What stupid shit has Trump done today?

[CRI]

On The Hill State Dept. lifts limit on refugee admissions
Huh? Is Trump even in the loop on this?

Shhhhhhhh!

 

[CRI]

On The Hill Boehner: Tax reform is 'just a bunch of happy talk'
Boehner can see Trump's impeachment coming and that's the best way for the GOP to play it. All aboard the outrage bus.

It will go either way, depending on how likely senators and congresspeople think it is they'll lose their shirt in 2018. If it's high, I'll bank on every last one doing a St Peter and denying they ever had anything to do with him. If it's low, or enough's been done to ensure there won't be anything like a fair election in 2018, they'll continue to back him, through gritted teeth perhaps, but if it gets what they want, they'll stick.

 

[CRI]

Okay, not a stupid act by Trump per se, but his administration's actions and stance could make this situ escalate, and the US will do fuck all if Russia takes any military action against Estonia, that's pretty clear.

Estonia expels two Russian diplomats, Moscow says 'unfriendly' act

 

[bimble]

Don't miss the next thrilling episode !

 

[spring-peeper]

Don't miss the next thrilling episode !

View attachment 107836

more like "the BIG reveal"

 

[bimble]

Reality tv was clearly his calling, not all this presidenting.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Bloomberg Trump Goes His Own Way as G-7 Cobbles Together a Form of Unity

...
A summit of G-7 leaders in Sicily wrapped up on Saturday with a fragile truce on the two most contentious topics on the table. The U.S. pushed back on worldwide efforts to curb global warming that Trump’s predecessor had signed up to and won a reference in the final statement on the need for trade to be “free, fair and mutually beneficial.”

In an unprecedented step, six of the seven leaders recommitted to the Paris Agreement, while acknowledging that the U.S. is “reviewing its policies” and thus “not in a position to join in the consensus.” Trump tweeted during the talks that he’d come to a decision next week, a fact that his host, Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni, didn’t seem to know.
...

The man from Mar-a-Lago he say no.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Reality tv was clearly his calling, not all this presidenting.

The G-7 as the Big Brother House with one carefully chosen crazy person adding drama.

 

[weltweit]

 

[CrabbedOne]

In The Atlantic Trump Remains a NATO Skeptic

...
Trump’s failure to personally endorse Article 5 may come to be one of the greatest diplomatic blunders made by an American president since World War II. We will not know for sure for some time. The thing about diplomatic mistakes is that they create new incentive structures that take a while to play out. Few noticed when Dean Acheson failed to include South Korea in the American defense perimeter until Kim Il Sung invaded six few months later. And no one paid much attention when April Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Saddam Hussein that the United States had no interest in his border dispute with Kuwait until he invaded a week later.

The problem is that Article 5 is ambiguous. It does not commit America to automatically defend a member state. It stipulates that each country should come to the aid of another with “such action as it deems necessary.” To compensate for this ambiguity, every American president has interpreted it as an automatic commitment to defend Europe from Russian aggression. This interpretation, combined with a credible military option, has functioned as an effective deterrent. Trump’s clear refusal fuels doubt about his commitment to defend Europe.
...

Which is a fair point about the danger of mixed signals but a bit alarmist as the Kremlin will read the actual US position as expressed clearly by rather aggressive DoD deployments around Russia which haven't changed significantly. Trump demanding NATO allies to spend more on deterring Russia isn't a friendship gesture to Moscow.

 

[spring-peeper]

 

[bimble]

Poor old Spicer has to get wheeled out to tell everyone that the Boss is listening hard but with an earpiece , in his right ear, that you can't see.

 

[CRI]

File this under "In Trump's America. . . "

Witnesses: Man Cut the Throats of Two MAX Passengers Who Tried to Stop Anti-Muslim Bullying of Women on Northeast Portland Train

The attack occurred in the Hollywood District. "He said, 'Get off the bus, and get out of the country because you don't pay taxes here.'"

Suspect in Portland Hate Crime Murders is a Known White Supremacist

Well, blow me, that's a surprise.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On FP Donald Trump’s Malarial Fever Trip

...
The mood changed dramatically when Trump left the controlled confines of the Middle East — whose autocrats understand him implicitly — and into the world of liberal democracies. In Europe, where the leaders were less fawning and the press less forgiving, Trump got himself into trouble. The contrast was remarkable: for this first time I can think of, we saw an American president who is more at home among Arab monarchs than democratic European allies.

Trump’s bar for success in Europe was very low. It was to be a diplomatic version of his address before Congress earlier this year: if he followed the choreography, read what was put in front of him, and didn’t act crazy, everyone would be relieved that he seemed “presidential.” Instead we got vintage Trump — preening, impetuous, attentive to every slight, pushing his way to the front, trying to out-muscle every handshake. The Europeans were desperate to hear Trump simply reaffirm NATO’s mutual defense pledge and state his commitment to enhanced deterrence against Russia. But they got neither.

With just a few sentences and gestures of macho puffery, Trump undercut all of the earnest efforts by his national security team to reassure the European partners about the U.S. commitment to NATO and a strong transatlantic partnership. After listening to Trump, do any European
allies feel any more convinced the United States has their backs? Too bad for Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the others in the “axis of adults,” who apparently pushed hard to get Trump to clearly endorse NATO’s Article Five obligation, but ultimately failed. They all own this one.

And it is likely going to get worse. If there’s one pattern in Trump’s conduct of foreign policy, it’s that it doesn’t take long for the outrageous things he says to other leaders to leak out. Just this past week, we learned more about what he said to the Russian foreign minister (Comey’s a “nut job”) and the Philippine president (“keep up the good work”). Already the German press is exploding over Trump’s whining to EU leaders about Berlin’s “very bad” trade policies. So there is still news to come. My bet is this trip will be remembered for some Trump rant we do not yet know about, and it won’t be good.
...

Leaving Trump in a room with foreign leaders does seem to be a bit of a gamble.

 

[CrabbedOne]

Suspect in Portland Hate Crime Murders is a Known White Supremacist

Well, blow me, that's a surprise.

That outfit is clinically interesting.

 

[CrabbedOne]

In BI G7 leaders took a stroll in Sicily — and Trump followed them in a golf cart

...
"They walked the 700 yards from the traditional G7 group photo, taken at a Greek amphitheatre, to a piazza in the hilltop town, but Mr Trump stayed behind until he could take a seat in the electric vehicle," The Times reported.
...

It's almost poetic.

From what I recall of it Taormina is a bit steep for a 70 year old fat guy who is rumoured to be afraid of inclines.

 

[spring-peeper]

In BI G7 leaders took a stroll in Sicily — and Trump followed them in a golf cart
It's almost poetic.

From what I recall of it Taormina is a bit steep for a 70 year old fat guy who is rumoured to be afraid of inclines.

Thought it was because he thinks that the heart can only beat so many times, so he is not wasting them doing any form of exercise.

Too lazy to find the link

 

[CRI]

Thought it was because he thinks that the heart can only beat so many times, so he is not wasting them doing any form of exercise.

Too lazy to find the link

Here ya go!

"Other than golf, he considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy," writes Evan Osnos in a piece entitled "How Trump Could Get Fired" that appears in the May 8, edition of the New Yorker.
That's far from the first time we've heard that Trump and exercise aren't friends. This, from a February 6 piece in Axios: "The only workout Trump gets is an occasional round of golf. Even then, he mostly travels by cart. On the campaign trail he viewed his rallies as his form of exercise."

In their revelatory book "Trump Revealed," the Washington Post's Mike Kranisch and Marc Fisher wrote more extensively about Trump's "battery" theory of energy:
After college, after Trump mostly gave up his personal athletic interests, he came to view time spent playing sports as time wasted. Trump believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted. So he didn't work out. When he learned that John O'Donnell, one of his top casino executives, was training for an Ironman triathlon, he admonished him, "You are going to die young because of this."

And then there was this from a 2015 New York Times magazine profile of Trump:
Trump said he was not following any special diet or exercise regimen for the campaign. '''All my friends who work out all the time, they're going for knee replacements, hip replacements — they're a disaster,'' he said. He exerts himself fully by standing in front of an audience for an hour, as he just did. 'That's exercise.'"

 

[CrabbedOne]

Thought it was because he thinks that the heart can only beat so many times, so he is not wasting them doing any form of exercise.

Too lazy to find the link

Perhaps, I've also seen sulky six year old's behave this way at birthday parties.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On NJ.com Watch: Did Trump blame A.C. casino failures on executives killed in N.J. copter crash?

Trump's theory on the limited capacity of the human heart reminded of this one.

 

[petee]

Cause there were no racist murders in Saint Obama' s America.

you're right, if only a guy with one african parent hadn't been elected, people wouldn't have been driven to racist murder, eh.

(edited to take out the mean bit. sometimes i do lose my patience.)

 

[Yata]

Here ya go!

he probably didnt get that from the Silicon Valley movie but its Trump so who knows

 

[redsquirrel]

Really? And how do you explain how a large proportion of the US population is denying reality?

1) Are you going to answer my previous question?

2) 'denying reality' are your words not YWs so you're asking me to defend a position I've not argued

3) Are a large proportion of the US population 'denying reality'? In what way? Is this only the case of the population of the US in 2017? Were previous generations and/or people outside the US clear sighted and free from bias and prejudices?

 

[CRI]

Not just people will be suffering.

Trump budget would allow sale of wild horses for slaughter

Trump wants to drill for oil in Alaska's fragile wildlife refuge

 

[maomao]

you're right, if only a guy with one african parent hadn't been elected, people wouldn't have been driven to racist murder, eh.

(edited to take out the mean bit. sometimes i do lose my patience.)

I have no idea what this post is supposed to mean. Really.

 

[CRI]

 

[CrabbedOne]

From Slate's Political Gabfest The “Glowing Orb” Edition

A podcast, John Dickerson has an interesting theory on Trump's government strangling budget: it's a trap. For the GOP that is. It's not something that stands a chance of being actually implemented but by running hard to the right into Freedom Caucasus territory Trump can attack establishment Republicans, who are somewhat constrained by the reality of constituent anger if they implemented this, as pussies once more not living up to Republican starve the beast ideology. Well it's a theory.

Or it could just be The Donald predictably being a very at sea Captain Chaos.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On FiveThirtyEight Some Of The GOP’s Institutions Have More Reason To Be Loyal To Trump Than Others

...
1. GOP-aligned media
Examples: Fox News (Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity); conservative talk radio hosts (Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh)
Politicians: Kevin McCarthy
Priorities: Opposition to liberal interests and Democratic Party

The simplest way to illustrate this: What would Trump have to do for Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity to start criticizing him regularly?

Actually, we don’t have to guess. As Matt Grossman and David Hopkins detail in their book “Asymmetric Politics,” Hannity and other conservatives on TV and talk radio started sharply criticizing George W. Bush near the end of his second term. Bush’s approval ratings were fading among conservatives, amid the struggling Iraq War and his bungled handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And Hannity and other radio and television hosts were blasting Bush’s advocacy of a bill that would grant citizenship to some undocumented immigrants.

In other words, Bush was already unpopular, and he was proposing an idea — citizenship for undocumented immigrants — that was more popular on the left than the right. Trump may want to consider this example before he starts touting, say, his daughter’s proposal to allow new parents six weeks of paid leave. Trump’s numbers are already declining, even among Republicans, and paid leave is an idea that liberals love and conservative activists really don’t.
...

Interesting for it's dissection of different GOP groups.

The blethering heads of the rightwing media may be one of the most important as they are what entertains an awful lot of the right leaning US public. They are what Trump himself watches addictively soaking up uncritical adoration. Trump ever doing anything slightly "progressive" is how he might lose them not that that seems likely in his first term.

 

[CrabbedOne]

On Bloomberg Yes, Trump Is Making Xenophobia More Acceptable

...
The upshot is that if Trump had not come on the scene, a lot of Americans would refuse to authorize a donation to an anti-immigrant organization unless they were promised anonymity. But with Trump as president, people feel liberated. Anonymity no longer matters, apparently because Trump’s election weakened the social norm against supporting anti-immigrant groups. It’s now OK to be known to agree “that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Nothing in these findings demonstrates that Trump’s election is leading to an erosion of social norms against incivility and hatred, let alone against violence. But they’re suggestive. Sometimes people don’t say what they think, or do as they like, because of their beliefs about the beliefs of their fellow citizens. A nation’s leader can give strong signals about those beliefs -- and so diminish the effects of social norms that constrain ugly impulses.
...

 

[bimble]

Tweeting up a storm. Five mentions of 'Fake News' so far today.