Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

BREAKING HATER HEARTS
https://claytoonz.com/2018/01/04/breaking-hater-hearts/

I have tried to talk to Trump sycophants so I can understand what makes them tick. Why would they sell their soul and dignity for a stupid person like Donald Trump? But I can’t do it anymore. It’s not that I want to sit in my little bubble and only hear my readers agree with me. I actually enjoying hearing people disagree with me. But anytime you challenge a Trump sycophant on policy, they typically respond with a meme. You can’t have an intelligent discussion of ideas with someone who replies with a picture of Willy Wonka calling you a snowflake. It seems you really have to believe in the stupidity coming out of the White House to defend Donald Trump. That is, unless you work in the White House.

As it turns out, the people who actually know Trump and are paid to go on TV and sell his bullshit know he’s a certified dumbass.

A new book called Fire And Fury, obviously titled after one of Trump’s threats to North Korea, came out yesterday quoting White House staffers and revealing what they really think of Donald Trump. We probably won’t hear “fire and fury” from Trump anymore. If a book about Trump’s tiny penis comes out called Little Rocket Man, he’ll probably stop using that phrase too.

The book, written by Michael Wolff, reveals that almost everyone in the White House uses about 20 different words to describe Trump as an idiot. It says nobody, including Trump, expected him to win the election, Melania was assured he’d lose (she cried when he won…along with a lot of other people), and the entire campaign thought of losing as winning and it would be a great money-making opportunity.

Wolff does state in the beginning of the book that some of the material may not be entirely accurate, as some quotes are told through other sources. But, Wolff sat in the White House for months overhearing much of the subject matter, which tells you right there how dumb Trump is for allowing this. Trump thought Wolff was writing a pro-Trump book. Wolff also claims he has hours of tape to validate many of the claims in the book.

The juiciest revelation is that Steve Bannon craps on everybody. Trump has now disowned Bannon, and claims he never had direct access to him and had no effect on his campaign. I’m surprised Trump didn’t call Bannon, who once had clearance to sit on the National Security Council, a coffee boy. Trump said that Bannon has “lost his mind,” while not contradicting any of the book’s claims.

Bannon says that the three top guys in the Trump campaign, Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner, meeting with Russians in Trump Tower was treasonous, and that there’s no way they didn’t take the “jumos” one flight up to meet Trump Sr. There’s still much speculation over the definition of “jumo.”

Other details claim Trump and Melania were arguing on Inauguration Day. Ivanka made fun of her father’s comb-over, and that she and Jared have an agreement she will run for president in the future while Jared (described as an ass kisser) holds her purse.

It claims Rupert Murdoch called Trump a “fucking idiot,” which puts him in a very large club in and out of the White House.

Trump clashed with White House housekeeping. Staff members were told not to touch his belongings, especially his toothbrush. If he leaves a shirt on the floor, the staff is ordered not to touch it. Trump has his own separate bedroom from Melania and sits in bed around 6:00 PM every evening eating cheeseburgers while talking on the phone with friends (who then leak the conversations to the press). Trump requested a lock on his door which the Secret Service denied. He requested two additional televisions to be installed in his room, giving him a total of three so he could watch TV Elvis style. Remember, Trump claims he doesn’t actually watch that much television despite constantly quoting Fox & Friends through tweets during their program.

Trump eats McDonalds so often because he’s paranoid someone will poison him. His rational is that McDonalds doesn’t know you’re coming and the food is already prepared, so they can’t poison you. If that guy can eat old Big Macs it explains the burned steaks with ketchup. I personally find it impossible to eat a Big Mac older than ten minutes.

Trump’s staff believes him to be semi-literate. This I believe. Wolff writes that Trump doesn’t read and doesn’t even skim articles, briefings, or reports. Former Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh reportedly said working with Trump is “like trying to figure out what a child wants.” If you have ever witnessed Trump reading during a speech, you realize it’s like that slow kid in third grade who slowed down the entire class every time it was his turn to read aloud. Except, that slow kid’s teeth probably didn’t fall out while he was reading.

Sam Nunberg, an early aide to the Trump campaign, recalled explaining the Constitution to Trump and said he could only get as far as the Fourth Amendment before Trump’s finger started “pulling down on his lip and his eyes rolled back in his head.”

My favorite quote in the book supposedly comes from an email sent by Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, which says, “Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits.” Yeah.

The most reported stuff is from Steve Bannon, who allowed himself to be quoted by Wolff.

Bannon believes Don Jr. will be a target for Special Counsel Robert Mueller over money laundering, and said, “they’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.” He also goes after Jared and Ivanka, and believes Jared will be targeted for money laundering, just like Junior.

Trump’s lawyers have issued a cease and desist to Bannon which is laughable. Bannon may have signed a nondisclosure form, but that wouldn’t apply after the campaign. Bannon worked for the American people in the White House, not Donald Trump.

The fun part of this is to see who wins who in the Trump/Bannon divorce. Bannon has already lost a major resource for funding Breitbart (you didn’t actually believe that publication made money on its own merits, did you?).

Nicole Wallace theorized that Trump will win Sean Hanitty and Bannon will get Breitbart. I’m thinking deeper. Who gets the Nazis and who gets the pedophiles? Bannon better hire some good lawyers or he’ll end up with Eric.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

But what Wolff is describing is an open secret.

Based on the excerpts now available, Fire and Fury presents a man in the White House who is profoundly ignorant of politics, policy, and anything resembling the substance of perhaps the world’s most demanding job. He is temperamentally unstable. Most of what he says in public is at odds with provable fact, from “biggest inaugural crowd in history” onward. Whether he is aware of it or not, much of what he asserts is a lie. His functional vocabulary is markedly smaller than it was 20 years ago; the oldest person ever to begin service in the White House, he is increasingly prone to repeat anecdotes and phrases. He is aswirl in foreign and financial complications. He has ignored countless norms of modern governance, from the expectation of financial disclosure to the importance of remaining separate from law-enforcement activities. He relies on immediate family members to an unusual degree; he has an exceptionally thin roster of experienced advisers and assistants; his White House staff operations have more in common with an episode of The Apprentice than with any real-world counterpart. He has a shallower reserve of historical or functional information than previous presidents, and a more restricted supply of ongoing information than many citizens. He views all events through the prism of whether they make him look strong and famous, and thus he is laughably susceptible to flattering treatment from the likes of Putin and Xi Jinping abroad or courtiers at home.

And, as Wolff emphasizes, everyone around him considers him unfit for the duties of this office.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

If Michael Wolff’s reporting is to be believed, Stephen Bannon’s assessment of the most dangerous threat posed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is not the one you might have assumed.

“You realize where this is going,” Bannon reportedly told Wolff. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f—ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner. … It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner s—.”

Two quick explanations. Weissmann refers to Andrew Weissmann. He was one of Mueller’s early hires, though not the first, and does have https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/06/16/muellers-team-has-over-a-century-of-experience-at-the-justice-department/?utm_term=.81ab4b327180 (a lot of experience) in prosecuting financial crimes. Deutsche Bank is a German financial institution that has been an https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-prosecutors-in-new-york-requested-kushner-cos-records-on-deutsche-bank-loan/2017/12/27/b1e45008-ea79-11e7-8a6a-80acf0774e64_story.html?utm_term=.37d630ed45b3 (apparent focus) of federal prosecutors, though not necessarily by Mueller’s team, thanks to a https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/kushner-firms-285-million-deutsche-bank-loan-came-just-before-election-day/2017/06/25/984f3acc-4f88-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html?utm_term=.ab71a266329b (loan) of more than a quarter-billion dollars issued to Kushner’s firm a month before the 2016 election.

Bannon’s argument is that Mueller’s team is focused not on Russian meddling but on unearthing money laundering by Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Kushner that can then be used as leverage against Trump. Manafort https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/manafort-and-former-business-partner-asked-to-surrender-in-connection-with-special-counsel-probe/2017/10/30/6fe051f0-bd67-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html (already faces) money laundering charges from Mueller. Those charges may involve property purchased by Manafort in New York and Virginia through shell companies based in Cyprus.

Real estate, it seems, is central to the charge Bannon made, given the involvement of Kushner and Trump Jr. in the industry. In light of that, we reached out to Chris Quick, a retired FBI special agent who specialized in financial crimes and who now runs a private investigative firm in South Carolina. He walked us through how money laundering worked in the real-estate industry and how others might be implicated in that criminal activity.

“With any money laundering, you’re trying to make the illegally gotten money look legitimate,” Quick said. “So in the simplest terms, if you have real estate, you’re going to buy a piece of property with the illegal funds, hang on to it — or have rental income from it, so that rental income is legitimate — and eventually when you sell the real estate, you get your proceeds out of it and by all accounts it appears to be a legitimate transaction.” According to U.S. law, any financial transaction of more than $10,000 involving illegal funds counts as money laundering.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

It’s true that Trump had some real accomplishments in 2017. But there’s still nothing normal about his presidency—a fact that was made abundantly clear less than 72 hours into 2018.

On January 2, Trump tweeted a nonsensical attack on his own Justice Department and, implicitly, the leaders he handpicked, as captives of the Deep State. The president seems to believe justice will be thwarted unless Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, and James Comey soon find themselves in jail. Or, as he prefers: “Jail!”

Almost exactly 12 hours later came a Trump tweet taunting the unstable leader of a nuclear-capable rogue state. Apparently Kim Jong-un’s nuclear “button” isn’t as big as Trump’s. That’s really what he said. In between, Trump took shots at the “failing New York Times” (despite record numbers of subscriptions and digital ad revenues) and suggested, fancifully, that he was responsible for a year of aviation travel without a fatality.

The next day, an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Michael Wolff appeared online. Wolff, who had nearly unfettered access to Trump’s inner circle for the better part of a year, quoted former White House adviser Steve Bannon accusing Trump’s son of treason for meeting with shady Russian sources. In response, the president http://www.weeklystandard.com/steve-bannon-was-mostly-right-about-donald-trump-jr./article/2011009 (released a statement)—an official White House statement—claiming that Bannon, a man he had trusted to run his political operation, was not of sound mind. Donald Trump Jr. took to Twitter to trash Bannon. Among his most ferocious attacks came one on Bannon’s political acuity, citing as evidence the former Trump adviser’s support of Roy Moore’s losing Senate candidacy in Alabama and eliding, for convenience, the fact that the president endorsed and campaigned for Moore, too, despite plausible accusations he had sexually assaulted teen girls. Later that evening, Trump’s lawyer sent a letter to Bannon demanding that the former aide stop criticizing the president, citing a campaign nondisclosure agreement.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A Taxonomy of Trump Tweets
A Taxonomy of Trump Tweets

As we all know, Donald Trump's tweets have become a potent force in our new era.

On the one hand, a single tweet can cripple opponents, activate supporters, move markets, and subsume the news cycle.

On the other, they're a window into Trump's wee-hours, unfiltered id.

But when his tweets are full of half-truths, distortions, and often bold-faced lies, should journalists treat them as normal presidential utterances, or something else?

Cognitive linguist George Lakoff believes that the press must understand how Trump uses language if we're to responsibly report on his tweets, not just magnify their misinformation. He talks with Brooke about the categories he's come up with for thinking about Trump tweets.

Trump’s tweets are irresponsible and un-presidential. Yet the real problem is not Trump’s addiction to social media – it’s ours. Trump uses Twitter to control news cycles because the press, the political class and his Democratic opponents continually empower him to do so.

Every time Trump tweets, he can count on an instantaneous reaction. His tweet fixation fuels a parasitic economy in which people compete to ride his digital coattails. Reporters, Democratic politicians, and social media influencers fall for it every time. They obsessively retweet, analyze and attack. This helps Trump tremendously.

First, they ensure that he dominates the airwaves – and the brainwaves. By focusing massive attention on Trump’s antics, they make him seem larger than life. This produces a cognitive effect called the “focusing illusion,” and it helps explain how Trump ascended from political clown to the presidency. He turned the media into a Twitter news service.

Second, they spread his message. Constant repetition of Trump’s words allows him to set the agenda. Like clockwork, his fellow tweet addicts – including his opponents – repeat every word. They enable him to embed his ideas and images into millions of brains, even yours. For example, which former presidential candidate comes to mind when you see the word “Crooked”? Trump got into your brain.

Third, the continual anti-Trump outrage bolsters his credibility with his base. He can play the victim of the “establishment” he promised to disrupt. He acts, but his opponents only react. He maintains heroic control.

The reasons why it works this way can be found in the cognitive sciences. By allowing Trump to constantly activate his ideas in our brains, we strengthen the neurocircuitry for those ideas. This allows Trump to dominate on a subconscious level – and 98 percent of thought is subconscious.

Trump isn’t a genius. He’s a super salesman, and has been for most of his life.

Now he’s president, and our gullibility to his antics threatens our democracy. That’s because Trump often uses social media to distract from what he’s actually doing, like dismantling our government and robbing the working class to pay off the rich. He often uses his tweet tantrums to “step on” big developments in the Russia investigation, creating a bigger story (“nuclear button!”) to distract attention.

With investigators closing in on Trump’s possibly treasonous Russia dealings, think of him as a trapped rat with a Twitter account. His attempts to distract will only intensify, but we must stop falling for them.

This doesn’t mean ignoring Trump. It means maintaining a steely focus on things that really matter, like the attack on our public institutions, the massive transfer of wealth and power to the rich, the resurgence of extreme racist politics, and the criminal investigation into the Trump Organization.

Let’s reclaim our power to decide what’s important. Let’s shrink Trump down to size. Let’s take away his power to control our brains.

During a famous exchange in 2016, Hillary Clinton accused Trump of being a Russian “puppet.”

“No puppet, no puppet,” Trump replied. “You’re the puppet.”

It turns out that we were all puppets. As long as we allow Trump to manipulate our public discourse with his fingertips, we’ll remain puppets. It’s time to cut the strings.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

CDC plans session on ‘preparing for the unthinkable’: a nuclear detonation
CDC plans session on 'preparing for the unthinkable': a nuclear detonation

With this week’s bellicose boasting about who has the bigger red button on his desk, an alert Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention felt more than a bit on the nose.

With the prospect of actual nuclear war breaking out between North Korea and the United States seeming ever more real, the CDC is moving to prepare health professionals and others on what the public health response would be to a nuclear detonation.

The CDC announced it is staging a grand rounds — a teaching session — on the topic. The target audience: doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, pharmacists, veterinarians, certified health education specialists, laboratory scientists, and others. The event will be held Jan. 16. Public Health Response to a Nuclear Detonation

A previous grand rounds on radiological and nuclear disaster preparedness was offered in March 2010. Radiological and Nuclear Disaster Preparedness | Public Health Grand Rounds | CDC