What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[CountDeMoney]

We should make a poll on how much time is left before the nukes go off and end up destroying your republic.

I'm still sticking to my "Dead By September" prognosis.  All of us trapped in Trumpworld are not going to survive the summer.

TheHill.com
Trump presented with plan to place nukes in South Korea: report

The National Security Council has presented President Trump with options in response to North Korea's nuclear program that include placing American nuclear weapons in South Korea, NBC News reported on Friday.

Multiple top-ranking military and intelligence officials told the news source that another option presented to Trump by the National Security Council is an operation to kill the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

According to NBC News, both scenarios were part of a review of North Korea policy prepared ahead of Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

Placing nuclear weapons in South Korea will be the first nuclear deployment overseas since the end of the Cold War, NBC noted. Washington withdrew all of its nuclear assets from South Korea 25 years ago.

A senior intelligence official told the network that he doubted U.S. and China could find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

"We have 20 years of diplomacy and sanctions under our belt that has failed to stop the North Korean program," said the official involved in the review.

"I'm not advocating pre-emptive war, nor do I think that the deployment of nuclear weapons buys more for us than it costs," the official added.

Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, maintained on Wednesday that "any solution to the North Korea problem has to involve China."

"I'm a military officer, not a State Department official or any economic expert. But I just look at the world, and it's hard for me to see a solution without China," Hyten told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The rapid advancement of the North Korean nuclear program has put the U.S. under increasing pressure in recent months.

In order to cope with the rising nuclear threat, Washington authorized a deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea, which it began to deploy last month.

The maneuver, however, created new geopolitical obstacles for Trump, with Russia and China strongly opposing the measure out of fear that THAAD will infringe upon their strategic capabilities.

[Ed Anger]

Bannon got cucked by a Jew.Sad!

It's hilarious to think that Bannon actually believed that he would be able to win against the family.

Looks like she is taking it in the ass.

[FunkMonk]

Bannon got cucked by a Jew.Sad!

It's hilarious to think that Bannon actually believed that he would be able to win against the family.

It amuses me that Bannon and his allies are out of the Circle of Trust now.

Never go against The Family.

[HVC]

Not the family, the daughter. I'm sure people could screw over the sins and the unfavored daughter and he would even notice. 

[CountDeMoney]

It amuses me that Bannon and his allies are out of the Circle of Trust now.

Never go against The Family.

It's as if he's been around for years, but people are only now just noticing.  For someone who values loyalty to him above all else, he will jettison anybody he does not need at a particular moment.  Rudy? Christie? Corey? Paul? Mike? Marla? Roy Cohn, for fuck's sake.

The man is a 6 year old.

[CountDeMoney]

Not the family, the daughter. I'm sure people could screw over the sins and the unfavored daughter and he would even notice.

But it's Jared who is his Linus blanket.

Aboard his gold-plated jumbo jet, the Republican nominee does not like to rest or be alone with his thoughts, insisting that aides stay up and keep talking to him. He prefers the soothing, whispery voice of his son-in-law.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html

[DGuller]

It amuses me that Bannon and his allies are out of the Circle of Trust now.

Never go against The Family.

It's as if he's been around for years, but people are only now just noticing.  For someone who values loyalty to him above all else, he will jettison anybody he does not need at a particular moment.  Rudy? Christie? Corey? Paul? Mike? Marla? Roy Cohn, for fuck's sake.

The man is a 6 year old.

Doesn't that just make him a typical corporate or mafia leader?  Loyalty from below is mandatory, loyalty from above only lasts as long as it's profitable.

[CountDeMoney]

Doesn't that just make him a typical corporate or mafia leader?  Loyalty from below is mandatory, loyalty from above only lasts as long as it's profitable.

No, you filthy fucking cossack antisemite slut.  He's not that complex.

[DGuller]

Doesn't that just make him a typical corporate or mafia leader?  Loyalty from below is mandatory, loyalty from above only lasts as long as it's profitable.

No, you filthy fucking cossack antisemite slut.  He's not that complex.

I think we know Donald a little better than you do.

[crazy canuck]

Doesn't that just make him a typical corporate or mafia leader?  Loyalty from below is mandatory, loyalty from above only lasts as long as it's profitable.

No, you filthy fucking cossack antisemite slut.  He's not that complex.

I think we know Donald a little better than you do.

[The Brain]

Doesn't that just make him a typical corporate or mafia leader?  Loyalty from below is mandatory, loyalty from above only lasts as long as it's profitable.

No, you filthy fucking cossack antisemite slut.  He's not that complex.

I think we know Donald a little better than you do.

[garbon]

Telegraph: Donald Trump 'considering sacking Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus' as simmering West Wing feud engulfs White House

[jimmy olsen]

Trump is erratic, easily manipulated by TV and quick to violence?  Who could have predicted this?

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/7/15217492/trump-syria-foreign-policy

Trump's foreign policy is dangerously impulsive
Trump needs a foreign policy, not just reactions to what he sees on cable news.

Updated by Ezra Klein@ezraklein  Apr 7, 2017, 10:10am EDT

The cruise missile strikes President Donald Trump launched in reprisal for Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapon attack in Syria are well within the norms of American foreign policy. But they fall far outside the stated boundaries of Trump's foreign policy, and reflect an administration bereft of a consistent, considered approach to the world — an approach that would make America's actions predictable to both our friends and enemies, and guide the commitments we're willing to make in the event of escalation or reprisal.

What we are seeing, instead, is a foreign policy based on Trump's gut reactions to the images flashing before him on cable news. And that's dangerous.

Last week, despite Assad's horrific, ongoing slaughter of his own people, the Trump administration was comfortable seeing him retain power. In March, Nikki Haley, Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, said, "Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out."

This was consistent with Trump's long-held view on Syria, which was that America should stay the hell away. Unlike many Republicans, his criticism of President Barack Obama wasn't for failing to follow through on infamous "red line" comments but for making them at all:

The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria,fix U.S.A.

There was no ambiguity in Trump's position:

What I am saying is stay out of Syria.

It was really unmistakable:

AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA - IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!

What changed Trump's mind was Assad's gas attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which killed at least 85 people, including 16 women and 23 children, and wounded at least 350 more. This was similar to the horrible chemical weapon attacks that crossed Obama's red line, and Trump even harked back to Obama's language in denouncing it.

"It crossed a lot of lines for me," the president told reporters on Wednesday. "When you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was, that crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line. Many, many lines."

On this, Trump is, of course, right — Assad has crossed all the lines there are to cross. He is a monster, and the suffering he has unleashed is unimaginable. But that was true in 2013, too. Then, Trump said attacking Syria would mean "MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!" What has changed now? Will fewer bad things happen? Will the US get more? Trump has been emotionally moved by the images out of Syria, but what is his new policy meant to achieve? Does he even know?


As far as anyone can tell, Trump's strikes are motivated by his horror over the gassing of Syrian innocents. But the chemical weapons Assad has launched account for a tiny fraction of the horrors he has visited upon his country. If Trump is truly worried about the innocent babies, then much more needs to be done to protect them from bombs, from bullets, from fires, from starvation. Is he willing to do any of it?

How about the simplest, but most effective, thing we could do to save Syrian lives and let Syrian children grow up in peace and prosperity: Let refugees from this horrific conflict resettle in the US — something Trump is trying to ban completely?

Trump's moral outrage appeared to spark a change in administration policy. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson now says Assad will have "no role" in Syria's future, and the US is planning an international effort to remove him from power. But what if he refuses to go? What if he launches more chemical weapon attacks? How committed is Trump to this brand new policy toward Syria? Is he willing to sacrifice American lives to pursue it? Is he willing to end up in a shooting war with Russia over it?

Foreign policy thinkers like to talk in terms of doctrines and philosophies and factions. There are the realists and the neocons and the humanitarians and the isolationists. These labels only get you so far, and no administration retains perfect ideological purity after contact with the world's awful complexity. But they are important, nevertheless, because they offer frameworks for making the awful, tragic choices that define America's foreign policy — and for helping others predict the choices we will make.

It is possible, for instance, to imagine the foreign policy that would lead to strikes like the ones Trump launched against Syria — but that would be a foreign policy based on upholding international norms of warfare, and a foreign policy that took Obama's red line seriously in 2013. And whatever you want to say about Trump, that has never been his foreign policy.

Instead, Trump, in this as in so much else, appears to be going by raw instinct. It took a single chemical weapon attack for his policy toward Syria to dissolve completely. He launched his attack within three days of the Khan Sheikhoun massacre — spending time neither to build public support nor to build congressional support, and raising questions as to whether he's really committed to the aftermath of this new policy, or certain of what he'll do if it fails.

The humanitarian impulse driving Trump's new stance toward Syria, meanwhile, conflicts with everything else his administration is doing. While President Trump publicly worries over the fate of Syrian children, he is also barring them from fleeing to the US. While he speaks of "beautiful babies" dying, he is trying to slash what America spends on foreign aid, consigning many more beautiful babies to death and disease.

This, above all else, is what is worrying about Trump on foreign policy: He is unpredictable and driven by whims. He is unmoored from any coherent philosophy of America's role in the world, and no one — perhaps not even him — truly knows what he'll do in the event of a crisis.

Obama's policy on Syria was perpetually paralyzed by fear of escalation. Trump's policy on Syria is volatile precisely because he doesn't seem to have thought through questions of escalation. This is a foreign policy based on intuition and emotion, and there is danger in that.

[Solmyr]

Abu Ivanka.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39526653

Shortly after, some Arab social media users started referring to the president as Abu Ivanka - Father of Ivanka, as a sign of respect and endearment.
Others referred to him as Abu Ivanka al-Amreeki - Father of Ivanka the American, complete with a religious beard.

[FunkMonk]

That's awesome