Look, it's not as if he's insulting our closest allies….
(touches ear)
I'm being informed that, in fact, he is insulting one of our closest allies
— William D. Adler (@williamadler78) August 21, 2019
no, really, how many women have heard some variation of 'all you had to say was 'no', don't talk to me like that, why are you so nasty?'
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) August 21, 2019
Jokes, flip remarks, and snark aside, here's the bottom line: A country that treats its allies like this won't have allies for long.
This is not because it's mean to treat friends this way. It's because it isn't in countries' interests to rely on people who are unreliable.
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) August 21, 2019
Odds that Trump:
Knows Denmark well: 0%
Has many friends from Denmark: Also 0% https://t.co/5FmZTOZ1u6— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) August 21, 2019
Maybe I’m underslept, but it’s deeply ironic to me that, on the same day that Trump reprises a vicious anti-Semitic stereotype, he goes after the only European country that proactively saved its Jews from the Holocaust.
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) August 21, 2019
Denmark, still fucking with fascists 70 years later
— Pfred Pflueger (@Pfredp) August 21, 2019
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen: "Thankfully, the time where you buy and sell other countries and populations is over.” pic.twitter.com/JOCASC5TEK
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) August 21, 2019
.
Yeah, feels like his breakdown is escalating…
Trump is genuinely confused whenever someone he considers inferior refuses his demands. He was shocked that Pena-Nieto didn't simply agree to pay for the wall and freaked out that Pena said so publicly. Now he's gobsmacked that little Denmark won't sell him a piece of itself.
— Greg Pinelo (@gregpinelo) August 21, 2019
I do think Trump actually believed that he would fly to Denmark, buy Greenland and return in triumph. He also thought he'd go to El Paso and be greeted with cheering crowds. I don't know the clinical definition of delusion, but he's not faking being shocked by these events.
— Greg Pinelo (@gregpinelo) August 21, 2019
Trump is decompensating.
Something is making him realize that his facade is failing and poised to shatter.
I’m guessing it’s polling.
Either way, I’ve seen this kind of fabulist spin cycle before. It’ll get worse until his aides feed him some comforting lies.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) August 21, 2019
Per my earlier post/thread, Trump’s last couple of narcissistic fill-me-ups didn’t go very well. That’s probably contributing to his meltdown-in-progress.
Betcha his aides shuttle him off to West Virginia or one of the Carolinas for some ego fuel. https://t.co/i0MWIKLAn9
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) August 21, 2019
The Dangerman
Probably heard that a lot growing up.
Chetan Murthy
@The Dangerman:
Don’t want to think about what he did to women who did that. Because we’re supposed to be civilized, and I don’t want a visit from the Secret Service where I tell them they’re disgraces to their fucking uniforms for not [again, eliding the dangerous bit, b/c I’m civilized].
And Matt Taibbi tells us we’re wusses/nerds, as opposed to just being Fucking Discreet, Matt You Fucking Putz.
trollhattan
I’ve got news for the Danish PM, Russia done bought us, dirt cheap.
NotMax
Great Dane breeders now trembling in anticipation of another shoe dropping.
NotMax
Awaiting a pic from TaMara of Bixby modeling a “Tuck Frump” shirt.
:)
B.B.A.
He’s been on the verge of a meltdown for the last four damn years. Somehow it never comes. Eventually the choads will die off and there won’t be enough fashlets to replace them in the electorate, but now is no time for complacency.
TS (the original)
Teresa May earned zero respect by Inviting trump to the UK – it hastened her exit, with or without brexit. I am ashamed that our PM thinks supporting the trump administration is a good idea.
He should be shunned – everywhere and anywhere.
Yarrow
Interesting…someone just asked Rick Wilson if any top level Republicans are talking about Trump’s recent lunatic actions. His reply:
TS (the original)
Just watched Mette Frederiksen speaking on the tweet above. She couldn’t have been more polite in what she said about the US and trump. He hears what he wants, not what people say & his minions are the same. Disgusting to the core.
Chetan Murthy
@TS (the original):
Like Dubya, I’d guess she’s counting “miss me yet?” and heh, she’s probably not wrong.
Mai Naem mobile
I saw/heard a blurb s ok somewhere that the Russians want to build a pipe line in Greenland and Denmark is not letting them? Putin’s hand in this???
Yarrow
@Mai Naem mobile:
I doubt Trump has any idea what’s going on with Greenland or even where it is but he’s a useful tool for Putin and others.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yarrow:
I think that’s hilarious how all of a sudden these top-level Goopers are just now to find the shit Trump says nuts. What has he said in the last 10 days that’s materially different than since he began his campaign in 2015?
Yarrow
@Mai Naem mobile:
I doubt Trump has any idea what’s going on with Greenland or even where it is but he’s a useful tool for Putin and others.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Whenever he says “I have many friends…” here, there, in some group, I want some smart ass reporter to yell out: Name two!
dmsilev
@Yarrow: As opposed to, you know, the last 2.5 or so years which went oh-so-swimmingly?
Wag
@TS (the original):
A man hears what he wants to hear,
And disregards the rest
JaySinWA
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: It’s accelerating. Donald has been spewing bullshit fast and furious. But now it is so fast and so unhinged that the Trump translators (who transform bullshit into near comprehensible terms) can’t keep up. The flip flops happen within hours, not days. There is no time to respond.
Of course Rick Wilson may not be the most reliable narrator.
Yarrow
I mean, they’re just parodies of themselves at this point.
Calouste
@TS (the original): The Danish PM herself was very polite. All the talk about the shitgibbon being a clown, a fool, and a narcissist was diplomatically outsourced to former PMs, former foreign ministers, opposition party leaders and the like.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Where to begin? ‘Tis a ponderous list indeed, including today’s declaration that he’s the King of the Jews.
No matter what’s on the table, unceasingly upping the ante eventually depletes one’s chips.
Mike in NC
@Mai Naem mobile: Pretty sure Putin pulled off this Greenland gambit to further humiliate his dimwitted puppet, who has never been anything but a sleazy New York mob boss.
Yarrow
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I think he’s getting worse. The “I’m the Chosen One” stuff, the buying Greenland, canceling the trip to Denmark because they won’t sell it to him. That sort of stuff breaks through even to low info voters. It’s harder to defend him as a stable genius.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Maybe it’s just me being optimistic, but I really think all of this crazy shit Trump/ the GOP are saying and doing is cumulatively adding up to harden the opposition of significant portions of America against them.
I just get this feeling that between the El Paso/Dayton shootings, the slowing economy, Trump attacking American Jews for being “disloyal”, this latest bullshit with Denmark, and “I’m the chosen one”, a lot of people getting fed up with this stupid, despicable shit
Cacti
When you start from the premise that Trump was installed to hollow out the U.S. as superpower, everything he does makes perfect sense.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Uh-huh, rose-colored glasses are by no means immune from cracking.
Heywood J.
Looking forward to PRESIDENT OBAMA visiting Denmark in a month, where he’ll be greeted with a hero’s welcome, then PM Fredriksen subsequently calling off Trump’s head-of-state visit for good. Our allies and friends have been far too polite and patient with this nonsense. They need to flat-out tell King Shitbird to go play in traffic. Being nice and polite does not work with bullies.
Chetan Murthy
@Cacti:
Indeed. As a patriot, this makes me livid in a way that almost nothing else does. Fucking livid. Our common birthright, and he’s squandering it, setting it on fire. No punishment is enough for this crime. And so, he needs to live, to survive to spend decades in Federal prison, where we can all visit him and spit in his face. An unending line of people to spit in his face. So many that they need to hose out his cell hourly.
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy
This.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chetan Murthy:
Those guys don’t wear uniforms. Suit and tie with earpieces in their ears.
Heywood J.
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I hope you’re right. Someone in our esteemed gaslight corporate media needs to invite some Republicon congress-critters on and just ask them point-blank: So, uh, how much longer are you guys just gonna sit and watch Grampa Walnuts smear his poop all over the walls?
HyperSphericalCow
It’s like one of his rallies, but with call and response. His press appearances follow a liturgy.
Ksmiami
@Chetan Murthy: I prefer hanging or firing squad- sorry not sorry. How dare he set the US ablaze- by the way as in the crow, he and his enablers are already doomed they just don’t realize it yet
cain
@Chetan Murthy:
I’m mostly angry at his supporters and the republicans. They are the ones that caused all this ..
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I always thought that was the uniform.
Calouste
@NotMax: Whenever I read “King of the Jews” I hear “King Herod’s Song” from Jesus Christ Superstar.
Chetan Murthy
@cain:
I agree with you on this. And no punishment, no matter how grisly, is too much for these traitors. But for-him-, I want it drawn-out, and for him to be made an example of throughout the world.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Yarrow:
Absolutely. He is getting worse and he can’t be allowed to win next November.
@NotMax:
@NotMax:
Yeah. I say this fully knowing I could be wrong, but for the past two years it’s appeared to us that there’s no low, no amount of insanity that could turn Trump’s base against him; we may be reaching that point and maybe not all of them would be disillusioned, but enough of them could be given time. Trump’s base wasn’t enough by itself to hand him the win in 2016. Some of the groups he needs to win have high disapproval ratings according to recent polling, with the caveat that polls this early on don’t mean much.
On top of all this, like Kay has said, credibility is like having money in a bank. A leader uses their credibility in emergencies and during tragedies to reassure the public. Trump has never had much credibility and so he has none to draw on/from. This, combined with his active encouragement of white supremacist mass shooters, is making people feel unsafe and frustrated at the lack of leadership we face
Steve in the ATL
@Chetan Murthy:
Fuck TB12 and his BFF trump!
@Ksmiami:
OMG thank you for not saying “literally”!
@Chetan Murthy:
Let me if they start hassling you. I’ll make a call.
Chetan Murthy
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
There have been moments in the last few months, when I’ve said to myself: “If Old Pervy Uncle Joe wins the nom, I’ll only donate to all the other Dem candidates”. But then (sometimes much later) I remember that in that event, he needs to win ALSO. That it’s not about my feelings of outrage, it’s not about Anita Hill, it’s not about all the women he’s groped, it’s not about his evident racism; it’s about saving our country.
In a phrase, it reminds me: “it’s not about YOU, is it?”
And that’s a useful and educational bring-down.
Yeah: we cannot allow him to continue in office. Nor his enablers. And yeah, I’ll donate to OPUJ’s campaign, if he wins the nom.
Yarrow
@Chetan Murthy: Nancy Pelosi is the one to listen to here: “Just win, baby.”
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@JaySinWA:
That does appear to be the case as well. He’s accelerating and he’s becoming worse; much more unhinged.
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah. Biden isn’t my first, second, or even third choice, but if god forbid he wins the nom, I’ll vote for him and give him money if I can
Chetan Murthy
@Yarrow: Well, it’s more than that. I think, we’re facing the destruction of our Republic, the dissolution of our nation, and the squandering of our last hope of advanced human civilization surviving into the next century. The stakes are incredibly high. So it’s not “just win, baby”, but rather “whatever the fuck it takes, man”.
Which …. well, is a different emphasis. If we don’t win in 2020, a LOT of really awful things will start to happen: some in slow-motion, some rather quickly.
ETA: there’s a subtext to Nancy’s words: “within the rule, of course”. But I don’t believe that. I believe that it doesn’t matter what it takes to win — we MUST win. Fuck the rules. Human civilization, not to speak of our Republic, is at stake.
Yarrow
@Chetan Murthy: The need is the same: to win.
Chetan Murthy
@Yarrow: [can’t believe I’m adducing a TV show] Do you remember when Baltar and Roslin are discussing (in Baltar’s cell) the election she didn’t steal? And Baltar says he kinda wishes she had gone ahead and stolen the election?
It is in that sense that we’re playing for all the marbles. If it took stealing the election, to kick him out, I’m good with it. Normally, we’re big believers in “process”. But when our Republic at stake, when the preconditions for the existence of process are at stake, then we have to set aside that belief in process.
I was thinking recently of the Algerian elections where the GIA (“Group Islamique Arme'”) was saying “one election, one time” — with the stated implication that if they won, there’d never be another democratic election. Under such circumstances, you don’t play fair. Because the assholes aren’t going to: they made an announcement to that effect.
mrmoshpotato
Dump: “Such a nasty woman.”
Vast majority of the world: “Such a fucking orange fascist, Soviet shitpile.”
mrmoshpotato
@Chetan Murthy: The adducing hour is upon us.
Yarrow
@Chetan Murthy: It’s a lot safer to win the election fair and square. That’s where our attention needs to be. Apocalyptic talk and “steal it if you can’t win it” thought experiments take energy that is better spent on helping our candidates win. I’m with Nancy.
mrmoshpotato
@Yarrow:
I’m also good with “Pound these fuckers into the ground at the ballot box, and salt the earth.”
Steve in the ATL
@mrmoshpotato: pink Himalayan, right? Don’t want to attract the wrong sort, if you know what I mean and I think you do
Raoul
This Washington Stare Rep has a word for Thunder and his deficit worries.
NotMax
@Chetan Murthy
Confident you are not proposing illegalities when you state eff the rules. That way lies anarchy
Rules are one of the bases of civilization; once sundered they are never again readily nor easily spliced. Use them to every possible advantage and to the opponents’ every possible disadvantage..
mrmoshpotato
@Ksmiami: Hanging. Less bloody, and the lumber can be reused. Also, no bleeding all over the place en route to Hawaii for their bodies to go fuck themselves in a lava lake.
(Were you expecting ‘rest in peace’? :) )
Raoul
@Raoul: That would be Thune. And I can’t go back and edit #51.
Oh well.
G’night, all.
Yarrow
@Raoul: I kinda liked Thunder. Made me laugh. As if John Thune would ever have the nickname Thunder.
@NotMax: Exactly.
Jay
@Chetan Murthy:
$5 a cell visit and you could have Universal Free Health Care, fully funded schools, free University, College or Trade Schools, guarenteed universal income and pay off the debt and deficit.
Think of it as an Infrastructure Week, every week, for as long as he lives.
$2.50 per visit for lesser Minions also behind bars.
HalfAssedHomesteader
Seems there’s been an acceleration of deterioration in the last week or so. I think he’s seen his ghost of Christmas future in Epstein’s suicide. He knows a recession will doom his reelection and once he’s out of the WH he’s likely heading to prison. He’s probably also entertaining fantasies of taking refuge in Russia but knows on some level that he’s of no value to Putin there and is more likely to be a source of trouble to him. So he would be found one morning slumped over in his car with a spattering of his blood on the dash. We all know we’re going to die some day; few of us can see it with the precision he sees rising in front of him.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s not being a smartass. That would be reporters actually doing their fucking jobs, ie. committing an act of journalism.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: There are uniformed Secret Service at the White House, but they’re not the protective detail.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Hawaii: “We would prefer not to.”
;)
billcinsd
@Raoul: Having met John Thune in High School, he was a fucking idiot and I doubt his years at Bible College improved that fact. He is however pretty corrupt, so he has that going for him
Chetan Murthy
@NotMax:
You would be incorrect. B/c while your last phrase is correct, unless we stop this madman, it won”t matter whether we have rules or not. And furthermore, unless we stop this madman’s feculent hordes, we’ll have a *hot* civil war in our country. Remember that my state (CA) has a majority of nonwhite folks, and a shit-ton of those have family members who are undocumented. The pogrom that will come with Shitler’s re-election will also bring a reaction. And there goes our country.
But yeah, I plan on exerting myself to the utmost to support our candidates everywhere. I just don’t pretend that if I do all that, and we lose, then it’s OK. It won’t be OK. It’ll be the end of our Republic, our democracy, our nation.
If he isn’t turfed-out, I’ll be pushing my state Assemblyman and Senator, as well as in Cemocratic clubs, to start the process of secession, the process of setting up our own military, and hence, of nullifying federal laws. Yeah, it’s that bad.
ETA: needless to say, I don’t visit Red States, and pretty much stick to the Bay Area. Lotta fucking traitors in California, too. And yeah, I don’t recognize my country anymore.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Every fucking day I have to pinch myself to convince myself that this clown is really the president of the United States, and I’m not having some deranged, drug-fueled fever dream.
I mean, the utter surreality of this whole fucking shit show is getting too over the top to believe any more.
Jay
@HalfAssedHomesteader:
Wussolinni is a one trick pony.
Feed the Outrage Funnel to hide the evil his Minions are doing,
Sit back, watch the MSM chase the bouncing ball,
But then a real journalist or activist manages to break the story of the evil being done loud enough, and the baying pack of the MSM stops chasing the outrage ball, and starts some actual reporting,
It’s like a magicians slight of hand,
The problem for Wussolinni and the Evil Rethugs is that more and more of the audience are not being distracted, calling out the evil almost in real time,
So he has to continually ramp up the outrage cycle to distract, distract, distract.
When you have only one trick as a conman, and the marks are getting wiser, you have to ramp up the cycle of deploying that trick.
Msb
“I have many friends in Denmark.”
If that was ever true, it isn’t any more. Lout.
NotMax
@Msb
Friends, Dolt 45?
Cue The Princess Bride: You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”
tamiasmin
When a government wishes to offer a possible deal to another government, isn’t it normal to begin quietly through diplomatic channels, so that if the second government is not interested, hard feelings and sharp language will not make it into the news? We’ve heard quite a lot lately about the State Department being hollowed out under Trump. But we do have a Senate-confirmed ambassador to Denmark named Carla Sands. Imagine how the conversation might have gone:
Ambassador Sands: We’d like to buy Greenland from you.
Danish Prime Minister: That’s a very kind offer, but the people of Greenland have recently expressed an earnest desire to continue their special relationship with the people of Denmark. But I thank you. Oh, and let me say, we are so looking forward to the President’s visit next month.
Amb. Sands: Thank you for agreeing to see me on short notice. I look forward to seeing you again in September.
And the world would never hear a cross word about it.
Aussie Sheila
@Yarrow:
Yes I agree. But what if the successful Democratic President in 2021 decides that the urgency of repairing the damage requires ‘looking forward, not back’?
For what it’s worth, I believe the Dems will win the Presidency next year, but the shape and content of the repairs matters.
The rest of the world now has to consider that this Presidency and its fascistic style is not just a one off, and this could happen again. Unless his successor and the elected members of congress take legislative action to ensure that the government of the US is less an elected monarchy, and more an elective body representing a real majority, then this cluster f$&@k will mark the redefinition of the US and its role in the world.
While that is overdue, ( the reconsideration ) I am not confident that absent a root and branch reform, the world will ever have the capacity for peaceful collaboration to address the existential problems facing humanity. Selfishly, I am thankful I live far away from the US, but scared for all those younge generations that will have to deal with the mess of the last twenty years.
Go Warren/Castro! ?
Central Planning
@HalfAssedHomesteader:
Wait… what?!?
Central Planning
@Chetan Murthy:
Don’t you think Republican’s see it that way? That they believe they have to steal elections to save the republic?
If we have to rig elections to win, our win will look just as illegitimate.
mrmoshpotato
@Steve in the ATL: Steve in the WTF, what do you hate about Morton kosher salt?
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: We need an active volcano in the Aleutian Islands then. Tengu can help you look.
Ken
@NotMax: Yeah, you don’t want Pele angry at you.
Citizen Alan
@cain:
This. I really do hate Trump supporters more than Bat Bastard himself. As I’ve said before, if you come home and find out that your roommate has bought a feral chimpanzee that has smashed all the furniture and crapped all over the floor, you don’t get mad at the dumb animal for doing what you would expect that dumb animal to do. You get mad at the idiot roommate who should have known better.
Citizen Alan
@Central Planning:
Under our system of government, an illegitimate win is indistinguishable from a legitimate one. As Justices Gorsuch a d Kavanaugh would smugly tell you.
pluky
@?BillinGlendaleCA: If they all wear the same thing, then it is a “uniform” look. Or, as I was told when I was a baby Queen, “it’s all drag, darling.”
Jay C
So it seems like Sen. Tom Cotton (R- Crazyland) is stepping up to take the “credit” (such as it is) for the “buy Greenland” flap. He’s all for it, of course: and said it was his hint to Trump that started the thing rolling.
I don’t know if Cotton thinks this admission is somehow going to take the heat off Trump, but I doubt it: That a President hears a stupid idea from a Senator is hardly new or unusual (extremely common, I’d guess) : but when international affairs are concerned, the fact that the POTUS simply jumped ahead and promulgated the stupidity (compounding it, actually) is the sad part. But then, the whole Trump Administration is, basically, “the sad part”…
Quaker in a Basement
Well, is WAS an absurd idea. She wasn’t wrong!
Shana
Today, on what I believe is the anniversary of her birth (if it wasn’t yesterday), I quote Dorothy Parker again:
What fresh hell is this?
Bookeater (formerly JosieJ)
@Jay C:
If Cotton seriously thinks this was a good idea, and is not just covering trump’s ass, he’s dumber than the media’s been making him out to be. Denmark doesn’t “own” Greenland, and anybody with two brain cells to rub together should have been able to find that out with Google in less than a minute.
I suspect he’s just covering trump’s ass to gain credit with the GOP. I bet he’ll run in the next Presidential election, whether trump wins or loses. He’s just that ambitious—and arrogant.