Cont: The Trump Presidency Part IV

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Seems like Michael Wolffe is upping the ante - presumably to further stimulate book sales:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42579990

The author of a controversial book on Donald Trump's White House says the US president has "less credibility than perhaps anybody who has ever walked on Earth at this point".
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Mr Wolff told NBC's Today show that Mr Trump's staff "all say he is like a child".

He added: "What they mean by that is he has the need for instant gratification. It's all about him... This man does not read, does not listen. He's like a pinball just shooting off the sides."
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Squeegee Beckenheim said:
It's the only medium in which I can find it being discussed. I'm happy to believe that legal experts know about the law, especially something as ubiquitous as NDAs. Sans contradictory evidence, I'm happy to accept it as true. You, of course, are entitled to your own opinions.
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I don't have an opinion of this. That was the point of asking.
 
Upchurch said:
Well, a little hyperbole is good for sales.
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Well, to be fair to Wolf, I follow a whole lot of newsmakers in various corners of the earth and there are several tied with zero credibility (My P.M., L'il Kim, Trump), but Elvis Costello notwithstanding you can't get a credibility score of "Less Than Zero". You start at 100 and work your way down the less credible you are.
 
Upchurch said:
Well, a little hyperbole is good for sales.
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Is it really hyperbole? "Like a child", "need for instant gratfication", "it's all about him", "does not read, does not listen" ... most of us here were saying all that eighteen months ago.

But I'll give you "less credibility than perhaps anybody who has ever walked on Earth at this point". A tad OT.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Bannon was reportedly about to issue a statement disputing quotes in the book and saying he was taken out of context, but decided not to once Trump had issued his statement disparaging him
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I read this at the end of that article;

A personal lawyer for the president has threatened to sue Bannon, Wolff and the book’s publisher and demanding that the book release be canceled.
There could be more efforts like that from others close to Trump.
“We are going to tie him up in litigation for years, until he’s spent more on legal fees than he makes on the book,” said one person quoted in the book.
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​

And thought to myself. "They'll just take it out of their advertising budget."
 
The Fox/Trump feedback loop is strong.

But here’s what is shocking: After comparing the president’s tweets to Fox coverage every day since October, I can tell you that the Fox-Trump feedback loop is happening far more often than you think. There is no strategy to Trump’s Twitter feed; he is not trying to distract the media. He is being distracted. He darts with quark-like speed from topic to topic in his tweets because that’s how cable news works.

Here’s what’s also shocking: A man with unparalleled access to the world’s most powerful information-gathering machine, with an intelligence budget estimated at $73 billion last year, prefers to rely on conservative cable news hosts to understand current events.

I have long known that the president was a Fox & Friends superfan—well before he ran for office, he had a weekly guest spot on the program for years, and since his election, he has regularly held the program’s co-hosts up as model journalists. But one morning in October, a colleague pointed out that Trump had tweeted an endorsement of a book minutes after the author, appearing on Fox & Friends to promote the work, praised him. Curious if there was a pattern, I examined the rest of the president’s tweets from that morning, and found that several others seemed to line up with the program, reacting or commenting on various topics raised by the broadcast—from kneeling NFL players to negotiating with Democrats over immigration—without ever explicitly mentioning the show itself.
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CapelDodger said:
Is it really hyperbole? "Like a child", "need for instant gratfication", "it's all about him", "does not read, does not listen" ... most of us here were saying all that eighteen months ago.

But I'll give you "less credibility than perhaps anybody who has ever walked on Earth at this point". A tad OT.
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To take it seriously for a moment, there is both truth and hyperbole in it. Most of the crazy claims seem at least plausible, given the publicly available information about Trump.

Remember, this is a guy who used to call up tabloid reporters posing as an employee of himself to gossip about his own love life.

It's both too crazy to believe and yet almost plausible at the same time.
 
I'm wondering if Trump will try to get away with pre-taping his State of the Union Address. I suppose he'd probably get through it if the teleprompter has large enough text and small enough words for him.
 
Puppycow said:
To take it seriously for a moment, there is both truth and hyperbole in it. Most of the crazy claims seem at least plausible, given the publicly available information about Trump.

Remember, this is a guy who used to call up tabloid reporters posing as an employee of himself to gossip about his own love life.

It's both too crazy to believe and yet almost plausible at the same time.
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It's why attempts to parody it have run into problems.
 
jnelso99 said:
I'm wondering if Trump will try to get away with pre-taping his State of the Union Address. I suppose he'd probably get through it if the teleprompter has large enough text and small enough words for him.
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I think it will just be like his Pensacola speech for an hour.

I do want to go back to when presidents submitted them in writing.
 
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jnelso99 said:
I'm wondering if Trump will try to get away with pre-taping his State of the Union Address. I suppose he'd probably get through it if the teleprompter has large enough text and small enough words for him.
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It doesn't involve follow up questions so it shouldn't be a problem. He'll give it and then go to be 'interviewed' on TrumpTV Fox.
 
Stacko said:
It's why attempts to parody it have run into problems.
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Hard to independently verify.

But the really telling thing is those bizarro cabinet meetings he holds from time to time to ritually degrade the members of his cabinet by forcing them to kiss his ass in front of TV cameras. (I'll refrain from using more colorful language.)

The televised meeting included a prayer by Ben Carson in the president’s honor and three minutes of praise from Mike Pence.

And it wasn't the first time:

Donald Trump just held the weirdest Cabinet meeting ever

This is a cult of personality where the leader expects to be worshiped as some kind of higher being.
 
CapelDodger said:
This is ligging at the highest level ("ligging" being the fine art of appearing to belong somewhere, such as a party or business convention, where freebies are available).
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A craft I honed during graduate school to solve my meal budget problem.
 
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