Trump and his cabinet/buffoonery- Get your bunkers ready!

[visionary]

 

 

 

 

 

[Larry]

55 minutes ago, China said:

The Dumbest Moments of the Trump Presidency

 

For five years, we kept a Google Doc of the most deeply idiotic episodes of this monumentally stupid era. Now it’s time to share our work with the world.
 

“His idiot doctor”
Dec. 14, 2015: In December 2015, amid questions about what CNN described as Trump’s “self-avowed lack of an exercise routine and his indulging diet,” his campaign releases a statement from a doctor that purports to establish his physical bona fides. Despite Trump’s previous promise to release “a full medical report,” Dr. Harold Bornstein simply attests in a short letter that Trump’s lab work is “astonishingly excellent,” that his “physical strength” is “extraordinary,” and that Bornstein believes, “unequivocally,” that the candidate would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Bornstein, who looks like his picture goes next to the entry for “quack doctor” in the Big Book of Sitcom Character Tropes, later tells CNN that Trump dictated the letter. —BML

 

“George Papadopoulos listing a Model U.N. thing he may not even have actually done on his résumé”
March 21, 2016: With its candidate taking heat for having almost no familiarity with any subject related to the job of governing the United States, the Trump campaign releases a list of its alleged “foreign policy advisers,” including an individual named George Papadopoulos, to the Washington Post. The Post immediately notices that the top item in the “Honors and Awards” section of Papadopoulos’ LinkedIn page is a claim to have participated in a 2012 Model United Nations event in Geneva, i.e., a conference for college students. In 2017, after Papadopoulos is convicted of lying to federal agents investigating the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, the Post follows up and finds out that the organizers of the Geneva event have no record of Papadopoulos’ participation. —BML

 

“The British airplane sexual assault witness guy”
Oct. 14, 2016: Shortly after the publication of the Access Hollywood tape, the New York Times reports that a woman named Jessica Leeds says Trump groped her on an airplane in approximately 1980. The Trump campaign subsequently arranges for the New York Post to interview a British man named Anthony Gilberthorpe, who would have been about 18 at the time of the alleged assault. Gilberthorpe—who, in the years after this flight, said he went “trawling” the streets of Blackpool to hire underage boys for sex acts with Tory politicians—says he remembers being seated across the aisle from Trump and Leeds and that he recognizes Leeds in the news because he has a “photographic memory.” He claims to recall specifically that Trump did not do anything inappropriate to Leeds and says moreover that she was flirting with Trump and told fellow passengers, when Trump went to the bathroom, that she “wanted to marry him.” —BML

 

“Michigan Man of the Year”
Nov. 7, 2016: At a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump says that he was once named “Michigan Man of the Year,” a claim he goes on to repeat numerous times throughout his presidency. In 2019, CNN’s Daniel Dale reports that Trump may be referring to an invitation he received to give a speech in Michigan at something called the “Oakland County Lincoln Day Dinner” in 2013. No award was presented at the dinner. —BML

 

“Former professional golfer Bernhard Langer voter fraud”
Jan. 25, 2017: During a meeting with lawmakers, the newly inaugurated president says that German professional golfer Bernhard Langer was prevented from voting in 2016 because there was a long line of suspicious Latin American individuals ahead of him. Follow-up reporting reveals that Langer is not an American citizen and did not attempt to vote in the election at all; according to Langer, he heard a similar story from a friend and relayed it to someone who then told it to “a person with ties to the White House,” which would mean that Trump had been told the (obviously false) anecdote fifth-hand.  —BML

 

“Frederick Douglass getting recognized”
Feb. 1, 2017: At remarks celebrating Black History Month, Trump ad-libs that “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.” The remark, and its present tense phrasing regarding a figure who died in 1895, has never been explained. —HG

 

Click on the link for the rest

 

Oh, come on. They're not even trying. 

How about covfefe ?

Or one of my favorites was when his campaign's national security expert was stunned to discover that when he phoned the Russian ambassador, the NSA recorded the phone call. 

Or candidate Trump, when asked about how he planned to deal with the national debt, stating that he thinks we should look into seeing whether the people we owe money to would accept partial payment. 

 

[Dan T.]

Stone, Manafort, Kushner’s dad pardoned. 

[Larry]

1 hour ago, visionary said:

 

 

 

In response to an attack which we claim was performed by Iran, the US considers closing it's embassy in Iraq.  

 

Remembering the meme somebody posted, a year or so ago:  

 

"I can think of no better analogy for the Trump administration than the fact that the US military is now bombing our own bases."  

[China]

2 hours ago, visionary said:

 

 

 

 

 

Um, no, that's not why.  That's just his cover story.  He doesn't care about bases being named after Confederate generals except if it will get him more support from his base.  The real reason he vetoed the bill is it will ruin his shell game as I pointed out before:

 

 

[TheGreatBuzz]

2 hours ago, Larry said:

 

Oh, come on. They're not even trying. 

How about covfefe ?

Or one of my favorites was when his campaign's national security expert was stunned to discover that when he phoned the Russian ambassador, the NSA recorded the phone call. 

Or candidate Trump, when asked about how he planned to deal with the national debt, stating that he thinks we should look into seeing whether the people we owe money to would accept partial payment. 

 

Nothing will ever beat using a sharpie to alter a hurricane projection map.

[88Comrade2000]

Why Trump Is So Desperate to Stay in the White House

[visionary]

 

[China]

 

[LD0506]

Trump Is Guilty of Sedition and Must Be Brought to Justice

He’s violating his oath to protect the Constitution, and every day that he’s allowed to remain in power, the threat to our democracy grows.

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-sedition-coup-elections/

[China]

A Trump executive order set the stage for Falwell’s political activities

 

Former Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.’s decision to spend millions of university dollars on Republican political causes followed an executive order by President Donald Trump directing the IRS to avoid whenever possible investigating religious organizations veering into politics.

 

Trump issued the order in 2017. The following year, under Falwell’s leadership, the university directed more than $3 million to conservative organizations. In 2019, it created a think tank that purchased Facebook ads featuring Trump’s image and the slogan “Pray For Our President,” produced a podcast that amplified Trump’s claims of a stolen election, and recently staged a strategy session for the 2021 elections that featured only Republican politicians.

 

These actions appear to push the boundaries of the university’s nonprofit status, particularly given that the law explicitly bans nonprofits from assisting political candidates under a provision called the Johnson Amendment, named after former President Lyndon Johnson, who sponsored it in the Senate.

 

But Trump’s administration furthered the IRS’ already hands-off approach to monitoring churches and other religious nonprofits to the point that enforcement now appears to be nearly nonexistent, giving Liberty and other groups new opportunity to test boundaries they couldn’t have in the past.

 

“For someone like Falwell, who was eager to use tax-exempt resources to engage in politics, it may have given the green light,” said Brendan Fisher, director at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center. “It’s a correlation — but it certainly seems like you can draw a line between the executive order, and Liberty ramping up its political activity in the years following it.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Donald Trump names owner of conversion therapy practice to disabilities advisory post

 

Donald Trump has named Marcus Bachmann – the husband of former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) – to the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, a Department of Health and Human Services advisory panel.

 

Marcus and Michele Bachmann own Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling practice in Minnesota. Marcus Bachmann, who is not a licensed clinical psychologist, has in the past been caught telling patients that he can make them straight.

 

“The truth is God has designed our eyes to be attracted to the woman’s body, to be attracted to her breasts,” a counselor at the practice told a gay man named John Becker in a 2011 hidden camera investigation broadcast on ABC News.

 

“I think it’s possible to be totally free of this,” the counselor said, offering a treatment plan that included reading Bible verses.

 

“I told my therapist that I was struggling with attraction to the same sex, and that my attractions were overwhelmingly, predominately, exclusively homosexual,” said the gay man who went undercover to the clinic five times, adding that “the goal of his treatment was to end his homosexual urges entirely.”

 

“God created us all for heterosexuality – he said that twice.”

 

The President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities serves to advise the White House on “a broad range of topics that impact people with intellectual disabilities as well as the field of intellectual disabilities” and “to improve the quality of life experienced by people with intellectual disabilities.” Bachmann has been appointed to serve for two years on the panel and will therefore be advising President-elect Joe Biden.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Not that this is a surprise, but:

 

Trump said he'd be working 'tirelessly' for Americans at Mar-a-Lago over Christmas, and then he went golfing

 

President Donald Trump had a busy Christmas week between throwing the COVID-19 relief bill into doubt, pardoning war criminals and dubious pals, threatening Iran, and vetoing the annual defense bill against top Republicans' wishes.

 

While Trump traveled to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Wednesday for the holiday, the White House announced that he would work "tirelessly" for Americans.

 

"As the Holiday season approaches, President Trump will continue to work tirelessly for the American People. His schedule includes many meetings and calls," the White House said as it released Trump's daily schedule.

 

By Thursday morning, Trump was headed to his golf club in West Palm Beach.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

This is always how the Trump presidency was going to end

 

It was once said about a famous TV personality that when he left a job, he didn't burn bridges with his past employer, he napalmed them.

 

That's exactly what Donald Trump is doing in the final weeks of his presidency -- as he savages longtime allies, pardons criminals solely because of their loyalty to him and threatens to rob the country of much-needed Covid-19 relief money just because he can.

"This is rotten to the core," Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said Wednesday night in the wake of Trump's latest round of pardons that included his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his political svengali Roger Stone.

That is, of course, true. But, what Trump is doing in his last days is also utterly predictable. This was always how this story was going to end. Anyone expressing shock and amazement simply hasn't been paying attention.

From the earliest days of his presidency, Trump made clear that he would use the office to which he had been elected to simply further the work of his lifetime: Rewarding himself (and his friends) while punishing his enemies. Trump didn't act differently in office -- as he said he would if and when he was elected -- because he didn't (and doesn't) see the presidency any differently than any other job he's done in his life; it was simply a higher-profile way to make himself more famous and more powerful while continuing to seek vengeance on the ever-growing list of people who have wronged him in some way, shape or form over the years.

He lacked any sense that being president was about more than him, that there was, in theory, the need to look out for the collective good of the country.

It's why Trump would say things like "my generals" or "my military" without any sense of why that might be wrong.

And why he spent his entire term clashing with his attorneys generals --- whether it was Jeff Sessions or Bill Barr -- over their unwillingness to use the Department of Justice as his own personal police force.

 

Click on the link for the rest

 

BTW, it's attorneys general, not generals.

 

 

[China]

 

[China]

President Trump Seeks Dismissal of Fraud Lawsuit Filed by His Niece, Says It’s ‘Laden with Conspiracy Theories’

 

President Donald Trump and his sister Maryanne Trump Barry on Wednesday each asked a judge in New York to toss a lawsuit filed by the president’s niece which alleges that the Trump family conspired to fraudulently swindle her out of her inheritance.

 

In a motion to dismiss filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, the president’s attorneys said the suit was based on a series of falsehoods and argued that it was too late for Mary Trump to bring a lawsuit over her alleged claim to the estate of Fred Trump, who died in 1999.

 

“Plaintiff makes outlandish and incredulous accusations in her Complaint, which is laden with conspiracy theories more befitting a Hollywood screenplay than a pleading in a legal action. Plaintiff even uses the thematic structure of a play to contrive a decades-long sinister plot in which she claims her aunt and uncles conspired with reputable lawyers, appraisers and other professionals to defraud her,” the motion stated.

 

In her September lawsuit, Mary alleged that her uncle Donald, her aunt Maryanne, and the president’s recently deceased brother Robert Trump, engaged in “rampant fraud and misconduct” to give her less of an inheritance than she deserved. The lawsuit began by describing the Trump family’s alleged decades-old scheme to “cheat on their taxes, swindle their business partners, and jack up rents on their low-income tenants.”

 

The suit broke down the Trump family’s alleged scheme into three parts: the “Grift,” the “Devaluing,” and the “Squeeze Out.”

 

Trump’s lawyers said Mary Trump is just trying leverage her family’s name for money.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Trump's presidential legacy, by the numbers

 

Words matter. But numbers tell stories, too.

 

Presidential historians and others will plumb them as they assess President Donald Trump’s legacy.

 

Trump’s presidency is reflected in a broad range of numbers representing everything from the U.S. death toll during the coronavirus pandemic to the miles of his “big, beautiful wall” along the border with Mexico to the tens of thousands of tweets he sent during four years in office.

 

Some of the numbers that are part of Trump’s legacy:

—325,000 and counting: Number of U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19.

—6: Coronavirus vaccines being developed and-or distributed under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed program.

—2: Coronavirus vaccines — by Pfizer and BioNTech, and a separate one by Moderna — that U.S. regulators approved in 2020 for emergency use.

 

 

Comprehensive health care overhaul plans Trump introduced despite repeated promises to replace the Obama-era Affordable Care Act with a plan that would cover everyone at a lower cost.

 

3: Justices added to the Supreme Court, establishing a solid 6-3 conservative majority.

221: Federal trial-level and appeals court judges added to the judiciary.

 

 

$3.1 trillion: 2020 budget deficit, the largest in dollar terms in U.S. history. Trump had pledged during the 2016 campaign to eliminate the gap between federal spending and revenue. Tax cuts Trump enacted in 2017 contributed to the imbalance, and it ballooned further after Congress passed $2.4 trillion in economic relief earlier this year to help unemployed workers, business owners and others weather the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

3: In-person meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (in Singapore, Vietnam and the Korean demilitarized zone).

$21 trillion: Federal debt in December, when it exceeded the size of the economy for the first time in history outside World War II.

82: Number of Trump administration environmental and public health rollbacks tracked on Harvard University’s rollback tracker.

4: Men who served as acting secretary of defense, the most in any administration.

203: Days the Pentagon operated without a Senate-confirmed defense secretary, the longest stretch in the history of the office.

450: Miles of Trump’s “big, beautiful” steel wall along the U.S.-Mexico border expected to completed by year’s end.

 

Click on the link for more

[China]

Still working tirelessly (and by that of course I mean playing golf), today with Lindsey Graham:

 

Trump golfs in Florida as COVID relief hangs in the balance

 

President Donald Trump spent his Christmas golfing in Florida as a government shutdown looms and COVID relief hangs in the balance.

 

Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach for the holidays, had no events on his public schedule after throwing the future of a massive COVID relief and government funding bill into question. Failure to sign the bill, which arrived in Florida on Thursday night, could deny relief checks to millions of Americans on the brink and force a government shutdown in the midst of the pandemic.

 

The White House declined to share details of the president’s schedule. It said only: “During the Holiday season, President Trump will continue to work tirelessly for the American People. His schedule includes many meetings and calls.”

 

Trump’s expected golf partner Friday was South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close ally.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[visionary]

 

[Corcaigh]

Not sure the best place to post this but I didn’t want any of you to miss out on this opportunity to get a bible signed by Trump.

 

Yours for just $37,000.

 

https://momentsintime.com/bible-signed-by-trump/#.X-c7LOQ8LDs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[88Comrade2000]

That bible may catch on fire. Isn't it defacing a holy book?

[youngestson]

57 minutes ago, Rdskns2000 said:

That bible may catch on fire. Isn't it defacing a holy book?

Could you imagine Trump trying to read the King James version of the bible?

 

He'd understand about 17% of the words. 

[China]

58 minutes ago, Rdskns2000 said:

That bible may catch on fire. Isn't it defacing a holy book?

 

[skinsmarydu]

1 minute ago, youngestson said:

Could you imagine Trump trying to read the King James version of the bible?

 

He'd understand about 17% of the words. 

Only the prepositions. 

[Jabbyrwock]

 

6 at the beginning (green)

6 at the end (blue)

6 peaks in between (red)

 

666 : Satan confirmed