I keep seeing it mentioned that the Russian bounty information was presented in the Presidential daily briefing, as if that is some sort of gotcha. Now granted, if Trump were a NORMAL President, it would be a horrifying indictment. But Donald Trump doesn’t read. And I don’t mean he doesn’t read the PDB, I mean he doesn’t read ANYFUCKINGTHING. If you put a gun to his head and said name three books he’s spit out “The Art of the Deal” because that involves him, the bible because he knows the rubes love it, and then you’d have to shoot him because he couldn’t fucking name a third.
If you wanted Trump to know something, you have to have whoever his current Grima Wormtongue is whisper it to him, someone on Fox and Friends talk about it, or stage a beauty pageant. Have some bottle blonde with fake cans come up the lectern for a Q&A in a bikini and say “My name is Destiny and I am from Southern California and I like long walks on the beach, Uggs, have a star tattoo on my ankle, and I think it is outrageous that Putin is paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers.”
Even then he might not give a shit, but at least he might have potentially processed the information.
A Few Relevant Numbers
Quaker in a Basement
Look over there! Bigfoot!
Leto
Sam Bee Full Frontal: Trump Can’t Read (Oct 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LFkN7QGp2c
As always, women are years ahead of the curve.
Soprano2
I think it’s hilarious how they think “Well Trump didn’t know about it” is BETTER. Holy Cow…..
dmsilev
I am unclear on the distinction between these two options.
bbleh
… and then you’d have to shoot him because he couldn’t fucking name a third.
Or because your finger slipped. Or … whatever …
JPL
New reporting from the NYTimes said that they had data on money transfer directly from the Russian military to the Taliban. link
dmsilev
@Soprano2: Apparently a FoxBot tried to offer the excuse that “hey, all Presidents skip reading their PDBs from time to time.”. And, of course, there’s always a Tweet, so people dug up Trump claiming that Obama was unfit for office because he skipped reading his PDBs.
Mr. Longform
Trump not being capable of reading, like all of his other disqualifying inabilities, was completely and perfectly obvious way before he got the nomination in 2016, so the question will always be: how could they have let this happen. They really are confederate/gilded age/genocidal maniacs.
schrodingers_cat
He knew. He has done everything to make the pandemic worse. He wants to kill as many Americans as he can.
bbleh
@Soprano2: He thinks it’s better for HIM if they say that. HE’s in the clear. That even if it’s true it indicates a badly dysfunctional process, for which he’s responsible, and that whatever the cause, it’s dereliction of duty, are not relevant.
crm114
His third book would be “The Red Badge of Courage”, it was a go-to reference he used to make.
sdhays
This doesn’t undermine your main point, which is unassailable, but I’m sure he could name his other favorite book – Mein Kampf. It was written by a man he very much admires. He reportedly had it in the drawer of his nightstand (if memory servers).
I believe him when he says he never read it (it’s not about him, after all), but he definitely knows it.
sdhays
Why does the fucking US government bother with the PDB’s when Republicans are President anyway? No Republican President in the 21st century has ever taken them seriously.
Jeffro
Hmm…maybe we should think about raising the standards for the office, America. Maybe it’s a bad thing that “anyone can grow up to be president”.
I have a few suggestions… ;)
Aziz, light!
Of course he reads. He reads the chyrons on Fox News.
MisterForkbeard
It’s not just the PDBs, either. Remember that the original reporting said they’d given Trump multiple options for a response and he’d dithered and ignored all of them.
At some point, someone talked to him about this. Bolton says he did a year ago, and it must have happened more recently as well, because they showed him response options and he fucked off about all of them.
Martin
He didn’t have to read it. Bolton said he told him about the bounties verbally. Not that I trust Bolton, but I’m fine if they fight to the death to resolve who is lying.
patrick II
As Susan Rice pointed out on Rachel last night, even if he didn’t know then, he knows now. Where is the outrage at the Russians? What are the plans to counteract Russia’s hostile activity?
The silence speaks for itself.
jonas
Which had the bonus of also not being true, but whatever…
JPL
@patrick II: They are more upset with the NYTimes reporting than they are about Putin.
Yutsano
He doesn’t read, but he watches TV. Rick Wilson is out for blood. The only flaw is I don’t want him to go back to his golf courses. He needs to go to prison.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m thinking of changing my nym.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
her name is Ivanka, if you please
kindness
John you of course are correct. Trump doesn’t read. But since this data was given to him in a late February DPB I don’t think it excuses Trump for not knowing and it certainly does not release him from the responsibilities of doing his damn job.
It’s just one more reason not to ever elect him again.
Leto
@Yutsano: he can maintain prison yard greens. I’m good with that.
MisterForkbeard
@jonas: I was going to say – I hadn’t even heard of this. I’m willing to bet it was something like “Obama didn’t personally read the PDBs every day while campaigning but still kept regular intelligence reviews and meetings”?
catatonia
He probably reads ads for penile dysfunction treatments. And he’s read a lot of those over the years, I’ll wager.
Leto
@kindness: as Adam, Susan Rice, and Ben Rhodes haBe pointed out, the PDB goes to the president, VP, all the principle deputies, a number of other people. Even if shitbird didn’t read it all these other people were aware and did nothing. So it’s yet another failure that needs to be hammered: Trumpov surrounded himself with incompetent lackies who are too afraid To tell him the truth. They all need to resign for dereliction of duty/cowardice.
I mean, this reminds me of Hitler and D-Day, where none of the German generals wanted to call back to Germany to get authorization from Hitler to move Panzers because he was asleep. This needs to be hammered every single fucking day until Jan 2021.
joel hanes
@bbleh:
He thinks it’s better for HIM
This is his only metric, the polestar of Trump’s existence, and the only explanation needed for many of his most feckless actions and statements.
In his mental processes, the rest of us don’t exist.
Ryan
Which is why if he was responsible, if he wanted to know the information, he would have set up an infrastructure to enable him to act and know. If the news isn’t about Trump, Trump don’t care.
Searcher
I’m pretty sure Trump doesn’t actually hear words when women talk.
Maybe if you ask Putin to start reading his copy of the PDB to Trump during their phone calls.
SFAW
@Yutsano:
If I smoked, I would have wanted a cig after watching that Lincoln Project ad.
Soprano2
Of course this isn’t the Republican’s first rodeo of having to defend a Republican president who didn’t read his PDB’s. Seems they’re used to it.
SFAW
@Ryan:
For some reason, I was thinking of this cartoon.
Ken
@SFAW: Great minds think alike.
It’s also why Cole’s story doesn’t work. Destiny didn’t mention Trump’s name, so he wouldn’t be listening to what she said.
Roger Moore
I doubt it. He would have been too busy figuring out if he could grab her by the p***y to pay any attention to what she was saying. No, if you want Trump to pay attention, you need to get Sean Hannity to tell him about it.
Yutsano
@Leto: I find your compromise acceptable.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Wait — are you saying he’d try to grab Hannity by the p***y
ETA: It would be irresponsible NOT to speculate.
cmorenc
How ironic that in the running gag line in the 1979 Peter Sellers comedy “Being There” is “I don’t read”. It was impossible to imagine at any time in our history, that this would literally be true about the President of the United States. “Being There” was about how an almost childishly simple-minded man’s utterances were wildly misinterpreted out of context by high-level government officials to be such incredibly sage insights that he was given a very high formal advisory position himself. Though the movie’s release preceded the 1980 election of Reagan, a running joke during the Reagan presidency was this was almost like “Being There” come true, except with a US President – no one took this literally about Reagan, though IIRCC, Reagan preferred written briefings to be kept very short and simplified.
Sasha
“Tattoo it on a hooker” is the suggestion I’ve heard.
JAM
Well according to Ivana, he used to keep a book of Hitler’s speeches in his nightstand. But maybe that was just a family heirloom.
catclub
@Martin:
Why not both?
Searcher
@JAM: He wanted to seem like an intellectual white supremacist.
sheila in nc
@cmorenc: Rotating tag lines at our house:
“I don’t read.”
“Well, who has the time?”
“I can’t write.”
“Who can, these days?”
prostratedragon
@Sasha:
From SFAW’s cartoon, which passed also through my mind, to The Pillow Book.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
Yeah, our president is a fucking idiot is a great selling point.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
The exact opposite. I’m saying if Trump is at all interested in grabbing someone by the p***y, he’ll be thinking about that instead of what they’re saying. So if you want Trump to pay attention, you have to send the message through someone whose p***y he doesn’t want to grab.
Ruckus
@Leto:
I wonder if all of the people who are supposed to read the PDB actually do in this nonadministration? Wouldn’t want to piss off the “boss.”
Ruckus
@joel hanes:
Actually the rest of us are in his mental arena. As a group. He has to have people to hold himself above.
Barbara
@JPL: It’s going to be drip drip drip for a long time. Meanwhile, Bill Barr will get pious and sanctimonious about the horrors of leaks. Fuck you, fuck all of you.
Ken
I may have missed it, but they don’t identify the banks involved. It’s interesting that our intelligence knows about these GRU and Taliban accounts, though. To me it suggests another option for retaliation.
eachother
Thing about the drip drip drip is it doesn’t know when to stop. Pretty soon the levee breaks.
tokyokie
@Martin:
Steel cage death match, then shoot the winner.
Roger Moore
@tokyokie:
Lock them in a steel cage, let them fight to the death, and then leave the winner locked up.
Ohio Mom
Parents and teachers of children with dyslexia like to inspire them with all the famous people and high achievers who succeeded despite their reading disability: Richard Branson, Cher, the attorney David Boise, the list goes on. I assume they won’t be adding Trump to the list of role models.
Geoboy
@Leto: “…this needs to be hammered home every day until 2121.” FIFY
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Roger ol’ buddy, I was attempting a joke, i.e., trying to appear as clueless as a typical RWMF pundit.
SFAW
@tokyokie:
Because that way, we’re ALL winners.
NotMax
Missed the opportunity for the punchy headline, good sir.
Scrutiny On The Bounty
Dmbeaster
It is a gotcha because saying you do not read the PDB is not going to work with public opinion.
That should be the point. That this is something so important that ignorance is not a defense of wrongdoing. Ignorance may be a defense to a contention that you did nothing because you have back door deals with Putin that prevented a reaction. But doing nothing because of ignorance means you cannot be bothered to pay attention in order to protect the lives of US service personnel.
Tehanu
@patrick II:
Hope you don’t mind if I steal this. I’m so utterly disgusted at this point I can hardly see straight.