Congratulations to president Trump for achieving something Obama never could – Being laughed at by the UN.
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) September 25, 2018
WATCH: Laughter in UN General Assembly as President Trump touts his administration's progress in past 2 years: "Didn't expect that reaction, but that's OK." pic.twitter.com/V7GViB5g4B
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 25, 2018
Spencer Ackerman, at the Daily Beast:
Diplomats and heads of state from all over the world laughed at President Donald Trump’s boast that he has “accomplished more than any administration in the history of our country.” At the podium of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump took it on the nose—“Didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s OK”—and then sleepily delivered a bellicose, 35-minute presentation of international cooperation as a threat to America…
Trump’s message was hardly one of leaving the world to its own peaceful devices. It was one where Trump sets the conditions for the world to follow, cloaked in revisionist history. Global free trade, for decades pushed on developing economies by the U.S. and yielding substantial wealth transfer upwards, was portrayed as a mechanism for other countries to “rig the system in their favor.” In between praising the Trump-coaxing regime of Saudi Arabia, Trump attacked OPEC as “ripping off the rest of the world” before demanding protection money: “We want them to start lowering [oil] prices, and they must contribute substantially to military protection from now on.” U.S. efusal to participate in the 2016 Global Compact on Migration, an entirely voluntary framework, was premised on preventing an “international body unaccountable to our own citizens.”
Everywhere Trump looked, he saw global avarice encircling to choke the life out of America–an America he defined in the blood-and-soil terms of “a culture built on strong families, deep faith, and strong independence”…
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The U.K., Germany, France, Russia and China have agreed to establish a special payments system to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran stemming from Trump's unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Financial Times reports.https://t.co/cElx3fGr5X
— Axios (@axios) September 25, 2018
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Trump: "The United States is the biggest giver in the world by far of foreign aid, but few give anything to us."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 25, 2018
Trump, talking about good things going on in the world, hails India, Israel, Poland, Saudi Arabia. He says Saudi Arabia is pursuing "bold new reforms."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 25, 2018
Scoop: Trump tasked former Peter Thiel associate Kevin Harrington to overhaul foreign aid, but it’s turned into an interagency fight with DOD, State and USAID. Latest from me and @jdawsey1 https://t.co/NfJJ7ZRwuX
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) September 25, 2018
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Which would be the US, if it stays committed to withdrawing (technically still “in” until after Election Day in 2020) https://t.co/mmwGdah7KG
— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) September 25, 2018
Fun fact: The U.S. and Syria used to be the only countries in the world that were not signed on to the Paris Climate Agreement. But in November, 2017 Syria decided to join. https://t.co/cdtd7oATJz
— Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer) September 25, 2018
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The president says he didn't get laughed at, he successfully told a joke. https://t.co/05TXYqCaPI
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 25, 2018
UPDATE: Fox News clips video of Trump's UN speech so you can't hear the world laugh at him https://t.co/McsppW4yJ0
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2018
New from @netflix! You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll cry more than anything probably pic.twitter.com/9rhH3dpmF6
— Josh Hara (@yoyoha) September 25, 2018
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
ixnay
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Chyron HR
We should start harassing Fox and demanding to know why they edited the video to make it look like Trump’s joke bombed.
I mean, y’all should, I ain’t got time for that shit.
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
Good morning!
I have a serious question: does he honestly not realize they’re laughing AT him? wtf?
JGabriel
Jim Acosta via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Bit of a Freudian slip there, using the contrary conjunction “but” instead of the affirmative “and”.
It’s not just that Spanky McTraitorface lies 70-80% of the time, but that he’s also so bad at it. You’d think with all that practice he gets lying, he’d have learned to be good at it by now. A liar, a traitor, and a fucking moron.
JGabriel
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues:
No, Dickspore Donny realizes it. Note the use of “but” instead of “and” above.
He’ll just do or say anything to save face and not look like a pathetically risible dumb lunatic the world laughs at.
Procopius
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues: Who knows what he knows and doesn’t know? The thing is he’s always going to pretend the outcome was what he wants or is a traitorous stab in the back by losers.
Tony Jay
I feel for you. Every time the malfunctioning automaton we have to call Prime Minister or one of her backstabbing Cabinet of delusional Quitters goes to the EU demanding respect, special treatment and a laundry list of whatever they think will get them favourable headlines in the Daily Mail, I die a little with shame. It’s all just pandering to a Base that not only can’t handle “the Truth”, but actively demands that everyone else has to play along with their Bulldog Cosplay or else be labelled a traitor to the “Will of the People!” and hounded by a compliant Media. That doesn’t fly in Europe, so they’re just laughed at, which feeds their victim complex and drives them back to the seemingly bottomless well of ethno-nationalism they’ve been gorging on for decades.
Roll on November. You get to Blue Wave the Republicans out of Congress and we’ll (hopefully) get such a complete collapse of Brexit negotiations that No-Deal is the only deal this shambles of a Government can bring to the Commons, which rejects it, which leads to a vote of no confidence in the Government, which leads to a General Election, which leads to a way out of the whole disaster, eventually.
Believe it or not you guys have the easier route back to sanity. It may not always feel like it, but you do.
Amir Khalid
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues:
1) When did Trump ever do anything honestly?
2) Trump never acknowledges when he’s made a fool of himself. He has convinced himself that he told a joke, and that’s what the world leaders were laughing at.
Immanentize
@Procopius:
George Carlin used to do a routine about cats in which he describes his cat running straight into a glass door; it backs up shakes a bit and then proudly walks away showing everyone “I meant to do that.”. Trump.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
Ok, because there is apparently a streak of masochism in me, I looked at the transcript of his speech. It is quite obvious that he doesn’t understand a word of the speech, but this is no surprise. The truly shocking part, as Adam pointed out earlier (and in the Ackerman article AL linked to, above) was the crap about globalism and the fervent praises of patriotism. This is dangerously close to fascist rhetoric. He didn’t literally say that the globalists had stabbed ‘Merka in the back, but the subtext is clear to his band of merry followers.
MagdaInBlack
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues:
He knows, and some one will punished for it.
Immanentize
Also, Good morning All. Ozark included!
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
@JGabriel: @Procopius: @Amir Khalid:
Thanks for the responses. Y’know, the instinctive response to that laughter was, “oh shit, somebody had better lose the nuclear football”. So in some sense, guess it’s better that he convinces himself this was a well delivered joke, rather than a universal moment of true derision for someone so obviously an idiot.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
@MagdaInBlack: I’m all for it if Miller is the one getting defenestrated. But somehow it’ll turn out to be the rest of us and the world.
Baud
On Day 1 of the Baud! administration, I will issue an executive order declaring everything that happened in the prior four years to be bullshit and therefore null and void. #USABackOnTrack
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Everyone who has a cat, has a cat that does that.
OzarkHillbilly
@MagdaInBlack:
FTFY. You’ll get my bill in the mail.
MagdaInBlack
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues:
I halfway expect to hear we’re pulling out of the U.N.
Immanentize
@Baud:
Back on Track is a good slogan.
“I think my country got a little off track.”
MagdaInBlack
Use my BJ email, I never check it ☺️
Immanentize
@MagdaInBlack: Or that we are sending the UN, building and all, to France.
MagdaInBlack
@MagdaInBlack:
OFFS!
Wtf with reply?
That was for you
@OzarkHillbilly:
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: very true.
m0nty
@Baud: Make Amnesia Great Again
Immanentize
@m0nty:
Milk of Magnesia is Great Again
(Theme for these times)
eric
@Immanentize: except the cat goes behind the couch and says “fucking meow” i love that line
m0nty
@Immanentize: The Audacity Of Nope
Immanentize
@eric: I forgot that part. Thanks for the reminder and the morning laugh. Fucking meeeooow!
Barbara
@Tony Jay: Brexit: committing national economic suicide so a political party doesn’t have to admit it made a mistake. I shake my head every time I think of how stupid David Cameron must be.
MagdaInBlack
I really need more coffee to deal with today.
OzarkHillbilly
Good luck with that, Sister.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: How contemptuous the executives are of — shareholders! Nuns are cheery because they play the long game.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Drumpf is doing a solo “news conference” today. He hasn’t done one in 19 months.
This is not a move you make if you have the votes.
debbie
I wish a country had stood up after Trump’s statement that no one helps the U.S. and forcefully reminded that dickwad how the world stood with the U.S. after 9/11 and even stood with the U.S. to the point of following the U.S. into a war that many knew to be bogus. Trump would never do that.
But back to local wars, when the Dems question Kavanaugh tomorrow, would they each be allowed to yield their time to Kamala Harris? That would really be something!
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Yep, good Republicans that they are.
Vhh
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues: It is not just close. It is Mussolini stuffed with Stalin stuffed with Hitler. A totalitarian turducken.
Kay
We had good turnout for a canvassing training last night. Run by the Ohio Democratic Party (as opposed to a candidate- candidates also run trainings). We also paid $260.00 to the ODP for mailers with US Senate, US House, Governor and then our 2 statehouse candidates on them. They’re “ballot cards”- the lists of candidates people can (and do) take into the polling place with them. Democrats have a problem with “undervotes”- our voters vote the top one or two lines and skip the rest so hopefully this helps with that. $260 is a good price- it would cost us 10X that to do it ourselves as an individual county.
The ODP isn’t targeting independents here – they are in college educated suburbs but this isn’t that. They’re targeting low propensity Democratic voters- people who only vote in Presidential years. Here that is about 1500 people which doesn’t sound like a lot but is when there are only 10,000 Democratic votes.
Tony Jay
@Barbara:
It’s worse than that. The Tories (most of them, half of them, it’s hard to tell) know full well it was a mistake, but avoiding admitting that is only part of the reason they’re in lockstep behind it. Mostly they – be they actual Remainers or the ones who backed Quit thinking all they’d ‘win’ was credibility with the hard-Right – just want to put off the date of a full-on Tory party civil-war until ‘something’ happens and they can retake control of the Party from the true-believers. That’s why there have been so many attempts to shift the blame for Brexit’s inevitable catastrophic failure to someone, anyone else. Labour, Europe, the Media, Labour again, but it hasn’t worked. Now time is getting short and they’re starting to panic as the inevitability of a No-Deal crash out with all the destruction that entails looms ever nearer. Splitting the Party may be the only thing they can do to save even a rump of their Party from taking the full and well-deserved blame for the worst national disaster since the Election of 1979. Poor little them.
And don’t even get me started on the substantial number of hardcore Quitters who still, to this day, dismiss any and all warnings of how bad it’s going to be as “debunked Project Fear nonsense”. Those people are as bad as the Republican base and deserve to get screwed just as hard and mercilessly.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay:
Even if we win the next couple of elections, it’s just papering over the bad craziness temporarily. It just pops back up worse and worse every time. With a generally shrinking (even negative) margin of popular support, but that just makes it crazier, and more bent on leveraging any trick it can to retain power.
I think that even if we stop Trump, the cycle after Trump has the potential to be really, really bloody. Fundamentally we have a political party that’s gradually convincing itself that we need a new Holocaust. And the solution that stopped Hitler in World War II won’t work now because we have thousands of nuclear weapons.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I think this is part of what US Republicans are doing- not the “never Trumpers” but the ones who went along. They’re the group who say liberals are hysterical and Trump isn’t that bad OR the people who say Democrats caused Trump. They’re hoping that they hold the party together and wait it out until Trumpists fade and they take over again. That’s why he won the nomination- those people.
They’re the worst, IMO. Both delusional and incredibly cynical. Delusional cynicism. Not the optimistic hopeful kind that is understandable and forgivable :)
Ken
@Baud: You have my vote.
RedDirtGirl
If this a safe space to comment that I actually thought Trump looked humble and a bit chagrinned when he realized they were laughing at him? Strange to find myself typing that, but s’truth.
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
My impression is that the Tories are in too much disarray to get to any kind of agreement and Vlad’s buddies Mogg and Bo J will get their hard Brexit. The media over there may be more useless than the one we have over here. In a rational world the focus would be on the naked attempt to make Britain a shady tax haven to provide Vlad’s Boys access to the Western banking system. Cyprus isn’t working out for them.
The Pale Scot
And I meant to say Bulldog Cosplay is a great phrase
Emma
@RedDirtGirl: I think he expected the cheering mobs he gets at his rallies and looked surprised. He really is delusional about his abilities as a speaker. In a few days he’ll explode.
kindness
Trump worries me. I mean he knows the world leaders were laughing at him, not with him. He deflects expecting his base to carry the theme through and save him. His base, not mental giants they, probably go along with it. Trump’s base, that sector of really stupid and tribal Americans who think owning the libs is the most important aspect of a leader….they scare me more.
Jeff
@Tony Jay: One longs for reality to return. Maybe in November it might start to here. I hope the vote of no confidence happens soon for the return of reality to your country.
Kay
They’re actually using the calendar. He should be disqualified because he was such a horrible teenager that he saved his calendar so historians could refer to it when writing the official biography. Unbearable.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
All that is true. The genie is out of the bottle and the Brown Shirts are back on the washing line ready to be donned, but – and it’s a big but – they chose as their figurehead a man so repellent and self-obsessed that all of the crap is coming out of the closet at once and it’s making even the terminally oblivious take notice. Political disengagement and savvier-than-though both-siderism are taking hits to the face, body and back of the neck on a daily basis and they’re simply not standing up to the barrage.
When that smart lady said that when someone tells you what they are, believe them the first time, she was right. What the Right are doing these days is building a podium out of the bodies of women and children and screaming what they are through a megaphone made of crispy orange skin. They are a minority and can only steal power when the majority are too divided to take it back. I don’t see the majority staying divided much longer in an increasingly Woke America where the Democrats are the only option to the Party of Hate.
Kay
@kindness:
I worry about an invasion of some country because they’re in trouble in the midterms. I feel like this is a perfectly rational fear and anyone who isn’t worried is crazy.
I’m somewhat comforted by the fact that in reality Trump is a soft, coddled coward who avoids confrontation with anyone who can hit back. What he mostly does is sue. Or threaten to sue.
Sister Golden Bear
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues: Nope. He’s a narc. with a narc’s personal reality distortion zone.
FlipYrWhig
Trump at the UN, or Montgomery Burns at the film festival?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701045/quotes/qt0233498
FlipYrWhig
Mr. Burns: [Mr. Burns’ film is being booed by the audience] Smithers, are they booing me?
Smithers: Uh, no, they’re saying “Boo-urns, Boo-urns”.
Mr. Burns: [Stands and faces the audience] Are you saying “Boo” or “Boo-urns”?
[the audience boos and throws rubbish at him]
Hans Moleman: I was saying “Boo-urns”!
Hildebrand
@RedDirtGirl: Every now and then you can see reality jump up and smack him in the face, and for a split-second he actually seems dimly aware that his BS is recognized as BS. I think that is why he is perpetually angry at the media and the ‘elites’, he knows they are laughing at him, he knows he will never be invited to the ‘club’ other than as the entertainment, and so he constantly lashes out because that’s all he has left. Hell, even the NFL didn’t want him. Outside of the fourth-tier celebrities and political hacks that glom on to him like lampreys, he has nothing, and deep down, he knows it, and it eats at him.
The UN folks laughing at him will likely engender the same kind of fury and vitriol that Obama and the Correspondent’s Dinner triggered in him. That’s all he’s got – trying to bring down the club that would never consider letting him join because he is an incompetent knave.
El Caganer
@Kay: Well, he could order the invasion of Puerto Rico. Or maybe the country of Africa.
Tony Jay
@The Pale Scot:
Yeah, every word. The Tories are completely screwed by their own contradictions. A substantial chunk of the Parliamentary Party, and a majority of the Membership/Loyal Voter Group are hardcore Quitters who want Britain to become the white, Christian, white, class-conscious, white, Imperial, white country they remember from reading about it in the Tory Press. Once the option of Continue or Quit was on the table a majority of Tories were always going to vote Quit, the only question was could they hoodwink or exploit enough non-voters and typical working-class Labour voters into joining them by running an overtly race-baiting campaign of lies and innuendo. Thanks to decades of anti-EU propaganda from the rancid Press we have over here, a good old helping of bile from our version of Talk Radio and an Assange of Russian-funded targeted misinformation on social media – turned out that yes, they could.
Now they’re about to pay the price, and the only question is, can the situation be politicked so that Labour can delay, halt and then reverse the Brexit Express without causing a massive split between the Party and the minority of Labour voters who voted Quit in 2016. That’s what we’re going to find out, because if it can’t, we are well and truly in for a bad time of it.
Tony Jay
@Jeff:
It’s going to be a long, hard road back, and it’s reliant on the whole country being honest about how we got here and what we have to do to get somewhere better. We can start with ousting the Tories and go from there, but there are a lot of powerful and well-insulated factions in Britain that won’t like many of the answers a centre-Left Labour Party comes up with. Will they hold their noses and let the ‘Loony Left’ pull their nuts out of the BBQ pit, or will they reflexively undermine the effort because it might cut into their profit margins?
We’ll see.
artem1s
@JGabriel:
It helps if you’ve surrounded yourself with sycophants and toadies whose only concern is proving how much they BELIEVE all the lies.
H.E.Wolf
@Matt McIrvin:
Many people across the country are are choosing to work hard to change this situation.
Rx for alleviating despair: Take 2 schrodingers_cat inspirational Bollywood videos, and GOTV!
Citizen Alan
@MagdaInBlack:
Honestly, I think the only reason we’re still in the UN at this point is because without our veto the rest of the world would be United in favor of sanctions towards Israel.