Thanks to an intrepid White House pool videographer, we have footage of the President meeting with his cabinet today.
Open thread!
by Adam L Silverman| 71 Comments
This post is in: America, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2020, Foreign Affairs, Humorous, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Not Normal
Thanks to an intrepid White House pool videographer, we have footage of the President meeting with his cabinet today.
Open thread!
Comments are closed.
Jeffro
I’m dying ???
Baud
How I wish that video reflected our timeline.
Jay
https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/steven-and-louise-vacation-in-cabo.html?m=1
“Hi! Beloved Treasury Secretary and Wonder Woman executive producer Steven Mnuchin here. You probably weren’t expecting to hear from me over the holidays, especially since I’m on vacation in Mexico, but I just wanted to pop in and let the American people know that there’s no danger that every last bank in the country will suddenly run out of money on Monday. In fact, I was so concerned that you might be afraid that the economic system would abruptly grind to a halt within 24 hours, I spent part of my vacation calling bank CEOs on their vacations so I could bring you with this confident, forward-looking statement that says, apropos of nothing, that I have no reason to believe that your life savings will be as worthless as paper in the face of what’s coming on Monday, which is nothing. Nothing is coming on Monday, except for a big meeting which I am convening on Christmas Eve so that we can all talk about how everything is totally fine and good and cool and we definitely won’t be stabbing each other in the streets over scraps of bread by Christmas morning. Why, what have you heard?”
debbie
Trump is so, so, so, so Cartman! Neither of you are at all kewl.
Martin
Trump’s not that tethered to reality, tbh. And Cartman’s cabinet is a good rung higher on the intellectual ladder, as well.
debbie
@Jay:
I almost long for the sanity of Hank Paulson.
NotMax
In other news, Supreme Court agrees to hear J. G. Giant v. S. Claus to determine once and for all who owns the rights to “Ho ho ho.”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jay:
This is good news for Syndicalism! Not that namby-pamby false consciousness “democratic socalist” shit.
NotMax
@debbie
Or, for that matter, Pat Paulsen.
;)
Baud
@Jay:
https://g.co/kgs/kZgau4
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
@Jay:
In case it’s not obvious, I’m joking here.
oatler.
We need a Linus monologue.
WereBear
@NotMax: I would prefer Pat Paulsen. Or his dog. Or his pet rock.
Any of them would have more compassion.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Ugh. I hate South Park for it’s often smug contrarianism and glibtarianism. However, when it gets something right, rare as that may be, it gets it right. This is one of those times.
schrodingers_cat
I have never found South Park remotely funny, the illustrations are pretty ugly too. It was a big hit with all the guys when I was in grad school though.
Mary G
Worms are thinking of turning – Ed Rogers in WaPo: The vice president should be preparing for the worst:
Oh, that’ll settle the Toddler-in-Chief right down. Cue the “I hardly even know Mike Pence, and he is a looooser who needs to go” tweets by 9:45 tonight.
Pogonip
@NotMax: ?
Anne Laurie
Mary G
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??@schrodingers_cat: Oh, thank you. I’ve never been able to watch more than a couple of minutes of South Park and thought there was something wrong with me, although in retrospect the fact that Andrew Sullivan thinks it’s right up there with the Bible should have clued me in.
Jay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Yup, it was clear.
“
Paul Krugman
@paulkrugman
·
23h
This is amazing. It’s as if Mnuchin was trying to create a panic over something nobody was worried about until this release 1/
Quote Tweet
Steven Mnuchin
@stevenmnuchin1
Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks. See attached statement.
Image
Villago Delenda Est
@Mary G: Ed Rogers is one of those guys Pence should ignore.
Adam L Silverman
@Mary G: It has a few funny moments. Often they are funnier separated out from the rest of the show and used, like the one above, for specific purposes other than what they were originally intended for.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve never understood the appeal.
Redshift
There have been many variations on the theme, but I liked Krugman’s description of Mnuchin’s “reassuring” statement as being like the pilot of your aircraft coming on the PA and announcing that they definitely have enough fuel to land.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
I agree with the people who think Mnuchin made the calls so he can claim reimbursement for his luxury vacation from taxpayers by calling it a business trip. It’s exactly the kind of cheap grift he would think was clever.
Mary G
@Anne Laurie: The poor lady holding the folder looks like she wore the closest she had to camouflage in case Twitler started throwing fast food at her.
Here is a cat video:
MagdaInBlack
I openly admit to liking South Park. I had dvds but they seem to have vanished…I blame my ex buzzkill.
And, I went to the movie on a date.
I’m with Dave Grohl on this: F guilty pleasures. If you like something, effin’ like it. ☺️
Thanks, Adam, you made me laugh
TS (the original)
@Mnemosyne: trump told him to DO SOMETHING to stop the dow falling. This was what he thought was a great thing to do – or else he hates trump – I’m undecided on which one.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mary G: @Adam L Silverman:
I remember catching the end of an episode once and it had something to do with being anti-Big Box Store/chain and supporting local small businesses. One of the main characters got on their soapbox and condemned the Buy Local people for being anti-Big Box (Walmart was one of them). That the people who owned these chains were ultimately just like the people who owned the local small businesses and that anti-Big Box people were hypocrites or something.
It was completely devoid of nuance IIRC. It was some bizarre contrarian take on the issue that only idiots like Trey Parker could come up with. If I could compare it to anything, it was like something Bobo of the NYT would write.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jay:
How, exactly, does one convene an individual call?
I would have been fine if he had said “Today I initiated…” or similar.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TS (the original):
Trump hires only the best people. What part of that don’t you understand?
Bostondreams
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
They’ve reversed course. The most recent season had a running anti-Amazon theme. And also admitted maybe Al Gore was right about climate change/manbearpig.
Chris Johnson
@WereBear: “We’ll let people have all the guns they want, and lock up all the bullets”
(I’m not THAT old, but I grew up being able to listen to that record. There was an LP of Pat Paulsen for President. I bet it’s on youtube somewhere)
Adam L Silverman
Patricia Kayden
@Mary G: Pence may go down with Trump. At least I’m hoping that’s what happens.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
I’m gonna go with “moron” first,
Grifting second,
Sucking up to Treason Tribble third.
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: @Mary G: That picture was not taken today. He never left the residence. The Marine guard never took his post today outside the Oval Office.
Patricia Kayden
@Adam L Silverman: So Trump is lying once again? Color me shocked. I’d be more shocked if he ever tells the truth.
Adam L Silverman
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Pretty much.
cynthia ackerman
@Mary G:
First, I don’t think iDJT will notice this.
Second, “gravitas” and Pence is a hilarious joke. Guy’s a .01 watt bulb.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Bostondreams:
I guess that’s good? Are they really acknowledging that climate change is real?
I personally like Amazon. It’s extremely convenient, but it’s not difficult to see that it’s causing problems, like with driving up property prices and rents in NYC with it’s HQ2 or putting brick and mortar stores out of business.
CliosFanBoy
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to all my fellow Jackals. and big hugs and pets and tummy rubs to the pets of Balloon Juice..
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: Yep, apparently, and that’s just science.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jay:
Oh good. I forgot the //.
CliosFanBoy
@Adam L Silverman: FWIW< My wife and I got a tour of the West Wing a few years ago in the evening while President Obama was elsewhere. While there WAS Secret Service there, watching us carefully, there was no Marine Guard. The Oval Office was marked off by a velvet rope, but I did stick my toe in, probably only the 1 millionth person to do so…
Eolirin
@ Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) : @ Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) : The bigger problem is the systemic mistreatment of workers and sketchy anti-competitive behaviors.
boatboy_srq
@Mary G:
That there is some serious deliberate self-delusion on Rogers’ part. “Sound judgment” falls flat when one looks at IN health policies that enabled an HIV pandemic because Heroin Addicts Deserve What They Get, and there’s precious little distance between “calm demeanor” and “I’m too thick-headed to respond to external stimuli.”
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
Did an image search. As near as I can tell, that’s the only photo of the Oval Office tree, from any of the Dolt 45 years.
Adam L Silverman
@CliosFanBoy: You’ve revealed too much. Execute your exfiltration plan immediately!
waratah
ICE bought busloads of migrant families in to El Paso and just left them there. Beto put out a call for help on hid Facebook and Twitter. I have not seen any numbers.
I think they decided if they could not send them to where they came from they would dump them in the treats.
BC in Illinois
Our retiree-president.
debbie
@MagdaInBlack:
You’re not alone. I am waiting for Butters to finally come out on top.
waratah
Beto is live on Facebook now
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: I’m sure it’s a legit picture, but from all available reporting that isn’t the President self reporting, he’s not been in the Oval Office at all today. So it’s a real picture of him in the Oval Office, just not a real picture of him in the Oval Office today.
Baud
@CliosFanBoy: Although I’m a jackal and not a pet, I wouldn’t mind some tummy rubs.
Jay
@Adam L Silverman:
I was looking to see if it was this years tree, or last years tree.
Because it has the Orange Bloat in it we know it’s not a stock model photo from Getty Images.
Mnemosyne
@MagdaInBlack:
When “South Park” is good, it can be really good, but they’re terrible at politics because they’re lazy libertarians who don’t want to have to think too hard and tend to conflate their hatred of specific celebrities with their hatred of specific politicians.
I still say that their Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck episode (“tacos!”) is simultaneously the most hilarious and most disturbing half hour of American television ever.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
I still laugh when I think of their version of James Cameron.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@CliosFanBoy:
Q-Anon: “See!? The Velvet rope is a reference to the velvet glove the Deep State uses to control us all through Q-Waves broadcast through the chips implanted in our teeth by dentists, who are really MIB undercover. It’s also a reference to gloves black athletes wore in protest at the Olympic Games of 1968. Ergo, Obama was a black supremacist member of the New Black Panther Party and this was his way of virtue signaling to his fellow travelers.”
Did I capture the feeling of a conspiracy theorist?
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Twitter sleuths are claiming the photo was taken on Sunday based on the dates of the newspapers that are on the desk.
Cheryl Rofer
I will never cease to be stunned by the void on 45’s desk. I can’t even imagine mine looking that way.
Adam L Silverman
@Patricia Kayden: @Jay:
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Patricia Kayden: RUMINT is that it will. Which I hear (read) is from reliable sources.
cliosfanboy
@Adam L Silverman: roger that. Hold on, someone is knocking on the do…..
Adam L Silverman
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: You’re alive!
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Adam L Silverman: Ooops. OPSEC fail.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Hasn’t been there in years now, judging from his public behavior, walking away from his limo, not signing the Order his news conference was called to sign, etc, etc.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
Re P. Krugman’s “It’s as if Mnuchin was trying to create a panic over something nobody was worried about until this release.”,
(and not PK’s “or he’s an idiot” in the next tweet), it’s quite possible that this is true. That Mnuchin (and perhaps DJT) are deliberately trying to panic the markets.
– Mnuchin, one possible motive would be to spark a quick recession with a gamble that is not deep and is over before 2020 and that they can spin a widely believed “blame the Democrats” narrative, which they couldn’t; the press including the financial press wouldn’t buy it (excepting maybe the WSJ editorial page but they’ve been nuts for all the decades I’ve glanced at them).
– DJT because he’d rather tear it all down than lose.
mdblanche
I don’t think Secretary of Defense Frog is going to last much longer.
And our intrepid videographer also got footage of Trump shutting the government down.
Ken
@cynthia ackerman:
Maybe “gravitas” here means “heavy”, “dense”, “thick”?
btom89
@Cheryl Rofer: Not only that, but he only has pictures of his parents on the table behind his desk. None of his kids or grandchildren.