I don’t have the energy to write anything at the moment so this will be brief and I may revisit it tomorrow. I think Donald Trump’s trip to the CIA today was extremely unfortunate and incredibly dumb. Setting up in front of the wall where clandestine officials who have died in the line of duty are anonymously memorialized was a very, very bad mistake. It shouldn’t be difficult to find examples of CIA officers talking about that wall in hushed and reverent tones. It’s the CIA’s Arlington Cemetery. It’s not a spot for a photo op.
What Trump had to say is almost immaterial, but it did make matters much, much worse.
I could go into that in detail, but I won’t tonight.
He also appeared on a Saturday when the regular work force is not there and those who are there are expected to monitor things, not sit around in the lobby listening to a speech.
Trump has made an enemy of the CIA, and he’s made it personal. He came in there needing to apologize for calling them Nazis and he just poured gasoline on the fire in so many ways.
That’s just not a good idea.
Great, Booman.
Join the mainstream media that have led us to these straits in the first place.
Google News Headline lead, 1/20/17, 10PM EST.
Great work.
Thanks so much!!!
AG
Excuse me. Who is who’s boss? Trump apologizing? What universe is this?
“The Boss” may not realize his own lack of power compared to the rest of the corporation.
Watch.
AG
Never underestimate the insanity level of the Emperor. The unthinkable will become tomorrow’s history.
Indeed.
So it might…
AG
Nothing about this varies from what I’d expect Putin to tell Trump to do, if Putin’s real aim is simply to break the government of the United States completely.
I am reading in various places of a serious split between the military hats and the intelligence hats, particularly CIA. Esp over Syria ops. Trump’s choices of so many military for high posts would suggest where his hand has come down.
I do find it very queer to see visible Dems egging CIA puddings. Be careful what you create.
Nothing “queer” about it.. CIA was plainly anti-Trump/pro-HRC, especially at the tail end of the campaign. Military doesn’t much like the spooks. A natural alliance.
SG
Some division within the CIA — from Politico:
or those “roughly 400 CIA employees” donned their covert masks today to shine him on and have his number, he can’t stand anything other than adoring audiences.
Agree there is a genuine, and dark, risk such as you imply. Considering lingering suspicions of espionage its also alarming that our senior counter-intelligence service seem suddenly vulnerable to such political alignments.
Suddenly? In the past they were better at keeping it under wraps.
I must admit I hadn’t imagined FBI agents apprehending serving CIA personnel as a plausible political tactic, though that would be the agency making domestic espionage arrests.
Let’s see: Military – guns, bombs, poison gas, drones, bombers, ships, submarines, tons of “troops”. Intelligence – guns disguised as cameras like they used to snuff RFK.
I choose the military too.
the video (on TPM) is truly bizarre. his strange ramblings about himself are cause for alarm -if he could sink lower – the offensiveness of his speech aside that too was an error in judgement (if I can use that word re: T). and I assume he thought he was helping himself. And am I correct that the wall is not to be photographed at will, as it were another reason not to have a photo op there?
Also the Spicer rant about size of crowd (obviously Spicer is trying not to get fired). video on TPM as well
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/spicer-crowd-size-presser
“spicer is basically in primal scream mode now” 5 43
maybe they think because this worked for der Fuehrer it will work for the T admin, but ppl are either alarmed or laughing at them or both
Wrong dictator. This is what Putin does. Just like the military parades. They insist that they dictate what the truth is, and the media’s job is to pass that on to the proles.
Completely agree.
Summary.
One question:
How exactly is this different from what our own government and its media satellites are and have been doing since at least the JFK murder?
Different style is all.
Same action.
AG
Baghdad Bob reanimated (to repeat myself).
Darn I should have gone with the picture as Duncan did when he had the same thought:
NYTimes
The wording from what must have been an earlier version:
Which led GG to say:
So, did those “anonymous” sources “familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking” retract their thoughts on “Mr. Trump’s thinking,” did Mr. Trump revise his “thinking,” or did the reporter(s) decide to junk the anonymous source? If the latter, are reporters learning that anonymous sources in the Trump era ain’t like they used to be?
Trump’s own words have impeached him again and again; however, reporters must dot every i and cross every t or Trump will find a way to slither away and slime reporters in the process.
Take careful note of:
Here Trump is making a big deal out of (a since retracted) Time report that the bust of MLK, Jr. was removed from the Oval Office. The real story — Churchill bust replaces MLK, Jr. bust most prominently on display in the redecoration of the Oval Office — the OMG should have been why the hell Churchill? (Why not Stalin who had at least as much to do with winning WWII as Churchill?)
Congressman Lewis fell into a similar trap when speaking of his decision not to attend Trump’s inauguration included that it was the first time he wouldn’t attend. Trump pounced because it wasn’t a first for Lewis. What these instances reveal is that Trump has on staff someone(s) that go through every critical statement or news report of Trump with a fine toothed comb to find anything in it that factually incorrect, misrepresented, or subjective in anyway shape or form that is then given to Trump to use in a bold counteroffensive. ie — the Park Service doesn’t estimate crowd size at DC events which he then used to deny reports of the size that showed up at his inauguration.
The better opponents and reporters get at being very precise in their critiques of this administration, the less room Trump will have to mount his stock counteroffensives and the easier it will be for “the people” to see that the “emperor” is naked.
(re: Prine ref.)
Wise words from Duncan:
I’d modify the first sentence in the second paragraph to:
IOW, make the funny and move on which will lead Trump to lose more of his shit.
CNN clip. It really needs to be viewed to get the full flavor of how thin-skinned he is and then proceeds to claim that the media faked the photos of the crowds at the inauguration yesterday. Trump claims 1.5 million people were. It’s know that only 250,000 tickets were printed by the government printing office (one million were printed for the ’09 election). Trump really can’t stand it that so many more people wanted to see the black man than see him.
A montage of the crowds from the live video feeds of the the ’09 and ’17 inaugurations along with Trump’s insane charges would be great.
Google News Headlines, 1/230/17, 10PM EST:
The PermaGov continues its ongoing, year-and-a-half-long, so far totally failed anti-Trump Anschluss.
Can you afford to trust it? The cheerleader for the Blood For Oil War? The architect of the Banking Bubble and concomitant bust? The supporter of the Surveillance State? Of the Drone murders?
Can you?
I can’t.
AG
The press needs to get out of that room in the WH and find out what the FBI has on Trump and the Russians. Time to get out in the world and do their job. Leave the WH to Fox News, the Atl Right, and some intern to take notes as no one in the the donald adm. will ever take a question from them.
That “room in the WH?”
That now is their “job.”
Bought and sold.
Totally.
Trust them not.
Not since Judith Miller, at the very latest.
Earlier?
Sure.
Since the JFK assassination.
Bet on it.
ASG
HE.BROUGHT.A.CHEERING.SECTION.TO.THE.CIA
DA PHUQ?
DA PHUQ!!!
For sure!!!
ASG
USA Today – Is Trump’s inauguration cake a copycat of Obama’s 2013 cake?
Why yes it is. It was specially ordered to be an exact replica. Don’t know about the 2013 original but the replica was mostly styrofoam, fake and inedible.
Let them eat Potemkin cake.
Everyone’s working so hard to “interpret” this, to read the tea leaves…and there’s nothing to interpret. It’s very simple: Trump’s supporters persuaded themselves that some kind of magic trick would happen on January 20 and this puerile, idiotic man-child would cast aside his cloak and reveal himself as Presidential timber. And of course nothing of the sort happened…those people are like anyone who sent money into a con and are waiting for the magic pills to take effect.
He’s just the same ignorant asshole he’s always been, laying out the same self-aggrandizing adolescent line of patter. That’s all he has ever been and all he ever will be (as anyone who’s ever depended on him for anything has learned the hard way). I have no pity or sympathy for anyone who expected anything other than this pathetic display.
the Trumpettes to pull off a grand 9/11 style bloodbath, except this time, unlike the original 9/11 sucker-punch which no one (in the general public) was expecting, he and his merry band will eventually get caught AND THEN THE FUN REALLY STARTS !!
Who is the armed wing of the Republican Party? It’s always seemed premature to ask such a thing, but it occurs to me now it might be good to know this now before it gets harder to find out. Is there one? An actually “armed” wing of the Republican Party. And I suppose they’d need a wide reach to be effective.
I suppose such structures / analysts / operatives might be in place, but even here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin they aren’t visible if they exist. There are a lot of uppity white mostly male (and I think largely Catholic) but also more than a few female lawyers active in the quest. Local law enforcement has it’s separate agenda, and of course, we all know they’ve got guns. And at least a few local cops, ones their peers have failed to control, have shown us over the past several years (at least) that they’re not afraid to use them. But I don’t think cops are under anyone’s control since most of them do it out of a real sense of giving a shit in addition to, I assume, needing a paycheck for a bang-em-up job that they felt they were qualified to get. Lawyers and cops; maybe could rustle up a local branch of the SS for the national cause. They couldn’t easily operate in the open.
How long does it take to staff and arm a fascist regime under martial law on a national scale here in the US in 2017? It all happened so fast after the Reichstag Fire Decree in 1933; it’s already been over 15 years since the Patriot Act.
It didn’t happen fast after the Reichstag fire. A lot longer than you’d think, if you can’t simply co-opt the existing state mechanisms — army, police, etc. They wouldn’t move en bloc…
The capacity to staff and arm a fascist regime in Germany was in place from the closing days of WWI, the revolutions in Berlin and Munich, the Freikorps, the SA.. the infrastructure existed for 15 years. Hundreds of thousands of men.
Nothing exists like that here.
We all know he’s an awfully dumb clod hopper, BooMan. The only advice I would offer him at this point is, stay away from cities that rhyme with Dallas, avoid grassy knolls like the plague, and for Chrissakes never ride in an open top vehicle. Messing with clandestine intelligence agencies is like getting too close to Julius Caesar.
Precisely.
AG
Trump knows who he is dealing with (at least, as well as his narcissistic bubble ever permits). Impaired as he obviously is, he knows an opportunist when he sees one.
The Okhrana went to work for Lenin as soon as they were perfectly sure that he had won. So will it be here. The audience were gauging the opportunities to expand their own power.
Yes. Jeremy Scahill commented on that this morning:
“People make fun of Trump’s remarks at CIA yesterday. But it’s terrifying. This will be a golden era for the worst of the CIA. Trump will empower the darkest sectors of the CIA in an unprecedented way since the Church Committee.”
Possibly.
Or…those “the darkest sectors of the CIA” will wage a very effective, hidden war on him on multiple fronts. I personally think that he has bitten off more than he can chew with this stance.
AG
I think that we have a different thing happening here than what was going on in Russia at that time. The Okhrana was a domestic secret police agency. The “CIA” as it stands now is international in scope…you might even say it is multinational because of its alliances with other intelligence organizations that serve similarly multinational corporate interests…and it is a massive system. Even if Trump completely replaces the supposed higher echelons of the CIA, the sheer weight of its main structure will be more influenced by its own alliances and the truly incomprehensible amount of power and finances…all secret, even from its supposed bosses and overseers…that it commands.
That CIA apparently declared war on Trump well before he was elected because his threatened pivot away from NATO and towards…the unknown/Russia/wherever else…threatens the power and riches of this state-within-a-state. They are the dominant power in what appears to be the equivalent of the Roman Catholic Church during the Medieval and Renaissance periods…an organization supposedly dedicated to one activity but in reality a multinational power broker.
Cross a Richelieu and bad things suddenly start happening to you. Ask JFK, RFK, MLK Jr., and Nixon.
I think Trump has overestimated his own presidential power, and…one way or another…he is going to lose.
Watch.
AG