4/24/19: Someone doesn’t understand how the U.S. Constitution works. It’s
President Trump!
Apparently, if lawmakers in Congress move to
impeach him, he has a secret plan to stop them. He will appeal to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his
friends PJ, Bernie and Squi.
Trump says he’ll head to the U.S. Supreme Court,
which, last time I taught seventh graders, had no role in the impeachment
process, save for the fact the Chief Justice presides over any trial in the
Senate.
By the way, if you’ve never noticed, the
President of the United States has only a passing understanding of numbers. On
November 29, last year, he complained that the Mueller probe had wasted $40,000,000.
This past April 19, he said it cost $30,000,000.
At this point, Trump could claim that 93 million
Americans were unemployed when Obama left office – which he did claim – and then
brag that he has added five million jobs since taking office – he has – and his
fans would believe Obama left all those people looking for work and now they
have jobs!
It’s loaves and fishes.
*
Who met with Russians in 2016?
This guy: Jared Kushner.
IN OTHER NEWS, White House aide and Trump son-in-law Jared
Kushner makes a rare public statement.
Kushner tells Time that the Mueller probe was an
awful mistake. “The whole thing is just a big distraction for the country,” he
says. “You look at what Russia did – buying some Facebook ads to try and sow
dissent. And it’s a terrible thing, but I think the investigation and all the
speculation that’s happened over the past two years has had a much harsher
impact on our democracy.”
Yes, indeed.
We would never want democracy to be impacted, as for example,
when Jared, himself, Donald R. (“R” for Russia) Trump Jr. and Trump campaign
manager (and now-convicted felon) Paul Manafort sat down with Russians in June
2016, with the understanding that the Russians would help them win the
election.
5/22/19: Let’s talk deals. Let’s talk Democrats and President Trump
working out a $2 trillion deal on infrastructure...
Never mind. Let’s talk temper tantrums!
A meeting at the White House collapses like an interstate highway bridge in desperate need of
repair, when Donald R. Trump (the “R” is honorary, for his collaboration with
Russians) stalks into a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck
Schumer and never makes it to his highchair.
The Toddler-in-Chief is steaming because
Democrats are accusing him of obstruction of justice, and keep coming up with
evidence to support their charges. Trump informs Pelosi that her comments –
that he’s engaged in a cover up – are “terrible” and stomps out of the room
before anyone else can utter a word.
Moments later, he appears in front of reporters
at a lectern in the Rose Garden. Some thoughtful aide has stuck a sign in
front, reading, “No Collusion, No Obstruction.”
Trump lets rip:
Instead of walking in
happily into a meeting, I walk in to look at people that have just said that I
was doing a cover-up. I don’t do cover-ups.
I walked into the room and
I told Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi: “I want to do infrastructure. I want to
do it more than you want to do it. I’d be really good at that, that’s what I
do. But you know what? You can’t do it under these circumstances. So get these
phony investigations over with.”
“You can’t legislate and investigate at the same
time,” he complains. This is like saying you can’t drive a car or mail a letter
if you are going through a divorce. At any rate, we’re never going to know if
Trump might be “really good” at doing infrastructure, because he proves once
again, he’s a septuagenarian baby.
“This meeting was set up a
number of days ago,” Trump continues. “All of a sudden I hear last night they’re
going to have a meeting right before this meeting to talk about the ‘I word.’
The ‘I word.’ Can you imagine?”
Can you imagine?
“Incontinent?”
Other possibilities, swirl in
imagination: “imbecile,” “infantile,” “immoral,” “impede” (as in “impede an
investigation”) and “indict.”
“Impeach?”
Speaker Pelosi sums up the meeting later. “He just took a pass, and it just makes me
wonder why he did that. In any event, I pray for the president and I pray for
the United States of America.”
5/30/19: At this point, it would be nearly impossible to overestimate how
petty the president is and how petty everyone who works for him knows he is (see: 5/15/19). The Wall
Street Journal reports that when Trump was in Japan the White House
requested that the USS John S. McCain,
a destroyer, be moved out of sight during
his visit to the U.S. Naval Base in Yokosuka.
The ship no one should name if Trump is about.
The request to move the ship
was rejected. Nevertheless, Navy officers reportedly draped a tarp over the
“offending” name. Clearer heads prevailed and down came the tarp.
Real reporters do their best
to verify what they say. So, ABC added
this:
The Navy’s top spokesman, Adm.
Charlie Brown, tweeted that the ship’s name had not been obscured.
“The name of USS John S. McCain
was not obscured during the POTUS visit to Yokosuka on Memorial Day,” Brown
tweeted. “The Navy is proud of that ship, its crew, its namesake and its
heritage.”
But it had been obscured, per White House
request, until base commanders ordered the tarp removed. “There was a lower level effort to comply with
the request but when leadership became aware they ordered the tarp be taken
down,” a U.S. Navy official told ABC News. “Navy leadership decided the name
should not be obscured.”
There was disagreement about
details and ancillary claims. For example, was a barge moved closer to the
destroyer to block its name from view after the tarp disappeared?
What
we know beyond doubt is that the White House made the request.
We know the president said he had no prior knowledge of the request. “Now,
somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, OK? And they were
well-meaning,” Trump told reporters gathered on the White House lawn. “I will
say, I didn’t know anything about it. I would never have done that.”
By the time the storm had
settled, with no warships sunk or damaged, Navy officials had wasted much of
the day explaining and clarifying the situation surrounding the “offending” name.
And here, your hard-working
blogger would like to add that the offending vessel is named for three
generations of the McCain family who served bravely during World War I, World
War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam War. The tradition continues, with James
McCain, the late senator’s son, having fought with the Marines and the U.S.
Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. His brothers, Doug McCain and Jack McCain were
both Navy pilots, like their dad.
By comparison no Trump, since
Friedrich Trump first planted immigrant foot on U.S. soil in 1885, has ever
dodged a bullet or bomb or even flown a paper airplane in service to this
country.
Naturally, the president
thought this all over and then decided to ignore the basics of the story, and
tweet out a defense:
*
MEANWHILE, reporters managed to question the
president about growing talk among congressional Democrats of impeachment.
“Do you think they’re going to impeach you?” one
of the enemies of the people, unless that reporter works for Fox News, asked.
Trump replied:
I don’t see how they
can, because they’re possibly allowed, although
I can’t imagine the courts
allowing it [emphasis added]. I’ve never got into it. I never thought that
would even be possible to be using that word.
To me it’s a dirty word, the word “impeach.”
It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word. And it has nothing to do with me.
Or to put it plainly, Trump fails Government 101
again! The courts have nothing to do with the impeachment process. Also, the
“dirty, filthy, disgusting word” appears in the U.S. Constitution for obvious
reasons.
The process can be used to deter a president or
any other high official intent on abusing the powers of office. (See:
4/24/19, for explanation of the role of the Chief Justice in any impeachment
trial.)
BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/24/20):
We were in error when we said no one in the Trump family had ever served in
uniform. Trump’s older brother, Fred, did serve in the Air National Guard. However,
no one in the president’s direct line has.)
Trump is the first U.S. president ever to support a civil war against his own people.
(Not counting Jefferson Davis.)
9/27-29/19: Fast moving developments Friday, on into the
weekend, did little to improve President Trump’s mood.
____________________
“We call on the Administration to make clear that retaliation
for political reasons will not be tolerated.”
The American Academy of Diplomacy
____________________
The American Academy of
Diplomacy warnedthat his administration was treading
on dangerous ground in its treatment
of former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. Ms. Yovanovitch
had been removed from her post in May, allegedly for mucking up Rudy Giuliani’s
goofy plans.
Of particular concern was
Trump’s statement during his phone call to President Zelensky, that Yovanovitch
was “bad news,” and was going to “go through some things.” Payback, one
assumed, for crossing Rudy.
The Academy, representing diplomats from past administrations,
Democrat and Republican, made its position plain:
The threatening tone of this
statement is deeply troubling. It suggests actions outside of and contrary
to the procedures and standards of a professional service whose officers, like
their military counterparts, take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Whatever
views the Administration has of Ambassador Yovanovitch’s performance, we call
on the Administration to make clear that retaliation for political reasons will
not be tolerated.
Kurt Volker, one of two
diplomats who was reported to have tried to limit the damage Giuliani was
doing, now resigned.
Trump’s first tweet on September 27, focused for some
unfathomable reason on a spelling issue and CNN, and came at 6:02 a.m. “To show
you how dishonest the LameStream Media is, I used the word Liddle’, not Liddle,
in discribing Corrupt Congressman Liddle’ Adam Schiff,” in an earlier tweet,
the president complained. “Low ratings @CNN purposely took the hyphen out and
said I spelled the word little wrong. A small but never ending situation with
CNN!”
(Yes. He spelled “describing” wrong, while complaining about
CNN and a missing hyphen, which was really an apostrophe.)
*
The old
Giuliani would prosecute the new Giuliani.
TRUMP TOOK an ugly turn for the worse Saturday morning. His
third tweet of the day, carried his attacks to a dangerous new low:
The problem, of course, is that tweeting like a madman could
not make Trump’s problems disappear. He was almost sure now to be impeached;
and he was going to have to testify under oath.
The bad news piled up.
NBC reported that Giuliani’s former colleagues at the
Department of Justice believed he may have committed a series of crimes.
“This is certainly not the
Giuliani that I know,” said Jeffrey Harris, who worked as Giuliani’s top
assistant when he was at the Justice Department in the President Ronald Reagan
administration. “I think the Giuliani that I know would prosecute the Giuliani
of today.”
…NBC News reached out to seven
former colleagues of Giuliani’s. Of the six who offered comments on or off the
record, none defended him…
Bruce Fein, who worked at the
Justice Department with Giuliani in the early 1980s, said he believes Giuliani
could be prosecuted for breaking federal election laws.
“He was soliciting a foreign
government to help Trump’s 2020 campaign. That’s a problem,” said Fein, a
former special assistant to the assistant attorney general for the Office of
Legal Counsel under President Richard Nixon and associate deputy attorney
general under President Ronald Reagan.
“Federal election laws make it
illegal to solicit anything of value from a foreign government or persons to
influence the outcome of an election.”
“There’s
obviously lots that’s very troubling there.”
Saturday and Sunday, the president took a series of swift
kicks to the nuts. We learned that the whistleblower was a C.I.A. agent
assigned to duty at the White House. He or she followed proper channels in
taking concerns to the director of the C.I.A. Another hit to the gonads
followed. The White House was forced to admit…well, okay…we did move transcripts of
conversations (including the one alluded to in the whistleblower complaint) to
a “more secure and classified computer system.”
Were any other records moved to the secure system, out of sight, out of mind,
as it were? According to a former White House official calls involving Trump
and Vladimir Putin were also moved.
There were fresh rumblings of discontent inside the GOP. Fox
News quoted former Sen. Jeff Flake as saying, during a
Q&A session at the Texas Tribune Festival, that if there was a secret vote
for impeachment in the U.S. Senate, Trump would be toast. “I heard someone
say if there were a private vote there would be 30 Republican votes. That’s not
true,” Flake said. “There would be at least 35.”
Rep. Mark Amodi, a Nevada Republican, was the first member of
his party in the House of Representatives to publicly support an impeachment
inquiry. To be clear, he wasn’t saying Trump was guilty. He was saying he was a “big fan of oversight.” “Using government agencies to, if it’s
proven, to put your finger on the scale of an election [emphasis added],
I don’t think that’s right,” Amodi explained.“If it turns out that it’s something along those lines, then there’s a
problem.”
A surprising number of Republican lawmakers, when asked to
comment, insisted they were really sorry. They were about to skip town for
summer recess and hadn’t had time to read the whistleblower’s nine-page
complaint. Sen. Tom Cotton, normally happy to cheer any and all actions taken
by President Trump, up to and including the president pardoning himself, went
with “no comment.”
Speaking to a reporter, Sen. Ben Sasse offered warning to GOP
colleagues. “Republicans,” he said, “ought not to be rushing to circle the
wagons to say there’s no there there when there’s obviously lots that’s very
troubling there.” In addition, “The administration ought not be attacking the
whistleblower as some talking points suggest they plan to do.”
It wasn’t just Democrats who sniffed a foul odor emanating from the Offal (Oval)
Office. Gene Hartigan, former chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party,
outlined for reporters a path forward that might save the party.
“There seems to be enough
material evidence to prove that what he did, he did,” Hartigan said [referring
to President Trump].
The former chair says
Republicans should realize that this is the end game for Trump – opening the
door for Mike Pence to take over the Oval Office, a more traditional Republican
Hartigan believes could work with Democrats to pass legislation and possibly get
elected president.
“I think it’s time for Mitch
McConnell to gather together enough Republicans to work with the Democrats in
the Senate to approve impeachment,” Hartigan said. “And I think that could
happen.”
Sunday, of course, the drumbeat of bad news continued. It was
revealed that Rudy had planned to attend a conference in Armenia, sponsored
by the Russian government, where he would be paid handsomely to give a
speech. In the sudden glare of publicity he claimed he had no idea the
conference would include an appearance by Vladimir Putin. On second thought, he
said, he wouldn’t go.
One of the “enemies of the people” pointed out, cruelly,
perhaps, that if you checked the website for the conference, it listed Putin
and several other Russian officials who planned to attend.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski got pinned down by members of the free
press and had to admit that Trump’s phone call was “very concerning.”
Former Republican Gov. William Weld said the call was
“grounds for removal from office.”
Sen. Romney offered up the idea that most of his GOP
colleagues were still backing Trump, not because they approved of his conduct,
but for selfish reasons. “I think it’s very natural for people to look at circumstances
and see them in the light that’s most amenable to their maintaining power and
doing things to preserve that power,” he said. Profiles in Cowardice,
you might call it.
Sunday
morning, Rudy was still Rudy-ing.
He
showed up on ABC’s This Week. Had he messed up in any way, the host,
George Stephanopoulos, wondered? Rudy demurred. “Everything I did was to defend my client and I am proud of having
uncovered what will turn out to be a massive pay-for-play scheme,” he
said.
Trump spent the last Sunday in September the way he spends
most Sundays in all the seasons of the year. He skipped church, tweeted
religiously, and worked himself into a funk. By afternoon he was tweeting dire
threats aimed at…
North Korea?
Putin?
Opioid manufacturers?
Nope. His threats were directed at Chairman Schiff and the
whistleblower – and admit it, even if you like Trump, you’re not surprised.
First, Schiff:
His lies were made in
perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He
wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the
President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest
level for Fraud & Treason [emphasis added].....
(To
understand what upset Trump, see Schiff’s tweet; 9/25/19; also 9/30/19.)
Next,
the whistleblower:
....In addition, I want
to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION,
but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely
incorrect, to the “Whistleblower.” Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President?
Big Consequences!
If that wasn’t bad enough, the President of the United States
was so angry by bedtime that he decided it might be a good idea to threaten the
American people as a whole.
To give you an idea how far the president had descended,
former U.S. Air Force pilot and GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger responded within the
hour:
10/5/19: We know the president is having a tough week. Once again, he retreatsto Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls,
Virginia. There he can hunker down and tweet-hate on other Americans.
As for the need to hunker, Mr. Trump is feeling
the heat of the impeachment investigation. Even a few voices at Fox News have
been raised against him, as evidence of shady dealings mounts.
If Trump eats at his place in Potomac Falls, you know he charges the government to feed
himself, and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, wearing glasses.
As a result of recent leaks from his
administration, we also learn that Trump “pestered” Shinzo Abe
of Japan to recommend him for a Nobel Prize – due to his brilliant success
disarming North Korea – which in retrospect seems pathetic and needy. Trump
reportedly told the Saudis he’d back them for admission to the G-7, rambled on
in conversation with Chinese president Xi about chocolate cake, and made a fool
of himself on the phone with world leaders.
In fact, much ballyhooed negotiations with North Korea, which
began Saturday, ended Saturday. The North said talks broke down
because the U.S. brought nothing new to the table.
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.
____________________
“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
____________________
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.
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