Showing posts with label Donald Trump unfit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Trump unfit. Show all posts

Friday, October 18, 2024

The Malignant Loser "Exhausted" According To Advisor




Politico reports that the seventy eight year-old Malignant Loser is worn out from his lazy schedule of swaying and bobbing in town halls, and is cancelling one media appearance after another, according to an advisor of his. After weeks of refusing another debate with VP Kamala Harris, the Malignant Loser has turned down multiple invitations (although he'll always go on his closely-allied Fox "News"). Politico writes:

"Recently, it’s become something of a pattern: Donald Trump is scheduled for an interview with a neutral media outlet, the date nears and then … things fall apart.

It happened just this week to planned Trump sit-downs with NBC in Philadelphia and CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — and that’s on the heels of him backing out of a “60 Minutes” episode earlier this month.

Why does this keep happening? Another outlet was recently given an explanation by Trump’s team for why their own interview wasn’t coming to fruition: exhaustion." (our emphasis)

He's clearly ducking interviews with media that might ask him questions he either doesn't have answers to or won't answer. He prefers the gentle confines of right-wing outlets, where he can stop answering audience questions and shuffle to his playlist. His declining cognitive ability -- as evidenced by interviews he has accepted -- is also a major reason he's running away. The more independent and persuadable conservative voters see his mental state in real time, the better VP Harris' chances are.

(photo: The Malignant Loser without the makeup. Newsweek)

 

Monday, May 27, 2024

Message From VoteVets On Trump's Unfitness

 

Powerful ad on why we can't have the Malignant Loser as our Commander-In-Chief.



Please support VoteVets by going here.

Protecting Our Health Researchers From Trump




The Malignant Loser's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. His approach was to "downplay" the virus as  a flu ("Kung flu" in his racist jibe), to suggest that it would disappear with the return of spring weather, to push quack remedies like hydroxichloriquine and injecting bleach, and to give people the false sense that the virus was under control by trying to limit testing. His downplaying of vaccines also signaled his cult members to refuse them, many paying with their lives. A second term of the Malignant Loser would undoubtedly bring restrictions on public health officials, retribution against those that pushed back against his dangerously ignorant health policies, and funding cuts like the one that eliminated our "early warning" program for pandemics three months before the COVID-19 outbreak. 

The Biden administration has recognized the extreme danger the Malignant Loser poses to our medical research institutions, and is putting obstacles in his path as a contingency. From Politico:

"The Biden administration is setting up new tripwires for Donald Trump at America’s premier health research agency to safeguard against political interference if Trump wins in November.

The White House fears Trump could try to advance an ideological agenda at the National Institutes of Health, like the ones he’s suggested on everything from vaccines to diversity policies.

In an effort to Trump-proof, NIH has designated an official to identify political meddling in the agency’s work and is tasking a soon-to-be-established scientific integrity council with reviewing those cases. The White House knows Trump could still cast those plans aside but is calculating that doing so will set off alarms with the media, Congress and the public. The Biden administration likely hopes GOP lawmakers, even those who think the NIH needs an overhaul, will temper Trump’s moves."

As president, Trump threatened to fire a top agency official, Anthony Fauci, and prompted another to quit after Trump pitched hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment. Scientific organizations that work with NIH now worry Trump’s potential return to the White House, inflamed by GOP anger over the public health bureaucracy’s pandemic advice, might bring more concerted attempts to influence the agency’s decisions." (our emphasis)

Dr. Fauci and China became the Malignant Loser's scapegoats for the COVID-19 debacle when he realized he had utterly mismanaged the crisis. His misinformed, violent and conspiracy-minded cult went along. A determined Malignant Loser, who has threatened to be dictator "on day one," may only be slowed down by these "tripwires," especially since they rely in part on a broken media to enforce. But it's a start.

(image: If he only had taken his own advice....)

 

Monday, October 24, 2022

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

A Texas judge has dismissed voter fraud charges against Hervis Rogers, the Houston man who drew national attention– – and praise– – for waiting seven hours in line to vote in the March 2020 presidential primary.

Rogers, who is Black, became a symbol of tenacity when news of the circumstances surrounding his voting experience surfaced. He stuck around– – despite working two jobs, including one beginning at 6am– – and was among the last, potentially the last, Texas resident to vote, according to KERA news.

“I wanted to get my vote in, voice my opinion,” he said to a local ABC affiliate. “I wasn’t going to let anything stop me, so I waited it out.”

But Republican Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, ordered Rogers’ arrest in July 2021, for casting a ballot while on parole. Rogers became one of the dozens of voters nationwide swept up by heightened GOP efforts to pursue election fraud cases; while many Republicans insist there is widespread voting fraud, there is no evidence to support this claim, according to the Associated Press.

The bad:

Since April of last year, the ReAwaken America Tour has brought hardline-election deniers, anti-vaccine doctors, self-proclaimed prophets and conspiracy theorists to enthusiastic crowds across the country. The central message is that America’s white, evangelical Christian way of life is under threat from the globalist cabal on the “woke” left.

The traveling carnival of misinformation merges entertainment, politics and theology and makes the existential argument to those attending: The debate is no longer about Republican vs. Democrat, they say, it’s about good vs. evil. And it’s time to pick a side.

Since its inception, the tour has been denounced by mainstream religious leaders because of its extremist views. Its organizers have been forced to move venues twice — in New York and Washington state — due to community concerns. The Anti-Defamation League has targeted it in a report.  [snip]

A growing number of Republicans are embracing the ideology of Christian nationalism, which advocates the fusion of American civic life with a particular kind of white, conservative Christianity, according to Samuel Perry, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma and the co-author of the book “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sells T-shirts that proclaim “Proud Christian nationalist.” Trump-endorsed Mastriano — who was seen at the Capitol on Jan. 6 although he says he left before the riot began — has made Christian nationalist ideology a centerpiece of his campaign, although he has rejected the term. At a recent campaign stop for Mastriano in Pittsburgh, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) urged the crowd to “put on the full armor of God” and “take a stand against the left’s schemes.”

The ugly

In new audio recordings released by journalist Bob Woodward, former President Donald Trump likened his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to having “chemistry” when first meeting a woman.

In an interview from early 2020, Woodward told Trump that the CIA described Kim as “cunning, crafty but ultimately stupid,” according to excerpts of Woodward’s recordings published by the Washington Post on Sunday.

“I disagree,” Trump answered. “He’s cunning. He’s crafty. And he’s very smart.”

“Why does the CIA say that?” Woodward asked.

“Because they don’t know. Okay?” Trump replied. “Because they don’t know. They have no idea. I’m the only one that knows. I’m the only one he deals with. He won’t deal with anybody else.”

He added: “The word chemistry. You meet somebody and you have a good chemistry. You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s all going to happen.”

Get a room.  Preferably a padded one.


Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Trump Lies, Americans Die


"Knee deep" vs. "good place":
"The current state is really not good," the highly respected Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a Facebook and Twitter livestream on Monday.
"We are still knee deep in the first wave" of COVID-19 infections," he said.
Trump, speaking Tuesday in a TV interview, disagreed with Fauci, a key player on the White House's own Coronavirus Task Force.
"I think we are in a good place," the president said in an interview on the "Full Court Press" news show hosted by a former Fox News anchor, adding: "I disagree with him."
"Dr. Fauci said don't wear masks, now he says wear them," he continued, adding that the immunologist has "said numerous things" that according to Trump were bad advice.
"So we've done a good job. I think we are going to be in two, three, four weeks, by the time we next speak, I think we are going to be in very good shape," Trump added. (our emphasis)
Not that we need to be reminded, but --



Here's what psychopathic narcissist Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump would have you believe is "a good job" (with considerable help from Trump- worshiping/ fearing governors):
More than 60,000 new cases of COVID-19 were identified in the United States on Tuesday, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
It's the first time the U.S. has reached or crossed the 60,000 threshold of newly diagnosed cases in a 24-hour reporting period.
Tuesday's caseload shattered the country's previous record set on July 2, when more than 54,000 new cases were identified.
The national total currently stands at 2,996,098 diagnosed cases with at least 131,480 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.
By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 50,000 for the first time last week.  (our emphasis)
Hospitalizations, especially ICU bed availability, are reaching or surpassing critical mass in some states:
As the number of confirmed novel coronavirus cases reported nationwide rapidly approaches 3 million, dozens of hospitals in Florida have run out of space in their intensive care units. Arizona is also swiftly approaching full capacity for ICU beds, while Texas, another hot spot, reported more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday.
Florida, Arizona and Texas.  Where have we seen those states in the coronavirus conversation before?

So, because he's a psychopathic narcissist, COVID Donnie's response to all this is to:

-- push to kill the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare);
-- push states to re- open schools in the Fall, regardless of the risk to students, teachers and their families (and threaten to cut off funds if they don't);
-- withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization;
-- continue to lie about the danger of coronavirus;
-- not model responsible behavior by refusing to wear a mask in public;
-- continue to plan large, super- spreader gatherings of his knuckle- dragging base.

It's up to all of us to end this.  118 days until November 3.

Friday, July 3, 2020

Tweets Of The Day -- Fore!








 






 




Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Team Trump




From earlier today:
Trump is now defending himself not just by claiming he wasn’t briefed on that intelligence, or just by contesting the significance of that intelligence. Instead, he’s declaring that the entire story simply doesn’t exist — that is, he’s suggesting no intelligence ever actually indicated anything like this.
Yet this defense is itself deeply self-incriminating. It only underscores what critics are saying — that at minimum, Trump should be taking this intelligence seriously and trying to get to the bottom of what it actually does indicate, even if the worst interpretation proves wrong.  (our emphasis)
The damning tweet:


  

It should go without saying, but --
“A real president would have said, ‘These reports are highly disturbing, and we’re doing everything we can to get to the bottom of them,'” Ned Price, a former National Security Council and CIA official, told me. “That is not what we’ve heard.”

So, briefly, the ones denying the well- sourced Russian- bounties- for- American- lives scandal are Trump, Putin and the Taliban.  In other words, Team Trump.

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Tweets Of The Day -- "Message: I Care"


Narcissist- in- chief Donald "I Alone Can Fix It" Trump can't be bothered with other peoples' problems that he created:





Here's what he was tweeting about:




And, somewhat related but more for the laffs --




(We should note also that Trump 2020 campaign manager and fellow grifter Parscale didn't vote for Trump in 2016.  Sad!)


Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Unfit


The Lincoln Project's going after Bunker Boy's moral and physical fitness as a "leader" in this pair of new ads:





Of course, feel free to share widely.


Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Twit Tweet, Thwap -- Deranged


Tweet from deranged conspiracy monger and twit playing the president:



 
Thwap:


 

 

 





  

  



  
 
TPM has more background on the extreme right- wing nuts responsible for this bit of fascist agitprop that Bunker Boy "thinks" is legit.  For instance, the narrator with the strange accent is Kristian Rouz, a propagandist who also works for Sputnik, the Russian news aggregator that was involved in disseminating fake news (the real kind) in the 2016 election to benefit Bunker Boy.

More here.



Thursday, June 4, 2020

Unemployment Claims Up Nearly 2 Million; Unemployment Over 20 Percent


Nearly 2 million more Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the past week (now over 42 million total), largely the result of an incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic by Donald "Disinfectant Donnie" Trump that cratered the economy:
An additional 1.877 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending May 30, exceeding economists’ estimates for 1.843 million initial jobless claims during the week. The prior week’s figure was revised higher to 2.13 million from the previously reported 2.12 million. Over the past 11 weeks, more than 42 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance. [snip]
“In reality, the shadow unemployment rate, which includes people absent from work for other reasons, is much higher,” Morgan Stanley wrote in a note Wednesday. “There is considerable uncertainty as to how high the shadow unemployment rate could be due to compositional and categorization noise. For example, some people that were absent from work for other reasons are counted as employed, but are presumed to be unemployed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics could re-categorize this at any time, which could life the unemployment rate to as high as 25%, in our view.”
A weekly reminder of the toxic consequences of Trump's unfitness and incompetence.

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Fire On The Right


As is often the case, some of the harshest critiquing of dimbulb autocrat Donald "#BunkerBoy" Trump, especially following his recent malicious antics, is coming from never- Trumpers on the right.  (Ed. note: featuring these writers doesn't mean we're ignoring their significant contributions to building the party they now excoriate.)

George Will
This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron. [snip]
... The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting. [snip]
... Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.

Jennifer Rubin
Nothing could be more representative of the dangerous narcissism of a president in over his head, resorting to threats of violence against a country he ostensibly is supposed to lead. The deliberate instigation of violence for his own photo op tells Americans how deeply twisted and deformed his character is.
His stunt was designed to play to the most rabid white evangelicals, who inexplicably have always seen themselves — not African Americans — as the true victims. The invocation of a religious institution to justify an assault on peaceful protesters was as great an abuse of religious symbols as anything Trump has done. Surely, he never heard of the “Blessed are the peacemakers” passage from the Christian bible. He worships not peacemakers but instruments of brute force. [snip]
It does not take much imagination to conclude Trump is attempting to escalate violence around the country so he can deploy the military. This is the conduct of a tin-pot dictator — someone resorting to violent suppression of our most closely cherished rights.
More than ever, we should all recognize that, as former vice president Joe Biden put it, this is an election about the soul of our country and the survival of peaceful self-governance.

Michael Gerson
Every crisis the United States now faces has been made worse by Trump’s limits as a leader and a man. We needed a president who could imagine what the American experiment looks like from the perspective of those who find its promises fraudulent. We got someone incapable of empathy. We needed a president who would be data driven in matters of public health policy. We got someone driven by irrational enthusiasms and the advice of cronies. We needed a president who could calm destructive passions. We got someone who now urges the militarization of his fight against the left. We needed a president capable of speaking across differences. We got someone whose only authentic public communications are expressions of rancor.
This is the main (and rather obvious) lesson of Civics 101: If you elect a politician who is professionally incompetent and emotionally unwell, you will pay a price. [snip]
A man of Trump’s character, background and talents is the answer to precisely none of the great challenges of our time. His election in 2016 was an act of irrationality and folly by a powerful, noble and indispensable nation. It has made us more pitiable, more degraded and more replaceable than before. And this likelihood was obvious to anyone with a single grain of foresight.
It's 154 days until the election.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Tweets Of The Day -- Trying To Keep Up


#BunkerBoy gathers intel from the most reliable source possible -- "Fox and Friends" -- and tweets a distraction:


Telling:








"Indications":






Reminder:


Finally,


BONUS:








Monday Reading


As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Protests near the White House last night drove a certain rat underground:
As anti-racist protests continued for a fourth night in Washington, D.C., the Secret Service rushed President Donald Trump to an underground bunker, according to a number of media reports.
Trump and his family were never in any real danger on Friday when they were relocated but the incident rattled them, sources told The New York Times, which was the first news outlet to report the extraordinary safety measure.
Trump spent about an hour in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, as the bunker is known, The Associated Press reported. The facility was established to protect presidents during emergencies such as terrorist attacks. First lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, accompanied the president to the bunker, per CNN(our emphasis)

Joe Biden models what a decent President would be doing. He needs to get out more (and it looks like that's the plan -- just do it safely):
President Donald Trump spent much of Sunday using Twitter as a bullhorn to urge “law and order” and tougher action by police against protesters around the country. Joe Biden quietly visited the site of protests in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, and talked to some of the demonstrators. Earlier, he wrote a post on Medium expressing empathy for those despairing about the killing of George Floyd.
That low-key, high-touch approach may be a sign of how the presumptive Democratic nominee presents himself in the five months before the presidential election, emphasizing calm and competence as a contrast to a mercurial president.
Here's a short vid of him having pics taken while visiting the site of protests in Wilmington, Delaware, yesterday:



From Biden's Instagram account:



If you missed his statement about the events of the last week, check it out.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but:
... Trump and some of his advisers calculated that he should not speak to the nation because he had nothing new to say and had no tangible policy or action to announce yet, according to a senior administration official. Evidently not feeling an urgent motivation Sunday to try to bring people together, he stayed silent.
Trump let his tweets speak for themselves. One attacked the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis; another announced that his administration would designate the antifa movement a terrorist organization; a third accused the media of fomenting hatred and anarchy; and in yet another, he praised himself for the deployment of the National Guard and denigrated former vice president Joe Biden(our emphasis)
Go back to your bunker and stay there, rat.

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, a smart move taking the prosecution of killer cop Derek Chauvin out of the hands of the county attorney, who dragged his feet in bringing charges and still hasn't charged the three accessory cops:
In an unusual legal maneuver, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison will take the lead in the prosecution of the fired Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died last week in police custody.
Gov. Tim Walz said Sunday that he concluded Ellison needed to take over the case from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office at the urging of Floyd’s family, community activists, and some members of the Minneapolis City Council seeking a vigorous prosecution of the officer, 44-year-old Derek Chauvin.
They apparently smelled another rat in county attorney Mike Freeman.

In Brazil, you have the Trump of the Southern Hemisphere, autocrat president Jair Bolsonaro, modeling Trumpian malicious ignorance and sociopathy in dealing with his country's rising death toll from coronavirus:
On May 9, Brazil’s death toll from the coronavirus topped 10,000. Instead of marking the grim milestone with an address or a sign of respect for the victims, President Jair Bolsonaro took a spin on a jet ski. Video footage widely circulated on social media shows Brazil’s far-right leader grinning as he pulls up to a boat on BrasĆ­lia’s ParanoĆ” Lake where supporters are having a cookout. As he grips onto their boat, Bolsonaro jokes about the “neurosis” of Brazilians worried about the virus. “There’s nothing to be done [about it],” he shrugs. “It’s madness.”
Even by the standards of other right-wing populists who have sought to downplay the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro’s defiance of reality was shocking. From the favelas of densely packed cities like Rio de Janeiro to the remote indigenous communities of the Amazon rain forest, Brazil has emerged as the new global epicenter of the pandemic, with the world’s highest rate of transmission and a health system now teetering on the brink of collapse.

Never fear, though, Brazil!  The Trump regime is here to solve all your problems:
The United States has supplied Brazil with 2 million doses of hydroxychloroquine for use against the coronavirus, the two governments said on Sunday, despite medical warnings about risks associated with the anti-malaria drug.
Spreading illness and death is what Trump and his rotted out accomplices do, part infinity.

Once again, please do yourself a favor by checking out Infidel 753's link round-up to a wide range of posts with something of interest for pretty much everyone. (We found that Time article on Bolsonaro there.)


Saturday, May 30, 2020

No Longer Downplaying The Insanity?


Two articles on the front page of the Washington Post this morning seem to demonstrate that, at least at one newspaper, reporters' gloves are off in describing the divisiveness and insanity emanating from the Oval Office.

First, Philip Rucker and Toulouse Olorunnipa on two actions taken by the Orange Shitgibbon (with the headline "With ‘shooting’ tweet, Trump inflames rather than soothes tensions amid Minneapolis unrest"):
Nobody forced the crisis in Minneapolis upon President Trump. He chose to inflame the tinderbox himself when he issued an ultimatum to people protesting the death of a black man there under the custody of a white police officer.
In a pair of tweets sent at 12:53 a.m. Friday, Trump threatened to deploy the National Guard to use lethal force against demonstrators he denigrated as “THUGS.” His ominous warning — “when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” — was flagged by Twitter as a violation of the social media platform’s rule against glorifying violence.
Having contributed to another national cleavage over racial justice, a president who was elected to lead the nation through crises effectively retreated from the responsibility of doing so on this one.
At the same time, Trump on Friday abdicated the traditional role of an American president abroad, ceding global leadership by announcing that he was “terminating” U.S. membership in the World Health Organization.
Later in the article, they quoted a political scientist who nailed the Orange Shitgibbon's utter failure at this moment in history:
“He’s perfectly incapable of exercising leadership because he doesn’t understand what leadership is,” said Max Skidmore, a political scientist at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and author of a book on presidential leadership during health crises. “He thinks of leadership as whipping up outrage from a crowd, and having them yell and support him.”
Second, Matt Zapotosky and Isaac Stanley-Becker on the crises facing America (with the headline "Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis"):
A global pandemic has now killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million unemployed in its wake. Protests — some of them violent — have once again erupted in spots across the country over police killings of black Americans.
Both articles also reported on Joe Biden's calming remarks, in which he described the "open wound" of racism and urged a restoration of "the soul of America."  An easy compare and contrast.

We should also note that the national evening news broadcasts are not blinking in describing the Orange Shitgibbon's words and actions and juxtaposing them against Biden's.  Guess it's finally hard to ignore the crazed elephant in the room when there are over 100,000 deaths, 40 million unemployed and cities starting to erupt in violence, all at the same time.

Thursday, April 30, 2020

No Truth, But Consequences


Pathological liar can't keep track of his lies (and/or his "cognitive decline" flaring up):

Tuesday, when asked if the U.S. could surpass 5 million COVID-19 tests a day:
“Oh, we’re going to be there very soon.  If you look at the numbers it could be that we’re getting very close.”
Wednesday, when asked about the previous day's claim:
“Do I think we will? I think we will, but I never said it.”

We're not even testing 10 percent of the 5 million per day now, largely because the shitwaffle refuses to use the Defense Production Act to force companies to manufacture (among other things) test kits, for fear that the actual number of infected Americans will make him look bad. 

A consequence of "electing" an incompetent, narcissistic, gaslighting, grifting, multiple- bankrupted reality show host as "president," ladies and gentlemen, part infinity.

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

QOTD -- Played


"Someday, we’ll get some perspective on how the press has contributed to this mess -- just as we can now look back on the news coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War and clearly see the sins committed then by most of Big Journalism: the shameful lack of skepticism, the foolish granting of anonymity to deceptive and self-interested sources.

"When we have that distance, what I suspect we’ll see is a candidate and a president who played the media like a puppet while deeply damaging the public’s trust in the press as a democratic institution. Someone who dazzled us with his show, while acting constantly in his own self-interest while we willingly — almost helplessly — magnified his message
." --  Margaret Sullivan, observing that history won't judge the media's coverage of nitwit incompetent Donald "Moron Vector" Trump kindly.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Attacks And Boasts, But No Empathy


These analyses of the content of the mini campaign rallies "briefings" malignant narcissist Donald "COVID Donnie" Trump has been holding for weeks (and is starting up again today after saying just days ago he wouldn't be doing them any more -- surprise!) reinforce why they've been so politically damaging to the shitwaffle.

The New York Times:
The self-regard, the credit-taking, the audacious rewriting of recent history to cast himself as the hero of the pandemic rather than the president who was slow to respond: Such have been the defining features of Mr. Trump’s use of the bully pulpit during the coronavirus outbreak. [snip]
By far the most recurring utterances from Mr. Trump in the briefings are self-congratulations, roughly 600 of them, which are often predicated on exaggerations and falsehoods. He does credit others (more than 360 times) for their work, but he also blames others (more than 110 times) for inadequacies in the state and federal response.

Mr. Trump’s attempts to display empathy or appeal to national unity (about 160 instances) amount to only a quarter of the number of times he complimented himself or a top member of his team
(our emphasis)

The Washington Post did a similar analysis:
Over the past three weeks, the tally comes to more than 13 hours of Trump — including two hours spent on attacks and 45 minutes praising himself and his administration, but just 4½ minutes expressing condolences for coronavirus victims. He spent twice as much time promoting an unproven antimalarial drug that was the object of a Food and Drug Administration warning Friday. Trump also said something false or misleading in nearly a quarter of his prepared comments or answers to questions, the analysis shows.  [snip]

Trump has attacked someone in 113 out of 346 questions he has answered — or a third of his responses. He has offered false or misleading information in nearly 25 percent of his remarks. And he has played videos praising himself and his administration’s efforts three times, including one that was widely derided as campaign propaganda produced by White House aides at taxpayer expense.
Both analyses are good reads, though any sentient person having had any exposure to Trump could tell you that it's always all about him.  The pathological lying, the self- aggrandizement, the self- pity, the obsessive need to blame others for his mistakes, the infantile attacks on the media and his political enemies -- it's all part of what makes this ignorant moron the absolute worst nightmare for our country at this catastrophic time.

Monday Reading


As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

David Von Drehle says "we're on our own, America:"
We are launched on a great experiment. Can this union of states, this republic of shopkeepers, this democratic experiment, this mecca of individual initiative, meet this crisis as one people when our leader is out to lunch?
I’d say the early returns are encouraging. New York has faced a wave of disease and death with courage and aplomb. Cities and hospitals across the country have readied themselves to meet the wave if and when it comes. Scientists have swarmed to their laboratories. Congress has taken difficult votes. Companies have torn up their yearly forecasts and reinvented their workflows. Entertainers have separated from their audiences; athletes have stepped away from their fans — and even surrendered their dreams as their Olympic year passes by. And millions of Americans have tried to understand what we’re up against and do what we can with fortitude and goodwill.
But that’s just the beginning. The coming days, weeks and months will demand more from us. In balancing the need for health and the need for livelihood, people are going to make mistakes. We can minimize those mistakes only by testing widely and responding rapidly to outbreaks of virus and death. This is where Trump’s abdication is most egregious, because the federal government ought to coordinate this crucial project. Instead, states and private industry will have to improvise.
We've been essentially on our own since the shitwaffle took office;  it's just taken a bungling response to a catastrophic pandemic and the attendant historic economic damage for it to hit home for some.

Not only is America on its own, Las Vegas has a libertarian nightmare as mayor who wants the casinos open, but won't lift a finger in providing guidance on how to do it:
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman on Wednesday repeatedly called for the city's businesses to reopen while refusing to provide any social distancing guidelines on how to do so safely.
"I am not a private owner. That's the competition in this country. The free enterprise and to be able to make sure that what you offer the public meets the needs of the public," Goodman, an independent, told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"Right now, we're in a crisis health-wise, and so for a restaurant to be open or a small boutique to be open, they better figure it out. That's their job. That's not the mayor's job."
Fortunately, Goodman doesn't have the power to open the casinos or any other closed businesses, and is being shut out of discussions about how and when to re- open. (Btw, she's the wife of Oscar Goodman, former mayor and defense attorney for a who's who of Mafia bosses.)

Speaking of nightmares:

President Trump strode to the lectern in the White House briefing room Thursday and, for just over an hour, attacked his rivals, dismissing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as a “sleepy guy in a basement of a house” and lambasting the media as “fake news” and “lamestream.”

He showered praise on himself and his team, repeatedly touting the “great job” they were doing as he spoke of the “tremendous progress” being made toward a vaccine and how “phenomenally” the nation was faring in terms of mortality.
What he did not do was offer any sympathy for the 2,081 Americans who were reported dead from the coronavirus on that day alone — among the now more than 54,000 Americans who have perished since the pandemic began.
The damn narcissistic sociopath.  That, of course, was the same "briefing" where Dr. Trump mused about injecting disinfectant as a possible treatment for coronavirus (Ed. note to any wayward Trumper who might be reading this: Don't do it!)

As the damn narcissistic sociopath continues to say he was being "sarcastic" in musing about injecting disinfectants, as well as his risible (now deleted) rage tweets about journalists getting "Noble (sic) Prizes,"  Ken Jennings has this:



Pollster Stuart Rothenberg thinks Democrats have a slight edge in picking up the Senate:
Democrats no longer need an “upset or two” to win control of the Senate later this year. In fact, while the fight for Senate control in November is a toss-up, I’d probably put a pinkie on the scale for Democrats right now.
It’s not that Democrats have really widened the playing field, though they have. Those “extra” races on the board, in places like Montana and Georgia, aren’t the greatest of opportunities for them.
It’s simply that the Democrats’ initial top prospects have succeeded in proving their fundraising mettle and have taken advantage of Donald Trump’s GOP.
Others tend to agree.  It's better to be running as a Democrat than as a Republican.  But it's best to work harder, donate more and, above all, vote like your life depended on it.

We end with our recommendation that you check out Infidel 753's link round-up (as well as his blog in general) for his usual excellent array of links to posts covering the waterfront, as we of a certain age might say.  We found the piece on the commerce- over- casualties mayor of Las Vegas.