What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[crazy canuck]

Photoshopped?

You noticed the nurse was not wearing a mask  -  sharp eyes.

[The Minsky Moment]

Photoshopped?

Clearly - Trump uses his own label bleach, contract manufactured by Chinese slave labor.  Also picture does not show light being shined up his ass.

[The Minsky Moment]

Photoshopped?

You noticed the nurse was not wearing a mask  -  sharp eyes.

Also anyone in that close proximity to Trump would wear protective ear coverings.

[merithyn]

In other news, apparently Melania is the Grinch:

Melania Trump complains about work on 'Christmas stuff' in profane secret tape recording
"Who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?" the first lady is heard saying.

Melania Trump complained about working on "Christmas stuff" and suggested migrant children separated from their parents in detention centres were glad of the facilities there, in a series of secret recordings.

The tapes were revealed by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former aide to the first lady who released a book last month entitled Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.

I'm not much of a Melania fan, but this is such a non-story. She was making plans for how to decorate the White House the first July she was in office, and she was annoyed about it. She had other things she'd rather have been doing, and she bitched to a friend.

I know she's tied herself willingly to a monster, but this particular incident doesn't make her one. There are plenty of valid things to complain about with her.

[Zoupa]

It's more the part about the refugee kids that's fucked up.

[The Larch]

In other news, apparently Melania is the Grinch:

Melania Trump complains about work on 'Christmas stuff' in profane secret tape recording
"Who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?" the first lady is heard saying.

Melania Trump complained about working on "Christmas stuff" and suggested migrant children separated from their parents in detention centres were glad of the facilities there, in a series of secret recordings.

The tapes were revealed by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former aide to the first lady who released a book last month entitled Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.

I'm not much of a Melania fan, but this is such a non-story. She was making plans for how to decorate the White House the first July she was in office, and she was annoyed about it. She had other things she'd rather have been doing, and she bitched to a friend.

I know she's tied herself willingly to a monster, but this particular incident doesn't make her one. There are plenty of valid things to complain about with her.

The part afterwards in which she says that the kids at the ICE detention centers in the borders are better off there than with their families is probably worse. 

[Barrister]

It's more the part about the refugee kids that's fucked up.

I dunno - it could be seen as equivocal:

"I'm working ... my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?"
She continued, "OK, and then I do it and I say that I'm working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, 'Oh, what about the children that they were separated?' Give me a f****** break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that? I can not go, I was trying get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn't have a chance -- needs to go through the process and through the law."

Given that:
-it's a private conversation
-she's not a politician
-she doesn't display total disinterest in the issue

I'll give her a pass.

[DGuller]

I find it very difficult to care about her in any way.

[Barrister]

The part afterwards in which she says that the kids at the ICE detention centers in the borders are better off there than with their families is probably worse. 

Even there though - that's not what she said:

"The kids, they say, 'Wow I will have my own bed? I will sleep on the bed? I will have a cabinet for my clothes?' It's so sad to hear it but they didn't have that in their own countries, they sleep on the floor," Melania Trump says on the tape. "They are taken care of nicely there. But you know, yeah, they are not with parents, it's sad. But when they come here alone or with coyotes or illegally, you know, you need to do something."

[merithyn]

It's more the part about the refugee kids that's fucked up.

I dunno - it could be seen as equivocal:

"I'm working ... my a** off on the Christmas stuff, that you know, who gives a f*** about the Christmas stuff and decorations? But I need to do it, right?"
She continued, "OK, and then I do it and I say that I'm working on Christmas and planning for the Christmas and they said, 'Oh, what about the children that they were separated?' Give me a f****** break. Where they were saying anything when Obama did that? I can not go, I was trying get the kid reunited with the mom. I didn't have a chance -- needs to go through the process and through the law."

Given that:
-it's a private conversation
-she's not a politician
-she doesn't display total disinterest in the issue

I'll give her a pass.

I just think it's a non-story. I don't care one way or another about her. Like I said, she's tied herself to a monster and is holding on for dear life. For that reason alone, she's not worth my emotional or mental energy. But this is a non-story.

[Maladict]

Tell us how you really feel, David 

What Did You Expect?

Trump should never have been allowed anywhere near any public office.

David Frum
Staff writer at The Atlantic


There is a great deal you have every right to expect at this moment of crisis, and no reason at all to believe that Donald Trump or his White House will provide it.

You cannot expect this White House to tell the truth about Trump's health. His doctors have lied about the president's weight and height. They have never offered an adequate explanation of his sudden, unscheduled visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center a year ago. Even the fact that a close aide to the president had tested positive for the coronavirus was kept from the public until Bloomberg broke the news.

You cannot expect the White House to produce any orderly plan for the execution of Trump's public duties, even to the very limited extent that Trump executed public duties in the first place. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was diagnosed with COVID-19 on April 6 of this year. Johnson formally deputed Foreign Minister Dominic Raab to preside over the government during his own incapacity. But the pattern in the Trump administration has been that the president will not and cannot do the job himself, and that he vengefully strikes down anyone who tries to do the job for him.

Trump fired his most successful chief of staff, John Kelly, for trying to force him to work. Kelly's successor, Mick Mulvaney, survived by enabling Trump "to act as he chooses—a recognition that trying to control Trump is a futile approach," as Politico's Nancy Cook put it. Likewise, Vice President Mike Pence had better be awfully circumspect about filling the role that the Constitution and its Twenty-Fifth Amendment assign him. Trump will be watching. So long as Trump is conscious, he will not allow it; should he lose consciousness, he will retaliate when and if he recovers.

You cannot expect the White House to exhibit any regard for the health of others. The president knowingly exposed his wife, his adult children, his staff, his donors, and his supporters in the Cleveland debate hall. He refused and forbade the most basic safety precautions in the close quarters of the West Wing and on Air Force One, except for testing, which was intended to protect him personally. On Tuesday, Trump was on the debate stage mocking former Vice President Joe Biden for wearing face masks; as the positive tests came in, he did not bother to inform Biden or his team that Trump had exposed him to the coronavirus. Until we know the date of Trump's last negative COVID-19 test, we can only guess at the number of people he exposed. By sticking to an aggressive travel schedule with in-person gatherings while eschewing even minimal safeguards, Trump has carried the risk of disease across the country.

You cannot expect Trump to gain any wisdom, empathy, or compassion for others. Throughout the pandemic, Trump has disdained the hardships suffered by sick and dying Americans, by their families and neighbors, by those who have lost jobs and homes. When NBC's Peter Alexander asked Trump on March 20 what the president would say to Americans feeling fear because of the disease, he upbraided Alexander: "I'd say you are a terrible reporter." When Republican Senator Mitt Romney self-isolated because he had been exposed to COVID-19 by the negligent selfishness of Senator Rand Paul, Trump sarcastically said to reporters, "Oh, that's too bad." It's a consistent pattern for Trump; on October 2, 2016, four years ago to the day of Trump's COVID-positive acknowledgment, Trump cruelly pantomimed onstage Hillary Clinton's campaign-season bout of pneumonia.

What you can expect is a lot of victimhood and self-pity. Trump and those around him have always demanded for themselves the decencies that they refuse others. They will get them, too. Trump's opponents will express concern and good wishes—and if they do not, Trump's allies will complain that those opponents are allowing politics to overwhelm human feeling. It was only three days ago that Trump on a debate stage dismissed Biden's dead son, Beau, and falsely claimed that Biden's surviving son, Hunter, had been dishonorably discharged from the Army. The next day, Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., appeared on Glenn Beck's show to describe Hunter as a "crackhead." Now, though, we will hear a lot about how people are not being respectful enough to a president in his time of illness.

Trump has all his life posed a moral puzzle: What is due in the way of kindness and sympathy to people who have no kindness and sympathy for anyone else? Should we repay horrifying cruelty in equal measure? Then we reduce ourselves to their level. But if we return indecency with the decency due any other person in need, don't we encourage appalling behavior? Don't we prove to them that they belong to some unique bracket of humanity, entitled to kick others when they are writhing on the floor, and then to claim mercy when their own crimes and cruelties cast them upon the floor themselves?

Americans are dead who might have been alive if Trump had met the challenge of COVID-19 with care and responsibility—or if somebody else, literally almost anybody else, had been president instead. Millions are out of work, in danger of losing their homes, living in fear. Tens of millions of young people have suffered disruption to their education, which will follow them through life. The pandemic was not Trump's fault, but at every turn, he made things worse than they had to be—because at every turn, he cared only for himself, never for the country. And now he will care only for himself again.

Trump should never have been allowed anywhere near any public office. Wish him well, but recognize that his deformed spirit will never be well—and that nothing can be well for the country under his leadership.

[Sheilbh]

Just reading the NYT on the debate and this feels like a microcosm of the last four years:

And again, on the covid procedures at the debate:

[The Minsky Moment]

Trump. "Honor" system.  What could go wrong?

[Syt]

He has neither honor nor a system.

[merithyn]

He has neither honor nor a system.