Kimstu
January 18, 2017, 12:12am
521
jsc1953:
On NPR this weekend there was a discussion of how Trump and his Cabinet will actually govern, and the NPR moderator referred to the Cabinet as “the grown-ups in the room” and he did so without finger quotes, irony, or apology.
To be fair, though, compared to Trump, his Cabinet members are the grown-ups.
Or so we hope, but knowing who they are kowtowing to one wonders if they are following the Trump rulebook of lying their asses now, because like Trump, lying is no trouble at all when the big price is on sight.
jsc1953
January 18, 2017, 2:23pm
523
That was actually my point, although I buried it. The amazing thing about the NPR discussion is that they blatantly and explicitly said that Trump is not the grown-up in the room, and nobody raised an eyebrow.
When you scrutinize Trump’s retaliatory tweets, it becomes apparent that Trump’s weakest spot is being called a loser . This seems to be his most sensitive hot button. What an incredibly fragile ego in such an old man. You’d think he’d have outgrown that by now.
…Right now, what Donald Trump really cares about is looking like a winner. It’s why he has spent the last two months since the election insisting that his election was such an enormous landslide (after all, how many presidents can say they won despite getting almost three million fewer votes than their opponent?). The true threat of the Russian dossier isn’t the idea that he’s Vladimir Putin’s puppet; as he said in one of his debates with Hillary Clinton, “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet.” I’ll bet he isn’t even bothered by the most salacious allegations in the Trump dossier. What really rankles him is the idea that without Putin’s help, he couldn’t have won. That’s also why he lashed out at Lewis, who said that he doesn’t consider Trump a “legitimate president.”
Another politician, understanding what a revered figure Lewis is, would have brushed it off. But Trump simply could not allow that accusation to hang out there without a harsh response, which is exactly what he delivered.
Trump is also irked to no end by data showing him to be the most unpopular incoming president since polling began. In The Washington Post’s polling, Barack Obama’s approval just before he was inaugurated was 79 percent, George W. Bush was at 62 percent, Bill Clinton was at 68 percent, and George H.W.Bush was at 65 percent. Trump is at 40 percent. As soon as he saw that, he tweeted, “The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.” Ah, the return of the “rigged” polls, when they show something other than stunning support for Trump (actually, the election polls were pretty accurate — they showed Clinton winning the popular vote by about 3 points, and she won by 2).
This is something that bears watching: You can call Trump a sexist or a vulgarian and it won’t bother him all that much. But call him a loser? That his fragile ego cannot tolerate…
Cite
A New York Times article from before the election:
What Drives Donald Trump? Fear of Losing Status, Tapes Show
The intense ambitions and undisciplined behaviors of Mr. Trump have confounded even those close to him, especially as his presidential campaign comes to a tumultuous end, and he confronts the possibility of the most stinging defeat of his life. But in the more than five hours of conversations — the last extensive biographical interviews Mr. Trump granted before running for president — a powerful driving force emerges: his deep-seated fear of public embarrassment.
The recordings reveal a man who is fixated on his own celebrity, anxious about losing his status and contemptuous of those who fall from grace. They capture the visceral pleasure he derives from fighting, his willful lack of interest in history, his reluctance to reflect on his life and his belief that most people do not deserve his respect.
dasmoocher:
A New York Times article from before the election:
What Drives Donald Trump? Fear of Losing Status, Tapes Show
The intense ambitions and undisciplined behaviors of Mr. Trump have confounded even those close to him, especially as his presidential campaign comes to a tumultuous end, and he confronts the possibility of the most stinging defeat of his life. But in the more than five hours of conversations — the last extensive biographical interviews Mr. Trump granted before running for president — a powerful driving force emerges: his deep-seated fear of public embarrassment.
The recordings reveal a man who is fixated on his own celebrity, anxious about losing his status and contemptuous of those who fall from grace. They capture the visceral pleasure he derives from fighting, his willful lack of interest in history, his reluctance to reflect on his life and his belief that most people do not deserve his respect.
That is really interesting. So being publicly embarrassed and being called a loser is the magic one-two punch that will lead to Trump hysterically investigating who stole the key to the strawberry locker, eh? Frankly, his tweets already have something of that tone.
Captain Queeg : Ahh, but the strawberries that’s… that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with… geometric logic… that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I’d have produced that key if they hadn’t of pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers…
Trump claims he doesn’t like tweeting, but he has to do it to defend himself again the dishonest media. :smack: It’s like the man is incapable of uttering even one single word of truth.
Of all of the scores of falsehoods Donald Trump has offered since he began running for president, few are as egregiously and obviously untrue as one he offered to Fox News Channel’s Ainsley Earhardt in an interview that aired Wednesday.
“Look,” Trump said, “I don’t like tweeting. I have other things I could be doing. But I get very dishonest media, very dishonest press. And it’s my only way that I can counteract.”
Of course, all evidence suggests that Trump loves tweeting. He loves it. Since May 4, 2009, he has tweeted an average of 10.8 times per day. Per day. On average. That’s not the behavior of someone who dislikes tweeting.
That’s the big falsehood. Then we get to the smaller falsehood: that he tweets only to counteract the media…
Cite
“The food here is terrible! And the portions are too small!”
Stranger
I happened to turn on the TV a while ago, and saw Trump at the Lincoln Memorial. I imagine what he thinks of Lincoln: “The guy got shot. I like guys who don’t get shot. What a LOSER.”
bobot
January 20, 2017, 1:28pm
530
That visit to the memorial was part of his Introduction to American Government class.
Made a new friend, just sitting there on the steps. Bill, IIRC.
I was gonna start a thread about how Trump & Co. are always butthurt, and try to keep it current with the latest butthurts that Trump and his henchmen are experiencing. But I saw we already had this thread.
Of course, Trump is perpetually butthurt over the “dishonest media” which he went on about yesterday when he dropped in on the CIA :
“I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.”
And of course, the whole team is butthurt over the size of the inauguration crowds, starting with Himself (same link):
“We did a thing yesterday at the speech and everybody like the speech? But we had a massive field of people. You saw that. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field. I’m like, wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people.”
And then his press secretary, Sean Spicer, went practically delusional on the subject , with of course a side about the dishonest media:
“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said with emphasis. “Both in person and around the globe.”
He accused the media of “deliberately false reporting” both with regard to photos of the crowd that were published as well as crowd estimates.
“No one had numbers. Because the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, does not put any out,” Spicer said.
“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” he added.
You say “delusional”, Propaganda Barbie says “alternative facts” :
A top adviser to President Donald Trump on Sunday said White House press secretary Sean Spicer provided “alternative facts” to reporters during his first briefing.
“You’re saying it’s a falsehood. And they’re giving, Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” Conway said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…
If you squint and add in a couple of caveats, yeah. The Auguring In was broadcast around the world, true. Add the in-person numbers to the worldwide numbers, maybe. So “both” kinda sorta works. Maybe.
And the events yesterday, which crushed them like a bug, were not an inauguration, but the protest of one, so it was not in the set of events called “inaugurations”. So, apples to orangutans.
A quick sip from the firehose of Internet mockery:
[QUOTE=#SpicerFacts]
Donald Trump was the first person to walk on the moon, despite what the dishonest media claims.
Suicide Squad was the most critically acclaimed movie of 2016. Period.
At 7’7", Trump is the tallest president ever!
Donald Trump was born in a log cabin, and learned to read by firelight. He chopped down a cherry tree, and wrassled bears.
Trump was America’s first black astronaut.
The groundhog is the most accurate predictor of weather in history. Period.
That was not empty space…that was millions of people wearing sheets. PERIOD.
President Trump is touched by enthusiasm and patience of milllions of spectators that arrived just 1 day late to inauguration.
The President is immune to all STD’s because once you have all of them, they cancel each other out.
elucidator:
If you squint and add in a couple of caveats, yeah. The Auguring In was broadcast around the world, true. Add the in-person numbers to the worldwide numbers, maybe. So “both” kinda sorta works. Maybe.
And the events yesterday, which crushed them like a bug, were not an inauguration, but the protest of one, so it was not in the set of events called “inaugurations”. So, apples to orangutans.
Whether that’s yours or not, I’m stealing this.
The silver lining here, if you squint and look at it just so, this will be the funniest shit-show of an administration in history.
We’re going to need much more popcorn.
Heh, I made the same comment about Trump’s speech in front of the CIA Wall of Heroes. “I prefer intelligence officers who DIDN’T die in the service of their country.”
Colibri
January 22, 2017, 6:53pm
539
QuickSilver:
The silver lining here, if you squint and look at it just so, this will be the funniest shit-show of an administration in history.
We’re going to need much more popcorn.
I keep having to remind myself I’m not watching some farcical satire. And if it were a satire, I would think it was much too broad.
The Trump Administration: A Parody Presidency
“Alternative facts.” Well, it’s official. We are now living inside 1984 .