Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

you don't have to live like a refu-jesus mr. potus

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/andrew-sullivan-america-is-trapped-in-trumps-delusions.html

i know photo editors can be pretty manipulative but doesn't it seem like trump's photographed facial expressions have become consistently like this in the past couple months, like he's straining under the desperate prevarication and fabrication as he senses no one around is even paying it lip service now?

Omg pic.twitter.com/k3wJ7y3ZsM

— Annie Shields (@anastasiakeeley) December 2, 2017

The parties that will be had when this fuck’s heart explodes

The thought of Trump's aorta popping from one too many Big Macs has an appealing vibe of self-correction by America's excesses.

(with all due respect to the millions of decent and enlightened people in the USA)

naw you're right we're trash

point

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/03/trump-suggests-investors-who-lost-on-false-flynn-report-by-abcs-ross-should-sue.html

counterpoint

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/22/lockheed-martin-shares-take-another-tumble-after-trump-tweet.html

The Republican Party can no longer claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, strong foreign policy, or family values :(

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-roy-moore-rex-tillerson-senate-tax-bill-everything-republicans-stood-for-a8091036.html

Fantastic technique. This is...freeze it here. Look at this: two hands, alpha scrunch, lapping away like a dang kitty cat. He's just having fun out there. pic.twitter.com/k2I0Zkouf3

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) December 18, 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMufib-_gLs

"Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color."

She treated her father with a degree of detachment, even irony, going so far as to make fun of his comb-over to others. She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate — a contained island after scalp-reduction ­surgery — surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The color, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men — the longer it was left on, the darker it got.

I enjoyed that piece, and even went to preorder the book, but Wolff has a history of making up quotes and exaggerating, so I think I'll skip buying it. Honestly I don't care that much about Trump once he got into office - I want to read a whole book about election night, and the hours when Trump and everyone around him realized they were going to win.

wolff's history notwithstanding, 1/2 term's pretty blistering attack on bannon suggests 1/2 term thinks wolff's on the level. apparently wolff was the tom yeats to donald and melania's francis and claire underwood? who knows though -- he could even be in on it. 1/2 term has a new excuse now -- i didn't really want to win, so why would i conspire with russia?

lol "1/2 term"? is that the new "45"?

and that's a weak excuse, and we all know he absolutely did not expect or want to win the election

At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.

"Jokes on them--I don't have any friends!"

Maybe he didn't recognize them because they were all heavily made up?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CqqW4i5XYAEfCHh.jpg

"Rudy? GTFO, you're not Rudy!"

The monthly average of 171,000 jobs created in 2017 was the lowest average monthly job growth since 2010, when just 88,000 jobs were added per month.

Bannon described Trump as a simple machine. The On switch was full of flattery, the Off switch full of calumny. The flattery was dripping, slavish, cast in ultimate superlatives, and entirely disconnected from reality: so-and-so was the best, the most incredible, the ne plus ultra, the eternal. The calumny was angry, bitter, resentful, ever a casting out and closing of the iron door. [...] Bannon felt - perhaps with overconfidence - that Trump could easily be switched on and off.

So they were selling this book at Penn Station and — god I’m weak.

Previous presidents, and not just Clinton, have of course lacked scruples. What was, to many of the people who knew Trump well, much more confounding was that he had managed to win the election, and arrive at this ultimate accomplishment, wholly lacking what in some obvious sense must be the main requirement of the job, what neuroscientists would call executive function. He had somehow won the race for president, but his brain seemed incapable of performing what would be essential tasks in his new job. He had no ability to plan and organize and pay attention and switch focus; he had never been able to tailor his behavior to what the goals at hand reasonably required. On the most basic level, he simply could not link cause and effect.

god I’m weak

if you're experiencing buyer's remorse, sell it to a friend for 20% off retail. they'll tell you all the 'good' parts anyway.

"As [Trump] got back on Marine One to head to Andrews Air Force Base and on to JFK and then into Manhattan and Trump Tower, [after addressing the Charlottesville murder], his mood was dark and I-told-you-so. Privately, he kept trying to rationalize why someone would be a member of the KKK -- that is, they might not actually believe what the KKK believed, and the KKK probably does not believe what it used to believe, and, anyway, who really knows what the KKK believes now?"

Once, coming back on his plane with a billionaire friend who had brought along a foreign model, Trump, trying to move in on his friend’s date, urged a stop in Atlantic City. He would provide a tour of his casino. His friend assured the model that there was nothing to recommend Atlantic City. It was a place overrun
by white trash.

“What is this ‘white trash’?” asked the model.

“They’re people just like me,” said Trump, “only they’re poor.”

“You know when I was young. Of course I feel young — I feel like I was 30 . . . 35 . . . 39 . . . . Somebody said, Are you young? I said, I think I’m young. I was stopping in the final months of the campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops — speeches, speeches in front of twenty-five, thirty thousand people . . . fifteen, nineteen thousand. I feel young — I think we’re all so young. When I was young we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade, we’d win with wars — at a certain age I remember hearing from one of my instructors, the United States has never lost a war. And then, after that, it’s like we haven’t won anything. You know the old expression, to the victor belongs the spoils? You remember I always say, keep the oil.”

“Who should keep the oil?” asked a bewildered CIA employee, leaning over to a colleague in the back of the room.

Ultimately Trump may not be that different in his fundamental solipsism from anyone of great wealth who has lived most of his life in a highly controlled environment. But one clear difference was that he had acquired almost no formal sort of social discipline — he could not even attempt to imitate decorum. He
could not really converse, for instance, not in the sense of sharing information, or of a balanced back-and-forth conversation. He neither particularly listened to what was said to him, nor particularly considered what he said in response (one reason he was so repetitive). Nor did he treat anyone with any sort of basic or reliable courtesy. If he wanted something, his focus might be sharp and attention lavish, but if someone wanted something from him, he tended to become irritable and quickly lost interest. He demanded you pay him attention, then decided you were weak for groveling. In a sense, he was like an instinctive, pampered, and hugely successful actor. Everybody was either a lackey who did his bidding or a high-ranking film functionary trying to coax out his attention and performance — and to do this without making him angry or petulant.

The payoff was his enthusiasm, quickness, spontaneity, and—if he departed for a moment from the nonstop focus on himself — an often incisive sense of the weaknesses of his opponents and a sense of their deepest desires. Politics was handicapped by incrementalism, of people knowing too much who were defeated by all the complexities and conflicting interests before they began. Trump, knowing little, might, Trumpers tried to believe, give a kooky new hope to the system.

1/2 term like totally used flynn as a primary russian go-between

A White House meeting that morning failed to convince Trump to fire Flynn. He was concerned about what it would look like to lose his National Security Advisor after just twenty-four days. And he was adamant about not wanting to blame Flynn for talking to the Russians, even about sanctions. In Trump’s view, condemning his adviser would connect him to a plot where there was no plot. His fury wasn’t directed toward Flynn but to the “incidental” wiretap that had surveilled him. Making clear his confidence in his adviser, Trump insisted that Flynn come to Monday’s lunch with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

just fuck the whole thing if this nominate Oprah thing gets any traction inside the DNC

i worked out how much it would cost, in 2021, to give every licensed american driver the equivalent of a 2004 pontiac G6 and it came to about 9.5 trillion

if you spread that out over two terms it's only about a trillion a year

but what would be truly extraordinary is the number of pontiac plants we'd have, and the sheer number of people required to work in them. we would be number one in pontiac plants per square mile and unemployment would probably be a thing of the past

Also, the taxes everyone would have to pay for getting free cars would pay for all sorts of other stuff! Downside: no one could sell their car, since everyone would have one already. The price we pay for the Pontiac Economy.

worth it imo

Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate — total television. But not only didn’t he read, he didn’t listen. He preferred to be the person talking. And he trusted his own expertise — no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. What’s more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention.

it's like an alfred jarry play come to life

“What is this ‘white trash’?” asked the model.

“They’re people just like me,” said Trump, “only they’re poor.”

I might have to call bullshit on this quote because it betrays a gift for brutally honest self-assessment that I can't believe Trump possesses.

that's a younger pre-senile 2scoops

He seemed to lack the ability to take in third-party information. Or maybe he lacked the interest; whichever, he seemed almost phobic about having formal demands on his attention. He stonewalled every written page and balked at every explanation. “He’s a guy who really hated school,” said Bannon. “And he’s not going to start liking it now.”

When Trump walked onto the field for the national anthem, he was greeted with a chorus of boos amidst scattered cheers, and struggled to remember the words to the Star-Spangled Banner he respects so much.

hooray

I totallt believe the “white trash” anecdote. Trump has always been aware that he wasn’t accepted by polite society. This is why he can convincingly (to some) rail against “elites” while being a billionaire. His brand isnas much about vulgarity as it is about glamour.

i hate his stupid fucking ugly face

it is so disgusting

Hater

he really epitomizes the old white politician “spoiled canned ham” ideal

you know what i find really helps is calling him donald butt instead of donald trump that way every time you talk about him you get to let ppl know that you think, that he is a butt

But my 6 year old would do that.

I tried just saying '45' but I couldn't keep doing it.

nicknames are silly imo. he's not the first bad president, you can just refer to him by name

Difference is, his name is a brand he licenses.

i believe 'donald butt' is a good compromise and will endorse this expression

donnie two scoops is still the best