August 1-2, 2019: Climate Change and Two Trump Friends

 

August 1, 2019: Scientists report that July beat out June 2016 for the hottest month, globally, on record.

___

  

8/2/19: Once again, through the miracle of Twitter, President Trump proves he’s a giant dick. 

The relevant tweet:

 

 

The President of the United States, who says he wants a big, beautiful border wall to protect us all from murderers and rapists, thinks it’s funny that Rep. Elijah Cummings’ house was burglarized.

 

* 

NOT ONLY is Trump a dick, he’s a sap. Fourteen months ago, he claimed North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat. So far, he has not convinced Kim Jong-un to give up a single nuke. 

The Donald is 0-for-his presidency. 

So, while North Korea continues to build its nuclear arsenal, and has started launching missiles again, Trump can only tweet his way out of the conundrum. 

His tweets, slightly edited: 

Kim Jong Un and North Korea tested 3 short range missiles over the last number of days. These missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement, nor was there discussion of short range missiles when we shook hands...[emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] 

 

....Chairman Kim does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust....

 

....Chairman Kim has a great and beautiful vision for his country, and only the United States, with me as President, can make that vision come true. He will do the right thing because…he does not want to disappoint his friend, President Trump!

 

His “friend?”

 

Trump should be learning what every president since William McKinley in 1898 has had to learn. Diplomacy on a world stage is a bitch. And it’s hard as hell to get foreign nations to do what we want. 

Only Trump isn’t learning.

 

* 

THE PRESIDENT suffers another blow to the orange ego, when it becomes clear that Rep. John Ratcliffe, his pick to be the next Director of National Intelligence, is not going to be the next DNI. 

That means Ratcliffe, tapped on July 29 to head up one of the most sensitive posts in the U.S. government, didn’t make it a week before his nomination went down in flaming wreckage. 

Naturally, the president blames Democrats and the “Fake News” crowd for derailing his fine pick. He tells reporters that news organizations have treated Ratcliffe “very harshly and very unfairly.” 

The president goes on to say that Republicans in the U.S. Senate would have loved Ratcliffe if Democrats and the free press hadn’t been so cruel. He says he and Ratcliffe decided it wasn’t worth it to go through a confirmation hearing, even though “Moscow Mitch” and the GOP had 53 votes in the upper house and had previously proven willing to vote “yes” on a tomato plant if Trump sent up a nomination.

 

The real problem was Ratcliffe’s thin-to-nonexistent qualifications. First, reporters discovered that the poor dolt had claimed a leading role in prosecuting U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, an important antiterrorism case. When ABC News checked no one involved remembered Ratcliffe. It didn’t help to find Ratcliffe had also claimed to have put all kinds of terrorists in jail. The “enemies of the people” (a.k.a. reporters) discovered that the only case he ever prosecuted involving a terrorist was an Iraq War veteran with PTSD. 

Finally, Trump’s pick for DNI claimed he had “arrested 300 illegal aliens in a single day.” That claim was…how shall we say…fictitious. 

Raids across several states, involving multiple jurisdictions, swept up undocumented workers in various poultry plants. All Ratcliffe did was “disarm” workers who were cutting up chickens. 

Even “Moscow Mitch” and his crew knew the only reason Trump picked Ratcliffe for the job was that Ratcliffe tried to make Robert Mueller look bad during public testimony on July 24. (See: 7/24/19.)