President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

And by secretly, I mean I had no idea anyone else could hear my nonsense rambling

 

Good thread here taking Maddow to task for jumping to conclusions about Niger that aren't supported by geography. (In the interest of equal time!)

 

Seems the general might have misremembered that story about the FBI office.

He Didn't Even Have His Facts Right

 

Helps emphasize how important it is for the U.S. to have capable military leaders and reliable intelligence, to overcome the dunderhead at the top.

 

It makes me genuinely sad that Kelly was willing to debase himself for Trump. Everyone who comes into his orbit is humiliated eventually. I suspect Kelly will regret this deeply, and we'll read about it in some Bob Woodward book several years from now. Soldiers do things for the good of command, and maybe Trump went into that call with good intentions. I'll conceded that much. But it's clear he upset that family, and it's clear he either wasn't prepared, or he choked and blanked on Johnson's name, which is almost as bad. I said once, before the election, that there was one thing I couldn't imagine Trump doing as president, and that was consoling people in a crisis like Sandy Hook the way President Obama did, and even the way President Bush did. He just doesn't do empathy. The whole emotion makes him uncomfortable. And in every instance of his presidency, we've seen that play out. He bungled Puerto Rico, he bungled several of these calls. It's a bridge too far to think he taunted this family. Even I don't think he's that kind of person. But he can't understand sacrifice because he's never sacrificed anything in his life, and so the idea of it makes him so uncomfortable that he tries to make jokes. Or tries to resort to colloquial cliches. And to give him a brief respite, Kelly invoked his dead son. I wish these people would realize that debasing yourself to save Trump never has any reward. He'll fire Kelly eventually, or throw him under the bus. Today meant nothing to Trump. People who work for him aren't real people, just employees who serve him, not the office or the country.

 

Your boy @YankeeFan

 

How do you think Trump pronounces Niger?

 

There is a new series on Showtime called Active Shooter. Last week's episode was on Charleston. Ten days after the massacre Obama delivered the eulogy at Reverend Clementa Pinckney's funeral. At one point he broke into Amazing Grace. Could you ever in a million lifetimes imagine Trumpy doing anything even remotely like that? I know SJ.com's KellyAnne does so on an hourly basis, but for those of us who actually live here on planet Earth can you see Trumpy capable of anything empathic at all?

 

High odds it's like Winnie the Pooh's orange striped friend

 

He doesn't... he forgot about it already.

 

I just watched the block in which she talks about Niger and Chad, and she didn't jump to any conclusions. All she stated was that Chad had been a huge part of fighting Islamic terrorism in central Africa, especially Niger, but once they were put on the travel ban they began withdrawing their troops back home over a two-week period that ended Oct. 13. So that makes Sept. 29 the start day with the deaths of the soldiers on Oct. 4. Americans had missions almost 30 times in the area over six months with zero incidents before and all of sudden they're ambushed by militants. She also pointed out the strong relationship between Chad and the U.S. as that's where the U.S. based some of its military operations when they went to region when they helped search for the Nigerian school girls. Hell just in March, the U.S. led 27 countries during three weeks of counter-terrorism exercises in Chad. Also part of the report was how Chad ended up on the travel ban, which I posted in a link below.

Passport paper shortage put Chad on Trump's travel ban list