The Saudi Arabia thing illustrates just how Trump got to be famous in the first place - it generated a ton of press without anyone actually standing standing back and looking at whether there was anything to it at all.
Speaking of Saudi Arabia…they’ve gotta be laughing up their collective sleeves right now at how easily manipulated Donald Trump was.
Trump went on a twitter rampage this morning against Qatar as being primarily responsible for funding terrorism and deserving of whatever’s coming next there.
Problem: the Saudis have their own terrorist-funding skeletons in their closet. Bigger problem: two weeks ago, President Trump assured Qatar that they and the US enjoyed great relations. Bigger problem: the biggest base the US has in the region is located in…Qatar.
Potentially biggest problem of all: if you’re a smaller, minor ally of the United States in a potentially politically unstable region in the world, you’ve just seen how quickly such an alliance can be chucked under the bus. Smiling in Moscow, Vladimir Putin strokes a white Persian cat and says with a come-hither look: “Russia would never do that to you…”
This is obviously fake, because both types of bread are spelled correctly.
Beyond this, though, note this: Trump’s seething anger at Sessions is disconcertingly similar to the anger that led him to fire Comey. As the Times previously reported, Trump privately “burned” as he watched Comey testify to Congress about Russia’s efforts to tip the election to Trump, and was “particularly irked” when Comey conceded his own intervention, via a letter about Clinton’s emails, may have influenced the outcome, which Trump “took to demean his own role in history.” The Post added that Trump was “infuriated” at the FBI’s failure to investigate and stop leaks, which have led to news accounts detailing what the Russia probe was finding.
[…]
Both Comey and Sessions enraged Trump because in some manner or other, they failed to show a level of loyalty to Trump that would have trumped (as it were) legitimate processes. Comey kept publicly validating the Russia investigation (which Trump dismisses as nothing but “Fake News”) and would not make it disappear by stopping leaks about it. Sessions recused himself to display (nominal) independence, which Trump somehow interpreted as a lapse into weakness that led to the special counsel, further affirming the probe’s weightiness.Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University who writes extensively on authoritarianism and Italian fascism, told me that a discernible trait of authoritarian and autocratic rulers is ongoing “frustration” with the “inability to make others do their bidding” and with “institutional and bureaucratic procedures and checks and balances.”
“Trump doesn’t respect democratic procedure and finds it to be something that gets in his way,” Ben-Ghiat said. “The blaming of others is very typical of autocrats, because they have difficulty listening to a reality that doesn’t coincide with their version of it. It’s part of the authoritarian temperament to blame others when things aren’t working.”
Trump expects independent officials “to behave according to personal loyalty, as opposed to following the rules,” added Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University who wrote “On Tyranny,” a book of lessons from the 20th century. “For Trump, that is how the world is supposed to work. Trump doesn’t understand that in the world there might truly be laws and rules that constrain a leader.”
Would Trump divert money from a charity for kids with cancer to enrich himself?
You know the answer - of course he would.
Remember when Trump showed up at a charity event that he didn’t donate too, took the seat of someone who donated and then left like he owned the place. People were so outraged then that it changed absolutely nothing.
As @Nesrie said, this is kind of the problem. The only people that care, are the people that don’t like him anyway and expect the worst. His supporters either don’t care or won’t believe the report.
Of course that’s true- he can literally eat babies on live TV and if that pisses off liberals or the 'establishment, so much the better - but his supporters are irrelevant.
It’s everyone else that matters - and they far outnumber Red Hat cultists.
Sort of. We’d matter a lot more if Congress weren’t controlled by lickspittle toadies that don’t seem to care what Trump’s ethical issues may be.
It only takes 8 people (15 cabinet members) to get rid of Trump. If he is ranting about Session today, and he blindsided Matis and Tillerson on the Article 5 of NATO that’s 3. I’m sure Elaine Chao would flip on him if Mitch McConell wants him gone.
Heh,
Trump told the lawmakers they could talk about the solar-paneled wall as long as they said it was his idea.
Are we going to build a wall in front of his wall, so people don’t steal or vandalize the panels?
So everyone is saying how Sessions is on the way out, with Trump refusing to say he had faith in him… While it would be awesome, I can’t see it happening.
But it will be amazing to see all the Trump supporters suddenly turn on Sessions.
Oh, also, apparently Quatar got slammed by everyone based on some fake news story planted by Russian hackers into their state news feed, so lulz to that.
It takes 14 people (Pence and half of the cabinet, which has 24 members) to declare the president temporarily unable to hold power. But that only lasts three weeks at most. To keep him out of power, it would take two thirds of both houses of Congress.
I think they all (excepting Trump) were looking for a reason to pile on Qatar. Trump probably doesn’t even know where Qatar is located, but felt the need to insert himself.
Because fuck our most important base in the region.
Putin is in real danger of death by laughter at this point.
Look for Trump to Tweet himself to oblivion the next few days…
Couldn’t find a good thread for this, so I’ll just drop it here since we’re already talking about Qatar.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/russian-hackers-planted-fake-news-qatar-crisis/index.html
The FBI recently sent a team of investigators to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate the alleged hacking incident, Qatari and US government officials say.
Intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago, US officials say. Qatar hosts one of the largest US military bases in the region.
We have a giant military base in Qatar. It makes total sense the Russians want to screw that up.
So let me get this straight:
If Trump actually paid attention to his fucking intelligence briefings, he’d already have known that US investigators were dispatched to Qatar two fucking weeks ago, but since he doesn’t, and since he’s a reactionary idiotic piece of shit, he instead bought the fake news bullshit hook line and sinker, proceeding to create the exact rift with our close ally that the hackers were trying to achieve in the first place?