TRUMP: So this button launches a nuclear warhead?
GEN. KELLY [handing him a Staples Easy! button with the word BOMB scrawled across it in Sharpie]: Absolutely— Jason O. Gilbert (@gilbertjasono) January 3, 2018
His poll numbers are abysmal. The assessments from pundits and historians are scathing. He's approaching the one-year mark, and the din of elite ridicule is as loud as ever.
And so, we get this: pic.twitter.com/rsNWxWSAzQ
— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) January 3, 2018
A statement by the President: pic.twitter.com/qIk5H4XAE5
— Real Press Sec. (@RealPressSecBot) January 3, 2018
Is it next to the Diet Coke button? This worries me. Risky! https://t.co/W8UeFTp89l
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 3, 2018
At least when we're all dying there will be dick jokes.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) January 3, 2018
??????? pic.twitter.com/fQ4YyFQu6r
— Celia (@_celia_marie_) January 3, 2018
We were warned. About everything. pic.twitter.com/DZ9KDhP35k
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 3, 2018
RandomMonster
Holy balls how did we get here.
Suzanne
Ugh. Christ. How are people so fucking stupid that they didn’t see this coming?
Mnemosyne
Sirveillance footage from inside the Oval Office.
Though Baby Groot is much cuter.
? Martin
My guess in all of this is that the Trump folks see a window of opportunity to rid NK of nukes without jeopardizing the US directly. It’s a calculation that South Korea or Japan are expendable toward this goal, and that any criticism of Trump’s decision will simply be blamed on China and Obama for not doing more, that none of this is his fault.
We’ve got a month before the Olympics start.
MisterForkbeard
Reading the twitter responses on the Hillary clip is kind of scary. The Trumpists are absolutely convinced that Trump has solved everything and that liberals are delusional because they just hate him so much.
The sad thing is, this is exactly what WE were saying about them for most of Obama’s tenure… except we thought Obama was doing ‘Well’, rather than “perfect in every way”. The difference is that the facts actually supported our case. Amazing what a litany of Fox/Breitbart/RussianNews will do to reinforce your crazy ideas.
Mark
I only know one person that will even talk about the Buffoon. Everyone else avoids the subject like the plague.
Wallis Lane
See this button? DON’T TOUCH IT! It’s the History Eraser Button, you FOOL!
So what’ll happen?
That’s just it! We don’t know! Maaaaybe something bad… maaaaybe something good! I guess we’ll never know! ‘Cause YOU’RE going to guard it! You won’t touch it, will you?
Oh, how long can Trumpy hold out? How can he possibly resist the diabolical urge to push the button that could erase his very existence? Will his tortured mind give in to its uncontrollable desire? Can he withstand the temptation …to push the button that, even now, beckons him closer? Will he succumb to the maddening urge to eradicate history? At the MERE PUSH of a SINGLE BUTTON! The jolly candy-like button! Will he hold out, folks? CAN he hold out?
Raoul
It may sound naive, but do it anyway: call your senators and rep. Tonight or first thin tomorrow. I left voicemails after seeing a tweet tonight that suggested this.
Our electeds, esp those GOP fuckers, need to hear that Trump threatening nuclear annihilation is not OK. Period. They need a fast, angry earful.
Part of why the tweets from T escalate is that it’s sort of nervously blown off as him just being him. But this shit escalates and it only takes that one time to go horribly wrong.
Call, and use social media to get your friends to call. “Hi, rep ____, I’m calling to say that our President threatening nuclear war scares me deeply. We need leaders to say this is not how we act in the world. I’ll be listening for you to push back on this dangerous brinksmanship. Thank you.”
gene108
@Suzanne:
They wanted this. They wanted a racist, sexist, narcissist, asshole in charge. It would a hoot. A real good time getting those immigrants deported, those Black Lives Matter niggers put back in their place, and hell, might even get the queers back in the closet.
There is both an amazing ability of America to absorb and adapt to immigrants, which change the demographics and culture of the country, as well as a dark legacy of white supremacy that underlies so much of this country’s history.
These forces seem to be constantly fighting for the soul of this country. But the forces of equality are winning a long slow battle. But sometimes the forces of hatred get a short term win against the march of progress.
Raoul
@? Martin: Saw some interesting stuff this eve that today’s public overtures by NK to SK make Trump look bad.
And on the radio I heard an IOC person (I think, tuned in mid piece) saying that NK could still get a couple athletes into the Games, which would also be a thumb in Trump’s brittle, self absorbed eye (ok, guy didn’t characterize that last bit quite like that).
But this all added up for me: Trump sees he isn’t driving the NK situation right now, and it enrages him.
So, dangerous loose talk of nukes. What a fucking shitshow.
Yarrow
dmsilev
@Suzanne: This is what a lot of them wanted. And still want; Trump’s popularity among self-described Republicans is still disturbingly high.
eemom
Um, the actual NEWS about NK at the moment is the purported olive branch Kim extended to the South. That is going to fuck Dump’s shit up.
Mary G
Sixteen crazed tweets today makes me wonder if a shoe is getting ready to drop in the form of a newspaper story or indictment. Maybe?
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
They saw it coming.
They thought they’d like it.
Some of them do.
Those are the fucking morons.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Pivot
Suzanne
@dmsilev: I genuinely believe that this election has done irreparable damage to the body politic. Before, there were plenty of people I disliked, and I didn’t want to live near them or consort with them, but I didn’t think they were evil. I have been awakened to the fact that nearly 50% of the citizens of the country are people that not only do I want nothing to do with, I no longer want to make a country with them and I really don’t mind if they suffer under the new regime they put in power. If there was a way to create a social safety net that excluded Trump voters, I would go for it in a second. I look at strangers with suspicion, and I automatically assume that a person is a bad person if I find out they voted for Trump.
I’m not proud of any of this, BTW.
Geoduck
@Mary G: No. There is no plan here. There is no strategy. Trump just spews whatever deranged thought that flits through the toxic void he calls a mind. Usually triggered by whatever Fox is going on about at the moment.
?BillinGlendaleCA
But her Emails!
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I feel the same with the exception that I’m sure not ashamed to consider someone who voted for this fucking asshole as a bad person. They’ve proven they don’t care about anyone but themselves and quite likely hate people all for bullshit reasons. Those are not good people.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
I don’t look at all strangers with suspicion, only white ones.
And I’m white.
Origuy
I was traveling when this happened, so I don’t know if it was discussed: On December 27, a bomb exploded in a St. Petersburg, Russia, shopping mall, injuring 18 people. Of course the assumption was that Chechens or another Islamic group was behind it. However, that turns out to be wrong, apparently.
Emerald
Rant:
Really, is the entire world just going to watch this lunatic destroy everything? Why? Because they don’t want to upset the established order that requires us to just let him do whatever he whims at the moment?
If our Congress won’t do it, and they won’t, then it’s time for the rest of the world to step up and demand that this lunatic be removed from power.
Germany, France, Australia, Japan, China, Great Britain, Sweden, all of Europe and whatever other nations see fit to get involved, it’s time for them to speak out and demand that this lunatic be removed from power. He threatens all of them too.
I mean, are we, and they, really just going to sit immobile and watch this happen, just as we did when we actually inaugurated the idiot?
Maybe they ought to impose sanctions on us until we remove him. Stop all travel to the U.S. I can’t believe powerful people around the world are just watching and not acting, not even protesting.
Rather like the way World War 1 started. Nobody seemed capable of simple action. They just followed the rules and let it happen.
Elizabelle
@Mary G:
The GOP got their fucking tax cut. Passed it, without one single, solitary Democratic vote.
I wonder if some of the letting “Trump be Trump” is building a case for removing him and replacing him with that nice Mike Pence in time for the midterms. “Trump’s dangerousness cannot be allowed to stand one more minute. (Now that we have the tax cut for our donors.)”
James E. Powell
@Suzanne:
They’re not so much stupid as they are hateful bigots. They actually love what Trump says & does. Remember how many times during the campaign heard, “He says what I’m thinking.”
ETA – I’m in complete agree with your comment @17
Elizabelle
@Emerald: I don’t think Europeans take Trump lightly at all. They may be laughing, but they are more honest about his craziness than is our paper of record, the suckituding FTF NY Times.
But timing is important. You don’t want him replaced with an even more effective plutocrat puppet. Get the GOP out of the line of succession. Pence has to go, and no way we get President Tillerson or Ryan.
I rather hope Mueller’s investigation turns up some serious questions as to whether Trump’s electoral college “victory” even was. I have thought he was illegitimate from the get go. As is his administration, and the judges, included Gorsuch, installed. They all have to go.
magurakurin
@Suzanne: I feel the same way, and, in fact, I am afraid to return home to visit. It’s a horrible state of affairs.
Chet Murthy
@Suzanne: @Ruckus: I’m with Ruckus. No shame for feeling *precisely* as you do, Suzanne. And yeah, a safety net that left those inbred morons out? Sign me up!
ETA: But we’d need to have provision for saving their children. Lots of those are blameless.
Emerald
@Elizabelle: Oh, absolutely agree. My dream is that it’s proven that the election was illegitimate, and everything gets reversed.
None of which will happen, even if all of it were proven. We have no mechanism to reverse an illegitimate election or its consequences.
My point is that most of the rest of the world knows just what they’re facing with this lunatic in power. OK. Do something about it, because our system either can’t cope or is too slow. Timing indeed is important, but we may not have much more of it.
The man is nuts, and trigger happy, and he loves him some nukes. Do something, World, because we, apparently, can’t.
(On that happy note, I’m off to bed.)
Sloane Ranger
@eemom: You think so? I think that Trump will take credit for it by claiming it was his tough talking that intimidated Kim into offering said olive branch.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sloane Ranger: Up to now there’s one thing that the DPRK and ROK agree on, they hate Japan(more properly the Japanese Government); Trump may be a means of finding another thing to agree on, hating Trump. The government in Seoul may just tell Trump to get bent over this crap. They live over there(Central Seoul is about 25 miles from the border) and they really don’t care for some asswipe 10,000 miles away causing trouble, especially when they’re hosting the rest of the world for the Winter Olympics. Of course, Kim may try to do what his grandfather did in 1988 and suggest that they jointly host the Olympics, and the response will probably be the same, get bent(we’ve already spent the time and money preparing for the event).
Sab
@Suzanne: I agree with you, and like you I am not proud of my feelings.
I was telling my husband today that since the election I view all white males, except those I know very well, with extreme suspicion.
Last election I was actually afraid to put a Hillary bumper sticker on my car. I didn’t, and I didn’t get any of the crazy angry white guys tailgating me, agressively passing and cutting off, and otherwise being obnoxious that I experienced during Kerry and Obama elections.
I useed to come home with stories of my traffic travails, and my husband would demand to know what is wrong with my driving. Which was disturbing because he is a more aggressive driver than me. This year , after this election, he finally acknowledged that the difference is that he is driving around large and white and male, and I am driving around small and female (albeit white.)
My black son in law spent a day in jail a couple of years ago right before Christmas for riding in a truck without a front license plate. The bail pretty much blew Christmas for the kids that year. Probably a quarter of the cars I see around town have no front license plate (white drivers). They never get hassled. They probably dont’even know they are breaking some law.
A young couple moved into our neighborhood a couple of years ago. She’s sweet and cute, and her dog is adorable. The husband seemed sort of meh, but whatever. I helped her hunt for her indoor cat when it escaped. Then the Trump sign went up in their yard. Their president is actively attacking my grandchildren. How can I ever be friendly to her again. This is personal. I dont want these people living in my neighborhood. This is a nice, tolerant town. Move out to a white suburb with gates. Don’t poison my neighborhood.
piratedan
@Emerald: there IS something that can be done and it would be up to the GOP to do it.. but they don’t care… Trump gives them cover for heir entire heinous agenda of feed the rich, enable the powerful at the expense of everyone not like them, petty, racist, sexist and corrupt. It’s why the Congressional investigations aren’t going anywhere the GOP doesn’t want them to.
Once this entire shitburger is exposed, I’m afraid that we’ll find that Putin has done an effective job of buying and playing on the hate, greed and racism of the GOP (and the people that own and control certain elements of the media) and while we may eventually rid ourselves of Trump, how in he ever lovin hell do we eradicate the rest of the infestation without coming off as Stalinesque? I am confident of beating back the current wave of shit, but rooting out Ryan, McConnell (who I believe are as complicit as fuck) and getting anything resembling introspection out of Faux or the FTFNYT seems to be just as daunting if not more so… how can we effectively deprogram millions of people who believe that Up is Down and have bought into (if not embraced) the entire message of hate?
Magda in Black
@Suzanne:
I agree with you, Suzanne, and I’d like to add the word “heartsick.”
I am physically heartsick at what is happening in this country and at the behavior I am seeing from my white brothers and sisters. I can find no other word that adequately describes that sad ache I (we) carry with us.
SFAW
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
But we were informed that “Hillary/DNC” was “careless” with their “internet security,” according to a very thoughtful commenter last night.
Who was shocked and hurt that people might take exception that the unhacked, uncompromised, un-broken-into “private” server of Hillary’s was a problem for anyone other than concern trolls, Russian trolls, BernOrBust-ers, and Shitgibbon voters/collaborators? Oh, yeah, it was also “beyond dispute” — unless one has more than two brain cells to rub together.
Fucking concern/BernOrBust trolls. Their mommies should take away their intertubez privs.
Cheryl Rofer
@Raoul: Exactly right. It is the Republicans in Congress who are playing the three monkeys: see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. They are abdicating their responsibilities. Call them every day and demand impeachment, or at least that they moderate this idiot.
About the time Trump was tweeting his dick challenge, North and South Korea were opening up their hotline for better communication.
@Mary G: He said nothing about the Russia investigations in those sixteen tweets. Probably has been told by his lawyers that his tactics for New York small claims court need to stop. Hence the rest.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Origuy: So Putin sold Russia out to the Muslims in the Hard Russian Right eye’s ROFL What did Putin expect, heck what do any of their conservatwits expect when they try this hyper nationalist stuff? When you get to political extremes today’s radicals are tomorrow’ weak believers who must be purged.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Cheryl Rofer: Except abdicating their responsibilities is the only thing the House GOP wants to do since 2006 at lest. Consider how difficult it was for them to just pass a tax bill they all wanted. There were plenty of GOP reps looking for a reason to say “no” simply to say “no”.
VincentN
I honestly did not believe that tweet about the nuclear button was real until I checked a few other sites. OMFG.
otmar
Swiss comedians had fun with it: https://www.facebook.com/srfdevillelatenight/posts/1967480726625227