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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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"If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him." - Sun Tzu
You can't tell the man anything. He has his own reality.
One of the reasons I'm upset is because I have to listen to this ugly mug everyday. Jeffery Lord also. That guy has a face you just want to slug.
ROME — Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.
But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola.
“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.
BEIJING—A Chinese early warning aircraft and a U.S. Navy patrol plane had an “unsafe” encounter over the South China Sea this week, the U.S. Pacific Command said, in the first such incident known to have occurred during President Donald Trump’s administration.
The interaction between a Chinese KJ-200 and a U.S. Navy P-3C plane took place Wednesday in international airspace, Pacific Command spokesman Robert Shuford said Friday.
He didn’t say what was unsafe about the encounter, although the term usually implies planes flying too close to one another. Mr. Shuford said the U.S. plane was on a routine mission and operating according to international law. The Department of Defense and the Pacific Command “are always concerned about unsafe interactions with Chinese military forces,” he said.
Donald J. Trump, who became the forty-fifth president on January 20, has taken a different approach. He comes to office having repeatedly refused to release his tax returns, even after a leak indicated that he may have paid no taxes for eighteen years. He has cited an ongoing IRS audit as his reason for not disclosing his returns, but the IRS itself has refuted that claim, saying that “nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”
Two days after inauguration, his administration announced that Trump would not release the returns even if an audit were complete. Trump has somewhat gleefully asserted that the conflict-of-interest rules don’t apply to the president. He mixed together personal business and official diplomacy during several meetings and conversations with foreign officials during the transition. And despite his widespread private holdings in commercial real estate, condominiums, hotels, and golf courses here and around the world, he has refused to follow the lead of his predecessors by selling his assets and placing the proceeds in a blind trust. Instead, he has transferred management, but not ownership, of the Trump Organization. He retains his ownership in full. And he has assigned operational responsibility not to an independent arm’s-length trustee, but to his sons, Eric and Donald Jr.
As a result, President Trump almost certainly began violating the Constitution the moment he took the oath of office. It’s true that conflict-of-interest statutes don’t cover the president—not because we don’t care about compromised presidents, but because such statutes generally require officeholders to recuse themselves from decisions in which they have a personal financial stake, and in the president’s case, recusal is rarely a workable option, since there is no alternative decision-maker.
But the Constitution subjects the president to a conflict-of-interest law: the so-called “emoluments” clause. That clause provides that no federal officeholder may, absent express approval by Congress, accept “any present, Emolument,…of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” It is designed to ensure that federal officials, from the president on down, serve only the interest of the American public, and are not compromised by foreign influence.
Sean Spicer went full Melissa McCarthy today
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/09/sean-spicer-went-full-melissa-mccarthy-today/? (Sean Spicer went full Melissa McCarthy today)
White House press secretary Sean Spicer turned it up to 11 at his daily press briefing Thursday.
Spicer, who has come under massive scrutiny in the wake of a biting “Saturday Night Live” sketch about him and several leaks about how displeased President Trump is with his performance, battled with reporters for 30 minutes — seeking out confrontation wherever he could find it.
Spicer repeatedly interrupted and talked over reporters — particularly when they sought clarification on the criticism Trump has leveled at Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) over how he characterized a meeting with Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Spicer's incredulity over reporters “not getting” his obvious attempt to split hairs on Trump and Gorsuch made for several very awkward moments. Separately, Spicer mocked a reporter for questioning whether a tweet from the president was more important than a statement by his press secretary. He balked at reporters as they tried to ask follow-up questions — any follow-up questions.
In short: Spicer was on the offensive, annoyed at those who got in his way and not afraid to make that clear to everyone. Unintentionally — I think! — Spicer seemed to be channeling Melissa McCarthy's impersonation of him over the weekend. He didn't actually pick up the podium and shove it in anyone's face, but he sure seemed like he wanted to.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/09/sean-spicer-went-full-melissa-mccarthy-today/? (Sean Spicer went full Melissa McCarthy today)
White House press secretary Sean Spicer turned it up to 11 at his daily press briefing Thursday.
Spicer, who has come under massive scrutiny in the wake of a biting “Saturday Night Live” sketch about him and several leaks about how displeased President Trump is with his performance, battled with reporters for 30 minutes — seeking out confrontation wherever he could find it.
Spicer repeatedly interrupted and talked over reporters — particularly when they sought clarification on the criticism Trump has leveled at Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) over how he characterized a meeting with Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Spicer's incredulity over reporters “not getting” his obvious attempt to split hairs on Trump and Gorsuch made for several very awkward moments. Separately, Spicer mocked a reporter for questioning whether a tweet from the president was more important than a statement by his press secretary. He balked at reporters as they tried to ask follow-up questions — any follow-up questions.
In short: Spicer was on the offensive, annoyed at those who got in his way and not afraid to make that clear to everyone. Unintentionally — I think! — Spicer seemed to be channeling Melissa McCarthy's impersonation of him over the weekend. He didn't actually pick up the podium and shove it in anyone's face, but he sure seemed like he wanted to.
I get the feeling Trump is a paper tiger. He's all bluster, and someone is going to call his bluff. He's backing away from his earlier position on China 3 weeks in. The Russians are making a move in Eastern Ukraine and both Iran and North Korea are giving him the bird and he is saying nothing. What a fucking loser.
MOSCOW — President Trump’s heady campaign rhetoric about possible detente with Russia is coming to terms with the realities of his chaotic new administration.
Details emerged Thursday about a telephone call held between Russian President Vladimir Putin in which Trump blasted a treaty negotiated under the Obama administration that limits nuclear weapons deployments — after Trump reportedly paused the call with Putin to ask an aide about the treaty. According to a report by the Reuters news agency, Trump then denounced the New START treaty as favoring Russia.
The Kremlin on Friday refused to comment on the leaked details of the telephone call.
