Erin Burnett has a nice bit on this. The general theme is “you gotta be kidding me – we’re not that stupid”. Listening to the message he’s clearly and almost desperately trying to convey at the original presser, “…not the Russians … not the Russians” – trying like a young puppy to please his master who stands at the other podium looking both bored and a little amused – the alleged word substitution makes absolutely no sense and has zero credibility to anyone with even half a brain.
So it will definitely convince the entire Trump base, but no one else.
How can anyone who saw the original video believe that everything’s okay now because oh, gosh, he just misspoke one word? What about later, when he stated that he asked Putin if he did it, said Putin ‘extremely strongly and powerfully’ denied it, and then said he believed Putin. Where in his ‘clarification’ does he address this bit of undeniably taking Russia’s side over his own country?
Tweet today: “Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!”
I personally don’t give a flying fuck if he gets along with Putin. I hope they had the best gay sex that is possible and also hope that one gave the other some nasty disease. What I DO care about is that he approves of a hostile act by a hostile power, refuses to enforce sanctions against them, approves of their takeover of Crimea, and says nothing about their use of nerve gas in the UK. The election hacking was an act of war by Russia and Dumb Donald has given them permission to do it again. This moron makes Neville Chamberlain look like he had balls of steel.
Trump is purely motivated by his own self-aggrandizement. He refuses to listen to his aides because he doesn’t like to be told what to do. His motivation is chiefly to make himself look good, and as far as he’s concerned, he should be famous for hanging out with famous people. Doesn’t matter what they’ve done. They’re famous, and every famous person has haters. He only cares about photo ops. Words are too complicated, which is why Twitter is an invention of Satan, because its 140/280 character limit fits right into Trump’s linguistic limitations. He can fit in “witch hunt” “no collusion” and “fake news” and have plenty of room left over to express his genius.
His followers don’t need to understand any more than the 280 character limit, and they’re happy with that. Too many words are the media’s attempts to confuse them. They see photos of him shaking hands with Putin, a living James Bond villain, and think “he looks nice.” They see him putting his hand on Kim-Jong Un’s shoulder and think, “Aw, he’s helping a poor fat Chingaling.” Then they go back to their Russian-fed Facebook feeds and look for Crooked Hilary’s child sex hideouts.
So I’m reading today that Trump went on Tucker Carlson’s show last night, and Carlson came up with a hypothetical about why the US should defend, say, Montenegro if they were attacked. Montenegro is a member of NATO, and their troops are in Afghanistan fighting alongside US troops. Trump said he understood Carlson’s concerns and wasn’t sure it would be worth risking WWIII to defend Montenegro, which again, is a goddamned NATO member and is fighting alongside us in Afghanistan! Trump reasoned that Montenegro is a tiny country and its people are “very aggressive”. So he worked in some ethnic stereotyping along with his undermining of the most significant alliance probably in the history of the world.
If it’s good enough for the GOP leadership, well, the Trump fans should have no problem with it.
This is the go-to answer from him about anything Trump does. “I can’t be bothered with what he does, I’m busy making policy”. If he dares to run for President again, all those quotes should be in every ad about him.
“A lot of things.” That’s his new nickname, for me. Donnie LottaThings.
“Many things happened, if you look a lot of things happened. If you look at Hillary, and Comey, and McCabe, and Strzok, and Rosentstein, and Gildenstern, and a lot a lot of things.”