Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

Roy Moore starts a GoFundMe for his legal bills he's building up because he raped a child.

Wow. Can't wait to see the donor list for that.

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I'm sorry, this is just too good NOT to share.



On topic:

Trump opposed to "critical" NY-NJ tunnel

Yep, that's an infrastructure project right there.

President Trump is pushing congressional Republicans not to fund a crucial infrastructure project — a long-delayed plan to build a new rail tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey — setting up a confrontation that could complicate passage of a massive government spending bill this month.

Trump personally appealed to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) this week to target federal funding for the $30 billion Gateway project, which would construct a tunnel into New York’s Penn Station to supplement two aging tubes that are at risk of failing in the coming years.

The project is widely considered to be among the most pressing and most expensive infrastructure needs in the country, and state and local leaders have long sought federal funding to jump-start work on it. But the Trump administration threw the project into doubt late last year by casting aside an agreement reached during the Obama administration that would have the federal government pick up half the project’s cost.

And now, according to four officials familiar with the discussions, Trump has taken a personal interest in making sure no federal dollars flow to a project that is considered critical to his hometown’s long-term economic prosperity.

[Breccia]

John Kelly has a sense of humor.

Yeah...

Trump doesn't.

White House chief of staff John Kelly's comment that God punished him when he left the Department of Homeland Security for the West Wing aggravated President Trump and was not well received, CBS News' chief White House correspondent Major Garrett reports.

Kelly made the remark, in a joking fashion, Thursday morning at at an event marking the 15th anniversary of his old department, DHS.

"I miss every one of you every day," Kelly said, rolling his eyes as the audience laughed. "Truly, six months, the last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life — being the secretary of homeland security — but I did something wrong, and God punished me, I guess."

More laughter ensued from the audience.

But the president did not take the joke so well. Mr. Trump, Garrett reports, believes he gave Kelly a lot of power when he arrived, and thinks Kelly should remember and appreciate that — not suggest he was cursed.

Kelly has been in a tough position in recent weeks, managing a White House facing turnover and shifting policy positions from the president. He faced scrutiny for the handling of Rob Porter, the ex-aide who was accused of abusing his ex-wives but operated on an interim security clearance in close proximity to the president for a year. Kelly now faces other staffing challenges, with the impending departure of Hope Hicks, one of Mr. Trump's most trusted allies who has served as the White House communications director. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster's job is also in jeopardy, Garrett reports. Sources tell Garrett an exit strategy may be in the works.

[Paranoid Android]

The Great Negotiator.

UCLA basketball players' release from China was secured before Trump got involved: report https://t.co/pv6j6X9uuv https://t.co/TpnvN72AUZ

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...mpression=true

[Breccia]

Clearly, there is only one place to go for a summing-up with this level of detail and sarcasm:

"Let’s go through it. Hope Hicks has quit, the person closest to the president among his White House staff. The president hates his attorney general. The deputy attorney general is defending the attorney general from the attack from the president. Gary Cohn, the national economic adviser, is threatening to quit because of the fact that the president announced these tariffs over his objection. The president reportedly wants to oust his national security adviser. Somebody is trying to get Jared Kushner. There’s a report in The New York Times today the president is telling Kushner that he’s sorry he’s taken all these slings and arrows while he’s supposedly at the same time taking to John Kelly help me get Kushner and Ivanka out of here. Other than that, it's sweetness, light, puppies and unicorns here in D.C."

That's right...the source of that detailed, critical scrutiny of Team Trump is none other than Chris Wallace of FOX Fucking News.

[Kujako]

Guys, I think I figured it out! Trump has determined, that if he acts like a lunatic, constantly flip flopping, going back on his word, and refusing to sign anything, that he can basically not work!

[Breccia]

Alex Jones receives his second strike after suggesting the school shooting was a false flag operation.

"You posted that already. That was Sandy Hook."

Nope. Well, I mean, yes, he did also say Sandy Hook was a false flag, but he said it about the Florida shooting as well. According to Alex Jones, nobody died in either attack, the parents are faking the children's deaths, and those are paid crisis actors.

Before a third strike has been issued, CNN contacted several groups that advertise on Alex Jones' channel, including the Mormon Church, the NRA, Alibaba and FOX News.

Many of the brands said they were unaware of the situation and canceled their ads on the channel after CNN reached out for comment. Several said they have reached out to YouTube about the situation.

Ad campaigns from YouTube don’t necessarily allow companies to know where their advertisements will show up but do allow organizations to use certain filters that keep their ads off certain content.

A number of the companies CNN spoke with said they are taking extra steps to ensure their ads do not show up on such content again.

"Okay that's great, but why the shitshow thread?"

Well, it goes beyond Trump appearing on the show that one time, around the same time Jones claimed 2,000 children were being shipped to Mars every day to be sex slaves. But the --

"Wait. Wait. Whoa. Children, shipped to Mars, to be sex slaves?"

It actually happened. Anyhow, Trump has long praised Alex Jones. There was the email his 2020 campaign sent, for one. And the press badge to the WH he gave him, for two. For three, Trump clearly likes conspiracy theories as much as Alex Jones does.

You might be thinking, Alex Jones believes Trump Jr. was hunting for Russian spies to wreck them. That's right: Trump Jr, a failing real estate agent, was actually in a deep cover operation to find Russian spies, to protect our country from Russian spies. That must be it, right? Trump needs people who believe him, and Alex Jones believes Trump is standing up to Russia, bravely striding upon those bone spurs and baiting them with lack of sanctions?

Nope.

Alex Jones has spent more times defending the size of Trump's penis than the time it took you to read this post.

Desperate as Trump is for anything remotely like positive press, Trump has not once chastised Jones. Nor has the WH responded to Alex Jones claiming Trump calls him for advice.

[Blade Wolf]

http://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushne...roperty-828847

Dunno if this has been posted but yeeeeeeeeaaah.....

[Baneth]

Wow. How many days has it been since all the bad news started?? There's been such a long chain of bad press, I've lost track of how many days it's been since this all started.

It's like a train, that caught fire, derailed, and for some miraculous reason, won't lose momentum after ploughing through schools, and large warehouse full of puppies and kittens.

[Thepersona]

Wow. How many days has it been since all the bad news started?? There's been such a long chain of bad press, I've lost track of how many days it's been since this all started.

It's like a train, that caught fire, derailed, and for some miraculous reason, won't lose momentum after ploughing through schools, and large warehouse full of puppies and kittens.

Well, this thread was opened on october 10th, last year. And almost every day it recieves an update... so you're right. Almost 4 months (that we're counting) of constant shitshows

[BrerBear]

I'm old enough to remember when US politics was boring enough that there wasn't enough content for multiple ShitShow posts every day...

We live in "interesting times".

[Poopymonster]

Great, there goes my 401k again...I have been trying to take some of it out for a wedding, but every time I think it's finally back to where it was a few months ago, he opens his mouth. Which, then causes the stock market to freak out.

Given the walkback on his "leave the due process, take the cannoli, er, guns" line, I still say child sized coffins are a good investment.

[Gestopft]

Trump on China's Xi consolidating power: 'Maybe we'll give that a shot some day'

Narcissistic, authoritarian shitbag is at it again. Any Trumpkins gonna defend this one?

[Dontrike]

Trump on China's Xi consolidating power: 'Maybe we'll give that a shot some day'

Narcissistic, authoritarian shitbag is at it again. Any Trumpkins gonna defend this one?

They'd love to, but defending that statement would quite literally mean they are some of the most un-American people out there.

[Poopymonster]

They'd love to, but defending that statement would quite literally mean they are some of the most un-American people out there.

1) Trump is MAGA.
2) If he leaves, there will stop MAGAing.
3) If Trump is forever, we will forever be MAGAing.
4) ???
5) I hear you.

[Breccia]

While Trump talks about being "President 4 Life" while shoving bacon cheeseburgers down his throat with no sense of irony whatsoever, let's take a moment and appreciate some of the beautiful parallels in life.

As I've cited before, our friendly neighborhood child rapist Roy Moore, a man so vile he lost a Republican election in Alabama, has been taking to the airwaves pleading for help. Legal fees fighting off the lawsuit from the child he raped is causing him hardship, he says also with no sense of irony whatsoever, and he needs $250,000 as he has "struggled to make ends meet" on his AL pension of $130k a year. As of linked article, he's gotten $32,000.

Meanwhile, a different form of GoFundMe has been running for a while: help for the families of the Las Vegas shooting, the results of which were 58 dead. a nearly uncountable pile of hopes and prayers, and 50% of the needed number of shootings before Trump thinks maybe banning bump stocks might possibly be WHOOPS CHOKE CHAIN nevermind.

To help the families who actually have struggled making ends meet -- because, you know, of the people who were shot and killed supporting their families -- this GoFundMe campaign has now raised $275,000, also known as "110% of a child rapist's legal fees".

Each.

$275,000 to each of fifty-eight families.

That's nearly $32 million total, or "one thousand times what people have donated so far to child rapist Roy Moore".

So while Trump's endorsed pick Roy Moore talks about how he needs help so he can bring the Light of God to the liberal media and Congress, waving his Rod of Iron on stage...the people of the United States of America came together, quietly under the radar, and actually made the world, at least a little bit, a better place.

I say that with no sense of irony whatsoever.

[Travis B]

That's nearly $32 million total, or "one thousand times what people have donated so far to child rapist Doug Jones".

I may have missed something, but did you mean to say Roy Moore instead?

[Breccia]

I may have missed something, but did you mean to say Roy Moore instead?

God dammit, yes, fixing it. Gah, read too many articles at once again.

[Stormspark]

I may have missed something, but did you mean to say Roy Moore instead?

Yeah I think it was a mispaste. Doug Jones is the Democrat who WON. Roy Moore is the rapist.

[Mormolyce]

Alex Jones receives his second strike after suggesting the school shooting was a false flag operation.

"You posted that already. That was Sandy Hook."

Nope. Well, I mean, yes, he did also say Sandy Hook was a false flag, but he said it about the Florida shooting as well. According to Alex Jones, nobody died in either attack, the parents are faking the children's deaths, and those are paid crisis actors.

Before a third strike has been issued, CNN contacted several groups that advertise on Alex Jones' channel, including the Mormon Church, the NRA, Alibaba and FOX News.

But has anyone contacted Paleo Power?

[Breccia]

WaPo's headline says it all.

‘Pure madness’: Dark days inside the White House as Trump shocks and rages

Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center.

These are the darkest days in at least half a year, they say, and they worry just how much farther President Trump and his administration may plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover. As one official put it: “We haven’t bottomed out.”

Trump is now a president in transition, at times angry and increasingly isolated. He fumes in private that just about every time he looks up at a television screen, the cable news headlines are trumpeting yet another scandal. He voices frustration that son-in-law Jared Kushner has few on-air defenders. He revives old grudges. And he confides to friends that he is uncertain about whom to trust.

"No thanks, I already have a hairpiece."

Trump’s closest West Wing confidante, Hope Hicks — the communications director who often acted as a de facto Oval Office therapist — announced her resignation last week, leaving behind a team the president views more as paid staff than surrogate family. So concerned are those around Trump that some of the president’s oldest friends have been urging one another to be in touch — the sort of familiar contacts that often lift his spirits.

In an unorthodox presidency in which emotion, impulse and ego often drive events, Trump’s ominous moods manifested themselves last week in his zigzagging positions on gun control; his shock trade war that jolted markets and was opposed by Republican leaders and many in his own administration; and his roiling feud of playground insults with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Some of Trump’s advisers say the president is not all doom and gloom, however. He has been pleased with the news coverage of his role in the gun debate and lighthearted moments have leavened his days, such as a recent huddle with staff to prepare his comedic routine for the Gridiron, a Saturday night dinner with Washington officials and journalists.

Still, Trump’s friends are increasingly concerned about his well-being, worried that the president’s obsession with cable commentary and perceived slights is taking a toll on the 71-year-old. “Pure madness,” lamented one exasperated ally.

"Ms. Hicks, you don't have to stand like that anymore."
"Oh, thank God."

Retired four-star Army general Barry McCaffrey said the American people — and Congress especially — should be alarmed.

“I think the president is starting to wobble in his emotional stability and this is not going to end well,” McCaffrey said. “Trump’s judgment is fundamentally flawed, and the more pressure put on him and the more isolated he becomes, I think, his ability to do harm is going to increase.”

This portrait of Trump at a moment of crisis just over a year after taking office is based on interviews with 22 White House officials, friends and advisers to the president and other administration allies, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss Trump’s state of mind.

The tumult comes as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russia’s 2016 election interference and the president’s possible obstruction of justice has intensified. Meanwhile, Kushner, a White House senior adviser, was stripped last week of his access to the nation’s top secrets amid increasing public scrutiny of his foreign contacts and of his mixing of business and government work.

Trump has been asking people close to him whether they think Kushner or his company has done anything wrong, according to a senior administration official. Two advisers said the president repeatedly tells aides that the Russia investigation will not ensnare him — even as it ensnares others around him — and that he thinks the American people are finally starting to conclude that the Democrats, as opposed to his campaign, colluded with the Russians.

Still, the developments have delivered one negative headline after another, leading Trump to lose his cool — especially in the evenings and early mornings, when he often is most isolated, according to advisers.

For instance, aides said, Trump seethed with anger last Wednesday night over cable news coverage of a photo, obtained by Axios, showing Sessions at dinner with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation, and another top Justice Department prosecutor. The outing was described in news reports as amounting to an act of solidarity after Trump had attacked Sessions in a tweet that morning.

The next morning, Trump was still raging about the photo, venting to friends and allies about a dinner he viewed as an intentional show of disloyalty.

Trump has long been furious with Sessions for recusing himself from oversight of the Russia probe, and privately mocks him as “Mr. Magoo,” an elderly and bumbling cartoon character. But this past week the president was irate that his attorney general had asked the Justice Department’s inspector general — as opposed to criminal prosecutors — to investigate alleged misdeeds by the FBI in obtaining surveillance warrants.

"What? I'm not pretending to smile to conceal the fact that it's just now dawning on me that I pushed hard to get a failed businessman with possibly diagnosable mental issues in charge of our economy."

On Friday morning, Trump targeted his ire elsewhere. About an hour after Fox News Channel aired a segment about comedian Alec Baldwin saying he had tired of impersonating Trump on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” Trump lit into Baldwin on Twitter, initially misspelling his first name. “It was agony for those who were forced to watch,” the president wrote at 5:42 a.m.

“Trump’s fundamentally distorted personality — which at its core is chaotic, volatile and transgressive — when combined with the powers of the presidency had to end poorly,” said Peter Wehner, a veteran of the three previous Republican administrations and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “What we’re now seeing is the radiating effects of that, and it’s enveloped him, his White House, his family and his friends.”

Trump jetted Friday to his favorite refuge, his private Mar-a-Lago Club in South Florida, where he dined on the gilded patio with old friends — former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and wife Judith and Blackstone Group chairman Stephen A. Schwarzman, among others. Trump tried to convince his companions that trade tariffs were more popular than they think, according to someone with knowledge of their conversation.

Shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday, he rolled up to the Trump International Golf Course for a sunny, 70-degree morning on the greens. Rather than firing off a flurry of angry messages as on other recent weekend mornings, the president tweeted only, “Happy National Anthem Day!” But then shortly after noon, once he returned to Mar-a-Lago from the golf course, Trump tweeted that the mainstream media has “gone CRAZY!”

Trump is testing the patience of his own staff, some of whom think he is not listening to their advice. White House counsel Donald McGahn and national economic council director Gary Cohn have been especially frustrated, according to other advisers.

The situation seems to be grating as well on White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, who had been on the ropes over his handling of domestic-abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter but who now appears on firmer footing. Talking last week about his move from being homeland security secretary to the West Wing, Kelly quipped, “God punished me.”

sniff sniff "Dammit, someone needs to change Trump's diaper again. He just crapped out a 25% tariff on Canada and the EU."

Last Friday, Kelly tried to explain anew the timeline of Porter’s dismissal with a group of reporters — an unprompted move that annoyed and confused some White House staffers, who thought they were finally moving past the controversy that had consumed much of February.

“Morale is the worst it’s ever been,” said a Republican strategist in frequent contact with White House staff. “Nobody knows what to expect.”

Since Trump entered presidential politics three years ago, Hicks has been his stabilizing constant, tending his moods and whims in addition to managing his image. Within the president’s orbit, many wonder whether Trump has fully absorbed the impact of Hicks’s upcoming departure.

Trump told one friend that Hicks was a great young woman, who, after three intense years, was ready to do her own thing. He told this friend that he recognized the White House was full of “tough hombres,” according to someone briefed on the conversation.

But other confidants said the president feels abandoned and alone — not angry with Hicks, but frustrated by the circumstance. Coupled with last fall’s departure of longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller, Trump will have few pure loyalists remaining.

“Losing people is too much of a story for the president,” said oil investor Dan K. Eberhart, a Trump supporter and a Republican National Committee fundraiser. “It just seems like it’s imploding . . . Trump had momentum with tax reform, the State of the Union speech. He should try to keep that going.”

The president’s decision last Thursday to announce steep new tariffs on aluminum and steel — and gleefully tout a possible trade war — caught almost his entire team, including some of his top trade advisers, by surprise.

Earlier in the week, Cohn was telling people he was going to continue stalling Trump on tariffs. He described the tariffs as “obviously stupid,” in the recollection of one person who spoke to him.

“Gary said to him, you can’t do this, you can’t do that,” a senior administration official said. “The more you tell him that, the more he is going to do what he wants to do.”

Repeatedly bolded for emphasis. Red text for flat-out insanity.

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North Korea has refused to meet with the USA, citing that Trump's preconditions for the talk are unacceptable.

"What preconditions were demanded, in the effort to diplomatically get North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program?"

North Korea would have to end its nuclear weapons program.

"Yes, what were the preconditions?"

Those were the preconditions.

"The U.S. is taking preposterous action by continuing to trumpet an insistence that it will not have dialogue unless a right condition is met and that it will keep watching if we have intention to abandon nuclear weapons and missiles and so on," the foreign ministry said.

"The U.S., that was terrified at the rapid development of our nuclear force and has continued to knock the door of dialogue, now feigns an indifference and advances this or that precondition," the ministry said, deploying the fractured English typically used in its diplomatic communications. "Not being content with it, it insists that it will have dialogue only for making the DPRK abandon nuclear weapons and persist in 'maximum pressure' until complete denuclearization is realized. This is really more than ridiculous."

Just so we're clear: asking North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program before diplomatic negotiations continue, is like taking Jerusalem away from the Palestinians before working out a peace deal between them and Israel.