I’m tired of a lot of things, but I am especially tired of the laziness our president regularly displays. He runs the government. If he wants information, all he has to do is make a phone call or tell an aide to go get it for him. But he frequently spreads false rumors, bogus statistics, and implausible conspiracy theories without the slightest effort to verify or debunk them. Today, we have another example, this one from an hardline Iranian cleric who opposed the nuclear deal his country made with the international community.
Donald Trump has tweeted an unsubstantiated claim from an hardline Iranian cleric and circulated by a news agency linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard, that thousands of Iranians were granted US citizenship as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.
In his 8am tweet, the US president said: “Just out that the Obama administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians, including to [sic] government officials. How big (and bad) is that?”
He cited no evidence for the allegation.
It’s also interesting that Trump can’t be convinced that Crimea belongs to Ukraine or that North Korea cannot be trusted or that a strong NATO and European Union is in our national interests, but he somehow still thinks Iran is the worst enemy we’ve ever had. It’s very curious and made even more puzzling by his willingness to cite the most hostile Iranians when it suits his purpose.
And then there is this:
President Trump “plans to meet one-on-one with Vladimir Putin at the start of their July 16 summit in Helsinki, Finland… before allowing other aides to join the highly anticipated encounter with the Russian leader,” CNNreports.
“Without official note-takers or other witnesses, one-on-one meetings lack any official record, making it difficult afterward to determine whether agreements have been reached.”
Jonathan Chait: “Huh, that’s weird. It’s almost as if Trump has some kind of secret relationship involving money or blackmail with Russia he wants to discuss without fear of being revealed to his own country!”
Don’t you think that at least one American should witness what Trump and Putin have to say to each other? Personally, I’d impeach Trump for even announcing this intention, and I’d certainly not let it happen without Mueller sitting in between them at the same table.
Jeez, make a list of everything Trump does wrong, under the guise of being “unconventional” or “anti-government”. It would be endless, because not only does he deliberately throw our conventions and rules back into our faces, he creates massive damage and gets away with it all.
No other president ever would do what he does. No other president would attempt to destroy the very foundations of democracy. Yet he has done it, from his appointments, his staff, his disconnect from even basic things like daily briefings, to what he does in foreign relations and trade.
Everything he does is an insult to us, our history, our status in the international community. And the fact that he answers for none of it, he lies and is unchallenged, he is a racist, misogynist, narcissist monster…and we can’t stop him.
This is what drives me insane: we can’t stop him.
We can’t seem to stop him because he has staunch allies in the Republican Party, especially its so-called leadership.
And yet, given all that, the democratic party is telling us all to be polite and allow them to be in public in peace
. . . Depends on what you mean by “the democratic party“.
IOW, if that’s what it feels like “the democratic party” is telling you, feel free to ignore such advice from those party elements. Also feel free to acknowledge or not the validity of any reasons for party leadership to adopt such a posture.
And what’s the deal (Rachel reported on it last night) with the group of GOP-only senators going to have a very friendly chitchat with their Russian counterparts?
And this is just more circumstantial evidence that supports my belief that its not just Trump that’s been “colluding;” the GOP as a political organization has known a lot more and has been itself much more involved than leadership has let on regarding having knowledge of or being involved, directly or indirectly, in Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election. It also explains congressional republicans reluctance to take any real steps to protect the country from another election threat, because they know any planned or forthcoming attacks on our election system are meant to help them.
This is why they have protected Trump at all costs. If he goes down, many of them go down.
These people are so power mad they will do anything, including suborning treason, if it means suppressing the popular vote at the polls.
It at least suggests itself as one possible answer.
Party over country, certainly, though I suppose one could still quibble over whether technically treason.
The Republican establishment (NRA, Trump, the traitors begging for the Russians to not interfere in US elections – for Republican benefit, etc) is all in on traitorous activity for the sake of money.
Putin has subverted the cult known as the Republican Party and it’s amazing to see the rank and file, clearly rotten to their morally hollow core, make all sorts of excuses for this terrible behavior. And as I have pointed out before this atrocious traitorous behavior pre-dates Trump as evidenced by the Republican congresssiinsl letter to Iran when Obama was president, etc.
These people are very weak minded in addition to being morally vapid. They are disgracing themselves as well as the country with their supplication to Putin and the Russians.
I worked at a company with an owner who would rather tell a lie then the truth anyday. Trump isn’t that unusual to me. I’ve seen this bizarre behavior before.
Same here. The bastard I worked for was also a racist, misogynist, abusive jerk, and he gloried in how convincingly he could lie. I escaped his clutches a long time ago, but I have no doubt he loooooooves his current president.
“if he wants information”
Der Trumper doesn’t simply want “information”, he wants information that conforms to his sadistic prejudices and crackpot beliefs. In short, he doesn’t want ACCURATE information, he wants bullshit, and the more preposterous, the better. Prez Trumper learned quickly that the information actual civil servants provided conflicted with his world of shit-thought and tended to hem in his actions.
So “garbage in, garbage out” has become the order of the day, and Der Trumper has learned to trust only sycophants, courtiers and approved internet cesspools for his “information”. In this he is, of course, very like the late-war Hitler, who became enmeshed in his own fantasy world of wonder weapons and non-existent divisions sent to stem the tide on the Russian front.
It was very clear in campaign 2016 that Donald Trump was an ill-informed blathering imbecile, yet the incompetent white electorate thought these qualities were just fine for a prez, as long as he was hostile to Latino immigration. The wild card was the Repub Congress, and we can now see that there was no validity to the notion that they would somehow resist or challenge a prez spewing braindead garbage on an hourly basis. It should have been apparent that this was a bootless hope, since Congressional Repubs didn’t care a whit about proven executive illegality in the days of Bushco.
Ultimately, this is all the doing of the lawless “conservative” movement and its decades of lies and misinformation serving the will to power—the feeble bleats of the hapless “Never Trumpers” notwithstanding. They, too, played their part in days gone by, and Der Trumper is their creation as well, no matter how loudly they now “protest”.
Trump gets away with what he does because (a) the republicans who have the power to stop him won’t; (b) the media who has the power to inform the public of the plain unvarnished truth of this presidency is too busy trying to normalize him to justify their focus on him for ratings, and (c) we have no opposition leaders of any stature willing to stand and speak out, plainly, about the danger of this president and how his party is helping him commit treason and undermine the Constitution.
Whatever happened to the days when a leader of the opposition party or of some major institution would give a major speech calling out stuff like this, and in so doing move public opinion? Are there any democrats or leaders of sufficient stature of any stripe that could give a major speech detailing the threat to the nation posed by Trumpism and the cowardice and shirking of duty of the GOP?
Mitt Romney gave a speech along those lines, at least as to Der Trumper’s unfitness for the job, during the campaign, and what came of that?
Nothing.
And I would offer to you that Mitt Romney lacks the political stature and moral heft to fit the bill I’m talking about. Romney isn’t even respected in his own party.
* Takes look at current Republican party *
Is there anyone, anyone at all that would fit the bill? Because from where I’m standing, I don’t see any candidates. At all.
Booman, I take offence at your use of “our president”. Please desist.
PS. Your home page is still not resolving correctly.
For many citizens, not just the die-hard Trump fans, it’s all about “shaking things up.” As if, simply doing anything to “shake things up” is, a priori, good or worthwhile.
Most US citizens are politically naive, to be kind, or just stupid, to be accurate in many cases.
So they’re easily misled by the usual rightwing propaganda that is promulgated by ALL of the M$M and much of what passes for less M$M but still prominent.
Trump gets away with this because no one of any stature is really speaking out against it, and we on the so-called “left” are constantly adjured to be “civil” and “polite”… OR ELSE the beatings will continue until our morale improves.
Or something.