Month: February 2019

Donald Trump Calls 60% of Americans ‘Fools’ Because They Don’t Support His Idiotic Vanity Wall

Posted by on February 4, 2019 at 1:02 pm. 3 Comments :

When the President of the United States is notorious for being willfully ignorant and dismissive of factual data, even when it is provided by the experts in his own administration, he ought not to be calling other people names and disparaging their intellect. But that is a behavioral flaw that is all too common with Donald Trump, whose preference for his own counsel (whatever that means) prevails over that of professionals with decades of experience.

Donald Trump

Trump recently told an interviewer from CBS that he “doesn’t have to agree” with Intelligence team. That’s technically true, but it is not generally considered a good idea for someone who knows nothing about national security to ignore the advice of those who have spent a lifetime studying it. Trump also stated that he has “no confidence” in those same Intelligence experts – who he appointed to their posts – apparently preferring the guidance of his shadow cabinet on Fox News and mentors like Vladimir Putin.

Despite this cognitive breakdown, Trump still manages to cast insults at anyone who isn’t sufficiently deferential to his point of view and ego. And his targets include the American people who he is supposed to be serving as their representative. This betrayal of the people’s will is best exemplified by Trump’s position on building a useless wall along the southern border. Most people knowledgeable about immigration agree that a wall is an ineffective solution to the problems cited by Trump and other Republicans. What’s more, a new poll by Gallup shows that most Americans (60%) “oppose significant new construction on border walls.”

This opposition to what has become Trump’s signature fetish is not new. The Gallup poll confirms the results of nearly every other poll done on this subject. The desires of the American people are well known and firmly held. But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his cohorts in the GOP and on Fox News from trying to force their unwise and unpopular plan on a nation that unambiguously rejects it. And what do the citizens of the country get for expressing themselves?

So Trump regards at least sixty percent of the American people as “fools.” Never mind that they agree with the experts while Trump is basing his opinion on partisans associated with flagrantly racist interest groups. This disrespect for the citizens of this country is emblematic of a malignant narcissist who wishes he could be a dictator. Trump forced the nation into its longest ever government shutdown over a policy that the majority of voters oppose. And he is threatening to do it again, or to violate the Constitution with a phony national emergency declaration. And all to advance a proposal for a wall that has been nothing but a scam from the start.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Stuperbowl Interview: Dotard Trump Talking About ‘Intelligence’ is Downright Frightening

Posted by on February 3, 2019 at 12:33 pm. 1 Comments :

It’s Superbowl Sunday and the annual tradition of having the president give an interview to the network broadcasting the game is one of the few that Trump isn’t scrapping. Never mind that he recently told his press secretary “not to bother” with holding daily press briefings anymore. Trump agreed to sit down with Margaret Brennan of CBS News for a few minutes of lying and casting insults.

Donald Trump, Padded Cell

Among the atrocious outbursts in this interview were Trump’s remarks about what he had learned from negotiating with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. His unresponsive reply was that she “doesn’t mind human trafficking,” and that “people [are] dying all over the country because of” her. Apparently he learned nothing as he stuck to his routinely hostile behavior of slandering his perceived enemies. But his childish acting out is evidence that he learned what he feels like to get beat to a pulp by a smarter, more experienced political opponent.

Trump also made some ludicrous assertions like claiming that the report by special counsel Robert Mueller exonerated him (Mueller has not published any report). And he admitted that stories about Secretary of State Pompeo talking to Mitch McConnell about running the Senate were true just seconds after calling them “fake news.” Then he characterized the fact that much of his cabinet consists of people serving in an “acting” capacity as a good thing because it gives him more flexibility. It also gives the nation a bunch of hacks who have never been vetted or confirmed by the Senate as the law requires. And he said that his indicted pal Roger Stone never worked for his campaign except for the time that he did.

There were a great many more examples of Trump’s deranged take on a variety of subjects. But perhaps the most disconcerting were those related to national security and his relationship with his own Intelligence team. When asked if reads the reports they prepare for him, Trump said that he did. But his responses revealed that that wasn’t true. Brennan asked him what he found wrong with those reports, and Trump gave this disjointed word salad of a reply: “I think- let me just say it wasn’t so much a report. It was the questions and answers as the report was submitted and they were asked questions and answers.”

HUH? They were asked questions AND answers in this report that wasn’t a report? He went on to provide provably false information about the presence of ISIS in Syria, saying they were ninety-nine percent gone. When Brennan pointed out that Republicans in Congress had just voted to repudiate his positions on abruptly withdrawing from Syria, Trump’s answer reached back to the GOP primary in 2016, where he bragged about beating the Republicans who ran against him. That, of course, had nothing to do with the question.

Shortly thereafter Brennan asked Trump if he is “going to trust the intelligence that you receive?” He gave a qualified “yes,” adding that “if they said in fact that Iran is a wonderful kindergarten, I disagree with them 100 percent.” No one ever said anything remotely like that. And in a direct rebuke of his Intelligence team, Trump said that:

“I have intel people, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree. President Bush had intel people that said Saddam Hussein in Iraq had nuclear weapons – had all sorts of weapons of mass destruction. Guess what? Those intel people didn’t know what the hell they were doing.”

Bush’s intel people told Bush exactly what he told them to say. They didn’t get it wrong. They lied at Bush’s direction. However, Trump is correct that he doesn’t have to agree with this Intel staff. But you have to wonder what the basis is for his disagreement. If he isn’t getting advice from them, from whom is he getting it? All we know is what he said next: “When my intelligence people tell me how wonderful Iran is – if you don’t mind, I’m going to just go by my own counsel.” So far as anyone can tell, Trump’s counsel is either Vladimir Putin or Fox News – or both.

Finally, Trump also dismissed the advice of his Intel team when they told him that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is unlikely to give up his nuclear capabilities. Trump disagreed on the basis of their personal relationship:

“I like him. I get along with him great. We have a fantastic chemistry. We have had tremendous correspondence that some people have seen and can’t even believe it. They think it’s historic. And we’ll see what happens.”

Seriously? Kim is a brutal dictator who murders his foes – even family members – and oppresses his people. But Trump gleefully brags about having “fantastic chemistry” with this tyrant? And this opinion comes long after their summit wherein Kim totally played Trump and has failed to deliver on anything they discussed at the time. In fact, Kim has actually expanded his nuclear facilities and arsenal.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The one thing that Kim has that Trump truly envies is the blind adulation of his people. And on that Trump openly expressed his desire for the same sort of cult worship from the American people. He isn’t going to get that. At the moment he is the most unpopular president of all time. And judging from recent events like his government shutdown and the arrest and indictment of his closest associates, that isn’t going to show much improvement any time soon.

Will Trump Declare a Fake National Emergency to Avoid the Real One in the White House?

Posted by on February 2, 2019 at 4:06 pm. 1 Comments :

Ever since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi masterfully forced Donald Trump to surrender his government shutdown, the President has been openly hostile to the notion of a negotiated compromise on immigration policy and border security. Within hours of forming a congressional committee to hammer out the details, Trump insisted that it was a waste of time and threatened to use his imagined imperial powers to impose a state of national emergency.

Donald Trump Revolt

Every credible expert on the law quickly pointed out that Trump’s case for a national emergency was virtually nonexistent. And much of the evidence was provided by Trump himself by his failure to act on the matter for more than two years and his willingness to put it off while Congress debates it. The only plausible excuse for such a declaration would be Trump’s desperation to deflect the public’s attention from his troubles associated with his conspiracy with Russia to steal the election.

However, there is a crisis in Washington that isn’t getting the attention it deserves. It’s a crisis of competence and leadership. Under Donald Trump the machinery of government is crumbling. Nearly twenty percent of the cabinet offices in this administration are being run by “acting” secretaries or directors. That’s because Trump is trying to adapt his television playacting role to his new job as president. And it’s painfully obvious that isn’t working. His “skills” are utterly inappropriate for the duties of government management and national leadership. He spends more time watching TV (Fox News) and conducting made-for-the-camera photo-ops, than engaging in the people’s business.

Currently serving in Trump’s pretend regime are an “Acting” Chief of Staff (Mick Mulvaney), Attorney General (Matthew Whitaker), EPA Director (Andrew Wheeler), Interior Secretary (David Bernhardt), and Secretary of Defense (Patrick Shanahan). All to serve our Reality TV Acting “President.” None of these department heads have been vetted or confirmed by the Senate as required by law.

It is all the more troubling considering that many of the nation’s most precarious challenges are directly associated with these cabinet offices. For instance, how can Trump’s alleged national emergency be taken seriously when the nation’s top law enforcement officer hasn’t been confirmed? Not to mention the fact that the current director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is also serving in an acting capacity.

Another example of the jeopardy that America faces under the Trump regime is that we have an acting Defense Secretary just as Trump has abandoned the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. At the same time, Trump’s Intelligence team (CIA, FBI, DNI, etc.) have publicly distanced themselves from the President’s positions on the most critical issues facing them, including Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Russia.

This is a terrible time to have a part-time cabinet and intelligence professionals who have no confidence in their boss. But as Washington burns, Trump is fiddling around with pretend declarations of national emergencies that are actually just attempts to bypass a Congress that he is totally incapable of negotiating with. Which is ironic considering the tweet he posted on November 20, 2014:

The outrageous constitutional breach that Trump was ranting about just happened to be related to immigration. Obama had just signed an executive order to “crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay their fair share of taxes as they register to temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation.” It was an entirely reasonable approach in response to a problem that Republicans in Congress refused to address.

But Obama did not declare a national emergency or overstep his constitutional powers, as Trump is now threatening to do. He simply took responsibility for a solution that would have passed in Congress (had the GOP allowed it to be voted on) and enjoyed widespread popularity with the public.

Trump, on the other hand, is the one subverting the Constitution with a threat to impose a bogus state of emergency because of his own pitiful negotiating skills. This is what Trump supporters got for believing the lie that he is adept at the “Art of the Deal.” And anyone who still believes that phony PR gimmick is terminally naive or firmly embedded in the Trump Cult.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Confesses to Violating the Law By Misappropriating Federal Funds for His Vanity Wall

Posted by on February 1, 2019 at 2:13 pm. 1 Comments :

During the Trump Shutdown the President routinely made ludicrous comments about the necessity of building a wall on the southern border that most experts agree would be wasteful and ineffective. But even worse than that, Donald Trump would claim that his idiotic vanity wall would virtually eliminate, not just illegal immigration, but crimes like drug and human trafficking. Never mind that most of these activities take place at legal ports of entry where a wall would be irrelevant.

Donald Trump, Border Wall

On Friday morning, however, Trump went further down the rabid hole to assert that the wall that has become a fetish for him was already being built (video below). “We’re building the wall,” he lied. “People don’t understand that. They’re starting to learn.” This, of course is totally false. There is no new wall being built anywhere. But Trump continued down that path of falsity:

“We’re spending a lot of the money that we have on hand, like in a business. But we have money on hand and we’re building, I would say we will have 115 miles, maybe a little bit more than that, very shortly. It’s being built. Some of it’s already been completed. In San Diego, if you look, it’s completed. It’s really beautiful, brand new. We have other wall that’s under construction and we’re giving out a lot of contracts. So we’re building the wall. It’s getting it built one way or the other.”

The problem with these remarks is that, if they were true, then Trump is actually confessing to a federal crime. There has been no money appropriated by Congress for the construction any new wall along the southern border. And since Congress is the only government body that can allocate such funds, any money spent on a wall would be misappropriation of funds. It would be just as much a violation of the law as it would be for Trump to build a statue of himself at Mar-a-Lago with government money.

Of course, this would be a difficult case to prosecute since Trump is confessing to something that, in reality, he hasn’t actually done. And you can’t convict someone of a crime that they didn’t commit, even if they say they did. He could confess to being Jack the Ripper, but since he wasn’t alive at the time, the London authorities would be unlikely to go after him.

In addition to Trump’s fishy confession, he is also admitting that his obsession with demanding funds from Congress for his wall is a scam. If he is already building hundreds of miles of the wall with “money on hand,” then why did shut down the government, making hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer? Notably, he has also claimed that the wall would be paid for by a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, or that it would pay for itself by reduced law enforcement costs. And don’t forget that Mexico was supposed to pay for it from the start. According to Trump the wall has been paid for at least four times over.

Trump’s fountain of nonsense is overflowing with crackpot assertions and dishonest blathering. Most of it never approaches the fringes of comprehensible commentary. He’s like the schizophrenic homeless guy under the freeway overpass who is yelling gibberish at passing cars.

Among his other flagrant lies in this interview are that El Paso “immediately” became one of the safest cities in the country after a wall was built there (it has been one of the safest cities long before any wall was erected); many Democrats want the wall but are being prohibited by Nancy Pelosi from saying so (because the iron hand of the Speaker is forcing unity among a caucus usually noted for being in disarray); and Trump’s foes take their legal complaints to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that has nothing to do with the case at hand (which, if true, would not be taken up by that court).

This is just the latest display of Trump diving off the plank into the deep end of idiocy. It fits nicely with his declaration of “no confidence“ in his own Intelligence team. Or his freak out over the release of a book (Team of Vipers) by his former communications aide. Or his boasting about a poll that actually showed him failing miserably. If there is one thing that we can be certain of, it’s that Donald Trump is not the “stable genius“ he thinks he is.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.