Trump, June 2017: From [Covfefe] with Love

i guess i know that right-wing outlets tended to use photos of obama that made him look bad, and political campaigns always inline that way with their opponents, but i'm constantly struck by how openly the MAINSTREAM MEDIA cough photo editors choose images of trump that are just like the nadir of grotesqueness. hard not to see it as confirming that he really is just visibly repulsive if he's not captured in a flattering light. like the still from the video here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/06/04/with-his-london-tweets-trump-embarrasses-himself-and-america-once-again/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.74f61135713b

*incline

While they may not be flattering portraits, Trumpistas still have a vision of Dear Leader as portrayed in the Mark Burnett show. None of the ones I've seen cut into that image.

If you want that image to be supplanted, concentrate on fat-Trump stumbling out of a golf hazard, or fat-Trump riding a golf cart behind the G6. Sooner or later, we'll get fat-Trump stumbling down passenger stairs.

^none of the ones I've seen unflattering images since the election cut into that image.

trying to understand how his mind works is both interesting on its own terms and can help us understand how to beat him?

bullshit, and v doubtful

depending on one's level of interest, we in NYC have seen how Yam's mind works for 35 years and it's sickmaking rather than "interesting"

I just don't get what there even is to try to understand. He is a straight up asshole who will always choose the worst option just to get his revenge on his enemies (aka the whole world). His only desires are to be admired, to make money, and to undercut anyone who questions him, and he's happy to see the world go to shit as a result. I really don't think this is particularly complicated.

Yeah, he is not a complicated man. He is hardly even a man. Trump is like a really bad flu. Shitting and puking and chills and fever, but just have to wait it out and clean up at the end.

The only factor that seems to drive armchair analysis of Trump is utter disbelief. Like, "there's no way he can simply be an asshole, so ..." or "he can't be that stupid, so ..." and so on.

right, if you suspect there's some thought or strategy or reason behind what he's doing beyond pure malice, you are overthinking

Lots of people in elite circles are there, in part, *because* they never had to encounter willfully ignorant malignant narcissists in their own families and circles of friends. Of course they respond, "he can't be that stupid."

The people to listen to are the ones who've had to deal with these shits for much of their lives. I only have one sociopath in my family, and it was enough to mean I'll probably never see my mother again. I don't think my burden is a narcissist, though, so I've listened to some in my extended internet community for clues into Trump's behavior.

Many if not most high-ranking politicians and CEOs are narcissists and assholes, so that's the not the key differentiation with Trump. It's the fact that he's a moron. Go read any transcript of any interview he's ever done, it's just a constant stream of nonsensical verbal diarrhea. The guy has literally never had a single interesting thought passing through his head. Even George W. Bush could manage the occasional interesting observation.

“I just want to be clear on this,” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Haley in an interview set to air Sunday, but which CNN released a portion of Saturday. “You’re not willing to acknowledge that calling climate change a Chinese hoax is just a big box of crazy?”

“President Trump believes the climate is changing and he believes pollutants are part of that equation,” Haley responded. “So that is the fact. That is where we are. That’s where it stands. He knows that it’s changing, he knows that the U.S. has to be responsible with it. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

of course, in trump's equation pollution is multiplied by zero so

or GHG, i mean, which is i guess what haley was referring to

Remember the vice presidential debate when mike pence ascribed like 136 of his own ideas/positions to Trump, even when they directly contradicted things Trump had said? Good times are here to stay.

why is Trump making John Roberts' job harder

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

someone woke up cranky today

Ha ha, keep it up, you petulant asshole, just tell it how it is, man!

i guess he doesn't understand that part of the reason it's been held up by the courts is that he's insisted on calling it a TRAVEL BAN before?

it's like he's making an extra-special effort to fuck up his own case with the supreme court

5d chess baby, 5d chess

I find it so lame that the right wing pushes this "the liberal media is biased against Trump and out to get him line." No, the liberal media, like a huge swath of people, hate his fucking guts, because he is indeed a piece of shit. Just like the right wing media hated Obama, but in that case, it was based on an illusion, not Obama's statements and actions. Trump ... just what a piece of shit. In an ideal world, when he's gone in 4 years, or 8 years, or 4 months or who knows, I hope no one ever forgets the pieces of shit that supported this piece of shit, and never lets them forget, either.

Also, let's not forget that, as demonstrated this morning, no one has quite the same tenacity in trying to take down Trump as does Trump himself.

I'm looking forward to his exegeses on racial epithets and who is allowed to use them. Should be enlightening.

no one has quite the same tenacity in trying to take down Trump as does Trump himself

unfortunately he's maintaining his lifelong, near-unbroken record of failure on this one too

Hah, biz. Sad but true.

it's all pretty much fucked. as much as the racists were pissed a black guy was president, the fair-minded on the planet seem nonplussed there's a spoiled fat self-destructive asshole rich kid, born on third base, in the white house, a bully in the international order. and to think what america used to symbolize, jeez louise

not to get all trenchant but 'what america used to symbolise', outside the states anyway, was just as much slavery, foreign interventionism and gun violence as it was truth, justice and the american way

Yeah, I'm not into this mythic version of America I've seen bubbling up lately in reaction to the rise of Trump. This place has had its fair share of issues for the entirety of its existence. I mean, we allowed Trump to run for president and then we elected him president. You don't do that if you're an untroubled people.

It's the lib version of MAGA, and it's NAGL.

allowing him to run is not a problem

This graphic appeared on Morning Joe today. (I saw it on Twitter; I don't have cable.)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBjla-YXoAA1R6l.jpg

Of late "Joe" has dropped any pretense of defending him; if I'm not mistaken he called Trump a moron or something last week.

I'm always so baffled that anyone who's had extensive personal experience with him could've ever thought otherwise. I at least get the consistency of the Double Down Brigade, as deep reserves of cognitive dissonance seems to be a prerequisite for taking him at all seriously in the first place.

wealth provokes an extremely powerful contact high in certain people

FINALLY met a Trump voter this weekend (a dude in my building who I kinda knew already but didn't know had voted for Trump). Several of us were chilling in the courtyard and started in on the political hair-pulling and he wasn't really defending any charges against the dude at all. He'd really only go so far as to express agnosticism re: Trump's personal involvement wrt collusion with Russia.

Few people like to admit they're wrong in public.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article154106459.html

Fuck Morning Joe, didn't they used to be buddy buddy? Also, fuck him for being Republican and as far as I know still being a Republican.

Fuck Morning Joe

Mika's taking care of that

They're both fucked.

They can go fuck themselves.

Morning Joe is on MSNBC, right? Yeah, fuck them, them turning has got to be all about the ratings. MSNBC has apparently been doing really well with the anti-Trump stuff, with Fox fading a bit, so no doubt management told them to keep it up or be tougher. It's all so obvious and cynical.

In the last few months MSNBC has hired Megan Kelly and Hugh Hewitt, joining Morning Joe and Nicole Wallace as fiery liberal commentators.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/us/politics/trump-plans-to-shift-infrastructure-funding-to-cities-states-and-business.html?_r=0

“If we thought it was the time to release an infrastructure bill, we would release an infrastructure bill,” Mr. Cohn said. “We just can’t keep throwing stuff on Congress. We actually need them to get legislation done. And as they start getting legislation done, we’ll come back with infrastructure.”

infrastructure week!

In the last few months MSNBC has hired Megan Kelly and Hugh Hewitt, joining Morning Joe and Nicole Wallace as fiery liberal commentators.

Well, gotta be fair and balanced! You know, for cred.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-this-marketing-agency-helped-president-trump-will_us_593469a8e4b062a6ac0ad0fc

A private source from Trump’s campaign has leaked an invoice from Oak Park Alliance, a high-profile marketing agency specializing in digital marketing. Among the largest charges on the invoice is a $30,000 charge for “30 front-page posts — /r/the_donald.” Among Reddit users, “the_donald” is a well-known community that focused on championing Donald Trump throughout the campaign season. Also included on the invoice are several services, such as downvotes on subreddits supporting democratic presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, publications of high-profile articles, content creation, and one listed as “damage control.”

holy shit did they overpay for this

Morning Joe's sins are legion, but I think there is some nuance required in how to characterize the show's Trumpattitude.

1. The show took T's electoral chances seriously (or at least pretended to) when almost no one else would. Which, while not morally neutral, turned out to have, arguably, a sort of prescience. We will never know whether this one media entity taking T's chances seriously

2. They DID give him a platform, in the sense that when he called, they would talk to him and let him bloviate. Trump surrogates and defenders were frequent guests (as was the case on lots of media outlets).

3. Trump-skeptics and Trump-critics also got plenty MJ air (including and especially Her Mikaness). Various species of souring on Trompiness were also given lots of air.

Personally I haven't watched a minute of TV nooz since November, and have no plans to resume. But the narrative of "Morning Joe was all buddy-buddy with Trump" is, I think, not quite right.

xpost I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Best Show (previously on WFMU) but many of their older bits revolve around characters who are basically incredibly stupid sociopaths, and so many of their scenarios which seemed ridiculously ott a decade ago have actually played out in real life over the past year or so. But, yeah, that reminds me of the bit about someone paying a shitload of money to have someone hook them up with a Facebook account. Fuckin' satire is over, man.

gotta be honest, i wish i had the entrepreneurial flair to bilk money out of credulous dum-dums by charging a time $1k for a reddit post