Don’t be mad at Trump, he just doesn’t fully understand:
As late as one hour before the decision was to be announced, administration officials privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump might not fully grasp the details of the steps he was about to take, and when he discovered their full impact, would change his mind, according to a person familiar with their thinking who spoke on condition of anonymity without authorization to comment on it.
What he understands is his base wants brown people shit on, so he sent out the racist Keebler elf and delivered. It’s just a weird series of coincidences based on his not knowing any better that he hired a bunch of Nazis to his staff, won’t distance himself from the Klan, hired Kobach and Hans von Spakovsky and Jeff Sessions and his only governing principle is overturning everything President Black did. Really, it’s sad because he just means well and is in over his head.
efgoldman
The Marianas Trench isn’t as far over his head as he is.
That he’s also a combination of pure, distilled evil and total ignorance doesn’t help.
A Ghost to Not
Hans von Spakovsky
zhena gogolia
@A Ghost to Not:
I kind of liked Hans Sovatsky.
A Ghost to Not
@zhena gogolia: Me too.
John Cole
@A Ghost to Not: him too the fucker
jl
” Trump might not fully grasp ”
Now, there is a WH leak I can believe.
Edit: and I admire its wry understatement.
Aleta
Yes, and in his sadistic sociopathic mind, DACA is also perfect as another emotional topic for him to use. to manipulate the press, while he pretends to dither back and forth and dangle compromises involving money for his wall, dropping leaks to take the story away from his collusion and other crimes.
Bobby Thomson
He’s a white supremacist and an asshole. Also an idiot, but it’s not like he would have done anything differently with greater understanding.
Felonius Monk
When you have shit for brains, everything is over your head.
Shalimar
Do the stenographers not realize that if Trump really can’t understand the consequences of his decision, then he shouldn’t even be allowed to go to the bathroom alone, let alone run the country? They also make it sound like his staff is afraid he will grasp how many people he is screwing over and decide not to do it, which his even-more-fucking-evil-than-Trump staff would not want to happen. Even the spin is terrible.
HRA
You said it John so I don’t have to say it.
Emily68
Anybody who believes Trump doesn’t realize he’s being mean to people just because he can, well, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn maybe you’d be interested in.
Kay Eye
Donald Trump is a bully and a coward.
Brachiator
Do even administration officials believe this fairy tale, that one day Trump will fully grasp something and make a smart decision?
He is all evil preconceived notions, and Ego Unbound. He ain’t never gonna smarten up. Along with everything thing else, he’s an old fart stuck in his ways
jl
@Emily68: True, but I think that people around Trump yelled at him enough about the fall out that even he realizes that he will pay a big cost for it if he doesn’t try to wash his hands of it. So, I think at some level, the element of cowardice and dithering in Trump’s BS on DACA over the last week is real.
Trump really likes freebies. This ain’t going to be a freebie for anyone if DACA goes down (edit: except for the likes of Duke and Spencer and King, a bunch of losers who won’t be able to help any GOPers hurt by a DACA repeal disaster)
efgoldman
@Aleta:
Mueller, Schneiderman and their investigative teams won’t be distracted.
eric
I wish there was an institution that might have helped convey the ways in which Trump was ill-suited to be President. Better yet, what if that institution paid people to look for facts and publish those facts in print or on TV. Well, we are truly fucked because there are no such institutions here!
Immanentize
If there were no “fa” there would be no “anti-fa”
mai naem mobile
Dolt45 is an attention seeking whore. He ran a freaking reality show and thinks being POTUS is a reality show. I know it’s ompossible to do this but if people would ignore him he would stop doing this shit. He gets off on the chaos, attention and ofcourse it’s a power trip.
trollhattan
Bidnez loves Trump’s move.
They can’t do shit about the shitgibbon but they can sure light some fires under key congresscritters. Now’s a good time, freemarketeers, make it so.
lamh36
Maggie Haberman wa on Tapper’s show.. talked about how her sources say Chump was very conflicted bout DACA…
And the other two guest and even Tapper saying…yeah, if you believe that, sure, but if he is conflicted, then why not leave it? Nope, Chump is a coward…
Paul Begala wasn’t having it…and was like bullshit…he’s a coward…if he was conflicted he could ya know..leave it be UNTIL Congress did something
Hell even the Black “young Republican” guy said, this was disgraceful, and if Chump was conflicted, then he didn’t HAVE to do anything..
Raven Onthill
Besides, he hates brown people, too.
Cacti
Remember, it’s more offensive to accuse a white racist of being racist than it actually is for them to be racist and shit.
lamh36
Hmmm…trying to get them all in before he’s no longer there?
jl
@Raven Onthill: Trump doesn’t care enough about it one way or another to take any risks in taking the lead in solving it one way or another. Trump really cares about avoiding a difficult situation that will put his political ass through a grinder. That explains how he has acted on DACA, and some other issues.
Mike G
Being openly clueless and mediocre is not a drawback for a Republican POTUS. I remember the media talking about GW Bush like he was a contestant in a Special Olympics race and we all must make allowances for his obvious subnormal capabilities because he’s So Special.
lamh36
Mnemosyne
@jl:
That’s why he sent Sessions out to do his dirty work — he wants to be able to pretend he didn’t know what a disaster this would be. And I fully believe that noy only does he not know how bad this will be, he doesn’t care. Not his problem. The only thing he cares about is making someone else take the fall.
trollhattan
Actual concern, or concern over income stream?
Guess the “appreciates foreign talent” thing is demonstrably true when beauty pageants and spousal choices are the topic.
debbie
@efgoldman:
Not for one day in his life– not for one nanosecond– has Donald Trump ever meant well.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: I am quite certain Sessions volunteered for the privilege.
Mnemosyne
Also, anyone who is unfamiliar with narcissists and how they operate should spend some time lurking at the Raised By Narcissists board at Reddit. It’s heartbreaking but extremely instructive.
The story that was most illustrative for me was from a woman whose narcisstic father acted up at her wedding, got angry (because he wasn’t the center of attention), and crashed his car into part of the facility. He then insisted that he hadn’t done it even though there were photos and that the bride herself should have to pay for the damage because it wasn’t his fault.
And she came very, very close to paying for it because she just didn’t want to deal with his bullshit and the bullying from the rest of her family to just let it go.
That’s the kind of person Trump is. He takes zero responsibility for his actions, and any bad result from his action is always someone else’s fault. Always.
Cacti
@trollhattan:
Those weren’t rumors. She actually worked here without a work visa.
geg6
@LAO:
He knocked people over in his excitement to do it, I’m sure. He is a disgusting creature.
FlipYrWhig
@lamh36:
In other words, her source is Ivanka.
catclub
@Immanentize: One explainer noted that although dozens if not hundreds of people have been killed by far right violence.
Nobody has been killed by antifa violence.
between Timothy McVeigh and Dylann Roof, just for starters, I think they had a point.
Elizabelle
@eric:
I think we should give the Fuck the Fucking NY Times writers p or n names. Let them know we are on to them. Their political desk has been in Judith Miller territory for way over a year now.
What do you think?
Maggie “Xaviera” Haberman?
Glenn Thrush — what is he?
Peter Baker is a straight up Republican whisperer, so take that into mind with the p or n name.
Interestingly, I don’t notice much of the FTF NYTime’s crack (ass) election team out there with bylines these days. Amy Chozick, Patrick Healey … were they disappeared — they did their Clinton Derangement duty? — or are they writing tell all books?
Last, I love that someone came up with calling Sarah Huckabee Lying Sanders the “Possum Queen.” All the pearls in the world can’t dislodge that image.
hueyplong
@Kay Eye: “Donald Trump is a bully and a coward.”
True, and I’m heartily tired of the spin that we are supposed to consider it a mitigating factor when you add “stupid” to “bully and coward.”
He’s only “conflicted” when he is unsure whether doing what comes naturally will be praised with sufficient enthusiasm on Fox & Friends.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
Sessions is excited now, but Trump hasn’t thrown him under the bus yet. Or, more specifically, told his followers that it was all Sessions’ fault and they turn on Sessions like a pack of ravening leopards.
I can’t say I’m not looking forward to it, because I am. But Sessions is going to be yet another casualty of the I Never Thought Leopards Would Eat My Face Party.
FlipYrWhig
Man, is that tangled. A person familiar with the thinking of administration officials says that administration officials were privately expressing concern that Trump was ignorant but would be sad later. To repeat myself, this person sounds like Ivanka, who is familiar with the thinking of Jared Kushner and who constantly calls up Big Media and tries to make Daddy sound like a nice well-meaning man except for sometimes when she and Jared aren’t around to guide him.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Yep. I’m guessing she’s buddies with Maggie Haberman, which is how Mags gets all of these “scoops” that everyone else realizes are bullshit.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Maybe Trump will be interviewed about the effects of the demise of DACA and he’ll say, like his comments on water damage that his cronies tried to say were so empathetic, “tough, tough, tough.”
different-church-lady
@lamh36:
I’m at a loss to understand how “I was really torn, but in the end I went with ‘fuck ’em'” is supposed to garner any sympathy.
MattF
Mr. Limited Repertoire. Show empathy in Houston? Nope. Show empathy to brown people? Nope. Show empathy to anyone? Nope. See a theme here?
schrodingers_cat
He knows what he did. He hates everyone who doesn’t look like him or think like he does.
Elizabelle
@different-church-lady: Thank you. Plain English is best.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: “Maggie, it was an hour before the announcement and Jar-Bear said that Dad was going to have regrets because he was listening to Jeff Sessions too much.” “Hmm, can I call Jared an ‘administration official’ and you ‘a person familiar with their thinking’?” “That sounds lovely. See you in the Hamptons!”
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
This simple point seems to escape a lot of people.
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: It’s The Rule Of Law! Because Donald Trump is Mr. Law and Order. Just ask the dozens of people in the government he’s tried to harass out of investigating him since January.
Aleta
He uses anything that benefits others or that others care about as a token to be played for power, or to threaten, or to satisfy himself via revenge, injury, money or sexual humiliation.
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
I’ve heard similar things from my mom. It’s along the lines of, We’d love to help people, but we just don’t have enough resources to help everyone, so we have to cut those people off.
Conservatives have managed to convince themselves that we’re living in a time of scarcity so severe that we just can’t afford compassion and have to make hard choices, and they get mad if you point out that we don’t actually have to make those choices because the scarcity is artificial.
Gin & Tonic
Poor, naive Donald, who, as has been pointed out elsewhere, has been actively pursuing the US Presidency for three fucking decades now. If there’s some aspect of the job he doesn’t understand, it’s not because he’s new to it, it’s because he is a fucking imbecile.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
They’ve also managed to convince themselves that they’re the country’s “makers” and “hard workers”.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the counties carried by Clinton produce 64% of our national GDP.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: BTW when Republicans talk about “the deficit” and “the national debt” it’s precisely to validate sentiments like those your mom expresses. And notice how Republicans NEVER SAY that when times are good the beauty of it is that finally we can take care of everyone. No, they say when times are good we can give the hardworking their tax money back, which resets things to their natural state where there’s sadly not enough to go around to take care of Those People. Because Republicans like it that way, and they all think it, about every public issue.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Oh FFS, most immigrants, DACA included are not charity cases, they contribute to the economy. Even most GC holders are not eligible for Federal benefits like SNAP for the first 5 years, the only exceptions are if you are child or over 65.
Rosalita
Trump was a coward and let Sessions make the announcement, but you know that Sessions must have needed a cigarette afterward.
cmorenc
@John Cole:
I fixed your quote below John.
cmorenc
Trump gives an honorable man like Mueller more motivation to dig deeper, wider, and harder by the day. Mueller is honorable enough that if he did end up finding there is no actual fire “there” amid all the smoke, he would say so when his findings are announced. Nevertheless, the possibility that he will find much more and more serious are growing far higher than the possibility he will find much less and much less serious – just on the basis of what is irrefutably publicly known so far.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Like I said, when you point out that their beliefs don’t match reality, they get mad. Their self-image is that they’re kind, generous people who are being taken advantage of by greedy Others and now they need to cut them off.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my mom actually does have a history of being taken advantage of financially by other family members. Like many conservatives, she’s repressing the reality of what’s going on and projecting the behavior out onto strangers.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Immigrants also have to prove they support themselves or that some will provide support for them before they get a visa. I know you know that.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes I do know that. I have filled elebenty such forms.
Elizabelle
@cmorenc: Yes. Eyes on the prize.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Every generation of immigrants, going back to Germans and Scandinavians in Ben Franklin’s time, was demonized as somehow sub human. Every generation has contributed way more to the economy and growth than they cost.
Facts don’t matter; they are fungible things in conservaworld.
Ksmiami
@Cacti: which is why we should keep the Dreamers and fucking deport the white trash ahole Trump supporters – they are literally useless wastes of protoplasm. Ps if this sounds “uncivil”, they started it
TenguPhule
@eric:
Late Night Comedy.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Obviously not enough experience with Evangelical Fuckheads. They eat that shit up.
aimai
@Mnemosyne: Yes, I’ve read that board, and also Dealing with the in laws and family of origin (DWIL) and some of those stories of people with narcissistic parents are truly heartbreaking–and bizarre. Its hard for normal people to grasp the workings of the truly broken mind.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
It’s hard to get people who haven’t experienced it to understand just how disorienting it is to deal with someone who has no sense of objective reality. EVERYTHING in their life gets fed through a mental filter of, How does this benefit me?
I only have to deal with a sister in law in another state, but as I’ve said before, she is a doozy. There’s a reason her son moved to the state that is geographically the furthest from her he can get and still be in the contiguous US.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
We thank you for filling out your forms in order to join us. We are so proud you chose to join us,, in spite of the enormous mistake we made last November. Well, those other people made the mistakes, we voted for Hillary, most of us.