US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

i'm trying to think of the last time he spoke at a public event that wasn't pre-populated with his existing supporters + people paid to stand there. i know if he ever got anywhere near me i would be tempted to just scream "YOU'RE THE WORST, EVERYONE HATES YOU" etc etc at him, and i think that a lot of people feel the same kind of primordial rage when they see him.

a public event not in America, basically.

a Ceausescu-on-the-balcony moment

now i reviewed a lengthy Ceausescu documentary years ago, but i don't remember this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceau%C8%99escu%27s_final_speech

Yeah, that's what I'm rooting for. A miscalculation, an event in a swing area, where the opponents outnumber the supporters. Could happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWIbCtz_Xwk&

It's really remarkable.

xps which is why he's not coming to england

a public event not in America, basically.

it would happen here, too! he doesn't hold public events, right? i mean, he's still holding campaign rallies in places where they can ensure that nearly everyone in attendance is a huge supporters and/or might physically attack any dissenters. but has anyone ever had a chance to go see him speak in a neutral context, where there might be, i don't know, 70% of the crowd that viscerally dislikes him?

wait till the toupee tape comes out and he never shows his face in public again

He's already shrugged off the mushmouthed moment when his choppers came unglued as 'exhaustion' or whatever. Perhaps he'll rationalize a wig mishap as spontaneous and temporary alopecia.

i wish i could go back to the one time i saw him in person, around 2012 or so, in the old post office pavilion in DC as i was standing in line to get takeout indian food. he walked by with a small entourage because he was getting ready to buy it so he could turn it into something really tacky. i should have told him "this whole place has terrible germs. the worst germs. you can't get rid of them. this whole city has terrible germs. stay away from here if you want clean hands!!"

Here's a full on Wolff selection

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-book-donald-trump.html

i know if he ever got anywhere near me i would be tempted to just scream "YOU'RE THE WORST, EVERYONE HATES YOU" etc etc at him

Remember Joe Wilson?

feel like norma desmond is the likely model for how trump would take abundant, in-his-face, unmistakable proof that he is hated, unpopular and unloved

the piece Ned posting is amazing

On December 14, a high-level delegation from Silicon Valley came to Trump Tower to meet him. Later that afternoon, according to a source privy to details of the conversation, Trump called Rupert Murdoch, who asked him how the meeting had gone.

“Oh, great, just great,” said Trump. “These guys really need my help. Obama was not very favorable to them, too much regulation. This is really an opportunity for me to help them.”

“Donald,” said Murdoch, “for eight years these guys had Obama in their pocket. They practically ran the administration. They don’t need your help.”

“Take this H-1B visa issue. They really need these H-1B visas.”

Murdoch suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas, which open America’s doors to select immigrants, might be hard to square with his promises to build a wall and close the borders. But Trump seemed unconcerned, assuring Murdoch, “We’ll figure it out.”

“What a fucking idiot,” said Murdoch, shrugging, as he got off the phone.

I have wondered to what extent his references to 'your favorite president (me)' are trolling vs. an expression of reality as filtered through the putrefying mass of gray matter sloshing around in his brainpan.

Goddammit, I'm gonna buy a book by Michael Wolff, aren't I? "She" in this passage is Ivanka:

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

“How’s the kid?” asked Ailes, referring to Kushner.

“He’s my partner,” said Bannon, his tone suggesting that if he felt otherwise, he was nevertheless determined to stay on message.

“He’s had a lot of lunches with Rupert,” said a dubious Ailes.

“In fact,” said Bannon, “I could use your help here.” He then spent several minutes trying to recruit Ailes to help kneecap Murdoch. Since his ouster from Fox over allegations of sexual harassment, Ailes had become only more bitter toward Murdoch. Now Murdoch was frequently jawboning the president-elect and encouraging him toward Establishment moderation. Bannon wanted Ailes to suggest to Trump, a man whose many neuroses included a horror of senility, that Murdoch might be losing it.

“I’ll call him,” said Ailes. “But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for Putin. Sucks up and shits down. I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.”

“Nobody is apparently telling you this,” she told him. “But you can’t. You just can’t hire your children.”

How did Wolff source all of this?

they all are really as dumb as they seem

How did Wolff source all of this?

From the end of the article:

HOW HE GOT THE STORY

This story is adapted from Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, to be published by Henry Holt & Co. on January 9. Wolff, who chronicles the administration from Election Day to this past October, conducted conversations and interviews over a period of 18 months with the president, most members of his senior staff, and many people to whom they in turn spoke. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Wolff says, he was able to take up “something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing” — an idea encouraged by the president himself. Because no one was in a position to either officially approve or formally deny such access, Wolff became “more a constant interloper than an invited guest.” There were no ground rules placed on his access, and he was required to make no promises about how he would report on what he witnessed.

Since then, he conducted more than 200 interviews. In true Trumpian fashion, the administration’s lack of experience and disdain for political norms made for a hodgepodge of journalistic challenges. Information would be provided off-the-record or on deep background, then casually put on the record. Sources would fail to set any parameters on the use of a conversation, or would provide accounts in confidence, only to subsequently share their views widely. And the president’s own views, private as well as public, were constantly shared by others. The adaptation presented here offers a front-row view of Trump’s presidency, from his improvised transition to his first months in the Oval Office.

So basically, they're all imbeciles who can't keep their fucking mouths shut, and nobody on the outside has the slightest bit of loyalty to any of them.

The headline on that excerpt pretty much underscores my own impression that Trump won counter to his own wishes and helps fuel the tiny sliver of schadenfreude I enjoy every time I think about this dumbfuck who could've been golfing every day of his golden years (instead of, y'know, 3 out of every 5 days) if he wasn't such a dumbfuck. Cold comfort, but I'll take it.

The first thing that pops up on google for "Scalp-Reduction Surgery": https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trumps-hair-mystery-solved-he-had-scalp-reduction_us_58966965e4b061551b3dff8a (not for those with weak stomachs)

his hair is like #3,067 on my list of horrible things about that person, but w/ev

Almost everybody on the Trump team, in fact, came with the kind of messy conflicts bound to bite a president once he was in office. Michael Flynn, the retired general who served as Trump’s opening act at campaign rallies, had been told by his friends that it had not been a good idea to take $45,000 from the Russians for a speech. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” ­Flynn assured them.

incredible

put it right into my veins:

He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-­literate.

We will lose too many of them, and there will be too much avoidable suffering, before sanity returns.

sanity is not gonna return - the genie is out of the bottle and the america you grew up in is gone forever

The surgeon dropped a junior mint into the cavity

xposts

Those who had worked on the campaign noticed the sudden change. Within the first week, Bannon seemed to have put away the camaraderie of Trump Tower and become far more remote, if not unreachable. “What’s up with Steve?” Kushner began to ask. “I don’t understand. We were so close.” Now that Trump had been elected, Bannon was already focused on his next goal: capturing the soul of the Trump White House.

He began by going after his enemies. Few fueled his rancor toward the standard-issue Republican world as much as Rupert ­Murdoch — not least because Murdoch had Trump’s ear. It was one of the key elements of Bannon’s understanding of Trump: The last person the president spoke to ended up with enormous influence. Trump would brag that Murdoch was always calling him; Murdoch, for his part, would complain that he couldn’t get Trump off the phone.

amazing

Balancing risk against reward, both Jared and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the West Wing over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, the two had made an earnest deal: If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she’d be the one to run for president. The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump.

jfc.

it can also never be pointed out too often how truly stupid Steve Bannon is. only next to Trump is he anything more than a complete fucking mouthbreather. even in the Guardian excerpt he says "plain as a hair on your face" which is not the actual idiom, numbnuts.

Congratulations mr Wolff on your upcoming dishonesty in media award (2017-2018 season)

I've assumed for a long time that Ivanka will eventually run so that tidbit isn't even slightly surprising.

After Jared and Ivanka joined them for lunch, Trump continued to cast for positive impressions of his first week. Scarborough praised the president for having invited leaders of the steel unions to the White House. At which point Jared interjected that reaching out to unions, a Democratic constituency, was Bannon’s doing, that this was “the Bannon way.”

“Bannon?” said the president, jumping on his son-in-law. “That wasn’t Bannon’s idea. That was my idea. It’s the Trump way, not the Bannon way.”

Kushner, going concave, retreated from the discussion.

Trump, changing the topic, said to Scarborough and Brzezinski, “So what about you guys? What’s going on?” He was referencing their not-so-secret secret relationship. The couple said it was still complicated, but good.

“You guys should just get married,” prodded Trump.

“I can marry you! I’m an internet Unitarian minister,” Kushner, otherwise an Orthodox Jew, said suddenly.

“What?” said the president. “What are you talking about? Why would they want you to marry them when I could marry them? When they could be married by the president! At Mar-a-Lago!”

lmao @ "plain as a hair on your face"

On the one hand, this book is exactly the kind of deep expose of this clusterfuck that I've been hoping for and I really really really want to read it. On the other, I don't know that I need another thing that makes me feel like lying down in the street and waiting for the sweet release of death.

his hair is like #3,067 on my list of horrible things about that person, but w/ev

It's not as much about his hair as what it was said he did because of it (which, according to the article I posted, was rape Ivana) that's upsetting.

i'd like to preemptively cut off any killjoys who are no doubt about to pop into this thread to opine at the likelihood of some-to-much of this reporting being bullshit. i think after last night's button tweet we all deserve a little fanfic.

well, it's wolff so the quotes are bullshit

"plain as the pustules on my face"

'Look, it's as highly-contagious as the seething bacteria farm that comprises what's left of my face.'

As Nate Silver points out, the excerpt never establishes that Trump didn't want to win, and also plays fast and loose with polls - only outlier polls showed Trump down 12, the worst average was 6-7, and that was after the convention bounce. Basically, it sounds about as believable picture of the Trump campaign as Shattered was of the Clinton campaign.

I'm still definitely reading it, though :)

fwiw

for no reason whatsoever, just remembered this passage from michelle cottle's profile of wolff in 2004 https://t.co/9JMwBbuYqT pic.twitter.com/D5GQw60AYH

— brad plumer (@bradplumer) January 3, 2018

Yeah. But come on, you're reading it as well, Simon :)

However fictional Wolff's specifics may be, an accidental Trump win has always made much more sense to me on many many levels. Trump may have convinced himself after the fact that this is what he wanted, but I very much doubt this was how he was planning to spend the next 4-??? years prior to election night.

I honestly don't find the inner workings of the Trump White House all that fascinating xp

xpost

i was about to say, certain parts like

“I’ll call him,” said Ailes. “But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for Putin. Sucks up and shits down. I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.”

sound like something written by robert reich

Old Lunch otm. It's hardly believable Trump willingly chose the route of having to divert and divest his own business emporium (unless, as stated, he was clueless yet again and didn't even know this was required). Not that he's really divesting or letting go but ykwim

I find it entirely believable however that they just let Wolff in one day, and he became the hobo-lives-in-airport-for-a-year, where he became one of the 'gang' with no one even questioning it.