What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[CountDeMoney]

What is too far, for you?

CDM level.   

Seedz does nothing in moderation.  He's like the Germans.

Fuck off, Strom.  That's my material.

[CountDeMoney]

Trump gets lost in Poland.

[CountDeMoney]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/marcusengert/donald-trump-hotel-room-g20?utm_term=.fv0x4ngZv&bftwnews#.flBjQMPRd

White House officials apparently waited too long to book accommodations for President Trump, leaving him without a hotel in Hamburg, Germany, as world leaders converge for the G20 summit.

Organizers announced the scheduled summit in February 2016, which requires 9,000 hotel rooms to accommodate world leaders, their sizable staffs, and security details.

The Hamburger Abendblatt, a local news outlet, reported that the US government wanted to accommodate Trump in the Four Seasons, but it was already booked. In fact, it turns out that every luxury hotel in Hamburg was reportedly booked by the time the Americans called, leaving Trump, who is associated with an empire of hotel properties, scrambling for a place to stay.

Several weeks ago there were even rumors Trump might have to sleep in Berlin and have to fly to Hamburg via helicopter.

BuzzFeed News surveyed some of the highest-rated hotels in Hamburg to see who had snagged their rooms in advance. Here are the results:

— The Four Seasons: Saudi Arabia's King Salman is here. In addition to his giant entourage, he reportedly brings along a golden escalator and camels for fresh camel milk. The Saudis booked all 156 guest rooms and suites along with a number of rooms in the Hotel Renaissance and The Westin in the Elbphilharmonie, a concert hall.

— The Hotel Reichshof was reserved by Vietnam's delegation.

— The Sofitel was snapped up by Turkey's president.

— The Park Hyatt is where Russian President Vladimir Putin and the prime ministers of South Korea and Australia are staying.

— Le Meridien is hosting Prime Minister Theresa May of the UK and two other delegations.

— The Mövenpick Hotel is full thanks to France's Emmanuel Macron and Erna Solberg from Norway.

— The Grand Elysée was booked by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Italy's prime minister.

— And Angela Merkel is already sleeping at the Atlantic Kempinski, as are the Indian and Canadian prime ministers.

With the summit approaching, the city of Hamburg is now apparently stepping in to help.

Officials would neither confirm nor deny details on who is staying at the Senate guesthouse, but the Associated Press reported that the estate will host Trump.

Police would say only that "a summit delegation" is being accommodated.

Meanwhile, the US Consulate General in Hamburg is reportedly preparing to host Trump's staff.

The address of the guest house is more than fitting: "Beautiful View 26". It is located close to the Russian general consulate and the Hamburg Islamic centre.

[Monoriu]

I didn't know there was a Movenpick hotel.  Is that the ice-cream brand?

[HVC]

Do they just swap out the old escalator for a gold one? I'm intrigued.

[HisMajestyBOB]

I bet he tries to bring it on as a carry-on to avoid checked baggage fees. 

[Zanza]

I didn't know there was a Movenpick hotel.  Is that the ice-cream brand?

Same founder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mövenpick_Hotels_%26_Resorts

[jimmy olsen]

My concern with going overboard on trump is that it absolves the GOP. Regardless of the candidate they were going to kill Obamacare, they'd sell arms to the terrorist factory that is Saudi Arabia. Muslim ban? They've have tried that too. Trump sucks, but ignoring the tweeter and general horrible public relations breakdowns nothing would be that different.

Don't think they would have

[Razgovory]

He declared Poland part of the West.  This has gone on too long.

[Syt]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/white-house-if-cnn-bashes-trump-trump-may-block-merger.html

White House Warns CNN That Critical Coverage Could Cost Time Warner Its Merger

It's quite possible that Donald Trump would never have become president were it not for CNN. The network nurtured the reality star's campaign in its infancy, broadcasting entire stump speeches, uninterrupted by correction or commentary. And it is likely that the president would be little more than a cultural artifact — a walking reminder of 1980s nihilism — were it not for the network's president Jeffrey Zucker, who reintroduced Trump to the American public as a no-nonsense businessman in NBC's The Apprentice.

But CNN is a journalistic enterprise. Or, at least, it plays one on TV. And so when a politician spews vicious, obvious lies on a near-daily basis — and directs a good portion of that venom at the free press itself — CNN's anchors and reporters feel compelled to correct and condemn such mendacity. And that makes the president feel "betrayed."

So, now, his administration is openly threatening to punish the network by sending the Justice Department after its parent company. As the New York Times reports:

Mr. Trump's allies argue that it is CNN's conduct that is unbecoming. Starting on last year's campaign trail, the president and his aides have accused the network of bias and arrogance, an offensive that heated up again in January after CNN reported on the existence of a secret dossier detailing a series of lurid accusations against Mr. Trump. The network's reporters now routinely joust with Mr. Trump's press aides, and Jim Acosta, a White House correspondent, recently denounced the administration's use of off-camera briefings as an affront to American values.

White House advisers have discussed a potential point of leverage over their adversary, a senior administration official said: a pending merger between CNN's parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T. Mr. Trump's Justice Department will decide whether to approve the merger, and while analysts say there is little to stop the deal from moving forward, the president's animus toward CNN remains a wild card.

This detail is buried 12 paragraphs into a feature on CNN's combative relationship with Trump. Which is bizarre, given that it's an open confession of corruption by a senior White House official. It hardly matters whether the administration follows through on its threat: The White House is extorting a news network in the pages of the New York Times. The fact that this didn't strike the paper as headline material is a testament to how thoroughly Trump has already succeeded in eroding our expectations for good governance.

Shortly after the mogul's election, Vox's Matt Yglesias posited politically motivated interference in the Time Warner–AT&T merger as a frightening hypothetical — a development that would signal America's descent into kleptocracy.

Trump is not going to crush the free media in one fell swoop. But big corporate media does face enough regulatory matters that even a single exemplary case would suffice to induce large-scale self-censorship. AT&T, for example, is currently seeking permission from antitrust authorities to buy Time Warner — permission that Time Warner executives might plausibly fear is contingent on Trump believing that CNN has covered him "fairly."

It's worth noting that CNN has already allowed the desire to appease Trump (and his voters) to undermine its journalistic integrity. The network literally pays Trump associates Corey Lewandowski and Jeffrey Lord to lie to its audience on the president's behalf — even as it cut ties with Reza Aslan for profanely criticizing the president on social media.

While this is the first time the administration has publicly declared its interest in using the Justice Department as a tool for stifling dissent, Trump has been encouraging Time Warner to discipline its news network for months now. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that senior White House adviser (and Trump son-in-law) Jared Kushner "complained to Gary Ginsberg, executive vice-president of corporate marketing and communications at CNN's parent Time Warner, about what Mr. Kushner feels is unfair coverage slanted against the president."

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to block Time Warner's desired merger "because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few."

If that sentiment were genuine, it would be worth applauding. There's considerable evidence that corporate consolidation in general — and media concentration, in particular — has been bad for our economy and our democracy. But the Trump administration has signaled an appreciation for the virtues of monopolies, appointing a former lobbyist with an affinity for big business as the Justice Department's head of antitrust enforcement.

And the White House is perfectly comfortable with media consolidation — when such mergers increase the bandwidth of pro-Trump outlets. Earlier this year, the FCC relaxed rules on how many local stations a single owner can control. Shortly thereafter, Sinclair Broadcast Group purchased Tribune Media — thereby gaining ownership of enough local television stations to reach 70 percent of American households. Sinclair is run by a big-dollar GOP donor, and forced its local affiliates to skew their coverage in Trump's favor throughout the 2016 campaign.

If the White House blocks the Time Warner–AT&T deal, it will not be out of a desire to enhance competition, but to limit free speech.

To be sure, there's reason to doubt that Trump will make good on that threat — this White House's bark tends to be louder than its bite. In an interview with the Times, Zucker claims that the merger is not something he thinks about and that Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes has never brought that subject to his attention.

But when a president with an ardent, white-nationalist following barks, it's reasonable to fear that someone else might use their teeth. While Zucker isn't worried about antitrust enforcement, he told the Times that he is worried for his staff's personal safety:

The level of threats against CNN employees, he said, has spiked this year. Mr. Trump, he said, "has caused us to have to take steps that you wouldn't think would be necessary because of the actions of the president of the United States."

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted a GIF that portrayed him battering a wrestling figure with the CNN logo for a head. The creator of that clip turned out to be a neo-Nazi Reddit user who had posted a list of all the Jews that work at CNN. The network's Andrew Kaczynski tracked down that user and extracted an apology. Kaczynski declined to reveal the figure's identity, but suggested that he retained the right to do so, if the shit-poster resumed his "ugly behavior on social media."

That threat did not sit well with the alt-right, who saw it as an attempt to restrict free speech through intimidation. Thus, some Trumpists decided to express their principled opposition to such intimidation, by threatening to kill Kaczynski and his family. As BuzzFeed reports:

For now, according to a source with knowledge of the situation, Kaczynski and his family are the subject of an ongoing harassment campaign that includes the publication of personal information and death threats. And earlier today, the pro-Trump social media personality Michael Cernovich announced a protest outside Kaczynski's New York home.

The White House is openly threatening to punish a (barely) adversarial outlet through selective regulatory enforcement. White nationalist Trump supporters are threatening to kill investigative reporters and assembling outside their homes.

Donald Trump has been president for less than six months.

[Grey Fox]

Stopping that merger is righteous work.

[The Minsky Moment]

I didn't see the part where the administration warned CNN over the TW merger.

[Savonarola]

We have a chain of supermarkets in the south called "Publix."  On their magazine racks they'll put a plastic binder to obscure the cover of magazines that make explicit reference to sex on their covers, such as Cosmopolitan.  Such is our prudishness here in the south and/or Latin America.  Since early last year they've also started putting the same sort of cover over The National Enquirer; no other tabloid, just The National Enquirer.  Presumably this is due due to The Enquirer's close relationship to Trump and their series of sleazy gossip pieces about his rivals.

[grumbler]

Grumbler thinks we'll muddle through and he's seen empires fall before.

Thanks for putting words in my mouth! 

Next time, try using your own words and your own mouth, because this kind of strawman does not dance.

[Eddie Teach]

Sorry, didn't realize you'd joined the "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" camp.