Cont: The Trump Presidency VIII

[dmaker]

Brennan was a dumpster fire, and his incoherent rants on the cable news were getting to be a national embarrassment.

Sounds an awful lot like Rudy Giuliani.

 

[dudalb]

I know, right?

This is just like TBD's attacks on Avenatti. TBD went after Avenatti like a rabid dog. He whined about Avenatti's ethics which is precious coming from a supporter of a man who has no ethics. In truth, the only thing that bothers TBD about either Avenatti or Brennan is they are effective outspoken critics of Trump.

All criticism of Dear Leader is forbidden.

 

[dudalb]

I think we have a slightly more literate logger on our hands...

 

[alfaniner]

First time I've heard today of "IRS" and "Trump" in the same news report as opposed to an opinion piece (re: campaign contribution anomalies). I believe a sleeping giant has been awakened. It's about time.

In other words, "Don't **** with the IRS."

 

[dudalb]

First time I've heard today of "IRS" and "Trump" in the same news report as opposed to an opinion piece (re: campaign contribution anomalies). I believe a sleeping giant has been awakened. It's about time.

In other words, "Don't **** with the IRS."

As Al Capone, among others, found out......

 

[Paul2]

y'all miss the posts about how he was a Patriot then?

It is cool.

So when I say that liking Brendan is unnecessary for criticizing Trump for revoking Brennans security clearance, you reply by talking about people liking Brennan?

 

[Trebuchet]

I was thinking about the recording Omarosa released of her call with Trump, in which he said he didn't know and that he didn't want that. You know what's sad? He actually sounds sincere.

 

[Stacyhs]

I was thinking about the recording Omarosa released of her call with Trump, in which he said he didn't know and that he didn't want that. You know what's sad? He actually sounds sincere.

He may have been sincere at the time. He was losing one of his best sycophants who told him how wonderful and great he was all the time.

 

[Bob001]

Straw man fallacy.

You don't have to like Brennan to think that Trump revoking his clearance is fundamentally about Brennan criticizing Trump.

Of course it is. There might be valid reasons for former officials to keep a security clearance, and there might be valid reasons for them to lose it. The point is that there is an established process and procedure to handle the matter. When Trump's rejects the process and makes decisions personally and attacks people personally, it can only be seen as an effort to degrade and humiliate a veteran civil servant, just like refusing to speak of Sen. McCain at the ceremony for the passage of the defense bill named for him.

 

[The Big Dog]

Straw man fallacy.

You don't have to like Brennan to think that Trump revoking his clearance is fundamentally about Brennan criticizing Trump.

So when I say that liking Brendan is unnecessary for criticizing Trump for revoking Brennans security clearance, you reply by talking about people liking Brennan?

So??? Hmmm, hmmm, see what happened there everyone?

I was rebutting your assertion regarding straw man fallacy. It is cool, tho

 

[pgwenthold]

He may have been sincere at the time. He was losing one of his best sycophants who told him how wonderful and great he was all the time.

All I can think with the Omarosa stoey and Trump's tirade about how he hired her to give her a chance despite how hopeless she is is, "Only the best pwople"

Hwre is his admission that he doesn't hire inly the best.

Not that it will matter to his fanatics

 

[Babbylonian]

All I can think with the Omarosa stoey and Trump's tirade about how he hired her to give her a chance despite how hopeless she is is, "Only the best pwople"

Hwre is his admission that he doesn't hire inly the best.

Not that it will matter to his fanatics

That's not what he's admitted. What he's admitted is that he has no loyalty to anyone or anything but his own moment-to-moment whims and desires. Of course, it's not his first admission in this regard. He's been throwing people under the proverbial bus since before his inauguration.

 

[Fudbucker]

At what point does someone like Dan Coats say enough is enough?

 

[Minoosh]

There might be valid reasons for former officials to keep a security clearance, and there might be valid reasons for them to lose it. The point is that there is an established process and procedure to handle the matter.

I'm not really sure that's true. There is a somewhat complicated set of guidelines that have been formulated, but they are numerous and have mitigating or aggravating factors to be considered. The president's power is absolute; that seems pretty clear - although if that's true I wonder why Jared had issues; I would think Trump could override them.

Look, Brennan said Trump was guilty of treason. Regardless of whether I agree with him, it's not necessarily a statement that is useful to U.S. national security. I could argue it either way. But surely, if Brennan is going to go on MSNBC and call the president a traitor, he's savvy enough to know that Trump will do something about it.

When Trump's rejects the process and makes decisions personally and attacks people personally, it can only be seen as an effort to degrade and humiliate a veteran civil servant, just like refusing to speak of Sen. McCain at the ceremony for the passage of the defense bill named for him.

It's different than the McCain thing; that was a petty snub. It's not slander. But Trump does seem to slander/libel people right and left (well, mostly left ) with a great deal of impunity. Using his official office to savage people's reputations seems worse to me than the fact that he fires people who serve at his pleasure, or arbitrarily revokes security clearances when he clearly has authority to do so.

 

[Lambchops]

I think we have a slightly more literate logger on our hands...

He has more words. Not sure if that makes him more literate though.

 

[Minoosh]

Something else I've been wanting to say and the Brennan thing is maybe a good example. If you're in the media and your job is to find panelists to say the most inflammatory things possible (in the name of shining an aggressive light on the activities of the Trump administration), you're going to be happy that the former CIA director is calling Trump a traitor. You're going to trot it out right away and high-five and see it as an unmitigated good. But I wonder how carefully the media has considered its role. There is actually a reason not to immediately go with the most incendiary opinion available.

But when I think about that, I get into uncomfortable questions about the motives of the press. In the case of the MSM, is the goal to shine a light on perfidy? To make sure Trump is not "normalized"? To keep those clicks and ratings up? To create whole beats like Chris Cillizza's editor-at-large with daily or more often "analyses" telling people what the news means? And same thing with Fox or Breitbart or whoever. What do they see as their role?

There have been a couple of times when public opinion really seemed to crest against Trump: during the family separations thing, and during Helsinki, and to a somewhat lesser extent after the summit with Kim Jong-un. Those were times when I felt the potential of a genuine anti-Trump groundswell. But I have an uneasy feeling that the relentless news coverage, the seeming need to fill the air 24-7 with analysis, opinions, tidbits, tweets etc., leaves little room for the average person to simply consider what they know and begin to form their own opinions about how they feel about the job Trump is doing. I can see why the press does it; they feel they have to emphatically not normalize Trump, or, in Fox's case to defend Patriot Trump against the gutter press that would bring him down.

I emphatically do not have any answers about this. I wonder if the whole country might be better off with a 24-hour or 48-hour blackout on Trump news. - or maybe just Trump speculation. No reading the tea leaves about Manafort, no analysis of whether Trump might or might not have said the "N word," no wondering what Omarosa really has.

As I write this Mom is listening to MSNBC and though I find it significantly less obnoxious than Fox, it's still kind of obnoxious. They're pumping up how agonizing tomorrow will be for Trump. But then, they'll have to fill the air tomorrow night as well. Seemingly everything has to be portrayed as the last straw.

Maybe we could just has a moratorium on last-straw-ism

ETA: And obviously I am speaking as someone who wants him gone. But I want that to come as the result of a growing consensus that he is not fit to serve. And IMO that requires at least some degree of reflection, away from the shiny people on TV telling us what to think.

 

[Minoosh]

At what point does someone like Dan Coats say enough is enough?

I liked what he said re Putin at the White House: "That will be special."

I welcome his circumspection - I think it's a great quality in an intelligence czar.

 

[Foolmewunz]

If "incoherent rants" and being a "national embarrassment" are criteria for losing security clearances, Trump would have lost his a long time ago.

Why are Trump supporters so obsessed with locking people up who have never been found guilty of a crime?

Hey, I miss logger, too! He'd have the answer that others won't dare to give: What's the point in winning if you can't abuse your opponents?

I've mentioned it before but Trump reminds me of Orson Welles' general in Catch 22 when he was totally non-plussed to find that he couldn't just order someone executed on the spot for a minor infraction.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Ohhh how sweet it is, a black woman getting under Trump's racist-misogynist skin.

The Trump-Omarosa thing fits so perfectly into the NPD theory. When he hired her for the campaign she'd just revealed that he ran for President just to get back at people for when Obama trashed him at the Correspondents Dinner.

Normally, that'd get you about four strikes and yer out! But, she knows him well enough that in the same paragraph she said, Y'all better watch out because now you're going to have to bow down to him. Donnie probably got so excited he wet himself and dropped one of the pussies he was grabbing! "She said I'm to be feared! Hear it! Hear it! All Hail King Donnie Johnny!"

Would anyone in their right mind have hired her? She just revealed to the world that you're a petulant baby and you think "Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I need on my team!" He forgot the first part of her statement the minute he heard how fearsome he was!

Do we think Russian intelligence and Korean intelligence haven't figured this out? "It's okay, Vladi. Tell him his breath still smells of the dog **** he had for breakfast but then say you hear he's got a huge schlong! He'll give you the ******* launch codes!"

 

[Bob001]

....
I emphatically do not have any answers about this. I wonder if the whole country might be better off with a 24-hour or 48-hour blackout on Trump news. - or maybe just Trump speculation. No reading the tea leaves about Manafort, no analysis of whether Trump might or might not have said the "N word," no wondering what Omarosa really has.
....

The time for that was during the campaign, when CNN and Fox routinely covered Trump rallies and speeches live and filled their days with conversations with Trump surrogates (that loathsome Katrina person appeared frequently). Trump himself claimed he got billions of dollars worth of free air time. But now he is in fact the President. Everything he does is newsworthy. It's too late to shut him out. At least the press is starting to get away from the "on the one hand, on the other hand" role of traditional journalism. When government officials tell blatant, obvious lies, they need to be called out.