Xtra News Community 2

Yep....people who are blinded by their support for the corrupt, treasonous, criminal idiot Donald J. Trump are certainly deranged alright.

(https://scontent.fakl2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/38697922_2344404165586637_7060436316294479872_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=8534d17fe9fa3488023f0ff6db85e6d6&oe=5C0AE017) (https://www.facebook.com/GuardianUs/photos/a.456883731005366/2344404162253304/?type=3&theater)

Hehehe — this appears in the latest (Monday) print edition of The Seattle Times…


(https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/bong-trump.jpg) (https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/this-week-in-cartoons-trumps-folly)

 :D
(https://stonecoldtruth-gc52brp.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Three-Amigos-935x640.png)

from the print edition of the Los Angeles Times…

After backlash, Trump lowers flag for McCain

The president, silent for two days about the late senator, expresses his respect following outcry from veterans.

By ELI STOKOLS | Tuesday, August 28, 2018

(http://origin.misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-c935-42f5-b0da-daebc36b7646/images/IMG_LA-AFP-Getty_The_Nat_2_1_C646QFRQ.jpg) (http://origin.misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-c935-42f5-b0da-daebc36b7646/images/IMG_LA-AFP-Getty_The_Nat_2_1_C646QFRQ.jpg)
An American flag at the White House flies at half-staff in honor of Senator John McCain. Earlier, the flag had been raised to full staff, sparking objections.
 — Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images.

WASHINGTON D.C. — President Trump, after protests from veterans groups, broke two days of silence following the death of Senator John McCain and on Monday belatedly issued the traditional statements honoring the Vietnam War hero and ordering flags to be flown at half-staff until his burial Sunday.

“Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain's service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment,” Trump said in a statement released about 4 p.m., after widespread condemnation of his failure to pay tribute despite McCain's past criticisms.

Until then, Trump had only tweeted his condolences to McCain's family on Saturday, without any praise for the senator.

Even as McCain was known to be dying, as recently as this month Trump continued to criticize him at political rallies, though not by name, for voting against repealing the Affordable Care Act last year.

His official statement and proclamation came after the president — three separate times on Monday — ignored questions from reporters just a few feet away.

In one instance in the Oval Office, he silently glowered behind the historic Resolute Desk, arms folded, while being asked if he had anything to say about the legacy of McCain, who died on Saturday at 81 after a long battle with brain cancer.

Trump, who has sought to present himself as an ardent backer of the military, relented only after two veterans groups delivered stinging rebukes for what they saw as an obvious lack of respect for McCain, a Navy aviator who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Trump famously derided McCain's record in 2015, shortly after announcing his candidacy, by saying McCain was no hero simply because he had been captured.

“It's outrageous that the White House would mark American hero John McCain's death with a two-sentence tweet, making no mention of his heroic and inspiring life,” said Joe Chenelly, national director of American Veterans, commonly known as AMVETS.

Both AMVETS and the American Legion urged Trump to follow the traditional protocol of honoring McCain as other senators and public figures have been honored.

“Mr. President, just this year you released presidential proclamations noting the death of Barbara Bush and Billy Graham. Senator John McCain was an American hero and a cherished member of the American Legion,” that group's national commander, Denise Rohan, said in a statement.

She added, “As I'm certain you are aware, he served five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and retired from the U.S. Navy at the rank of captain.”

About an hour after those statements were released, the White House flag was restored to half-staff, as it had been on Sunday. Shortly afterward, the administration released the president's statement.

The White House also confirmed that Vice President Mike Pence would speak at the ceremony honoring McCain at the Capitol on Friday and that three senior administration officials would attend his funeral: retired Marine General John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff; Defense Secretary James N. Mattis; and national security advisor John Bolton.

McCain had let it be known that he did not want Trump at his funeral.

As McCain has been praised by lawmakers in both parties for his lifetime of service to his country, Trump's two-day silence spoke volumes about his lingering bitterness toward a senator who, in the winter of his life, often deployed his hard-won moral authority to criticize the president.

Ironically, Trump came under fire on Monday for disrespect involving the flag, the national symbol that he has invoked for two years to divide the country over the non-violent protests of African American football players against racial injustice, wrongly claiming that they're dishonoring the flag and veterans by kneeling during the pre-game playing of the national anthem.

When Washington awoke on Monday, the country's colors flew at half-staff atop government buildings throughout the city in honor of McCain. But at the White House, the flag had been raised back to full staff, sparking objections on social media, cable television shows and elsewhere.

Officially, the White House was not in violation of official protocol, which calls for the flag to be lowered on all federal buildings for one day after the death of a member of Congress. Other senators, however, have been honored for longer periods of time.

Trump has castigated rivals for years using the U.S. flag as a weapon. In 2006, he raised an oversized flag on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida golf resort, baiting the city of Palm Beach into suing him as part of an effort to win public support in his separate fight to expand the club.

In 2015, at the outset of his presidential campaign, Trump criticized President Obama, saying he waited too long to order the nation's flags lowered following killings at a military recruiting center in Tennessee.

“This disgraceful omission is unacceptable and yet another example of our incompetent politicians,” Trump tweeted.


• Eli Stokols is a White House reporter based in the Los Angeles Times Washington, D.C., bureau. He is a veteran of Politico and The Wall Street Journal, where he covered the 2016 presidential campaign and then the Trump White House. A native of Irvine, Stokols grew up in a L.A. Times household and is thrilled to report for what is still his family's hometown paper. He is also a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=2c17c746-c6dc-452c-89a7-e3203cc61c69 (http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=2c17c746-c6dc-452c-89a7-e3203cc61c69)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tkBiFZBix0

Face facts....John McCain was an American hero who served in the military with distinction when his country needed him.

Donald J. Trump is a gutless, yellow-bellied coward who hid from the military when his country needed him.

Therefore, he is totally and morally unfit to be the commander in chief of the military he turned his back on when he was needed.

No more needs to be said about Trump....someone should publicly present him with a WHITE FEATHER to signify his cowardice.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmhD75kX4AAEpIB.jpg) (https://twitter.com/MoceriJohn/status/1038154414953922562)

wow you really are a sick cunt with a mind? from the gutter

we need to purge the old queer commie cocksucking train driver to the dustbin of history

Trumps millitary making love to putins mercs syria

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0E_kDwFhXE

(http://origin.misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-c935-42f5-b0da-daebc36b7646/images/7216aec8-1658-4474-a011-497ab810b40f.jpg) (http://origin.misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-c935-42f5-b0da-daebc36b7646/images/7216aec8-1658-4474-a011-497ab810b40f.jpg)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRAae1mTEy0

Hahaha....the Woodville clown has visited this thread.

I guess the following must apply to him, eh?


(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/10/a2/18/10a2181a3809d1cd44cae63ef2f309c7.jpg) (https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/694609942504328685/)

you a simple sub human commie trump derangment syndrome slob have removed all doubt about how mental lefty's are

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnPaRe8V4AAfWys.jpg) (https://twitter.com/davidhorsey/status/1041415988837679104)

(https://grrrgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/trump_derangement_syndrome.jpg)

from The Washington Post…

Trump feels angry, unprotected amid mounting crises

The president’s latest attack on his attorney general underscores
his lack of trust in many of his subordinates and appointees

By ASHLEY PARKER and PHILIP RUCKER | 9:18PM EDT — Wednesday, September 19, 2018

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/-TCJC1E-YKSIeQ9At1jRE6WlghM=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/OBWWLZV4LQI6RASD6OXJZGLFRI.jpg) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/-TCJC1E-YKSIeQ9At1jRE6WlghM=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/OBWWLZV4LQI6RASD6OXJZGLFRI.jpg)
President Donald J. Trump listens to Polish President Andrzej Duda speak during a joint press conference in the East Room
of the White House on September 18, 2018. — Photograph: Calla Kessler/The Washington Post.

PRESIDENT TRUMP's declaration that “I don't have an attorney general” was not merely the cry of an executive feeling betrayed by a subordinate.

It was also a raw expression of vulnerability and anger from a president who associates say increasingly believes he is unprotected — with the Russia investigation steamrolling ahead, anonymous administration officials seeking to undermine him and the specter of impeachment proceedings, should the Democrats retake the House on November 6.

In a freewheeling and friendly interview published on Wednesday, Trump savaged Attorney General Jeff Sessions, mocking the nation's top law enforcement official for coming off as “mixed up and confused” during his Senate confirmation hearing and for his “sad” performance on the job.

Though Trump has long railed against Sessions, both publicly and privately, for recusing himself from overseeing the Justice Department's Russia probe, the president's comments to Hill TV brought his criticism to a new level.

“I don't have an attorney general,” Trump said. “It's very sad.”

Publicly, at least, Trump is going through the ordinary motions of being president. He met with the visiting president of Poland and on Wednesday toured the flood-ravaged Carolinas to survey damage from Hurricane Florence. He also prepared to hit the campaign trail with rallies in Nevada on Thursday and in Missouri on Friday, and next week he will host scores of foreign dignitaries at the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan.

Behind the scenes, however, Trump is confronting broadsides from every direction — legal, political and personal.

The president, as well as family members and long-time loyalists, fret about whom in the administration they can trust, people close to them said, rattled by a pair of devastating, unauthorized insider accounts this month from inside the White House. A senior administration official penned an anonymous column (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html) in The New York Times describing a “resistance” within to guard against the president's impulses, while Bob Woodward's new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House” (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501175513), offers an alarming portrait of a president seemingly unfit for the office.

“Everybody in the White House now has to look around and ask, ‘Who's taping? Who's leaking? And who's on their way out the door?’ It's becoming a game of survival,” said a Republican strategist who works in close coordination with the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Some of Trump's allies believe he has legitimate cause for worry.

“The president should feel vulnerable because he is vulnerable — to those that fight him daily on implementing his agenda,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former chief White House strategist, wrote in a text message.

“The Woodward book is the typed up meeting notes from ‘The Committee to Save America’,” he added, referring dismissively to a loose alliance of advisers who saw themselves as protecting the country from Trump. “The anonymous op-ed is the declaration of an administrative coup by the Republican establishment.”

In some respects, Trump has maintained a sanguine outlook. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort last week became the latest former member of the president's inner circle to agree to cooperate with federal prosecutors. But Trump has been uncharacteristically calm about the plea deal for Manafort, whom he had praised only a month ago for refusing to “break” under pressure from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Asked if he was worried about Manafort's cooperation agreement, Trump told reporters on Wednesday: “No, I'm not…. I believe that he will tell the truth. And if he tells the truth, no problem.”

Trump has been similarly restrained this week as federal judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, his pick for the Supreme Court, fights to save his nomination amid an accusation of sexual assault, which Kavanaugh denies. Trump has publicly defended Kavanaugh, though he has refrained from attacking the judge's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

White House officials, who began this week reeling from the assault allegation, said by mid-week that they have concluded Kavanaugh would probably still win confirmation, especially given Ford's reluctance to testify at a public Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled by Republicans for Monday.

Nonetheless, Trump's screed against Sessions underscored the president's sense of anger and what he considers to be a betrayal by his attorney general, who, despite executing much of the president's hard-line, law-and-order agenda, has never been able to recover from what Trump views as an unforgivable sin: his recusal from the Russia investigation for a conflict of interest, which ultimately led to Mueller's appointment.

Trump told Hill TV that he appointed Sessions out of blind loyalty, a decision he now regrets. Sessions's aggressive and controversial immigration actions — including emphasizing “zero tolerance” for those who come to the country illegally and defending the administration policy of separating families — have been cheered by Trump allies. But the president criticized his attorney general even on this front, in a striking expression of his deep dissatisfaction.

“I'm not happy at the border, I'm not happy with numerous things, not just this,” Trump said, referring to the Russia probe.

(https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_825w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2018/09/19/National-Politics/Images/AFP_1982N2.jpg) (https://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2018/09/19/National-Politics/Images/AFP_1982N2.jpg)
Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during an event at the Department of Justice in Washington earlier this month.
 — Photograph: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

The president's attack on Sessions raised concern in the law enforcement community and also prompted reactions ranging from exasperation to outright dismay.

“Trump doesn't just blur the lines, he flat out tries to eradicate those lines,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in Alabama nominated by President Barack Obama. “He wants a consigliere, not an attorney general. On the one hand, it's a pitiful thing to watch, but it's also deadly serious, because the attorney general does not protect the president. The attorney general protects the American people. And the fact that we have a president who doesn't understand that is alarming.”

A former White House official was similarly disturbed. “It is a complete disgrace the way that Trump is acting like a schoolyard bully against Sessions,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share a critical opinion. “I understand his frustration. I understand why he feels the way that he does. But what a child. What an absolute baby. He's disgracing himself.”

In the interview, Trump belittled Sessions, whom he has previously dubbed “Mr. Magoo” and, according to Woodward's book, dismissed as “mentally retarded.”

“He went through the nominating process and he did very poorly,” Trump said of Sessions's Senate confirmation hearing. “He was giving very confusing answers, answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him, and he won by one vote, I believe. You know, he won by just one vote.”

Trump went on to question Sessions's self-recusal from the Russia investigation.

“He said, ‘I recuse myself, I recuse myself’,” Trump told Hill TV. “And now it turned out he didn't have to recuse himself. Actually, the FBI reported shortly thereafter any reason for him to recuse himself. And it's very sad what happened.”

It was not clear what Trump meant.

Career Justice Department ethics officials had told Sessions he had to step aside from any campaign-related investigations because he had been a top campaign surrogate and met with the Russian ambassador.

FBI officials would not have been among those providing advice. Then-FBI Director James B. Comey said at a congressional hearing that he was aware of nonpublic information that he believed would force the attorney general to step aside before Sessions did so, though he declined to specify what those facts were.

After taking yet another public tongue-lashing from the president, Sessions gave a speech on Wednesday to law enforcement officials in Waukegan, Illinois, in which he effusively praised Trump.

“Under his strong leadership, we are respecting police again and enforcing our laws,” Sessions said, according to his prepared remarks, which a DOJ spokesman said he delivered. “Based on my experience meeting with officers like you across the country, I believe that morale has already improved under President Trump. I can feel the difference.”

Even as Sessions was dutifully showering compliments upon his boss, Trump was unwilling to throw him a lifeline.

“I'm disappointed in the attorney general for many reasons,” Trump told reporters before leaving for North Carolina. “You understand that.”


• Devlin Barrett, John Wagner and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.

• Ashley Parker (https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/ashley-parker) is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at The New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things.

• Philip Rucker (https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/philip-rucker) is the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. He previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Rucker also is a Political Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter.


Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: Trump: ‘I'm disappointed in the attorney general for many reasons’ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-im-disappointed-in-the-attorney-general-for-many-reasons/2018/09/19/7a800bc0-bc15-11e8-8243-f3ae9c99658a_video.html)

 • ‘I don't have an attorney general’: Trump escalates his attacks on Jeff Sessions (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/i-dont-have-an-attorney-general-trump-escalates-his-attacks-on-jeff-sessions/2018/09/19/0f592082-bc08-11e8-be70-52bd11fe18af_story.html)

 • You only need a one-question test to identify a narcissist (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/08/05/you-only-need-a-one-question-test-to-identify-a-narcissist)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/he-is-vulnerable-trump-feels-angry-unprotected-amid-mounting-crises/2018/09/19/e33ca996-bc26-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/he-is-vulnerable-trump-feels-angry-unprotected-amid-mounting-crises/2018/09/19/e33ca996-bc26-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html)

a bit more fake creative writting from an anonymous source
america is doing great under trump its economy is booming

trump is making america great again

do you not notice the left is controlled by the one percent
so far the man is winning

The only thing Trump has done is to make America the laughing stock of the entire world.

Oh, and.....facilitate making CHINA great again.

I'm going to piss myself laughing when the dumb Jesuslanders wake up to the fact that China is about to supersede them as the world's top-dog superpower.

i believe you are a chinise bot scum sucking pig
but thanks for making me laugh and being such a stupid moron
the left are menally sinsane we need to take a leaf out of china's book put the all dems  in reeducation camps
or kill them all and harvest and sell their organs

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnkuTeBVAAA6RGK.jpg) (https://twitter.com/davidhorsey/status/1042915721041215489)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm1zLP1WsAEBtNJ.jpg) (https://twitter.com/wuerker/status/1039613738825998336)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cvctmb3VIAAI8Ql.jpg)

And in the United Nations yesterday, when Trump gave a speech, the world's leaders laughed at him.

Hillarious, eh? Trump has made himself and his country the laughing stock of the world.

what else do you think he expects from UNCOMMIECENTRAL.ORG

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoFVPnJUcAAPJSO.jpg) (https://twitter.com/davidhorsey/status/1045210430614827008)

trump should boot the UN out of the US they are good for nothings like stupid train jerks useless

from The New York Times…

James Comey: The F.B.I. Can Do This

Despite limitations and partisan attacks, the bureau can
find out a lot about the Kavanaugh accusations in a week.

By JAMES COMEY | Sunday, September 30, 2018

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/30/opinion/30comeyWeb/30comeyWeb-master675.jpg) (https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/30/opinion/30comeyWeb/30comeyWeb-superJumbo.jpg)
— Photograph: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg.

THE F.B.I. is back in the middle of it. When we were handed the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2015, the bureau's deputy director said to me, “You know you are totally screwed, right?” He meant that, in a viciously polarized political environment, one side was sure to be furious with the outcome. Sure enough, I saw a tweet declaring me “a political hack,” although the author added, tongue in cheek: “I just can't figure out which side.”

And those were the good old days. President Trump's decision to order a one-week investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, comes in a time of almost indescribable pain and anger, lies and attacks.

We live in a world where the president routinely attacks the F.B.I. because he fears its work. He calls for his enemies to be prosecuted and his friends freed. We also live in a world where a sitting federal judge channels the president by shouting attacks at the Senate committee considering his nomination and demanding to know if a respected senator has ever passed out from drinking. We live in a world where the president is an accused serial abuser of women, who was caught on tape bragging about his ability to assault women and now likens the accusations against his nominee to the many “false” accusations against him.

Most disturbingly, we live in a world where millions of Republicans and their representatives think nearly everything in the previous paragraph is O.K.

In that world, the F.B.I. is now being asked to investigate, on a seven-day clock, sexual assaults that the president says never happened, that some senators have decried as a sham cooked up to derail a Supreme Court nominee, and that other senators believe beyond all doubt were committed by the nominee.

If truth were the only goal, there would be no clock, and the investigation wouldn't have been sought after the Senate Judiciary Committee already endorsed the nominee. Instead, it seems that the Republican goal is to be able to say there was an investigation and it didn't change their view, while the Democrats hope for incriminating evidence to derail the nominee.

Although the process is deeply flawed, and apparently designed to thwart the fact-gathering process, the F.B.I. is up for this. It's not as hard as Republicans hope it will be.

F.B.I. agents are experts at interviewing people and quickly dispatching leads to their colleagues around the world to follow with additional interviews. Unless limited in some way by the Trump administration, they can speak to scores of people in a few days, if necessary.

They will confront people with testimony and other accounts, testing them and pushing them in a professional way. Agents have much better nonsense detectors than partisans, because they aren't starting with a conclusion.

Yes, the alleged incident occurred 36 years ago. But F.B.I. agents know time has very little to do with memory. They know every married person remembers the weather on their wedding day, no matter how long ago. Significance drives memory. They also know that little lies point to bigger lies. They know that obvious lies by the nominee about the meaning of words in a yearbook are a flashing signal to dig deeper.

Once they start interviewing, every witness knows the consequences. It is one thing to have your lawyer submit a statement on your behalf. It is a very different thing to sit across from two F.B.I. special agents and answer their relentless questions. Of course, the bureau won't have subpoena power, only the ability to knock on doors and ask questions. But most people will speak to them. Refusal to do so is its own kind of statement.

Agents will summarize every witness encounter in a detailed report called a 302, and then synthesize all the interviews into an executive summary for the White House. Although the F.B.I. won't reach conclusions, their granular factual presentation will spotlight the areas of conflict and allow decision makers to reach their own conclusions.

It is idiotic to put a shot clock on the F.B.I. But it is better to give professionals seven days to find facts than have no professional investigation at all. When the week is up, one team (and maybe both) will be angry at the F.B.I. The president will condemn the bureau for being a corrupt nest of Clinton-lovers if they turn up bad facts. Maybe Democrats will similarly condemn agents as Trumpists if they don't. As strange as it sounds, there is freedom in being totally screwed. Agents can just do their work. Find facts. Speak truth to power.

Despite all the lies and all the attacks, there really are people who just want to figure out what's true. The F.B.I. is full of them.


• James Comey is the former F.B.I. director and author of “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership” (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250192455).

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on Monday, October 1, 2018, on Page A19 of the New York print edition with the headline: “The F.B.I. Can Do This”.


Related to this topic:

 • Maureen Dowd: Capitol Hill Ralph Club — Brett Kavanaugh faces his moment of truth in a town that doesn't care about truth. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/brett-kavanaugh-ralph-club.html)

 • Frank Bruni: Brett Kavanaugh Loves His Beer — The Supreme Court nominee paired a frothy beverage with identity politics. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/brett-kavanaugh-beer-politics.html)

 • The Editorial Board: Women Are Watching — Which should make Republican lawmakers very, very nervous. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/opinion/brett-kavanaugh-jeff-flake-gop-women.html)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/opinion/james-comey-fbi-kavanaugh-investigation.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/opinion/james-comey-fbi-kavanaugh-investigation.html)

FUNNY SHIT ;D

The Left Are Insane,Truth Is an Enemy,Logic Is A Menace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3quruHpcuo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pni_kDv9BsU&t=308s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrAcxT18yaE&t=289s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGxr1VQ2dPI&t=665s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEzDHUMgeAs

Yeah, we get it ... you support rapists.

Probably why you also support Donald J. Trump.

Trump the winner+ktj is a whitetrash loser hahaha ;D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TODyyR5GRqw&t=591s

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dono8HvWwAAmouz.jpg) (https://twitter.com/MatttDavies/status/1047624528996827138)

 ;D

(https://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/238360_image.jpg)

SNIGGER … Donald J. Trump boarding Air Force One with a length of toilet paper stuck to his left shoe…


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVdVUN0EBso (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVdVUN0EBso)

good to be human

a friend once stuck a sticky san pad on my back while we were down at the toilet on a 747
 funny when i walked back to my seat wondering what they were laughing at
dont drink and fly;D

This is how the DEMS are making sure Trump Wins 2020

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DokdOrNW4AAu3Cu.jpg)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DokdFyMW0AEGe4a.jpg)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dokc7VGXgAAfBjK.jpg)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpSYde_VsAIPRbX.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpSYde_VsAIPRbX.jpg)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpXg4-UU8AA3XbX.jpg:large)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS4Lw2yMmuA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS4Lw2yMmuA)

While hillary fucked bernie in his arse

Trump was just crazy enough to win,bury the demonrats
make them cry and hes now slowly draining the swamp.

The pussy people im with her mob are still whining their tits off....
Antifa are pretending to be the brownshirts doing what the nazi's done.


You're doing a good job mr trump taking names and kicking commie arse...

It's a thankless job but someone needed to do it.

Look at all those sexual offenders & predators…


(http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/Miscellaneous/SexualOffendersampPredators_zpsqjfyzemu.jpg~original)


…the whole lot of them are sickos who deserve to be castrated with a blunt knife.

yawn more piss weak anti trump propgander they forgot to put bill clinton and hillary in the picture,bills the rapist and hillary is his enabler ;D

and then theres these guys they paid off their victims with tax payer money lol haha most of them are democrats

Here Are the 7 Congressmen Accused of Sexual Misconduct Since #MeToo
Rep. Patrick Meehan is most recent resignation from Congress over sexual misconduct allegations

http://www.rollcall.com/news/heres-7-congressmen-accused-sexual-misconduct-since-metoo/

from The Press…

Having my mood lifted by the kindness of the mower man

By JOE BENNETT | 5:00AM — Wednesday, 28 November 2018

(https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/s/t/y/u/j/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.710x400.1sty4a.png/1543270154373.jpg) (https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/s/t/y/u/j/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.710x400.1sty4a.png/1543270154373.jpg)
A council mowing contractor's care around a duck and her new brood of ducklings helped lift
a dark mood for Joe Bennett. — Photograph: Ricky Wilson/STUFF.

GRIM MORNING, fit for a funeral, under rat-belly clouds so low you could touch them. And with a head full of the loathsome Trump I drove the dog to the recreation ground as a way of cracking the gloom.

You can see Trump's plan. He's hopelessly corrupt, so if he's to prevail he has to defeat the rule of law. To this end he's put a stooge in charge of the Department of Justice, and what he hopes are stooges on the Supreme Court, and he's tried to vilify the Special Counsel who by now knows all his crimes.

And Trump has fawned to the military. Because when the conflict comes, when Trump finally defies the order of a court, he'll need the military on his side, along with the three-headed hydra of right-wing American politics, the bigots, the Baptists and the billionaires.

Trump shouldn't prevail, of course, but by the same token he should never have been president. And if he does prevail, darkness falls. Indeed you can already see it falling. Ah well.

The recreation ground had been mown. At the age of 19 I had a job as a groundsman and I discovered the joys of mowing. Seated on the tractor I looked ahead of me at disorder — daisies flowering on the cricket field, grasses sprouting to uneven lengths — but when I looked behind me there was order, a grass carpet, uniform in length and colour. With my fierce and spinning blades of metal I'd imposed dominion on the earth and it was good.

Even today, if I am sour of mood, I find that mowing the lawns can lift the clouds, as can imposing order in some other way — cleaning the fish tank, say, or picking the clothes-drift from the bedroom floor. Order is balm.

But not for dogs. They like things natural. At the recreation ground my dog went straight to the margins, the unmown vestiges of wilderness, where the swaying grass heads and the unkempt shrubs told stories of what had passed that way, stories echoing back to the plains of Africa and the birth of his species.

On the far side of the rec was a patch that the mower had missed for its last few visits, a few square metres of longer grass, and with the dog engaged elsewhere I wandered over to see what was what. And what was what was clear. The unmown patch was a swampy depression and the council mower man, reluctant to risk his machine in the bog, had simply skirted it. It ruined the uniformity of the mowing but one could hardly blame him.

But even as I was on the point of turning away, in the midst of the swamp a duck's head popped up like a periscope. The bird eyed me a moment, decided I posed a threat, stood and lurched a little further away from its nest in the endearing manner of ducks. As it went it quacked quietly and it was then that I saw the brood of ducklings, fluff-balls that could not have been more than a few hours old and that clambered over the ridges of the swamp as if over Himalayan foothills.

And what was what seemed newly clear. The mower-man hadn't been avoiding a bog. He'd been saving a nest. And if a man on a council mower can steer round a duck for a month, well, that would do me.

“Don't you worry, dog,” I said, as we got back in the car a while later, “We'll see Trump in prison yet.”


• Julian “Joe” Bennett is a writer, columnist and retired English school teacher living in Lyttelton, New Zealand. Born in England, Bennett emigrated to New Zealand when he was twenty-nine.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/108892666/having-my-mood-lifted-by-the-kindness-of-the-mower-man (https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/108892666/having-my-mood-lifted-by-the-kindness-of-the-mower-man)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-D1KVIuvjA

Michael Cohen.

Go and google Michael Cohen and read the latest news stories.

Then go and read the idiot Donald J. Trump's latest tweets.

It's hilarious reading, seeing Trump lashing out in panic as the walls close in.

I reckon it's getting very close to indictments against Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump.

Robert S. Mueller III is going to have the final say about the entire corrupt, criminal Trump family.

And from early next year, the U.S. Congress will be appointing a shitload more special investigators to dig into Trump family criminal activities.

Michael Cohen lying rat trying to save his own skin

watch the Clintons get torn apart for their criminal behavior
uranium one pay to play

a whole shitstorm is about to be unleashed against the left wing traitors of America

be fun to watch

Yes, you hit the nail right on the head.

Michael Cohen told a shitload of lies on the orders of Donald J. Trump.

And he got caught lying to the Feds about it.

So now he has done the decent thing and pleaded guilty in an attempt to save his own skin.

After all, why should he go down when he was merely carrying out criminal acts on behalf of and on the orders of Donald J. Trump?

The instant the 46th President of the United States of America is sworn in should be a very entertaining piece of theatre as the handcuffs get slapped on the wrists of the 45th President and he gets led away to jail in front of the 46th President's inauguration crowd.

its a good job trumps bringing home all the troops they can help with the civil war that's going to fuck up all the traitors

be funny when all the Americans come to DC with their guns and hang all the commie bastards  ;D

It's a good reason to have a fully armed free people lol

Yes, seeing America disintegrate into total chaos would be a good thing, because it will mean the downfall of America much sooner than it was going to happen anyway.

Which is why Donald J. Trump is such a good thing for the world: he is fucking up America and making it easy for China to take over.

the only reason it would be fun if China won the world
would be the thought of watching you being put in a death camp and having your poxy organs harvested

You've been listening to that lunatic Alex Jones for too long.

He has “FUCKED” your brain.

No wonder you think that god delusion inside your mind is a real god.

If I lived in Woodville, I would stand outside your house every day pointing in your direction and rolling around the ground pissing myself laughing.

I don't need Alex Jones to tell me commies are arseholes

Maybe you should just open your eyes and use your tiny brain with its little common sense

Communism is shit and fails every time

China communism is the story 1984 on steroids
a slave camp where the rich commie trash leaders live like kings.

They exploit their workers as their personal cheap slave labor

China steals everything from the west and screws their own country men's lives


Desperate women fleeing Venezuela sell hair, breast milk, sex to get by

https://www.foxnews.com/world/venezuelan-women-sell-hair-sex-and-breast-milk-to-survive-as-country-crumbles

Venezuela is fucked gee thanks commie dumb cunts

yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda …


… yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda … yadda …

Yawn yada yada yada

picture for a white trash cum sucking commie

(https://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ben-G-dems-768x543.jpg)

Hahaha ... those two are going to turn Trump's life into total hell in 2019.

Just over a week to go and the Democrats OWN Congress.

Trump can sit in his television room at the White House and tug his needledick while fuming with rage that he has become a lame duck president.

No wonder so many people he has approached to be his next chief of staff have flatly turned him down.

Who'd want to work for a total idiot? Only idiots, that's who.

hey white trash common commie talking about yourself again and your needle sized dick with your pin-sized brain
you think your dick is so big
go fuck yourself loser

(https://www.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/santacoal-dt-600.jpg)

from the print edition of the Los Angeles Times…

Trump in the mood to grumble

He talks about his ‘lonely’ holiday, defends Syria decision and criticizes Mattis.

By ELI STOKOLS | Thursday, January 03, 2019

(https://misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-c935-42f5-b0da-daebc36b7646/images/IMG_AP_19002695516928_1__3_1_HP4ORU8A.jpg) (https://misc.pagesuite.com/3630c326-c935-42f5-b0da-daebc36b7646/images/IMG_AP_19002695516928_1__3_1_HP4ORU8A.jpg)
President Donald J. Trump talked to reporters for more than 90 minutes on Wednesday, airing lingering grievances during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
 — Photograph: Evan Vucci/Associated Press.

WASHINGTON D.C. — President Trump, as he often does, had a few things to say.

After admitting that he had been lonely over the holidays, Trump took advantage of his first public appearance of the new year on Wednesday to air lingering grievances, make multiple false claims and reinforce recent decisions that have rattled financial markets and his party's leaders.

As he held forth for more than 90 minutes before a small pool of reporters and photographers, members of his Cabinet, ostensibly called to the White House for a meeting, sat quietly around a long conference table.

Trump defended his decision last month to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and sharply cut the deployment to Afghanistan, moves that disturbed Republican allies in Congress and prompted the resignation of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis. In doing so, he contradicted his own recent claim that the U.S. had achieved its objectives of total victory over Islamic State militants in Syria.

“Syria was lost long ago,” he said.

“Look, we don't want Syria,” he continued. “We're talking about sand and death. That's what we’re talking about. We're not talking about vast wealth. We're talking about sand and death,” he said, seemingly contrasting the war-wracked country with Iraq and its vast oil reserves.

Iran “can do what they want there, frankly,” he added, a comment likely to unnerve officials in Israel, who have worried that a U.S. withdrawal from its positions in eastern Syria would allow Iran to expand its influence there.

“It's not my fault,” he said. “I didn't put us there.”

Trump offered little further clarity on the U.S. withdrawal from Syria, which he initially said would take place in 30 days, saying now that the pullout will “take place over a period of time.”

Later, in a long riff about Afghanistan, Trump seemed to endorse Moscow's 1979 invasion of the country — an act that the U.S. viewed as an attempt to spread communism and waged a long, covert operation to combat during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia,” Trump said, making a case to leave the policing of hot spots in the Mideast and Central Asia to countries in the region. “They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight.”

The Soviet Union eventually was bankrupted by its Afghan war, Trump added. “Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan.”

Historians generally agree that the Russian invasion and subsequent occupation of much of Afghanistan was one of several factors that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, although the country never went bankrupt.

For years, Republicans have credited President Reagan with bringing an end to the Soviet Union by his aggressive increase in U.S. military spending.

Trump's comments stood in stark contrast to the view Mattis espoused in the resignation letter he presented last month after failing to convince the president to hold off on withdrawing from Syria.

“We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances,” Mattis wrote.

Mattis' comments clearly stung Trump, who responded last month with criticism of his former Pentagon chief. On Wednesday, he stepped that up, claiming that he fired Mattis.

“What's he done for me? How had he done in Afghanistan? Not too good,” Trump said. “As you know, President Obama fired him, and essentially so did I.”

Obama did not fire Mattis, although the general did retire several months early in 2013 from his position as the head of the military's Central Command after dissenting from Obama administration policy decisions.

Tuesday was Mattis' final day at the Pentagon. Trump, in a fit of pique after the resignation letter became public, had moved up Mattis' termination date.

In addition to his foreign policy comments, Trump also downplayed December's stock market losses, which erased all positive gains for the year, as “a little glitch” and asserted — wrongly — that there are “probably 30-35 million” immigrants in the U.S. illegally. The non-partisan Pew Research Center estimates that as of 2016, there were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country, a number that has declined in recent years.

Trump repeated his call for Democrats to agree to $5.6 billion in funding for a border wall, and expressed surprise not to have received overtures from them over the holidays to negotiate an end to the government shutdown.

“I was in the White House all by myself for six or seven days,” he said. “It was very lonely. My family was down in Florida. I said, ‘Stay there and enjoy yourself’. I felt I should be here just in case people wanted to come and negotiate the border security.”

Trump, who met later in the day with congressional leaders away from TV cameras, has already dismissed a funding proposal from House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi that includes $1.3 billion in border security funding.

While leaving the door open to a compromise, Trump continued to argue for the importance of a wall, pointing to other examples of barriers. He incorrectly asserted that Obama's Washington residence is surrounded by a 10-foot wall and cited the Vatican, which he said “has the biggest wall of them all.”

“When they say the wall is immoral, then you better do something about the Vatican,” he said. “Walls work.”

As Trump spoke, a “Game of Thrones”-style movie poster teasing Iran sanctions — “SANCTIONS ARE COMING,” it read — lay unfurled across the table directly in front of him. But he made no remarks on the subject.

He did, however, comment on Senator-elect Mitt Romney of Utah, who wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday that he was troubled by Trump's “deep descent in December” and that his deficit in “presidential leadership in qualities of character … has been most glaring.”

“I wish Mitt could be more of a team player,” Trump said. “And if he's not, that's OK too.”

Seeming to warn Romney about the fate that lies ahead for Republican lawmakers who vocally criticize him and his presidency, Trump boasted that he “got rid of” former Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, both of whom opted not to seek new terms last year.

Accusing both men of seeking publicity in taking stands against him, Trump suggested that Flake would be seeking a job as a paid cable news contributor — or perhaps in another profession that Trump himself once plied.

“Jeff Flake is now selling real estate or whatever he's doing,” he said dismissively.


• Eli Stokols is a White House reporter based in the Los Angeles Times Washington, D.C., bureau. He is a veteran of Politico and The Wall Street Journal, where he covered the 2016 presidential campaign and then the Trump White House. A native of Irvine, Stokols grew up in a L.A. Times household and is thrilled to report for what is still his family's hometown paper. He is also a graduate of UC Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7cf7d016-c072-4a71-bbca-c0d73e4cac1d (https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7cf7d016-c072-4a71-bbca-c0d73e4cac1d)
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=e071a602-e51a-4720-84a6-a8814967e175 (https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=e071a602-e51a-4720-84a6-a8814967e175)

Los Angeles Times Fake news

I hope he brings the troops home
let the other bastids fight their own fake wars

The U.S. military are going to run out of money in a few months.

And the Democrats aren't going to vote to provide them any money until Trump stops being stupid over his wankfest wall idea.

So the U.S. military had better get all their forces home from around the world before they no longer have any money to bring them home, let alone feed them where they are.

Hahaha ... Trump is going to LOSE his battle with the Democrats. They now hold the purse-strings to everything in America.

from The New York Times…

Donald Trump and His Team of Morons

Nobody left besides those with no reputation to lose.

By PAUL KRUGMAN | Monday, January 14, 2019

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/14/arts/14krugman/merlin_146399808_4a141edb-5ed5-4d57-baab-625034dac8e3-master768.jpg) (https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/14/arts/14krugman/merlin_146399808_4a141edb-5ed5-4d57-baab-625034dac8e3-superJumbo.jpg)
President Donald J. Trump greeting a member of his team, Sean Hannity, at a political rally in November.
 — Photograph: Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

THERE HAVE BEEN many policy disasters over the course of U.S. history. It's hard, however, to think of a calamity as gratuitous, an error as unforced, as the current federal shutdown.

Nor can I think of another disaster as thoroughly personal, as completely owned by one man. When Donald Trump told Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/us/politics/trump-border-wall-government-shutdown.html), “I will be the one to shut it down,” he was being completely accurate — although he went on to promise that “I'm not going to blame you for it,” which was a lie.

Still, no man is an island, although Trump comes closer than most. You can't fully make sense of his policy pratfalls without acknowledging the extraordinary quality of the people with whom he has surrounded himself. And by “extraordinary,” of course, I mean extraordinarily low quality. Lincoln had a team of rivals; Trump has a team of morons.

If this sounds too harsh, consider recent economic pronouncements by two members of his administration. Predictably, these pronouncements involve bad economics; that's pretty much a given. What's striking, instead, is the inability of either man to stay on script; they can't even get their right-wing mendacity right.

First up is Kevin Hassett (https://www.newsweek.com/government-shutdown-good-federal-employees-keveintrump-adviser-1288854), chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, who was asked about the plight of federal workers who aren't being paid. You don't have to be a public relations expert to know that you're supposed to express some sympathy, whether you feel it or not. After all, there are multiple news reports about transportation security workers turning to food banks (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/nyregion/tsa-shutdown.html), the Coast Guard suggesting its employees hold garage sales (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/01/09/coast-guard-families-told-they-can-have-garage-sales-cope-with-government-shutdown), and so on.

So the right response involves expressing concern about those workers but placing the blame on Democrats who don't want to stop brown-skinned rapists, or something like that. But no: Hassett declared that it's all good, that the workers are actually “better off,” because they're getting time off without having to use any of their vacation days.

Then consider what Sean Hannity had to say about taxing the rich. What's that? You say that Hannity isn't a member of the Trump administration? But surely he is in every sense that matters. In fact, Fox News isn't just state TV, its hosts clearly have better access to the president, more input into his decisions, than any of the so-called experts at places like the State Department or the Department of Defense.

Anyway, Hannity declared (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/01/04/sean-hannity-warns-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-will-stop-rich-people-buying-boats-and-taking-expensive/222427) that raising taxes on the wealthy would damage the economy, because “rich people won't be buying boats that they like recreationally,” and “they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore.”

Um, that's not the answer a conservative is supposed to give. You're supposed to insist that low taxes on the rich give them an incentive to work really really hard, not make it easier for them to take lavish vacations. You're supposed to declare that low taxes will induce them to save and spend money building businesses, not help them afford to buy new yachts.

Even if your real reason for favoring low taxes is that they let your wealthy friends engage in even more high living, you're not supposed to say that out loud.

Again, the point isn't that people in Trump's circle don't care about ordinary American families, and also talk nonsense — that's only to be expected. What's amazing is that they're so out of it that they don't know either how to pretend to care about the middle class, or what nonsense to spout in order to sustain that pretense.

So what's wrong with Trump's people? Why can't they serve up even some fake populism?

There are, I think, two answers, one generic to modern conservatism, one specific to Trump.

On the generic point: To be a modern conservative is to spend your life inside what amounts to a cult, barely exposed to outside ideas or even ways of speaking. Inside that cult, contempt for ordinary working Americans is widespread — remember Eric Cantor, the then-House majority leader, celebrating Labor Day by praising business owners (https://twitter.com/ericcantor/status/242654833218293760). So is worship of wealth. And it can be hard for cult members to remember that you don't talk that way to outsiders.

Then there's the Trump effect. Normally working for the president of the United States is a career booster, something that looks good on your résumé. Trump's presidency, however, is so chaotic, corrupt and potentially compromised by his foreign entanglements that anyone associated with him gets tainted — which is why after only two years he has already left a trail of broken men and wrecked reputations in his wake.

So who is willing to serve him at this point? Only those with no reputation to lose, generally because they're pretty bad at what they do. There are, no doubt, conservatives smart and self-controlled enough to lie plausibly, or at least preserve some deniability, and defend Trump's policies without making fools of themselves. But those people have gone into hiding.

A year ago I pointed out (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/opinion/trump-stable-genius.html) that the Trump administration was turning into government by the worst and the dumbest. Since then, however, things have gotten even worse and even dumber. And we haven't hit bottom yet.


• Paul Krugman (https://www.nytimes.com/by/paul-krugman) joined The New York Times in 1999 as an Op-Ed columnist. He is distinguished professor in the Graduate Center Economics Ph.D. program and distinguished scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York. In addition, he is professor emeritus of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. In 2008, Mr. Krugman was the sole recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade theory. Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1977. He has taught at Yale, M.I.T. and Stanford. At M.I.T. he became the Ford International Professor of Economics. Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 27 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal. Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises. At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience. Some of his articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist. His column (https://www.nytimes.com/by/paul-krugman) appears every Tuesday and Friday. Read his blog, The Conscience of a Liberal (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com), and follow him on Twitter (https://twitter.com/NYTimeskrugman).

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on Tuesday, January 15, 2019, on Page A23 of the New York print edition with the headline: “Donald Trump And His Team Of Morons”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/opinion/government-shutdown-trump.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/opinion/government-shutdown-trump.html)

Trump is so stupid that he doesn't realise that every time he slags off at the media in an attempt to intimidate them, they simply retaliate by digging deeper and deeper to see what else he has been hiding, then expose it for the entire world to see the sleaze and graft of the corrupt, criminal Trump mob.

---

from The New York Times…

At Trump's Inauguration, $10,000 for Makeup
and Lots of Room Service

New details of spending on President Trump's inaugural two years ago
show that it roughly doubled that of his immediate predecessors.

By MAGGIE HABERMAN, SHARON LaFRANIERE and BEN PROTESS | Monday, January 14, 2019

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-inaugural-1sub/merlin_149176377_b50351be-65e1-408f-a113-772ef12f9d93-jumbo.jpg) (https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-inaugural-1sub/merlin_149176377_b50351be-65e1-408f-a113-772ef12f9d93-superJumbo.jpg)
President Donald J. Trump and his wife, Melania, at a ball on Inauguration Day in 2017. — Photograph: Doug Mills/The New York Times.

WASHINGTON D.C. — Private donors put up $107 million to usher Donald J. Trump into office in style two years ago, and it is now clear just how enthusiastically his inaugural committee went to town with it.

There was $10,000 for makeup for 20 aides at an evening inaugural event. There was another $30,000 in per diem payments to dozens of contract staff members, in addition to their fully covered hotel rooms, room service orders, plane tickets and taxi rides, including some to drop off laundry.

The bill from the Trump International Hotel was more than $1.5 million. And there was a documentary, overseen by a close friend of Melania Trump's, that was ultimately abandoned.

The details of the expenditures, gleaned from interviews and from documents reviewed by The New York Times and not previously made public, show that the committee spent heavily on nearly every aspect of the events surrounding the inauguration.

In 72 days, it laid out about $100 million, roughly twice as much or more than was raised by Barack Obama or George W. Bush for their first and second presidential inaugurations.

The expansive spending reflected Mr. Trump's desire to make a grand entrance, with roughly 20 events around Washington, people familiar with the events said. It also had the hallmarks of previous Trump efforts, such as the campaign, with some Trump-family friends circumventing existing chains of command.

Disclosure of the spending details comes at a time when the inaugural committee is facing legal scrutiny over the donations that funded it.

Inaugural committees are required to document every donation with the Federal Election Commission, and the Trump team's reports are now under investigation (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/politics/trump-inauguration-investigation.html) by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Investigators are also looking into whether any foreign donations, which are illegal in the United States, were passed through Americans, and whether any donations went unrecorded, people familiar with the inquiries said.

People involved with the committee have said that they vetted all donors, but that they could do only so much to prove someone's money was their own. False statements to the Federal Election Commission can be a crime.

The investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan was prompted at least partly by a recording that Mr. Trump's former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, made of a conversation he had with a central figure in the inaugural planning, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, shortly after Mrs. Trump ended Ms. Winston Wolkoff's role as an unpaid adviser to the first lady. Ms. Winston Wolkoff was dismissed after initial reports about the amount of money taken in by the entity she formed to help produce the inaugural.

There is no indication of any investigation into the inaugural committee's spending. For the most part, inaugural committees are free to spend the money they raise from private donations as they wish.

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-inaugural-4/merlin_149174688_64e2259d-3173-4bf0-9480-25eaa03e9914-jumbo.jpg) (https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-inaugural-4/merlin_149174688_64e2259d-3173-4bf0-9480-25eaa03e9914-superJumbo.jpg)
The Trump International Hotel billed the inaugural committee more than $1.5 million. — Photograph: Doug Mills/The New York Times.

The bulk of the money for the inaugural committee came from big corporations, like AT&T, Bank of America and Pfizer, and wealthy Republicans donors, like Sheldon G. Adelson and Andrew Beal.

Given the short time frame between Election Day and Inauguration Day, inaugural committees cannot always seek out the lowest bidder. In the case of Mr. Trump's inaugural, some staff members and major vendors were veterans of previous inaugurations.

Much of the spending, while outsize, was mundane. Documents reviewed by The New York Times accounted for the entire $107 million raised for the inaugural, with most of the money going to payroll expenses and roughly 40 entities, the bulk of which were hotel chains and other vendors.

Roughly $5 million went to charity, which organizers have noted is the most ever for an inaugural committee.

But millions were written off in lost revenue. That included $6.4 million for blocks of hotel rooms booked for guests who ended up arranging their own accommodations. The Republican National Committee booked the excess hotel rooms before the inaugural staff was even formed, but the committee had to pony up when only half as many rooms were used as the party organization had expected.

Another $1.2 million in revenue that the committee expected to recoup for a media center never materialized.

Other arrangements by the inaugural committee also proved unusual.

Ms. Winston Wolkoff, then a close friend of Mrs. Trump's, was initially signed to a $1.6 million contract. Along with a friend, Jonathan Reynaga, she formed WIS Media Partners, a firm that oversaw broadcast rights for the inaugural events and worked on the documentary project featuring interviews with top inaugural committee officials.

The idea was to sell the rights to a major distributor. The project was later abandoned, although the interview footage still exists, as do copies, according to three people familiar with the effort.

WIS Media Partners became the inaugural committee's top vendor, acting as a kind of general contractor and overseeing a series of events. It received nearly $26 million, much of which was paid out to other vendors.

Steve Kerrigan, who was chief of staff for Mr. Obama's first inaugural committee, said that the firm's $1.6 million “supervisory fee” was the equivalent of “roughly one-fourth of what we paid our entire 450-person staff” in 2009. Even if Ms. Winston Wolkoff shared the fee among more than a dozen other top managers, as she and others say she did, the charge itself, Mr. Kerrigan said, was “outrageous.”

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/14/us/15dc-inaugural-2/merlin_133935350_fdef2344-7a93-4aca-aa3d-8fd334ffa0aa-jumbo.jpg) (https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/14/us/15dc-inaugural-2/merlin_133935350_fdef2344-7a93-4aca-aa3d-8fd334ffa0aa-superJumbo.jpg)
A firm led by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a good friend of Melania Trump's, was paid a $1.6 million “supervisory fee” for the inauguration.
 — Photograph: Justin T. Gellerson/for The New York Times.

Greg Jenkins, the executive director of Mr. Bush's second inaugural, said, “I have never heard anybody getting that kind of fee associated with any inaugural, ever.”

Ms. Winston Wolkoff often fought with other top aides, according to people with direct knowledge of events. She was known to threaten to have senior officials fired, at times brandishing a cellphone and saying she would text Mrs. Trump or Ivanka Trump, the president's elder daughter, conveying a sense of authority that people later came to realize she did not have, three people with direct knowledge of the events said.

A lawyer for Ms. Winston Wolkoff declined to comment.

A spokesman for WIS Media Partners said all of the firm's charges “were vetted, authorized and signed off on” by the committee's top officials, including Thomas J. Barrack Jr., the committee's chairman; Rick Gates, the deputy chairman; and Sara Armstrong, the chief executive.

He said the firm's fees were “significantly below” the customary charges “for equivalent productions,” and that officials provided the inaugural committee with “all its audited records and receipts.” He said the company could not reveal more because it is legally barred by the inaugural committee from discussing its work on the inaugural events.

In a statement, Mr. Barrack said he continues “to be proud of the incredible work of all those that were part of the committee” and that it “complied with all laws and regulations, and its finances were fully audited internally and independently. The donors were fully vetted and disclosed to the Federal Election Commission as required.”

Mr. Trump's inaugural committee has come under scrutiny (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/us/politics/melania-trump-inauguration-adviser.html) in the past for its high administrative and logistical costs. The new details help flesh out how the inaugural spent the money. Among the payments was more than $2 million spent on the firm of the Trump campaign official Brad Parscale for online advertisements to drum up inaugural crowds.

The Trump International Hotel was paid more than $1.5 million for services including the use of a ballroom, an “annex” and a space called the townhouse, according to records and people familiar with the payments.

While two other hotels, the Willard and the Fairmont, collected as much or more, Mr. Trump's hotel was also favored by vendors who billed their expenses directly to the committee.

Over all, the Trump team's spending appears “astronomical,” said Emmett S. Beliveau, who was chief executive of Mr. Obama's first inaugural committee.

Mr. Jenkins, who handled the Bush inaugural, said the scale of the Trump team's spending “blows me away.”

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-inaugural-3/merlin_149176395_f52f9165-9a15-4cc5-a642-8de1b58141b4-jumbo.jpg) (https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/15/us/15dc-inaugural-3/merlin_149176395_f52f9165-9a15-4cc5-a642-8de1b58141b4-superJumbo.jpg)
The inaugural committee spent $924,000 on seven-foot-high wreaths, moss-covered obelisks, flowers and other decorations to dress up Union Station.
 — Photograph: Doug Mills/The New York Times.

Ms. Winston Wolkoff and Mr. Reynaga brought in nearly three dozen staff members, some of whom flew in from Los Angeles or other cities and remained on the East Coast for weeks. WIS also helped bring in a New York-based party planner named David Monn, who refused to sign a contract, according to two people familiar with the arrangement. Mr. Monn charged the committee a total of $3.7 million, from which he paid subcontractors.

Among other tasks, Ms. Winston Wolkoff and colleagues managed the 500-person black-tie dinner hosted by Mr. Barrack at the neo-Classical Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium and a 1,500-person “candlelight” dinner at Union Station. They decided the decorations were not elegant enough and needed to be enhanced.

Mr. Monn spent $924,000 on seven-foot-high wreaths, moss-covered obelisks, flowers and other decorations to dress up Union Station. Makeup was provided for 20 staff members at a cost of $500 per person. For the dinner at the auditorium, table menus, table numbers and place cards, including an on-site calligrapher to correct last-minute mistakes, amounted to $91 per guest. Mr. Monn did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Monday.

The handling of expenses for contractors like WIS Media Partners was also unusual. Mr. Kerrigan, who also served as chief executive of Mr. Obama's second inaugural committee, said officials negotiated fixed-price contracts that limited how much vendors could charge for expenses.

If a vendor's staff member ran up a big room service bill, “that was on them,” said David Cusack, who was the executive director of the second committee. “They had a per diem, and they were supposed to eat on that.”

For Mr. Bush's second inaugural, too, vendors were required to build their expenses into their contracts, Mr. Jenkins said. He said his committee did not even hire vendors from outside the Washington area because “there was no need to.”

The Trump inaugural committee covered not only a fixed per diem for the people brought in by WIS Media, but picked up expenses including room service, cab rides for assistants who dropped off laundry and an order of McDonald's. All told, those expenses came to $227,511.

In less than two months, WIS billed $31,000 for hotel rooms described as Mr. Reynaga's, including nearly $18,000 for rooms at the Trump International Hotel, according to detailed expense documents reviewed by The New York Times. He also billed thousands of dollars for meals, room service and travel. On one day, he charged a $560 Amtrak train ticket from New York to Washington, plus a $251 first-class upgrade to meet with Mr. Barrack. That was followed by a $100 Uber ride the next day to “get to Tom's plane,” the records show.

The spokesman for WIS said WIS expenses were paid through business cards tied to a few senior officials of the firm, including Mr. Reynaga, meaning that Mr. Reynaga could have been paying for other employees' costs.

He also said staff members stayed at the Trump International Hotel “at the explicit direction” of inaugural committee officials. A former official of the inaugural committee denied that the WIS employees were required to stay at the Trump hotel.


• Maggie Haberman and Sharon LaFraniere reported from Washington, and Ben Protess from New York.

• Maggie Haberman (https://www.nytimes.com/by/maggie-haberman) is a White House correspondent. She joined The New York Times in February 2015 as a campaign correspondent. Previously, Ms. Haberman worked as a political reporter at Politico from 2010 to 2015 and at other publications including the New York Post and New York Daily News. She was a finalist for the Mirror Awards, with Glenn Thrush, for “What is Hillary Clinton Afraid of?” (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/hillary-clinton-media-105901) which was published in 2014. Her hobbies include singing, and she is married with three children.

• Sharon LaFraniere (https://www.nytimes.com/by/sharon-lafraniere) is an investigative reporter at The New York Times. Ms. LaFraniere began writing for The N.Y. Times in 2003, covering southern Africa for the international department. She moved from Johannesburg to Beijing in early 2008 to report on China. For the past four years, she has been based in New York. Before joining The N.Y. Times, Ms. LaFraniere was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post for 20 years. Her last assignment was at its Moscow bureau, where from 1998 to 2003 she covered the Russian region, including war zones in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Ms. LaFraniere received The Gerald Loeb Award in 2013 for international reporting, the Michael Kelly Award in 2006 for her coverage of women in sub-Saharan Africa and the Overseas Press Club Award for business reporting in 1999. Born in Detroit, she received a bachelor's degree from Brown University and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Ms. LaFraniere is married with three children and resides in the New York area.

• Ben Protess (https://www.nytimes.com/by/ben-protess) covers the Trump Administration for The New York Times, including its overhaul of Obama-era regulations and potential conflicts of interest arising out of the president's personal business dealings. Since joining The N.Y. Times in 2010, he has covered white collar crime, Wall Street lobbying and was the co-author of a five-part investigation of the private equity industry and its expanding role in everyday American life.

• A version of this article appears in The New York Times on Monday, January 15, 2019, on Page A1 of the New York print edition with the headline: “At Inauguration, Spending Money At a Record Pace”.


Related to this topic:

 • Prosecutors Examining Ukrainians Who Flocked to Trump Inaugural (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/ukraine-donald-trump-inauguration.html)

 • Trump Inaugural Fund and Super PAC Said to Be Scrutinized for Illegal Foreign Donations (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/politics/trump-inauguration-investigation.html)

 • Melania Trump Parts Ways With Adviser Amid Backlash Over Inaugural Contract (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/us/politics/melania-trump-inauguration-adviser.html)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/trump-inauguration-spending.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/trump-inauguration-spending.html)

from The Washington Post…

What Trump's orgy of inaugural spending tells us
about the people around him

Lincoln had a team of rivals; Trump has a team of grifters.

By PAUL WALDMAN | 3:57PM EST — Tuesday, January 15, 2019

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1111w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2019/01/15/Editorial-Opinion/Images/NQPAERQZBMI6TOHGKZYZBQX5BA.jpg) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2019/01/15/Editorial-Opinion/Images/NQPAERQZBMI6TOHGKZYZBQX5BA.jpg)
U.S. President Donald J, Trump speaks in front of fast food provided for the 2018 College Football Playoff National Champion Clemson Tigers, due to the partial
government shutdown, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington D.C. on January 14, 2019. — Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters.

IT'S safe to say President Trump is not too happy about how things have gone for him personnel-wise over the last few years. As a presidential candidate, he promised that he would assemble a platinum-quality staff, as though Corinthian leather (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corinthian_leather) and gold leaf were government bureaucrats.

“I'm going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people,” he said in 2015 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/08/trump-ends-relationship-with-longtime-political-adviser-roger-stone). “We want top of the line professionals.”

Yet, somehow, it hasn't worked out that way. In fact, over time, we have learned that in both his business and political life, Trump has been followed by a truly extraordinary collection of grifters and thieves, people who, to paraphrase George Plunkitt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Plunkitt), seen their opportunities and took 'em. And there was never an opportunity quite like Trump, at least until you get caught.

That's the message of documents that were obtained by The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/trump-inauguration-spending.html) and ABC News (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-donald-trumps-inaugural-fund-spent-lavishly-dc/story?id=60361242), laying out what Trump's inaugural committee did with the record amounts of money it spent — more than $100 million, twice what Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush spent on their inaugurals, despite the fact that the Trump inaugural included a relatively small number of events. The picture painted by the figures amounts to that unusual combination of greed, ethical vacuum and incompetence that is so characteristically Trumpian.

Just like his business, just like his campaign, and just like his administration, it appears that all kinds of people looked at this Trump enterprise and said “Here's my chance to fill my pockets.” Here are some of the highlights:

• Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a friend of first lady Melania Trump, set up an event-planning company just before the inauguration; her company billed almost $26 million. Though most of that went to subcontractors, she was paid a $1.6 million fee (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/trump-inauguration-spending.html). Veterans of both the Obama and Bush inaugurals called that fee outrageous; it amounted to “roughly one-fourth of what we paid our entire 450-person staff” in 2009, said one Obama staffer.

• Trump campaign digital chief Brad Parscale, who will be managing the president's re-election campaign, was paid more than $2 million to use his online wizardry to drum up a crowd for the inauguration. You'll remember how that worked out (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/06/donald-trump-inauguration-crowd-size-photos-edited).

• The Trump International Hotel billed the inaugural committee $1.5 million, in addition to making unspecified amounts from guests who made their own reservations.

• “One couple working for Winston-Wolkoff billed the inauguration $1,835 in room service charges (https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/Politics/president-donald-trumps-inaugural-fund-spent-lavishly-dc/story?id=60361242) [at the Trump International] over three days.”

• The committee spent $6.4 million (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/trump-inauguration-spending.html) on empty hotel rooms after guests arranged their own accommodations.

• Another party planner hired by Winston Wolkoff, David Monn, billed the committee $3.7 million. From The New York Times report (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/trump-inauguration-spending.html): “Mr. Monn spent $924,000 on seven-foot-high wreaths, moss-covered obelisks, flowers and other decorations to dress up Union Station. Makeup was provided for 20 staff members at a cost of $500 per person. For the dinner at the auditorium, table menus, table numbers and place cards, including an on-site calligrapher to correct last-minute mistakes, amounted to $91 per guest.”

For some reason, the makeup is the line item that strikes me as the most extravagant, but what do I know.

You might ask, who cares? So a bunch of corporations and rich people decided to give Trump their money — they should have known what would happen to it. This whole practice of having the super wealthy and special interests rain money on the newly elected president for a bunch of parties is where the problem lies.

Which is true enough. But it's still an excellent representation of the kind of people and practices that Donald Trump attracts. When you elect someone such as him, you not only get his personal corruption, but in the bargain you get the kind of people he surrounds himself with, a corruption multiplier.

I don't think it's an accident that Obama, a man of obviously high personal integrity, not only didn't have any scandals, but suffered no significant scandals of graft and corruption among his underlings. With Trump, on the other hand, they're everywhere, as befits a man who lies in the way the rest of us ingest oxygen, keeps his tax returns secret, doesn't pay his bills (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/28/i-sold-trump-100000-worth-of-pianos-then-he-stiffed-me), and spent years running one con after another on gullible victims.

And it runs in both directions. So Michael Cohen looks at Trump and says, “That's the guy I want to get next to,” and when Trump meets Cohen he says, “This kid is aces; I'm bringing him into my inner circle.” (Those aren't actual quotes.) The same thing happened, in one form or another, with the many others around Trump who have either pleaded guilty to crimes or been engulfed in scandal: Paul Manafort (https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/14/politics/paul-manafort-guilty-plea/index.html), Michael Flynn (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/politics/michael-flynn-guilty-russia-investigation.html), Scott Pruitt (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-epa-head-steps-down-after-wave-of-ethics-management-scandals/2018/07/05/39f4251a-6813-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html), Ryan Zinke (https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/12/20/zinke-was-rising-star-washington-then-he-joined-trump-administration).

All were in one way or another trying to get their hands on as much cash and perks as they could, and they saw Trump as a vehicle to do that, while he saw them as his kind of folks. When we learn that acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney seems to have skipped out (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/old-land-deal-quietly-haunts-mick-mulvaney-as-he-serves-as-trumps-chief-of-staff/2019/01/14/e1d3cd72-07b8-11e9-a3f0-71c95106d96a_story.html) on a $1.4 million loan, we realize why Trump likes him enough to have given him three jobs (and counting).

So the orgy of ludicrous inaugural spending tells us as much or more about the people Trump attracts than it does about Trump himself. And here's another reason why this is important: It's going to keep happening. Do you think you've seen the last scandal coming out of Trump's administration or his businesses? Oh dear, no. He's got at least two more years. There's much, much more to come.


• Paul Waldman (https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/paul-waldman) is an opinion writer for The Plum Line (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line) blog at The Washington Post. Before joining The Post, he worked at an advocacy group, edited an online magazine, taught at university and worked on political campaigns. He has authored or co-authored four books on media and politics, and his work has appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines. He is also a senior writer at the American Prospect.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/15/what-trumps-orgy-inaugural-spending-tells-us-about-people-around-him (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/15/what-trumps-orgy-inaugural-spending-tells-us-about-people-around-him)

from The Washington Post…

Donald Trump's fast-food presidency

We are living in a political era defined by the need for instant gratification.
The Trump administration is the embodiment of that.

By ROBERT GEBELHOFF | 6:09PM EST — Tuesday, January 15, 2019

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1111w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2019/01/15/Editorial-Opinion/Images/OQDAVCAYUQI6TOHGKZYZBQX5BA.jpg) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2019/01/15/Editorial-Opinion/Images/OQDAVCAYUQI6TOHGKZYZBQX5BA.jpg)
President Donald J. Trump speaks alongside fast food he purchased for a ceremony honoring the 2018 College Football Playoff National Champion Clemson Tigers.
 — Photograph: Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

PRESIDENT TRUMP couldn't welcome the Clemson University football team on Monday with food typically served at the White House, given that caterers there were furloughed under the partial government shutdown. So he did what many other Americans do when their options are limited: He ordered out (https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/01/14/clemson-tigers-visit-white-house-meet-with-trump).

The president celebrated the fast-food display — complete with mounds of hamburgers, fries, pizzas and, to be fair, some boxed salads — and, of course, boasted about paying for it himself. The reception, no doubt, was an attempt to make the president more relatable, but if anything, his cornucopia of greasy indulgence should serve as a symbol of his presidency.

On the bluntest level, Trump's default choice of “great American food” is a manifestation of a great American problem. People across the country — especially in low-income areas — too often rely on such inexpensive, high-calorie, high-sugar food to get by. We all know the result: a stark nutritional divide that saddles our most vulnerable communities with the brunt of our poor national health.

The problem is often framed as a lack of access to food — as in, low-income communities are less likely to have access to supermarkets or stores with fresh produce. But this “food desert” explanation doesn't suffice; research shows (https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/its-not-the-food-deserts-its-the-inequality/550793) the real issue is that junk food is just more affordable, more convenient and more ingrained in some communities than nutritious options are.

This is a reality that has long frustrated public-health advocates: It's simply difficult to change people's behavior. This is partly due to a lack of education on nutrition, but it's also due to the fact that consumers simply find the short-term cost reductions of junk food more attractive than addressing long-term health costs.

But food isn't the only aspect of life where Americans overvalue instant gratification and ignore the massive challenges looming on the horizon. The Trump administration embodies that mind-set.

Take climate change. Trump's opponents advocate taking on some of the long-term costs associated with remedying global warming now, either by implementing some type of carbon tax or using taxpayer money to subsidize cleaner energy. Trump's strategy is not merely to ignore the problem but to deny that it's even happening (https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26/politics/donald-trump-climate-change/index.html). The short-term economic benefits of carbon-based energy are just too tantalizing for the president's conservative base to give up, so he parades around talking about a “war on coal” (https://www.vox.com/2018/1/30/16953292/trump-war-on-coal-claim-fact-checked) and promising that coal jobs will reappear — as if the president has power to control the market forces that have cut into the coal industry.

Whereas others want to lay out a systematic overhaul of immigration policy — or, at the very least, make some kind of deal on immigration just to keep the government running — Trump's strategy is to exacerbate the problem but in ways that make his base feel good. He has ginned up a phony crisis at the border and offered a solution as flimsy as the fast-food containers he served on White House platters: a border wall that has little to do with effective immigration enforcement. Never mind the long-term immigration crises we face, such as the millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally, or dealing with the humanitarian and economic crises in Central America that spur migrants to come north in the first place.

And while others are alarmed about the growing debt and interest rate payments facing our country, Trump's strategy has been to hand out treats in the form of tax cuts to business interests. Despite his lip service to our growing fiscal woes on the campaign trail, he has set up the 2019 budget to reach a deficit greater than $1 trillion (https://www.wsj.com/articles/deficit-projected-to-top-1-trillion-starting-next-year-1531950742).

This is the junk-food presidency, oriented to a political era in which far too many people are concerned about immediate satisfaction. Whoever challenges Trump in 2020 will have a tough time persuading people to get serious about discomforting issues and advocating solutions that will require taxpayers to take on the costs of proper government. But if we focus a little more on the long term, perhaps we’ll be able to make our country a little healthier.


• Robert Gebelhoff is an assistant editor for The Washington Post's Opinions (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions) section. He has been with The Post since 2015 and his work appears on the PostPartisan blog. Before joining the Opinions section, he was a reporter for The Post's health and science section. Earlier, he was a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.


Related to this topic:

 • VIDEO: ‘Great American food’: Watch Trump welcome the Clemson Tigers with a fast-food buffet (http://)

 • Sonny Bunch: What Trump's fast-food feast and Gillette's woke razor blades have in common (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/15/what-trumps-fast-food-feast-gillettes-woke-razor-blades-have-common)

 • Jennifer Rubin: Trump's pitiful powerlessness (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/15/trumps-pitiful-powerlessness)

 • Trump's shutdown has paralyzed immigration courts. Oh, the irony. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-shutdown-has-paralyzed-immigration-courts-oh-the-irony/2019/01/01/4e9c8682-0d46-11e9-8938-5898adc28fa2_story.html)

 • The Washington Post's View: The Trump administration is making school lunches less healthy again (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-is-making-school-lunches-less-healthy-again/2018/12/18/3240091a-fe31-11e8-ad40-cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html)

 • Max Boot: I was wrong on climate change. Why can't other conservatives admit it, too? (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/i-was-wrong-on-climate-change-why-cant-other-conservatives-admit-it-too/2018/11/26/11d2b778-f1a1-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/15/donald-trumps-fast-food-presidency (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/15/donald-trumps-fast-food-presidency)

fark there's so much food there it goes right up to the sky

Excellent title for this thread.

Donald J. Trump sure is deranged alright.

And his supporters are fucked-in-the-head.

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/nTe1iAoXPtR-uIP2keueoZiSWas=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/76SYJQLHJFFIBPPAM6CODU5XSY.jpg) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/08/trump-vaults-into-first-place-historic-furtiveness)

from The Seattle Times…

Mayor Durkan spoils Trump's vindictive fun by welcoming immigrants

By DAVID HORSEY | 1:43PM PDT — Wednesday, April 24, 2019

(https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Sanctuary-city-ONLINE-COLOR-780x520.jpg) (https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Sanctuary-city-ONLINE-COLOR.jpg)

TWICE in the last six months President Trump has threatened to release hundreds of immigrant detainees (https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/white-house-proposed-releasing-immigrant-detainees-in-sanctuary-cities) into so-called sanctuary cities that have pledged not to cooperate with mass roundups of undocumented immigrants. Apparently, Trump sees this as a way to punish his political adversaries, since those cities are led by Democrats who oppose his administration on many fronts. The president's vindictive glee may have soured, however, since Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and other civic leaders across the country have made it clear they would welcome the immigrants with open arms.


• See more of David Horsey's cartoons at The Seattle Times HERE (https://www.seattletimes.com/author/david-horsey).

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/mayor-durkan-spoils-trumps-vindictive-fun-by-welcoming-immigrants (https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/mayor-durkan-spoils-trumps-vindictive-fun-by-welcoming-immigrants)





(http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/TooFunny_zps2gz4suf2.gif~original) (http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/LaughingPinkPanther_zpsy6iu8yso.gif~original) (http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/ROFLMAO_Dog_zpsc4esrpyc.gif~original) (http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/LaughingHard_zpswco6umsu.gif~original) (http://i378.photobucket.com/albums/oo227/Kiwithrottlejockey/ItchyBugga_zpsebzrttez.gif~original)

(https://scontent.fwlg2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s851x315/58381485_10216874434265709_1552684231451213824_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&_nc_ht=scontent.fwlg2-1.fna&oh=4695ee68860a3d85be6fe4c174961149&oe=5D74E92E)

(https://i.imgur.com/cg1AUO6.jpg) (https://imgur.com/gallery/bZzpl)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkVEiCbEzCg

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5mY1-YX4AAzZhu.jpg) (https://twitter.com/davidhorsey/status/1124097998043123712)

Barr is the winner

so now nobody is talking about Russia barr hahahaha ;D

The FACTS are simple.

Because Democrats control Congress, Trump cannot get any legislation passed without sucking up to the Democrats.

Ain't that a hoot, eh?  (https://cdn.smfboards.com/Smileys/smf/grin.gif)  (https://cdn.smfboards.com/Smileys/smf/2funny.gif)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5-s1wDUwAAxqHW.jpg) (https://twitter.com/davidhorsey/status/1125808522355023872)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6Ev05OXkAIWzWy.jpg) (https://twitter.com/JimmyMargulies/status/1126234424599822338)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7xGcdnVUAAfeMf.jpg) (https://twitter.com/davidhorsey/status/1133858679420121088)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8vA8bYXUAENzIw.jpg) (https://twitter.com/MatttDavies/status/1138215481708548096)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF_v88aW2ic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD0CYKK_mMo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF_v88aW2ic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYZG7NR9lBI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmmg5lNUYXk

(https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/1/w/f/6/9/d/image.gallery.galleryLandscape.1024x684.1wd9kf.png/1567336188518.jpg) (https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/114832270/jeff-bell-cartoons)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECbn93pWsAAORJn.jpg) (https://twitter.com/SigneWilk/status/1163872612273049605)

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EErvdCAXUAY1SoF.jpg) (https://twitter.com/wuerker/status/1174013939274997760)