White House declined for hours to discuss this dad's case.
Now, accuses media of being disgusting by reporting.https://t.co/FtblUW9iRN
— Dan Lamothe (@DanLamothe) October 18, 2017
“President” Flapjaw had to play the big shot in front of the cameras yesterday; when he got called on his bullshit, he went on the offensive (‘offensive’ being his baseline state). That gave the Washington Post an(other) excuse to go do some actual investigative reporting — “Trump offered a grieving military father $25,000 in a call, but didn’t follow through”:
… Chris Baldridge, the father of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, told The Washington Post that Trump called him at his home in Zebulon, N.C., a few weeks after his 22-year-old son and two fellow soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan police officer in a suspected insider attack June 10. Their phone conversation lasted about 15 minutes, Baldridge said, and centered for a time on the father’s struggle with the manner in which his son was killed.
“I said, ‘Me and my wife would rather our son died in trench warfare,’ “ Baldridge said. “I feel like he got murdered over there.”
Trump’s offer of $25,000 adds another dimension to the president’s relations with Gold Star families, an honorific given to those whose loved ones die while serving in support of the nation’s wars. The disclosure follows questions about how often the president has called or written to grieving military families.
The Washington Post contacted the White House about Baldridge’s account on Wednesday morning. Officials declined to discuss the events in detail.
But White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement Wednesday afternoon, “The check has been sent. It’s disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media’s biased agenda. “…
The president has faced worsening backlash since details emerged of his phone call Tuesday with the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was killed Oct. 4 alongside three other U.S. soldiers in Niger. After not addressing the incident for 12 days, Trump on Monday falsely claimed that previous presidents never or rarely called the families of fallen service members. In fact, they did so regularly…
Trump denied the allegation Wednesday morning. But the fallen soldier’s childhood guardian, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, told The Washington Post that she also was in the car when the White House called, and said that “President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband.”
In all, seven Gold Star families contacted by The Post said they have had phone conversations with Trump. Most said they appreciated the gesture. Four families said they have not received a call and were upset. One said Trump had not called but that they knew the late soldier would not want his death politicized. An additional family said that it had corresponded with the White House, but declined to elaborate…
Euvince Brooks’s son, Sgt. Roshain E. Brooks, 30, was killed Aug. 13 in Iraq. He has not heard from the White House. The president’s claim this week that he had called every military family to lose a son or daughter only upset the Brooks family more.
Brooks said that after watching the news on Tuesday night he wanted to set up a Twitter account to try and get the President’s attention.
“I said to my daughter, ‘Can you teach me to tweet, so I can tweet at the president and tell him he’s a liar?’” he said. “You know when you hear people lying, and you want to fight? That’s the way I feel last night. He’s a damn liar.”
Of course Trump doesn’t have to contact the grieving families — as my Nana used to say, the only things you “have to” do are breathe and someday die. But if the stupid bastid had enough sense to simply not run his big yap, the families wouldn’t have been put to further abuse and the rest of us wouldn’t have been “gifted” this new example of Trump’s basic sociopathy.
THANKS EVER SO MUCH FOR IMPOSING THIS MONSTER ON THE REST OF US, REPUBS!
Money not the point in @DanLamothe's story. It's about how Trump's deep indifference for military loss makes him think money can compensate
— Adam Blickstein (@AdamBlickstein) October 18, 2017
Chyron HR
Yeah, but it’s the Democrats’ fault for not clearing the primary field so the the junior senator from Vermont could have his coronation.
Corner Stone
Every thing Trump touches turns to shit.
ruemara
@Chyron HR: So damned petty. We should sit down & sip tea.
Some of those guys voted for him. I don’t begrudge them the call and I sympathize with their loss, but what did you expect from the man? Morality/ Compassion? Common fucking sense?
O. Felix Culpa
Meanwhile, in the maladministration’s war on humanity:
Litlebritdifrnt
At what point does everyone in the US say “fuck this shit” and actually turn on the shitstain that currently occupies the Whitehouse?
Patricia Kayden
For the President to send $$ to the families of deceased soldiers is not normal. This administration is not normal and can not be normalized. This whole thing is beyond bizarre. The Twilight Zone would have rejected a script based on Trump’s White House as being too fantastical.
By the way, the media needs to keep asking why the four soldiers who were killed in Niger were there in the first place and what back up they had. Seems as if that mission (whatever the hell it was) didn’t have the support it needed.
Elie
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Exactly!
I’m sick of these stories that support the horror that we already know. What and WHEN are we going to do about it!!!
Without some strategy, we could be tut tutting stories three years from now!
HeleninEire
I’m exhausted. And I’m 3,100 miles away.
r€nato
there is no bottom to this barrel.
NotMax
FDR: New Deal
JFK: New Frontier
Dolt 45: New Bottom
jl
This presidential duty has been around probably for as long as the country has existed. Public was paying attention to it at least since the Civil War.
It’s the kind of thing where you ask some qualified staff to set up a system, give you briefing materials and sit-down meeting on how to do it.
And then, you do it.
You get notified, you get briefing material on the fallen. Staff does this for you. You take a deep breath, and you call or write.
Can’t think of a better example of Trump’s complete incapacity for this kind of executive office, of a nation, of a state, or podunk county out in the sticks.
Except maybe fact that he has been chaotically contradicting himself on support for Senate proposal for bipartisan health care risk subsidy fix, all within 48 hours. That too.
OK, two ‘no better’ examples.
Edit: Trump thought setting up a system for his twice a day Trump media puff piece briefing. Why not for this?
encephalopath
Trump’s world view of everything being a zero sum game dictates this sort of outcome in everything he is involved in. He wants to be a winner and him winning mean everyone else has to lose.
He is going to be the worst most horrible person imaginable in everything that he does because of this. There will never be an instance of him doing anything helpful, upright, or just. Everything he does will be a self-dealing, self-aggrandizing shit show.
Republicans found the worst person in America and they made him president because it made liberals cry. It’s going just about as well as you would expect.
r€nato
future generations will wonder what the fuck people were thinking in 2016, much like how we wonder how the Germans in the 1930s allowed a monster like Hitler to take charge.
Mai.naem.mobile
The other day I was talking to this lowe income POC millenial woman who is gay and in an interracial marriage. I made a comment about Trump bring cray cray and she said yeah but Hillary wasn’t good either. I don’t know her that well so I just said she would be a hell lot better than this moron. Then we talked about Las Vegas and she thought it was the people in government who want to take our guns away. I don’t know how this person thinks she’s going to do better with a GOP presidency. Ever. And,oh,yeah, I think the Hillary sachs ring has really.penetrated the Internets.
Brachiator
@HeleninEire:
I hear you.
JerryRich
@NotMax: @NotMaxBossy bottoms are the worst.:
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Everyone? Never. There are plenty of diehards who will back Trump regardless. I think there’s probably something that could happen that would get the majority of the Republican party to turn against him, but hell if I know what it is.
Mnemosyne
@Mai.naem.mobile:
Linking Goldman Sachs and Hillary was a huge feature of Russia’s propaganda. Their tool Snowden was pushing it. Your friend is getting fed anti-Democrat propaganda from sources that claim to be liberal.
Adam L Silverman
I can’t go into details, but I can say that this is not playing well inside the military. Especially the senior leadership.
catclub
@r€nato: Germany had 47% unemployment. They had reasons. Ours is more along the lines of the Russo-Japanese war. Stupidity by self-important empire.
hueyplong
I get extremely irritated merely observing on tv this guy’s lifelong obsession with being the world’s biggest dispenser of chickenshit in service of his monumental ego. I cannot imagine the depth of the insult and hurt when the context involves the death of a loved one in action.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
Hey, M., how is your knee? What treatment did you have? Hope that all is ok…
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s only October — several months until May.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Out of curiosity, I did some reading on how past presidents dealt with condolences. Some interesting stories.
One I found puzzling. Two mothers returned purple heart medals for fallen soldiers, with angry accusatory letters. For some reason, Truman kept the medals and those letters close at hand for the rest of his life. I don’t understand that.
Edit: I know Truman lead soldiers in combat in WWI. He probably understood some things in ways that are beyond me.
clay
Trump, of course, brought this on himself. No one asked him about contacting Gold Star families — he was the one who brought the topic up, and his did so with an obvious, outrageous lie. Which caused journalists to think, “Since Trump lies about everything, we should probably look into some of the Gold Star families he allegedly contacted.”
And now it comes out that he’s: a) offensively disrespectful (“He knew what he signed up for”), or b) offensively making false promises (“I’m going to give you $25,000”), or c) offensively absent (Euvince Brooks’s son, Sgt. Roshain E. Brooks, 30, was killed Aug. 13 in Iraq. He has not heard from the White House.), or d) something worse, probably.
Again, no one was looking into this until Trump brought it up. He is a master own-dick-stepper.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Any details?
clay
@Adam L Silverman: I’m guessing it’s not playing well outside the military, either. But the real question is, what are the senior leadership going to do about it? What can they do about it?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s also pathetic from the point of view of Trump claiming to be a CEO for all these years. The correct reply would have been from Trump “tell you what, the military has it’s rules obviously, but I will tell one of my people to look into this and see what we can do for you”, that would have been nice to the father without promising anything and avoids getting into the obvious point that the late Captain wanted the money to go to his wife.
Also, that money, that’s just damn wierd; The President MUST see those deaths as a national necessity for those men’s sacrifices to mean anything and that comes across as hush money.
Mnemosyne
@Elie:
I went to urgent care yesterday and I’m back at work today. I’ve been able to prop my leg up at my desk and ice my knee every half hour or so. 400mg of ibuprofen every 4 hours is working well on the pain.
My one big fear is that I managed to re-tear my ACL, but there’s no way to know that for sure without an MRI. So far, it doesn’t feel as bad as when I tore my ACL, so I’m hoping I didn’t do it.
I still have to make an appointment with my GP and see if she wants me to see an orthopedist.
different-church-lady
@Chyron HR:
SatanicPanic
@clay: I can think of a few things, none of which seem advisable.
different-church-lady
@clay: It has to be less than 48 hours before we start seeing the news articles about how administration officials view this as a win with his base.
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
This is my shocked face.
guachi
I’m in the military. But I also post and read this website. So my opinion on what people in the military think doesn’t really mean much, does it?
I’ve heard no one at work talk about it but we’ve all just switched rather suddenly to midnight-shift so staying awake is more important than what’s on the news (and it’s all Fox News at work. Except the one channel permanently on the Weather Channel)
dmsilev
@Adam L Silverman:
I can imagine. It’s a fundamental lack of respect, and seems to get worse with every passing day.
different-church-lady
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Everyone? Never, quite clearly.
Enough to get rid of him? I don’t know.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
Ask her what sort of rehab is best.. Sometimes you can mitigate things by having strong quads… I firmly believe also in early bicycling (stationary bike) to get things moving and lubricated, but check that out with her…. ( I have had chronic knee problems)
Frankensteinbeck
@r€nato:
This will go down in history as racist backlash to the first black president. It is so obvious an interpretation, with plenty to support it, that it won’t be a controversy. Whether or not you think they’ll be right, to historians it will not even seem open to question.
d58826
It’s been a long day so maybe a bit of career advice from the CIA
https://twitter.com/CIA/status/920761510061858816
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Truman survived the Battle of Meuse-Argonne, which was the bloodiest and deadliest battle fought by the American Expeditionary Forces in WW I. He led Soldiers through that horror. He lost men. He’d written these types of letters, or contributed material for them, since 1918. I imagine this contributed to him retaining the Purple Heart medals and the letters from the mothers as a reminder of exactly what their losses really meant.
Mnemosyne
@Elie:
I’ll have to see what my insurance will pay for — it’s pretty good, but most insurance companies are stingy about PT. I have been doing some of my post-ACL exercises to try and keep the knee from getting too stiff. I’m using the crutches as needed, but I’m already putting a little more weight on it — carefully!
Mike in DC
@encephalopath:
I want him removed from office, convicted and publicly sentenced to life in prison, just to finally see him cry. Petty? Sure. But justifiable.
Adam L Silverman
@clay: There is nothing they can do formally.
different-church-lady
@Adam L Silverman: What can they do “informally?”
(No, I’m not serious.)
catclub
@clay:
Exactly. But he has to find a way to make it about himself – rather than give a blank stare and say “what happened in Niger?”
I even suggested he could have blathered that the reports are still classified and he cannot talk about it.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
I get it on the formal PT, but they should give you some ideas on what is ok to do. As I said, stationary bike always helped me but it may not be the ticket for you. For my shoulder probs I swam — in other words, used the injured joint in some gentle but repetitive way once safe to do so…
Wishing you fast healing!
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
You are such a tease ;-)
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
Sending you positive thoughts.
Duane
It’s amazing that Trump has never learned to just say nothing. SHUDDUP already, you blasted idiot.
Sloane Ranger
According to CNN there’s an investigation underway into what they were doing in Niger and what went wrong.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump would offer money to a grieving family and then not pay until called on it. This is what he did after that telethon he did for the military during the campaign.
In the Raw Story version he tells the Father that no other President would offer him money from their own pocket but he will.
In doing so he makes the point that he is rich and better, more generous than any previous President. He expects the recipient to express gratitude and adulation in return. That is what he lives for.
rikyrah
@Mike in DC:
I feel you
bystander
I just heard a clip in which Orrin Hatch blamed Obama for the passage of the DEA castration act. Obama signed a bill handed to him with unanimous consent. So it was obviously Obama’s fault.
I hate these people.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Avoid the national anthem for a while.
;)
Corner Stone
@Mike in DC: I want him to die in prison. Locked away from society except for the occasional visit by a monkey trainer to see if there may be parallels to be drawn in their work.
Adam L Silverman
Ooopsie!
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I can relate. Hope things turn out OK.
Mnemosyne
@bystander:
Well, come on, how is Congress supposed to know what’s in the bills that Congress sends to the President? We already know they don’t read their own bills.
Also, isn’t Hatch the guy who keeps blocking any attempt to regulate vitamin and supplement manufacturing? Now I’m wondering if there’s another poison pill in that bill that Hatch inserted.
khead
@Patricia Kayden:
This. Is Trump going to send a $25K check to every soldier killed during his term?
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
Mindless gibbering ✔️
Aimless poo-flinging ✔️
Strutting about ✔️
Playing with own dick ✔️
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@jl: Truman had a streak of humility–he knew there were people around him from wealthier backgrounds, people with more education, people who had had greater successes outside of politics, and that he ended up in the White House through a series of what could be justly called lucky breaks. He wasn’t defensive about any of that–he just accepted it, and went on, trying to do his best and knowing he wouldn’t always get it right. I think that’s why he was underrated in his won time, and looks better in retrospect. From what I’ve heard about him, keeping those letters and the medals sent with them would have been entirely in character–a reminder that he was going to make mistakes, and when he did, real people would suffer.
billcoop4
The previous GOP entertainer president valued scripts and could read from them.
BC
r€nato
@Adam L Silverman: Good. Because I truly believe our only hope to prevent nuclear war initiated by the US for the stupidest of reasons, is resistance from the highest levels of the military to carry out such orders from the Tangerine Toddler absent damned good cause.
Roger Moore
@Sloane Ranger:
Five will get you ten that the money is coming from the Trump foundation or some other slush fund, not Trump’s pocket.
patrick II
“It’s not my fault” is an underlying theme for so much of what Trump says that sounds so discordant and out of touch. “He knew what he was in for” is another variation on that theme, with Trump’s overarching need to cover his ass worming its way even into condolences to the family of a fallen soldier. It wasn’t Trump’s fault, the guy knew what he was in for.
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck: Good point. Hey in my wildest dreams, the whole thing gets overturned and Dolt’s not even Dolt45 any more, just a Russian stooge who happened to occupy the WH for a while until a real president could be elected.
Erased from the history books – how ironically Russian a fate would THAT be?
As a runner-up, I’ll settle for him dying in prison with every last cent confiscated under RICO.
Ruckus
@catclub:
Didn’t that have something to do with that little fracus that they were in just a few years before, helped along by a little thing called the depression? And we were how much better off?
r€nato
@Adam L Silverman: Tangerine Toddler makes it impossible to rationalize his tantrums. The Khizr Khan affair could be explained away as Mr. and Mrs. Khan tugging on Superman’s cape, so to speak, and getting what they deserved when they played hardball. Likewise his intemperate jab at McCain (and by implication at all POWs; Trump spoke of ‘soldiers who don’t get captured’, not McCain specifically). That can be explained as simply political sniping in a snippy campaign season.
But this? It’s a fundamental lack of respect in every single way for a grieving family combined with an utter lack of basic humanity. He’s a terrible liar, as well.
Kathleen
@Mnemosyne: Snowden wasn’t the only tool “from the left” that was pushing it.
Jeffro
Geez, give me a fucking break: I know we have been talking about ‘penetration at all levels’, I had no idea we were talking about PENETRATION AT ALL LEVELS!!1!
Russians paid for self-defense classes for African Americans to try and sow fear and division here in the US
it’s quite possible that once you remove all the Russian pot-stirring, the entire country actually loves one another just to the dickens and can’t wait to hang out more with each other.
I’m also starting to think the Russians were behind that whole, “Is it a white and gold dress, or blue and black dress” nonsense.
Gravenstone
@Adam L Silverman: This is my shocked face.
Kathleen
@different-church-lady: I’ll bet Maggie Hackerman is regretting she’s not tweeting her Hackmaid’s Tales. this week. She can find a “Pivot” under any pile of pony shit.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Imagine my shock that fucking with military families like a pathetic asswipe doesn’t play well in any town US of A.
VOR
@r€nato: Fred Kaplan at Slate caught a claim from Trump that our missile defense system has a 97% success rate. He is concerned Trump thinks he could nuke North Korea without any return fire. In fact, the success rate in carefully arranged tests is around 56%. The 97% estimate assumes 4 defending missiles per attacking missile. So what happens if the attacker just has more missiles?
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: I did mention several months ago about the systema program being a Russian intel front.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: Trump tricked a bunch of football fans into choosing him over football. I’m certain he’ll try to trick his troop-respecting base into choosing him over the troops.
MCA1
@Mike in DC: He would never cry. He’s a psycho – there will never be remorse or regret, because it simply does not register that he’s anything other than the great center of the universe. He would interpret imprisonment as validation of the wonderful disruption he brought to a failing, decrepit system. Also as evidence of his greatness, that he made so many evil, powerful enemies take such dastardly, desperate measures. He would spend the rest of his miserable life making his fellow inmates miserable and scouring the internet for the beautiful words of his dead-end supporters.
I would be happy with him getting some solitary time, during which he could only drive himself insane without any external targets on which to inflict his ceaseless, malignant narcissism.
SatanicPanic
Calling up a military family and being an insensitive jerk would be a presidency-defining moment for most other presidents. But in Trump’s case, we all know he can do something lower, stupider and more awful. It’s morbid but maybe a betting pool might stave off some of this existential dread some of us are feeling? Like how much worse can he be?
bystander
@Mnemosyne: I do wonder how Marino bamboozled everyone.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
Shouldn’t be hard. Most of those “troop respecting” followers respect troops only in the abstract and couldn’t give a fuck about the actual human beings.
Waynski
@jl:
Just speculating, (and my history may be off here… feel free to correct…), but it might have had something to do with not firing McArthur right away after he crossed the 38th parallel and took soldiers all the way to the Chinese border countermanding Truman’s orders and, I believe, the UN resolution only covered expelling NK from the south. Again, assuming those facts are in order.
MCA1
@SatanicPanic: There’s a new “Trump’s Katrina” so often I can’t remember offhand what his Katrinas were only two weeks ago. Just in the last week we’ve had the paper towel pop-a-shot episode in PR, the snide overenunciation of a Hispanic accent when saying Puerto Rico, the outrageous lie about other presidents not contacting soldiers’ next of kin, “he knew what he was getting into” and now this false promise to send a guy 25 grand. Every single one of those things would have tormented every previous president for months on end and did serious damage to their approval ratings. Hell, the deaths of 4 soldiers in Niger would have led to another Benghazi if it had happened two years ago. And the disastrous lack of response in PR would have been no kinder to GWB than the New Orleans shitshow was.
Now we can’t even keep up with them because there’s a fresh outlandish thing just a few hours away at all times.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@jl:
Harry Truman participated as a company level officer in the single largest media litany engagement in American history – the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. It was the final battle of the war prior to Armistice, and ran the length of the Western Front. In addition to The Western European and British Allies, 1.2 million American servicemen were engaged in brutal combat.
It was so bad that even after final lines for the Armistice were known and set, British and American commanders were ordering mass charges across wire and fields – suicide charges with no point. There were Congressional inquiries after.
I suspect that is what Truman was remembering.
ThresherK
Surely someone has made the joke that this Trump promise of money would actually be paid, simply because it’s not coming out of his wallet.
Miss Bianca
@d58826: that is so damn cute, I re-posted it on the Book of Faces!
Gvg
I know families of the fallen expect the President to call at least some of the time. It’s tradition and has been comforting, plus I think it’s kept some of our past Presidents humble and or focused. However given Trumps permanent insensitivity and foot in the mouth problem, everyone might be better off if they encouraged him to forget it and never call.
I suspect any high ranking real general could do much much better.
r€nato
@VOR: that’s how you defeat an anti-missile system, you play the odds.
And yes, that 56% success rate – after hundreds of billions and literally decades spent on it – is only in carefully arranged tests. The real world success rate would likely be more like 10% at best. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to knock an ICBM out of the sky before it reaches your nation’s soil. Then there’s the issue of the anti-missile detonating the nuke.
NorthLeft12
Of course that’s what Deadbeat Donald thinks. That is pretty much the core belief of most conservative, capitalist, and libertarian thought. Some company cuts a corner that results in human death or injury or long term disability or suffering and they get sued or lose customers and go out of business. BAM! What could be more fair than that?
Polluters destroy a habitat and kill wildlife? They get fined and have to pay for cleanup and they might even lose some customers because of it!
Some law enforcement officers get trigger happy in a tense situation and a person or two or three get injured or killed? Their families get a big cash settlement! WIN!
Wrongfully convicted and spend ten years in prison before being cleared and released and you get a nice payment….as long as there is some prosecutor or police misdeeds. What’s the big deal about ten years and having to explain ever after that “No, I did not do that crime.”
This is exactly what those RWNJs think. They monetize virtually everything, and value very little that cannot be bought and paid for. Trump is just being true to his tribe, and sadly this kind of attitude is becoming even more prevalent in society.
Van Buren
@Adam L Silverman: They supported him in 2016 over Hillary. My dog could have predicted what this presidency would be like. It does not reflect well on Military Leadership that they did not realize what a clusterfuck this would be sooner.
Lyrebird
@Mnemosyne: Will say that following Lee Albert’s advice (book avail for $30 on A-mart) and wearing a knee brace have been associated with gradual but BIG improvement in my knee situation, YMMV and all that.
ETA: I have gotten PT from him & students of his, all helpful… and fwiw so has SARK, who put a testimonial into the book. Ignore the cornball title & artwork on front.
Barbara
@Adam L Silverman: My husband hates politics with something close to a passion and the last few weeks have caused him to be unexpectedly engaged. First, with Puerto Rico, in which he told me that the president had abdicated his core constitutional duties as president. And now, with this — just, unbelievably cruel and needless political posturing over which president has the best outreach to grieving family members. It’s unusual for my husband to have more details than I do — but he knew that LaDavid Johnson was 25, with a pregnant wife and two children under the age of 6. We also have a 25 year old daughter and it brings me close to tears to even type this. So as my husband said to me, Trump doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that this man died and he couldn’t even be bothered to have someone who has done this in the past write out a short statement of condolence that would consider the fact that when a family is wracked with grief things might hurt in ways you didn’t think of, so it’s best to be very careful and scripted. And then bringing up the death of General Kelly’s son to further the battle of the presidents. I really am shocked. I know I shouldn’t be but this is the guy who has been screaming about NFL players failing to stand for the anthem and he can’t even be bothered to sublimate his ego in favor of showing respect for people who did way, way more to show their love of country than stand up for the anthem.
chopper
@Van Buren:
my dog did predict it, when she took her first steaming dump in the yard after the election.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, yeah, whatever about your knee thing.
The important question is: did G get you any Chex Mix, and do you have enough to share with the rest of us?
On a more serious note: glad the knee’s still OK (i.e., relative to a torn ACL).
Roger Moore
@r€nato:
That’s very low risk for two reasons:
1) Nukes are actually very hard to set off, both for safety reasons- nobody wants an accidental nuclear explosion- and because they’re inherently very fiddly.
2) The interceptors we’re using are designed to blow it up while it’s still a long way away, so an early detonation is still a win compared to letting it reach its target.
SFAW
@Gvg:
Hell, I suspect any three-year-old could do better. Well, maybe not three, but certainly a five-year-old.
Roger Moore
@NorthLeft12:
Of course the other thing is just how cheap Trump is in that scenario. $25,000 is pathetically measly for a dead family member, even if he did sign up for hazardous duty. Either the family deserves weregild, in which case it should get a big payday, or it doesn’t. Offering $25K is saying the family deserves a payday, but their family member’s life wasn’t worth much; it’s a huge insult.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Oh and the fucking racist morons will fall for it. Every time.
NorthLeft12
@Barbara:
“to further the battle of the Presidents.” I don’t want to be nit-picky, but this seems to be a war that only Deadbeat Donald is involved in. None of the other living Presidents are dignifying his doltish comments with a direct response. Yes, there are those who worked with those Presidents and others who have defended them, but once again the Orange Idiot stands alone in insulting and impugning those that came before him.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
He probably thinks that’s how much a funeral costs.
Mnemosyne
@Lyrebird:
I added his two books to my wishlist so I can look at them further — thanks! I’m more drawn to the yoga one since I’m pretty good at yoga.
Ruckus
@Gvg:
I knew a couple of guys that I wouldn’t have trusted to call, not because they were evil like drumpf but just because they had no idea what to take serious and what was OK not to. But other than a couple, everybody I ever met in the service could have done a better job. Including the asshole lifers.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Must have missed a post, my bad.
Feebog
If you asked DOLT45 the names of the four Green Berets killed in Niger this minute he could not tell you. But he would try to bullshit his way out of it. But this is not the bottom, no where near it. When you consider that millions of his supporters will deny he ever mocked a disabled reporter, and give the most bizarre explanations to support their denial, he will continue to pander to his moron base.
Shana
@guachi: Isn’t that cruel and unusual punishment?
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
You think it’s an accident that a racist dominionist like Uncle Roy Moore received monies from Nazis? Surely everyone knew what they were doing, donors and recipients alike!!
nasruddin
@MCA1:
It makes you think that it might be strategy, doesn’t it?
Gretchen
@Feebog: That’s one thing that upset Mrs. Johnson: that he didn’t even know her husband’s name while he was on the call! Nobody wrote it down on a notecard for him so he could call her and her husband by name! And he referred to her as the woman or the wife afterward. People calling to get you to get a new credit card do better than that.
Mike G
For all their self-puffery about “support the troops” I doubt more than an handful of Repukes will protest this. Trump sees soldiers as like the janitors in his buildings, little people to be exploited because they weren’t as smart and hustling as he was. In his eyes they signed up for a bad deal and nothing earns more contempt in Trumpworld than making a bad deal; he shrugs at the consequences for them.
Hw3
#block @realDonaldTrump if you want to send a message that the Cheeto Caeser will comprehend