President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

7:12: "Stephen ... Stephen ... Settle down. Settle down. ... Calm down. ... I have a question for you about issues."

 

pres·i·den·tial
[ˌprezəˈden(t)SH(ə)l]

adj.

"To look more calm than you really are, smarter than you really are and that you have a better grasp of things than you really do."

Is it any wonder half the nation's most beloved president was an actor?

 

"Washington could not tell a lie, Nixon could not tell the truth and Reagan could not tell the difference."--Mort Sahl

 

Lincoln. America doesn't call him "Honest Abe" for nothing.

 

Thanks. And if I may revise and amend my original thought ... this is an act of political hara-kiri. He went full Kellyanne. Never go full Kellyanne.

 

“Fire and Fury” Is a Book All Too Worthy of the President

"The problem is that Wolff’s approach is too well-matched to his material. As Andrew Prokop explains on Vox, Wolff’s writing is a rehashing of gossip. What the Times’s and Washington Post’s White House teams have been doing through painstaking reporting—producing stories in which the account of every absurd incident in the life of the Trump Administration is based on conversations with several different sources—Wolff accomplishes by absorbing the ambient noise, the self-aggrandizing statements, the overheard (or surreptitiously recorded) conversations, and reshaping them as a narrative all his own. This tone, more than the substance, is what gives the book the flavor of a peek behind the curtain, the sense of someone finally putting words to an “open secret.”"

"Unlike Bee and the other comedians, who are forever balancing on the angry edge of disgust, Wolff appears to relish observing Trump the Terrible. If the comedians bring reality into sharper focus, Wolff just slaps on broad, sloppy strokes. His writing is comically bad: “a crooked real-estate scam” is a typical phrase; one four-sentence paragraph contains four instances of the word “likely” and six of “unlikely.” His logic is ridiculous: he includes, for example, a rumination on why real-estate entrepreneurs have never before become Presidents, and concludes that this is because real estate often involves questionable monetary relationships—and not, say, because the business does not offer the policy, legal, moral, or intellectual training that is usually expected of high-level politicians."

"Wolff’s book seems to occupy a middle ground: between the writing of White House newspaper reporters, who exercise preternatural restraint when writing about the Administration, and the late-night comedians, who offer a sense of release from that restraint because they are not held to journalistic standards of veracity. That middle ground, where there is neither restraint nor accuracy, shouldn’t exist. That “Fire and Fury” can occupy so much of the public-conversation space degrades our sense of reality further, while creating the illusion of affirming it."

 

Whose truth about the current White House do you think is closer to reality: Trump's or Wolff's?

The U.S. president is screaming and throwing daily tantrums, but everything is "beautiful. So beautiful."

 

Whose truth is closer to the truth? Neither. That's the point.

And in light of Magary's screed it points out that legitimate journalists covering the White House can't just create the best narratives and run with them. They're not cowards. A line I find laughable from a website warrior.

 

I'm surprised you of all people don't understand sunk cost fallacy.

Not building an unnecessary wall is not equivalent to tearing down an existing wall.

 

If there are actual trophies, the winners should do stories pointing out how much taxpayer money was wasted on them.

 

You can't get at the truth with this White House. It's all bullshit and propaganda. Watch Miller's clip with Tapper. Watch Sarah Sanders at any press briefing. And then they shout down or deflect anyone who pushes hard. It's a clown carnival.