[Discussion] Hope to Remember The Trump Administration Thread as being 'transparent and honest'

Let's follow and discuss what our newest presidential administration gets up to, the good, the bad, the lawsuits, and the many many indictments.

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dejanzie wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

As a single person I guess I should rejoice in the knowledge that there's somebody out there for everyone with the news that the human-shaped piece of sh*t and concentrated evil Stephen Miller is dating Pence's new press secretary.

That or I should feel absolutely horrible because the human-shaped piece of sh*t and concentrated evil Stephen Miller has found someone with which he can celebrate his victories, like stripping brown children from their parents and locking both of them up indefinitely, and who shares his dream of an all-white America while I haven't had a decent date and years, which probably means I'm somehow worse than the human-shaped piece of sh*t and concentrated evil Stephen Miller.

I would totally date you, if I were unmarried, on the same continent and attracted to men.

See, that's interesting. I have always thought that OG and I would be a great, bad relationship. You drive me nuts but, damn it, your rants are so sexy.

ruhk wrote:
Clumber wrote:

primaries often result in the most extreme right/left choice and the general election is along party lines

While it’s true that most people vote along party lines I’m not certain what you’re getting at about the primaries... Republicans maybe but Democratic primaries almost always spit out milquetoast centrist candidates into the general election. This election cycle and the 2016 elections have been the first time in metaphorically forever that a leftist has had a reasonable chance at the general, and neither Sanders nor Warren are particularly far left. Center-left at best. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and most of this year’s crop of candidates all range from centrist to center-right.

I was mostly thinking state and congressional level, presidential primaries seem to be a different story.

I love the name "the human-shaped piece of sh*t and concentrated evil Stephen Miller."

It's evil! Don't touch it!

It’s a trick... get an axe.

Giuliani & Trump's illegal activities in Ukraine span 2+ yrs
Not sure of the veracity of the author, but interesting none the less.

VICE-PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!!!!

Guess were sending kids to die in Saudi Arabia. Hope we got paid in cash!

The Guardian: As a foreign reporter visiting the US I was stunned by Trump's press conference
Despite being subjected to a daily diet of Trump headlines, I was unprepared for the president’s alarming incoherence

As a regular news reader I thought I was across the eccentricities of the US president. Most mornings in Australia begin with news from America – the bid to buy Greenland, adjustments to a weather map hand-drawn with a Sharpie or another self-aggrandising tweet. Our headlines and news bulletins, like headlines and news bulletins everywhere, are full of Trump.

As a political reporter for most of the last 30 years I have also endured many long and rambling political press conferences with Australian prime ministers and world leaders.

But watching a full presidential Trump press conference while visiting the US this week I realised how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect.

Exactly. The man can't form a complete sentence and the GOP thinks that's just fine. It's insane

NathanialG wrote:

Guess were sending kids to die in Saudi Arabia. Hope we got paid in cash!

his daughter did...

Nice to see Trump giving what amounts to a white supremacy speech at the UN, something that's only made weirder because he sounds like he chugged a bottle of NyQuil before. Very low energy. Sad.

And he is mocking 16yr old children now too....

The Growing Threat to Journalism Around the World

This country’s leaders have long understood that the free press is one of America’s greatest exports. Sure, they’d complain about our coverage and bristle at the secrets we brought to light. But even as domestic politics and foreign policy would change, a baseline commitment to protecting journalists and their rights would remain.

When four of our journalists were beaten and held hostage by the Libyan military, the State Department played a critical role in securing their release. Interventions like this were often accompanied by a stern reminder to the offending government that the United States defends its journalists.

The current administration, however, has retreated from our country’s historical role as a defender of the free press. Seeing that, other countries are targeting journalists with a growing sense of impunity.

To give you a sense of what this retreat looks like on the ground, let me tell you a story I’ve never shared publicly before. Two years ago, we got a call from a United States government official warning us of the imminent arrest of a New York Times reporter based in Egypt named Declan Walsh. Though the news was alarming, the call was actually fairly standard. Over the years, we’ve received countless such warnings from American diplomats, military leaders and national security officials.

But this particular call took a surprising and distressing turn. We learned the official was passing along this warning without the knowledge or permission of the Trump administration. Rather than trying to stop the Egyptian government or assist the reporter, the official believed, the Trump administration intended to sit on the information and let the arrest be carried out. The official feared being punished for even alerting us to the danger.

Unable to count on our own government to prevent the arrest or help free Declan if he were imprisoned, we turned to his native country, Ireland, for help. Within an hour, Irish diplomats traveled to his house and safely escorted him to the airport before Egyptian forces could detain him.

We hate to imagine what would have happened had that brave official not risked their career to alert us to the threat.

Eighteen months later, another of our reporters, David Kirkpatrick, arrived in Egypt and was detained and deported in apparent retaliation for exposing information that was embarrassing to the Egyptian government. When we protested the move, a senior official at the United States Embassy in Cairo openly voiced the cynical worldview behind the Trump administration’s tolerance for such crackdowns. “What did you expect would happen to him?” he said. “His reporting made the government look bad.”

OG_slinger wrote:

Nice to see Trump giving what amounts to a white supremacy speech at the UN, something that's only made weirder because he sounds like he chugged a bottle of NyQuil before. Very low energy. Sad.

I saw 30 seconds of it and it looks like the teleprompters were too far away and he was squinting to read them. So I think he was just struggling through reading a speech.

DSGamer wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Nice to see Trump giving what amounts to a white supremacy speech at the UN, something that's only made weirder because he sounds like he chugged a bottle of NyQuil before. Very low energy. Sad.

I saw 30 seconds of it and it looks like the teleprompters were too far away and he was squinting to read them. So I think he was just struggling through reading a speech.

He put Wilber Ross asleep.

Democrats hound Trump for giving our military the 5 star treatment they deserve. /s

Somehow we have to have our eyes on Ukraine. I don't know how we'll do it, but that's the next step.

FIXED.

Does Prestwick distribute the same pamphlet to all large groups?

Or are you asserting that a foreign airport inserted that bit just for the US military, because corruption/reasons?

Sounds far fetched.

Reads like boilerplate tourist booth blurb: "Here are the nice 4* hotels nearby. If your want fru-fru 5*, there's one a little further away."

Jonman wrote:

Does Prestwick distribute the same pamphlet to all large groups?

Or are you asserting that a foreign airport inserted that bit just for the US military, because corruption/reasons?

Sounds far fetched.

Reads like boilerplate tourist booth blurb: "Here are the nice 4* hotels nearby. If your want fru-fru 5*, there's one a little further away."

It's a brochure Prestwick Airport (specifically Prestwick Aviation Services, the airport's in-house division that handles military stopovers) created exclusively for US military personnel. They are the only ones who get it.

And there are no other large groups that cycle through Prestwick, which is kinda the reason the Scottish government bought it for £1 back in 2013: it was gushing cash and was tens of millions of pounds in debt.

The Trump Organization partnered with Prestwick back in 2014 after Trump bought Turnberry in hopes of boosting tourism and helping both of them.

And once Trump became President U.S. military flights into Prestwick significantly increased along with fuel and services contracts worth almost $20 million. It's not at all far fetched that the airport, in return, would promote Trump's property to US service members because Trump's a vain, petty grifter like that.

I mean why else do you think the Ukrainian Prime Minister specifically mentioned he stayed at Trump Tower in the call memo or why foreign governments and businesses are renting blocks of rooms at the Trump International Hotel?

A reminder of just how Stupid this version of Watergate this really is.

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Love having a president who doesn’t know what a hyphen is

Your face is a hyphen!

Or what an apostrophe is for.

After 2+ years I have become pretty much inured to his inane tweets, but this one....wow. With all that's going on, that he is even paying attention to this sort of noise is, well, I don't have the words.

HAHAHAHAAHAH I love how he is trying to explain a spelling error and makes another one in the same message. That's some talent there...

Hyphengate

Within the next 48 hours Trump is going to show a line drawn on his phone screen in sharpie and say “see, it’s always been a hyphen “