The Trump Presidency: Sweet/Sweat 16

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Skeptic Ginger said:
I wondered what that cat on the weather map was about. OK, now I get it.
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It's legit scary how often this happens these day:

*Sees something that doesn't make any sense.*
"What the hell is this mean?"
*Sees then same thing in a different context that doesn't make sense in the same way later*
"Oh... it's a new meme."
 
kellyb said:
Now that he knows he could actually go to jail over the sharpie-altered NWS map, Trump's now implying he was just trolling us (and "the media") with it:[/url]
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Not really sure why he would think that was better.

If he claims "My claim it would hit Alabama was due to earlier predictions" it at least provides a reasonable defense... it was an honest mistake (well, that would be the claim anyways), and not meant to be malicious.

But if Trump resorts to suggesting he was just "Trolling" the media? It means he knew the information he was presenting was false, which means that there was some malicious intent.
 
Segnosaur said:
But if Trump resorts to suggesting he was just "Trolling" the media? It means he knew the information he was presenting was false, which means that there was some malicious intent.
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Okay and? "Trump is a troll and nothing else" is an open secret at this point. Everyone knows it. He's not hiding it. His followers revel in it. Him admitting it isn't going to hurt anything.
 
JoeMorgue said:
It's legit scary how often this happens these day:

*Sees something that doesn't make any sense.*
"What the hell is this mean?"
*Sees then same thing in a different context that doesn't make sense in the same way later*
"Oh... it's a new meme."
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Huh? :boggled:
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Huh? :boggled:
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Oh sorry I realize that makes no sense without the backstory. I had heard about Trump's whole "The hurricane was gonna hit Alabama" thing, but I didn't know about the altered with a Sharpie map, so I was sort of confused when I started seeing "Sharpie Memes" all over my Facebook feed until I got the context and made the connection.
 
NOAA disclaimer prompted by Commerce firing threat

WASHINGTON — The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at NOAA on Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disavowing the office’s own position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew criticism from the scientific community that NOAA, a division of the Commerce Department, had been bent to political purposes.

[Wilbur J. Ross], the Commerce Secretary, intervened [...] early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode. Unlike career government employees, political staff are appointed by the administration. They usually include a handful of top officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and their aides.

On Monday, Craig N. McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, sent an email to staff members notifying the agency that he was looking into “potential violations” in the agency’s decision to ultimately back Mr. Trump’s statements rather than those of its own scientists. He called the agency’s action “a danger to public health and safety.”

Dr. Jacobs is scheduled to speak Tuesday at a weather industry conference in Huntsville, Ala.

On Monday, the National Weather Service director, Louis W. Uccellini, got a standing ovation from conference attendees when he praised the work of the Birmingham office and said staff members there had acted “with one thing in mind, public safety” when they contradicted Mr. Trump’s claim that Alabama was at risk.
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ETA: By the way, this is fascism.
 
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The Greater Fool said:
Compare stays at Trump properties before and after he became President. If there is a significant difference then there is a problem, written or not.

Of course, an honest President would have a written policy to NOT stay at properties owned by them. Sadly that ship has sailed.
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I will say it again: Jummy Carter sold his peanut farm when he got elected president. To avoid any issues
 
jeremyp said:
There’s two ways this could happen. Is it because Trump is convincing all Republicans that he is doing a good job, or is it that Republicans who do not approve of him are leaving the party?

That’s a serious question. If anybody has got stats, I’d like to see them.
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Trump is lying as usual, and the Republican party is getting smaller.

Fact is that Trump's Republican party approval rating (not popularity) is about 10% lower. He just likes to bigly-up all his numbers.

But the shrinking size of that party means that percentage comprises only a small fraction of the overall US voting population.

In short, he's overblowing his popularity among a small bunch of increasingly repugnant right-wing thugs. He's running for "Most Popular Nazi" on Stormfront!

ETA: Ninja'd!

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/9/20856738/trump-94-percent-republican-approval-lie
 
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jeremyp said:
Should have thought of that.
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I wonder if the 94% approval rating is only among the president's staff at the White House (officials, not including service staff).

"We polled the people who had dinner with me last night and it was 94%"
 
Trump's loose lips and contempt for any and all security and accountability measures whenever he shares a room with Russian diplomats reportedly concerned the CIA so much that in 2017 they decided to exfil their highest-placed Kremlin source, a move which came at a significant intelligence cost.

Trump likes to brag about what he believes he knows, because in his insecurity he strives to be seen by others as knowledgeable. He is largely either unaware or apathetic to the fact that when he shares sensitive information, other intelligence agencies can use that information to deduce possible sources.

A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure, according to the source directly involved in the matter.

At the time, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told other senior Trump administration officials that too much information was coming out regarding the covert source, known as an asset. An extraction, or "exfiltration" as such an operation is referred to by intelligence officials, is an extraordinary remedy when US intelligence believes an asset is in immediate danger.

The removal happened at a time of wide concern in the intelligence community about mishandling of intelligence by Trump and his administration. Those concerns were described to CNN by five sources who served in the Trump administration, intelligence agencies and Congress.

Those concerns continued to grow in the period after Trump's Oval Office meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov. Weeks after the decision to extract the spy, in July 2017, Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg and took the unusual step of confiscating the interpreter's notes. Afterward, intelligence officials again expressed concern that the President may have improperly discussed classified intelligence with Russia, according to an intelligence source with knowledge of the intelligence community's response to the Trump-Putin meeting.

Knowledge of the Russian covert source's existence was highly restricted within the US government and intelligence agencies. According to one source, there was "no equal alternative" inside the Russian government, providing both insight and information on Putin.

CNN is withholding several details about the spy to reduce the risk of the person's identification.

The secret removal of the high-level Russian asset has left the US without one of its key sources on the inner workings of the Kremlin and the plans and thinking of the Russian president at a time when tensions between the two nations have been growing. The US intelligence community considers Russia one of the two greatest threats to US national security, along with China.

"The impact would be huge because it is so hard to develop sources like that in any denied area, particularly Russia, because the surveillance and security there is so stringent," a former senior intelligence official told CNN. "You can't reacquire a capability like that overnight."
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pgwenthold said:
I wonder if the 94% approval rating is only among the president's staff at the White House (officials, not including service staff).

"We polled the people who had dinner with me last night and it was 94%"
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It would have been 100% if Melania wasn't there.
 
I now really hope when Trump goes down..and he eventually will...he takes the GOP with him. It no longer deserves to survive.
 
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