Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

This fight is for everything.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

This chaos was totally avoidable.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

You are here: Home / Politics / Crazification Factor / Trump Had A Press Availability Today

Trump Had A Press Availability Today

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Many people have complained that Donald Trump hasn’t gone before the press to answer questions. After today, those complaints may stop.

It’s…hard to know where to start.

Here’s the video:

 

The one thanking Putin has scrambled my brain to where it’s hard to look for more. If you’ve got more, I’ll add them. I would like to see a transcript, too. There should be one out soon.

 

Update: This is from earlier.

Also this

More

 

Bonus (This is good news, I think)

Reader Interactions

216Comments

  1. 1.

    Roger Moore

    How long will it take before the media and the Republican party acknowledge Trump is a Russian asset? How could he make it more obvious, giving Putin the nuclear football on live TV?

  3. 3.

    RedDirtGirl

    Language…how does it work? He has this habit of using adjectives as nouns. Maybe his attention span is so short that he can’t make it to the end of his sentences…

  4. 4.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    I said it once, I’ll say it again: That debilitating stroke can’t come soon enough

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    Putin may be paying Trump and his family via shady money laundering instruments, but I doubt very much Putin manages payroll for US diplomats. Sorry, Shitgibbon — you still gotta pay them. What a stupid fucking thing to say.

  8. 8.

    lamh36

    IJS, BUT gotta think they were just WAITING for “good” reason to fire Lords…insult Black and Brown folks all he likes, but Jews..NO SIR!

  9. 9.

    encephalopath

    CNN was OK paying Lord to lie in the most insulting was he could manage in the service of evil for the last year and a half, but tweeting a Nazi salute is going to far.

    I don’t think Jeffrey Lord is the problem here.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    “Military is very important to me. As you know, I did extremely well with the military vote.”

    Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, MAKE IT STOP!!

  11. 11.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    Lord, a former Reagan administration staffer, had been one of CNN’s best-known commentators. He was the first explicitly pro-Donald Trump commentator to join the network, back in August 2015, two months after Trump entered the GOP primary race. At the time Lord was a counterweight to CNN’s other conservative commentators, who were all dismissive of Trump’s candidacy.

    So I guess referring to Reagan’s admin as fascist wasn’t hyperbolic.

  17. 17.

    TenguPhule

    @Roger Moore:

    How could he make it more obvious, giving Putin the nuclear football on live TV?

    I’d tell you to stop giving him ideas, but we really don’t know what happened during that private meeting of theirs.

  18. 18.

    randy khan

    He also slammed Mitch McConnell again, saying that repeal and replace should have been on his desk the first week he was in office. This actually was more or less coherent, certainly as compared to the defense word salad. (And there’s a tweet saying the Senate should come back and give him his infrastructure bill, too.)

    It’s kind of mind-boggling, but his tweets actually are better than his spontaneous comments; there’s a bit more thought put into them.

  20. 20.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Roger Moore: At this point I would have asked “What would have happened if Obama (or Clinton) had said that?”, but that game is not fun anymore.

  22. 22.

    donnah

    You would have to be the most abjectly ignorant idiot to still support this man as president. If even the most staunch Republican voters don’t find this to be utterly appalling and embarrassing, then let North Korea nuke us. I don’t want to share a planet with these numbskulls.

  23. 23.

    TenguPhule

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Please tell me you made the whole thing up. Please?

    And here we were arguing about voting types.

    The real question is, are there going to be any survivors left among the ruins of civilization?

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    I’m not sure if it was that or if actually using a Nazi phrase made it so obvious where Lord stands that even CNN couldn’t play dumb anymore.

    And I have to laugh (sardonically) whenever a grown man like Lord claims that he only said something racist/sexist/fascist to prove he’s NOT racist/sexist/fascist. That’s the kind of excuse a 10-year-old comes up with.

  26. 26.

    TenguPhule

    @donnah:

    If even the most staunch Republican voters don’t find this to be utterly appalling and embarrassing, then let North Korea nuke us. I don’t want to share a planet with these numbskulls.

    FFS, all of us in range are blue. The red assholes are further to the rear, like always.

    ETA: except Alaska, screw them, splitters.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @randy khan:

    It’s kind of mind-boggling, but his tweets actually are better than his spontaneous comments; there’s a bit more thought put into them.

    There’s been speculation all along that he dictates his tweets to staffers, who then translate them as best they can from Trumpese to English.

    This seems more and more plausible the more he tries to speak off-script.

  31. 31.

    JPL

    @lamh36: Yup. He might be out of work for awhile because Fox news must be running out of room for all the white supremacists who are losing their jobs. Since MSNBC gave Hugh a time slot, maybe they are still in the hiring mode.

  33. 33.

    Hal

    Ta-Nehisi Coates wasn’t lying:

    To be president, [Obama] had to be scholarly, intelligent, president of the Harvard Law Review, the product of some of our greatest educational institutions, capable of talking to two different worlds … Donald Trump had to be rich and white. That was it. That’s the difference.

    Trump’s idiocy is a monument to white male privilege.

  34. 34.

    Bobby Thomson

    I don’t understand why anyone is confused or surprised. Trump is a dipshit. Full stop.

  36. 36.

    Chet

    Argh! Does he actually believe that having diplomats expelled by their host country is the same as laying them off?

  37. 37.

    TopClimber

    I think you all are missing the real message with the payroll remark. Donald is just telling Putin “you didn’t hurt me with those expulsions because I wanted to do them myself!” One can never dominate Der Trump–outsmart, play like a fiddle, tweet-goad and troll all day long–but never dominate. Not even grandmaster Putin. Which isn’t to say he has any use for diplomats, but that weeding them out is a secondary motivator.

  39. 39.

    BC in Illinois

    “I would like to thank my friend and master, Vlad, for his kindness in allowing me to serve him. It has been a total blessing to have the honor of serving his agenda. Thank you, sir. May I have another?”

  40. 40.

    Mnemosyne

    @Hal:

    Rich, white, and male (though that may have been stated earlier in the piece). We really can’t discount misogyny as a factor here, because Hillary Clinton is also rich and white.

  43. 43.

    Hungry Joe

    I’m currently reading “I Am Alive and You Are Dead,” Emmanuel Carrere’s speculative psychological biography of Philip K. Dick. I think If Dick were still around he’d look at All Things Trump and say, “I knew it. I just KNEW that, beneath the veneer of normality and sanity, this is what reality is actually like.” Dick’s mind-detonating novel “Ubik” comes to mind (“I am alive and you are dead” is a line from that book), as does his short story “Faith of Our Fathers,” in which the head of the government is a powerful extraterrestrial who has spiked the water supply with a psychedelic drug that makes it impossible to see it as it really is.

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Just got a message from a former colleague. A retired Canadian diplomat, he said he has always made a point of not commenting or expressing a view on any POTUS; but, he continues, “This guy is a thug; it is scary that America is still under his command.” And “Seeing him speak magnifies in my mind how crazy his supporters must be.”

  45. 45.

    ThresherK

    @Major Major Major Major: Mess with the girl, und you get ze Hitler!

    I’m reading a book called Blitzed, about 30s and 40s Germany and amphetamines. It posits that Hitler was so dependent on a variety of drugs by the end of 1941 that almost any attempt to write about him (after the war) as if he were normal is doomed to fail.

    There no normative there.

    Covering Trump has been the same way.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    Hillary would have been worse. She probably would have handed out donuts and water at the press conference.

  47. 47.

    geg6

    Well, the good news is that I heard Justin Trudeau sent an envoy or something to NK. Hopefully, he can save us.

  48. 48.

    lamh36

    @Mnemosyne: except…Lord has saying some PRETTY horrible things about immigrants and people of color…just never the N-word I guess? But even so….1,000,000 derogatory things said bout P.O.C., one Nazi salute tweet…OMG!!!

    Like I said, they were looking for a reason I’m sure, but I have this idea that even if he’d used the N-word…CNN would have still kept in on payroll…

  49. 49.

    efgoldman

    @LurkerNoLonger:

    Who says it hasn’t already happened?

    Having had one myself, I vote no. Even for a “mild” stroke the symptoms are more obvious.
    I’ll buy onset of some kind of dementia, though.

  50. 50.

    hellslittlestangel

    “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down our payroll …”

    Good news: Somebody has finally managed to control what The Orange Better One blurts out in public.
    Bad news: That somebody is Vladimir Putin.

  53. 53.

    Ohio Mom

    When Trump says he disagrees with what Obama said about global climate change being the biggest threat, the biggest threat is “nuclear,” I had to stop and think, Yeah, that might be true since you started mucking about.

  55. 55.

    Peale

    They’ve managed to build warheads and they don’t have their act together? Imagine what they could do if they’d focus more and lay off the sauce?

  60. 60.

    efgoldman

    @Chet:

    Does he actually believe that having diplomats expelled by their host country is the same as laying them off?

    Who knows what he “believes”. Shit, he doesn’t know his ignorant self. And it will change the next time he “thinks” about it.

  62. 62.

    trollhattan

    @JPL:
    Jesus, what a pack of sycophants. “Yes, mister Trump, right away, mister Trump, will you come back on now, mister Trump?”

    Ratings schmatings.

  68. 68.

    MisterForkbeard

    Note for Alain: Something on this page is causing amazing performance problems. for me in Chrome or IE. Like, hitches, problems scrolling or typing. Not on any other site, either.

    ETA: Looks like JS gone amok. Halting all processes on the page helped significantly.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    Other way around — I think that CNN was desperately trying not to fire Lord, and it was only something this blatantly obvious that made them do it. Tweeting the N-word probably would have gotten Lord fired, too — that’s also something that’s pretty hard to claim was meant “ironically” or whatever Lord’s lame excuse was.

  71. 71.

    catclub

    There is anew thread at LGM on an unhinged manifesto a White House NSC staffer wrote and distributed to his friends.
    The Staffer got fired from NSC by McMaster.

    Ranting about cultural marxist conspiracy to remove Trump.

    The cultural marxists are allied with the Islamists. who knew?

  72. 72.

    JPL

    @Baud: Baud you can, but only if you run as a republican.

    Poco could do a better job than Lord did. At least he piss on the other sycophants

  75. 75.

    Quinerly

    @randy khan:
    I think I heard Trump say something like Elaine Cho needs to talk to her husband. There was a mention of her in that presser. Need to read the transcript.

  76. 76.

    bystander

    I liked the part where Trump congratulated himself on Haley’s getting 15 nations on board with further sanctions. He then said the sanctions will not work and started with the itchy trigger finger again.

    Anyway, is it too soon to start referring to President Penice?

  77. 77.

    debbie

    @Roger Moore:

    More importantly, how long until the GOP takes note and acts to stop the growing support for fascists like Spencer and Lord? What will it take for conservatives to cut out that cancer?

    The local Fox station used to broadcast “think pieces” by the head of Sinclair during their evening newscasts. They’ve started to give time to Boris Epshteyn, who used to be a Trump aide. Last night, he claimed that Obama’s policy on North Korea was “appeasment.” I ask, how can sanctions ever be considered to be appeasment?

  78. 78.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL:

    Since MSNBC gave Hugh a time slot, maybe they are still in the hiring mode.

    Is it Charles Pierce or Betty Cracker who always refers to Hugh Hewitt as “an ambulatory cream-cheese sculpture”?

  79. 79.

    lamh36

    @geg6: I believe the envoy was to negotiate return of a Canadian citizen arrested or jailed by NK…

    But they did release a statement, that they are aware of other situations involving NK…

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @debbie:

    More importantly, how long until the GOP takes note and acts to stop the growing support for fascists like Spencer and Lord?

    Jeff Flake will get right on that.

  83. 83.

    Yarrow

    Jeff Zucker, who runs CNN, is Jewish. I wonder if that had something to do with firing Lord for the Nazi salute.

  85. 85.

    chopper

    i would like to (ouch) thank…mr. putin (oof) for…stabbing me 40 times. ugh. uh, see, i haven’t taken a look at my blood recently and i wanted…to make sure it was still red. so thanks, mr. putin, for (passes out)

  88. 88.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    United States has no ambassadors yet to Canada, Australia and India among other countries. So. Much. Winning.

    Kelly Knight Craft has (very recently) been confirmed as Ambassador to Canada, but AFAIK she hasn’t taken up residence in Ottawa yet. Don’t know about Oz or India.

  89. 89.

    lamh36

    @Mnemosyne: we’ll have to agree to disagree…I just don’t believe that CNN would have fired Lord for using the N-word…

    Still, I do think CNN was looking for a more “compelling” reason to get rid of Lords other than his blatant racism/xenophobia

  93. 93.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Major Major Major Major: Haven’t had that problem with the ad before – it was just extremely annoying.

    This is the thing that’s finally going to make me install an ad blocker again. Hell, it even crashed IE when I left the browser alone for 5. Not that it’s hard to crash IE. :)

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @debbie:

    I ask, how can sanctions ever be considered to be appeasment?

    By lying and claiming that wasn’t Obama’s policy. How many people remember or are willing to check? Will the network step in and claim it’s a lie? This is how they work. They say whatever they think will work and count on everyone’s inability to keep up with the lies. It’s the Gish marathon.

  97. 97.

    trnc

    “I greatly appreciate the fact that they’ve been able to cut our payroll.”

    I know a way we can save $400,000. Come to think of it, we’d save a hell of a lot more than that.

  100. 100.

    Travels with Charley

    @Mnemosyne:
    Off topic, but I’m a long time lurker who is rarely around when the Threads are”alive”. I just wanted to thank Mnemosyne for showing me Hamilton and Lin Manuel Miranda and for the recommendation for Mary jo putney books. Great for escape at times like these! I look forward to reading your novel!

  101. 101.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    It wouldn’t be sufficient to get someone fired from Fox, but I think CNN is still sufficiently invested in appearing mainstream that they would fire someone over the n-word. But hopefully we’ll never have to find out.

    ETA: And I think we’re both saying the same thing — CNN was willing to ignore all of the racist and xenophobic shit that Lord was saying until he crossed that line into actual Nazi quotes. ?

  102. 102.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @catclub:
    That cultural marxist shit is the same weird theory that manosphereians like to promulgate

  107. 107.

    TS

    Trump, his henchmen and the GOP have NOTHING – the latter are supporting a man who will lead them into WWII – and all they can do is bring up lies about President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

  111. 111.

    NotMax

    @schrodingers_cat

    Yeah, snark imagining the reasons whined about by the wading pool of candidates for the posts. That any of them have an inkling about trade and Canada assumes facts not in evidence.

  113. 113.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @TenguPhule:
    I have to confess. I used the Delorean to give Trump a small loan of a million dollars. In the OTL, he was cleaning toilets in the NYC subway. I fucked up guys.

  114. 114.

    TS

    @Betty Cracker:

    Putin may be paying Trump and his family via shady money laundering instruments, but I doubt very much Putin manages payroll for US diplomats. Sorry, Shitgibbon — you still gotta pay them. What a stupid fucking thing to say.

    And what a message it sends to US diplomats around the world. All you are is an expense on the budget.

  118. 118.

    debbie

    @schrodingers_cat:

    You’ve been warned:

    Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 2h2 hours ago

    .@IvankaTrump will lead the U.S. delegation to India this fall, supporting women’s entrepreneurship globally.

    I can just imagine the non-good this will do.

  122. 122.

    Miss Bianca

    been thinking this might be a good thread for this link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/

    How widespread is this promiscuous devotion to the untrue? How many Americans now inhabit alternate realities? Any given survey of beliefs is only a sketch of what people in general really think. But reams of survey research from the past 20 years reveal a rough, useful census of American credulity and delusion. By my reckoning, the solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. Only a third of us, for instance, don’t believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. Two-thirds of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world.” More than half say they’re absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal God—not a vague force or universal spirit or higher power, but some guy. A third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that it’s a hoax perpetrated by scientists, the government, and journalists. A third believe that our earliest ancestors were humans just like us; that the government has, in league with the pharmaceutical industry, hidden evidence of natural cancer cures; that extraterrestrials have visited or are visiting Earth. Almost a quarter believe that vaccines cause autism, and that Donald Trump won the popular vote in 2016.

  123. 123.

    TenguPhule

    @debbie:

    @IvankaTrump will lead the U.S. delegation to India this fall, supporting women’s entrepreneurship globally.

    On the plus side, she wears enough beef byproducts to get her on the wrong side of the insane sexist cultists currently in charge of the place.

  126. 126.

    Yarrow

    @lamh36: Zucker and Trump are buddies, so when Trump said to hire Lord he probably just went ahead and did it. But Lord’s Nazi salute probably made life difficult for Zucker with his fellow Jewish friends and family members, so…

  128. 128.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Gonna need to come up with a collective noun for people named Kelly.

    Yes, have often wondered at the prevalence of people connected to this (mal)administration with either first or last names of Kelly, and thought it again just now when I typed that comment. I include MSNBC’s Kelly O’Donnell.

  130. 130.

    randy khan

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I walked past the Department of Commerce building, which is in the midst of a modernization, today, and there were more names missing from the sign outside than had been updated since the inauguration. Basically, all of the GSA people listed on it under Obama Administration haven’t been replaced. I just shook my head.

    ETA: More than 50 ambassador slots with not even anyone nominated, including Australia, Germany, and India. Fascinating.

  131. 131.

    TenguPhule

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:

    I have to confess. I used the Delorean to give Trump a small loan of a million dollars. In the OTL, he was cleaning toilets in the NYC subway. I fucked up guys.

    I too have to confess, I made the mistake of not smothering Bush & Cheney in their cribs during my seven day run. We had flying cars in the OTL.

  132. 132.

    eemom

    @lamh36:

    insult Black and Brown folks all he likes, but Jews..NO SIR!

    That is not only an incredibly shitty thing to say, it also demonstrates pig ignorance about the tsunami of overt antiSemitism that has been unleashed against Jewish journalists since Dump and his merry band of neo Nazis came to power.

    But what does it matter anymore.

  134. 134.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Cheryl Rofer: It may be that Trump is a genius and he’s grokked something about North Korea that no one else understood: Like Trump, North Korea makes completely ridiculous statements that they can’t actually back up in a meaningful way. Trump knows from the campaign that the one making the most ridiculous and obviously untrue statements wins! North Korea demonstrated this against the US for years, getting a nuclear weapon out of it. Trump did this to other republicans and then to Clinton.

    Therefore, this is a master plan to get North Korea to lose the election/war/whatever by saying even more lies, inflammatory rhetoric, and threats.

    Or Trump is just a giant idiot. One of those.

  135. 135.

    TenguPhule

    @Baud:

    So on the national embarrassment scale, how many tan suits was today’s presser?

    All of em, Katie.

  137. 137.

    debbie

    Hmm, Kai Rysdall just announced that the markets went down “not a little” by 2%. I wonder when this will show up in Trump’s Twitter feed?

  138. 138.

    Betty Cracker

    @SiubhanDuinne: That is mine, but I’m flattered to be confused with Pierce. I know he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think he’s funny as heck and on-point 99% of the time.

  140. 140.

    TenguPhule

    @schrodingers_cat:

    They are roughly the equivalents of the fundie evangelical brigade here.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but that party currently in charge is trying to ban beef eating across the whole country & has roaming packs of insane vigilantes literally murdering those they accuse of eating beef as I understand it.

    ETA: And remember, the fundies are in charge here now.

  141. 141.

    Mnemosyne

    @Travels with Charley:

    Aww, thank you! I’m stuck in the Dark Forest with my book right now (HT: Jessica Abel) where I’m convinced it’s all crap and it’s too hard and I suck as a writer, so this came along at just the right time to cheer me up! ?

  142. 142.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Miss Bianca: Thanks! I haven’t read that article yet – have a policy of not reading things on line that I will see on dead trees. It’s more thoughtful than I can manage at the moment – will be going out with friends soon to decompress.

    I do think, fwiw, that some Americans, maybe the famous 27%, really do think this is fine. They want to express their feelings of hostility and enjoy the Jerry Springer show now in the White House. Although iirc, Jerry Springer said a while back that this was a bit much.

  143. 143.

    TenguPhule

    @MisterForkbeard:

    It may be that Trump is a genius and he’s grokked something about North Korea that no one else understood:

    What are you smoking and could you please send it to the White House.

  145. 145.

    debbie

    Reminder for those who love to listen to Trump Abuse: NBC is broadcasting SNL’s Weekend Update feature, theoretically on a weekly basis at 9:00 am Eastern. Either they’re lying in their ads, or there will actually be new material.

  147. 147.

    TenguPhule

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Oddly, investors think that nuclear war might be bad for business.

    You know what’s really nuts?

    The Yen and US Treasury’s are both strengthening.

    Because its a flight to safety.

    Yeah.

  148. 148.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @TenguPhule:
    This could be a really fun game.

    I travelled back in time and told Hitler he should go into public speaking

  149. 149.

    randy khan

    Thinking a bit more about the comments on McConnell, a split between Trump and Congressional Republicans could be trouble for the Republicans in the midterms. If the Trumpists think the Republicans are responsible for not getting them the things they want, they could stay home or even vote for Dems. That would be pretty amusing.

  153. 153.

    MisterForkbeard

    @TenguPhule: “It must be very strange to be President *Trump*. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice.”

  154. 154.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @randy khan:

    More than 50 ambassador slots with not even anyone nominated, including Australia, Germany, and India. Fascinating.

    We’re going with regional ambassadors now, so the important countries get one. China will get one, and represent Japan and South Korea and those countries in Southeast Asian since they look alike. It saves boatloads of money.

  159. 159.

    Ohio Mom

    @Cheryl Rofer: Jerry Springer is very liberal and very smart. Of course he’s appalled.

    He is also very, very cynical. That is what allowed him to foist that show on the rest of us.

    Fun fact: I voted for him when he was a Cincinnati Councilman.

  160. 160.

    Haroldo

    @Cheryl Rofer: This is to Cheryl and anybody else who cares to chime in. In the dark hours of this morning (~3 am, maybe), in a half-awake dream state, I thought I heard the folks on the BBC quoting Mattis responding to Kim Jong-un in a such a bellicose fashion that he might have made his boss blush….and now checking up on it, it seems as though I wasn’t dreaming (tho’ probably embellishing a bit with the boss blushing stuff). So much for the moderating influence, eh?

  166. 166.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    I think what you wrote in the comment was, um, inartfully put, but you’ve been here long enough that I was pretty sure I knew what you meant.

  168. 168.

    Mike in DC

    Trump needs to get tougher on NK. He should remind Kim Jong Un that he won 306 electoral votes.

  169. 169.

    sylvania

    I don’t know why there are so many of you saying make it stop. His poll numbers keep going down and he is dragging the rest of the GOP down with him. It’s not like US voters are not already a huge embarassment for electing this clown. The rest of the world already knows he’s an idiot so this is not going to change any of that.

  170. 170.

    lgerard

    @Mike in DC:

    Trump needs to get tougher on NK. He should remind Kim Jong Un that he won 306 electoral votes.

    and did very well with short, fat people

  174. 174.

    Kathleen

    @Ohio Mom: I’ve always liked him. He was a great anchor on WLWT. A friend of mine was featured on a segment NPR did about Springer several years ago. She’s been politically active for years, had a job in City Hall, so is very well versed in in politicians in the city. Evidently Ken Blackwell and Tim Burke came of age at the same time at Xavier. My friend said Ken Blackwell was one of the most skilled, charismatic politicians she had ever seen before he sold out.

  175. 175.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @sylvania:
    We want him to stop ruining our government and global standing as a superpower. He’s doing damage

  176. 176.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Cheryl Rofer: Matt is has just been on CNN where he’s been more measured. Basically he said that although the US would respond militarily if necessary he favoured trying the diplomatic route first.

    A complete change of tone from his boss.

  179. 179.

    TenguPhule

    @sylvania:

    I don’t know why there are so many of you saying make it stop.

    Tell you what, you hang your ass out on the North Korean target range for awhile and then get back to us.

  183. 183.

    TenguPhule

    @Roger Moore:

    I traveled back in time and told Gavrilo Princip to meet me at Moritz Schiller’s cafe.

    When Kyle Reese told me that Donald Trump was going to destroy all of humanity, I should have listened to him.

  184. 184.

    sylvania

    @TenguPhule: Tell you what. Don’t complain that Hillary is not pure enough which helped elect these clowns in the first place and then retroactively say “make it stop”.

    And to all the wankers giving me sheit for saying that Dems need to let Repubs shut down gov’t over the debt ceiling. One of your heros BooMan says the same thing. So go wank off over there about it.

    http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2017/8/7/12933/18015

  188. 188.

    p.a.

    I went back in time and told Lincoln
    1) the play was going to be all understudies
    2) fuck loyalty oaths; exile and expropriation is the way to go
    2)a. 40 acres and a mule.

  189. 189.

    TenguPhule

    @sylvania:

    Don’t complain that Hillary is not pure enough which helped elect these clowns in the first place and then retroactively say “make it stop”.

    You’re clucking at the wrong piano.

  190. 190.

    TenguPhule

    @sylvania:

    And to all the wankers giving me sheit for saying that Dems need to let Repubs shut down gov’t over the debt ceiling.

    You and Booman are both idiots.

    There, you happy?

  193. 193.

    SatanicPanic

    @TenguPhule: That’s about as much of a misreading of this audience as I can imagine. Well, I suppose she could accuse of being animal haters.

  198. 198.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Betty Cracker:

    I do love it, and I think you and Pierce are both hilariously funny — yet both of you are occasionally downright poetic when the topic is more moving or somber.

  199. 199.

    Ryan

    Oh, he’s a money launderer for sure, probably for Putin. Does anyone think that Trump is a make lemonade when life hands you lemons kind of guy?

  200. 200.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @TenguPhule:
    Can’t say I have. I don’t watch 1980s British sitcoms very much. Maybe I’ll check it out

  202. 202.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @randy khan:

    ETA: More than 50 ambassador slots with not even anyone nominated, including Australia, Germany, and India. Fascinating.

    Yeah, in response to a comment from SC, I linked earlier (cannot now remember if it was upthread here or on an earlier, different thread) to the AFSA site listing current Ambassadorial appointments — confirmed, nominated awaiting confirmation, or vacant
    I have a pretty solid belief that our career diplomats, mid-level bureaucrats, and Embassy/Consulate staff around the world will keep things ticking along reasonably well.
    But when it comes to high-level receptions, meetings, negotiations, and various public events, there is nothing like having an Ambassador Plenipotentiary on hand to impress his or her opposite number. “Deputy Chef de Mission,” no matter how capable, isn’t a title that always cuts it.

    What amazes me is that Trump keeps blaming Senate Democrats for holding up the confirmation process, even though in most cases he hasn’t even proposed a name for their consideration. Or in some cases [*cough* Callista Gingrich *cough*] the Trump team is way behind on filing the paperwork that’s required before the Senate can begin deliberations on the appointment.

    I shall never again watch a “Keystone Kops” movie with the same careless abandon I used to innocently bring.

  203. 203.

    Roger Moore

    @Ryan:

    Does anyone think that Trump is a make lemonade when life hands you lemons kind of guy?

    I think when life gives Trump lemons, he spray-tans them and tried to sell them as valuable mutant oranges. That or he holds a lemon party.

  205. 205.

    Ithink

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
    I’d love to agree w/ you but then we’d be stuck w/ President Pence whom is every bit as awful as Trump is from a retrograde policy stance, just minus the vulgarity and infedelity because, let’s be honest, who on their right mi d wants to have an affair w/ the Caucasian Crimson Chin of Squinty Eyes??

  210. 210.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sylvania:

    I don’t know why there are so many of you saying make it stop.

    The whole “mass death” side effect could be a problem.

  212. 212.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: yeah, i’d say that as a wordsmith, Betty Cracker can give Charlie Pierce a run for his money with both the laughter and the tears.

    I’ll never forget the story she told on her mom after she died, about her brother running off and calling home to say, “I’m in Savannah,” to which Ms, Cracker Mom replies, “Savannah better be the name of a girl, you little shit!” That wasan awesome laugh/sob there, obviously the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  215. 215.

    J R in WV

    @Miss Bianca:

    Just Wow!!! I know that’s by and large true. I once had a co-worker, supposedly a top level programmer and developer. She had a small aquarium on her desk, with 2 or 3 small tropical fish. She was a Tammi Fae sort of make-up user, which is important to the story.

    One of the fish got fin-rot, and she got a medication to put in the water to cure the ailment. But then she decided to pray over them, and lay hands on them to heal them, just to help the antibiotic powder along a little.

    The perfume etc on her hands killed all the fish shortly after she “laid hands” on them in prayer.

    Note that this event did not change her attitudes about religion, illness, prayer, and people’s relationship with God one tiny nano-smidge of a bit. So not just ignorant, but also unable to learn from painful experience.

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