibly” be Elvis, or Jimmy Hoffa. It could even be – possibly – Melania. You could image the First Lady wanting to blow the whistle on her philandering, fat husband. 

(Remember, though: The Inspector General for the U.S. intelligence community reviewed the complaint. He found it “credible” and of “urgent concern.” Elvis didn’t write it. Neither did “Shifty Schiff.”) 

 

“I have to fight off these—these lowlives.” 

In Trump’s eyes, Schiff was shifty because he was gathering testimony from a series of witnesses. “He’s a crooked politician,” Trump grumbled. The entire impeachment inquiry was, 

Very bad for our country. This whole thing is very bad for our country. In the midst of that, I’m trying to get out of wars. But we may have to get into wars, too. Okay? We may have to get into wars. We’re better prepared than we’ve ever been. If Iran does something, they’ll be hit like they’ve never been hit before. I mean, we have things that we’re looking at.

 

But can you imagine I have to fight off these – these lowlives at the same time I’m negotiating these very important things that should’ve been done during Obama and Bush and even before that.  

 

Yes. Trump’s political foes were lowlifes. But he was a tough guy,  even if he weaseled out in Syria. He’s got “things,” he’s got plans. He’s ready to destroy Iran if they mess around. First, he’s going to bring our soldiers back home. Some of them we’re going to reposition in Iraq (not quite home.) We’re also going to send additional troops to Saudi Arabia (definitely not home.) 

If we get in a war with Iran, maybe we’ll ask the Kurds, who also live in the northern mountains of Iran, to help! 

Trump admits it’s hard being president, what with seeing coffins of dead soldiers coming home, or visiting the wounded at Walter Reed. “The toughest thing is sending letters,” he says. “I send many letters home to parents, and I speak to parents. But I send many letters home to parents; their son or daughter has been killed over in the Middle East. For what? For what?” he muses.  

 

Personally, this blogger would argue he’s made that clear. We want to keep the oil in the Middle East. So, he could pen a letter like this: 

Dear Mom and Dad,

 

Your son and/or daughter died bravely in service to our country. Well, screw the Kurds, who fought by their side.

 

We have the oil!

 

Peace and crackers,

Donald J. Trump

 

* 

WHAT ABOUT HIS DECISION to hold the next G-7 summit at Trump National Doral? a reporter finally asked. 

Well, Trump explained, he gives his salary away, all $450,000. He’s happy to do so. He’s not in the White House to make money. Okay, sure, the tax cuts he and the GOP rammed through saved him at least $11 million per year. 

And, yes, they saved Don Jr. and Eric and Ivanka and Melania and maybe Tiffany, too (even if her dad thinks she does look fat in her photos), millions more. 

But he was giving up his salary! Because he cared! Because he was the best! He wanted the reporters there in the room, and the American people, to know what he knew. He was the best. 

They say that no other President has done it. I’m surprised, to be honest with you. They actually say that George Washington may have been the only other President that did. But see whether or not Obama gave up his salary. See whether or not all of the other of your favorites give up their salary. The answer is no.

 

(A quick factcheck by the free press turned up two more examples of presidents who took no pay: Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy. That meant Trump was making sh*t up or lying again.) 

 

Wrestling with some deep-seated inferiority complex. 

Besides, he continued, he was losing a fortune by being president. Maybe as much as $2 billion. Maybe $5 billion. No way of knowing. Probably because he was pulling numbers out of his hat. Trump Math. He would have been happy to hold the G-7 at his property, and it would have been “the greatest G-7 ever.” He’d have done it without making a dime! Because he’s like George Washington, except for the fact that Washington was willing to fight for his country. Did anyone appreciate the losses he, Donald J. Trump, had to endure to be president? 

No. 

You know who else made money while he was president? Trump asked reporters. He decided he’d explain. 

George Washington – he ran his business simultaneously while he was President. Many other Presidents – there weren’t too many really rich Presidents, but there were a few – they ran their business. Hey, Obama made a deal for a book. Is that running a business? I’m sure he didn’t even discuss it while he was President. Oh, yeah. He has a deal with Netflix. When did they start talking about that? That’s only, you know, a couple of examples. 

 

No one in the room had mentioned Mr. Obama. Trump brought him up again. You suspected that he was wrestling with some deep-seated inferiority complex, as far as his predecessor was involved. 

The only problem with this comparison would be that Obama closed the Netflix deal in May 2018, more than a year after leaving office. 

As for a book deal, every president gets a book deal. Presidents make history. Publishers know people will want to read about how it was made. Even Nixon got a book deal. And a pardon. Not that we mean to imply that Trump might be leaving office in similar fashion any time soon. 

 

“Pelosi, Shifty Schiff, Schumer…are trying to destroy the country.” 

As is often the case, Trump’s comments were all over the map. He said he was going to win again in 2020. 

“I have my best polls now,” he claimed. 

“Pelosi, Shifty Schiff, Schumer, these people are trying to destroy the country,” he warned. The Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution was “phony,” he said. 

Then he attacked the free press once more. You could tell he wanted to say the First Amendment was “phony,” too. 

He bit his tongue, scowled, and insisted that he should be able to run the country any way he pleased, “not have to focus on this kind of [impeachment] crap, while at the same time doing a great job with Syria and Turkey and all of the other things that we’re doing.” If somebody else was president we’d already be “in a big war with North Korea. You don’t hear too much about it,” he said. “It could happen. Could happen. I don’t know. I always say, ‘Who knows?’ It’s deals. Who knows?” 

Again. Who knows? No one knows. You almost expect him to say we might have to fight a war with aliens from outer space.

 

“But, in the meantime, North Korea is – I like Kim; he likes me. We get along. I respect him; he respects him [error in White House transcript; or mistake by Trump]. You could end up in a war. President Obama told me that. He said, ‘The biggest problem –  I don’t know how to solve it.’ He told me doesn’t know how to solve it. I said, ‘Did you ever call him?’ ‘No.’ Actually, he tried 11 times. But the man on the other side – the gentleman on the side did not take his call. Okay? Lack of respect. But he takes my call.” 

Obama was no good. 

That’s what Trump wants everyone to know. Obama said he never called Kim. Donald says he tried to call almost a dozen times. Anyway, Kim likes Trump. Trump likes Kim. Trump doesn’t like Obama. Kim, of course, is a homicidal maniac – which tells us a great deal about who Donald really is.

Trump doesn't like this guy.

Trump does like this guy, center.

 

* 

HE THANKS his cabinet and the reporters for listening and tries to wrap up the show. Reporters keep firing questions. 

Does he think he’ll be impeached? 

“Well, the Democrats want to do it,” he says. But he has the greatest economy ever. And the stock market “went through the roof” because “they got rid of Obama, they got rid of Hillary.” 

If any of the Democrats he’s watching in the debates were in power, the stock market would “go down 70, 90, 80 [percent], you’d destroy the country.” 

That’s from the White House transcript. It reads, “70, 90, 80 [percent].” 

Trump is making numbers up again, trying to make himself look good, trying to fill some empty place in his soul.

 

The Democrats want to impeach him because that’s “the only way they’re going to win. They’ve got nothing. All they have is a phone call that was perfect.” The whistleblower has “disappeared.” So has the second whistleblower. And the “informant.” He’s gone too. 

As for all the diplomats testifying, the Democrats were “interviewing ambassadors who I’d never heard of. I don’t know who these people are. I never heard of them.” 

 

Even more if the Ukrainians would help. 

You figure it might be a problem – if Trump really wanted to deal with corruption in Ukraine – that he didn’t know who his own diplomats were. Even though he didn’t know them, he continued,  

I have great respect for some of them. One of them said, just recently – a very, very highly respected man – I’m not going to get into their names, but a highly – said, “No, no. We were very, very bothered by Joe Biden and his son back during the Obama administration.” He said, “We were very…” He’s supposed to be their witness.

 

Trump went on to suggest that the people saying he was abusing his power were Obama people, and Clinton people, and “Never Trump” people. “Those people might be worse than the Democrats – the Never Trumpers. The good news is they’re dying off fast. They’re on artificial respiration, I think.” 

Finally, the president turned it over to cabinet members and aides and they finished telling us how great Trump is. Larry Kudlow, for instance, explained several “economic models” he’d been studying. They helped predict electoral victories. Trump was on target, Kudlow claimed, to get between 289 and 351 electoral votes in 2020. Even more if the Ukrainians would help. 

It was almost pitiful in the end – how fragile the President of the United States was. “Are they predicting who is going to win the election, Larry?  Is that what you’re saying?” Trump asked. 

Yes, Kudlow told the boss. The economic numbers he was seeing, “are the kinds of numbers that suggest a very substantial victory. A very substantial victory.” 

Trump beamed at last.

The kind of applause President Trump secretly craves.