# The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2016, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070 "2016-12-07T00:25:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1799
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2019, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35965 "2019-08-27T20:57:29Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Individual 1 claimed that Melania "has gotten to know Kim Jong Un and I think she would agree with me, he is a man with a country that has tremendous potential.” > Melania has never been in the same room with Kim Jong Un. > When press secretary Stephanie Grisham was asked about this, she replied, “President Trump confides in his wife on many issues including the detailed elements of his strong relationship with Chairman Kim,” she said. “And while the First Lady hasn’t met him, the President feels like she’s gotten to know him too.” > [https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/08/26/white-house-melania-trump-kim-jong-un-1475726](https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/08/26/white-house-melania-trump-kim-jong-un-1475726) I’ve never met Xi Jinpng, Kim Jongun, or Trump; however, I feel I’ve come to know how interactions between either of the first two and Trump will go. They will play him lke a fiddle. > [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Also notice that Melania was wearing a translation device when Individual 1 and Macron were press conferencing, even though she claims to be fluent in French. & > [@Nava](#): > > I’m sure that hearing whatever the EN-to-FR manages to come up with for Trump’s gobbledygook would be quite interesting. That job should come with hazard pay and access to psychological and psychiatric support. Remember a few years ago there was [this guy in South Africa pretending to be a Sign Language interpreter](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/12/11/mandela-south-africa-deaf-fake/3985257/)? It has to be like that. There’s no way it’s not lke that. Hell, I’m wonderng what the fuck language Tan the Conman is trying to speak almost every tme I hear him. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35966 "2019-08-27T21:05:31Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > A Palestinian student coming to the United States to attend Harvard was stopped at Boston airport and held for hours while ICE looked through his phone and laptop. When they found that some of the people on his contacts list had made anti-US posts (he himself had not), they revoked his visa and deported him. > [Incoming Harvard Freshman Deported After Visa Revoked | News | The Harvard Crimson](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/8/27/incoming-freshman-deported) What’s this bullshit the agent pulled? > [@Rick Kitchen's link](#): > > Ajjawi alleges an immigration officer continued to question him about his religion and religious practices in Lebanon. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35967 "2019-08-27T23:43:51Z")
> [@Skypist](#): > > I thought this was interesting. Looks like the administration’s effort to pollute the environment in every way bit corn farmers in the butt (although I’ve heard that ethanol in fuel and the extra corn growing associated with it are also bad for the environment). > > [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/us/politics/trump-farmers-china-trade.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/us/politics/trump-farmers-china-trade.html) There’s more from the “hard to feel sorry for you guys” dept.: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/iowa-corn-farmers-to-trump-the-government-put-us-in-one-hell-of-a-bad-situation/ar-AAGpOVd](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/iowa-corn-farmers-to-trump-the-government-put-us-in-one-hell-of-a-bad-situation/ar-AAGpOVd) Agriculture is in a hell of a bad situation! And it is because of the trade war plus the deregulation of the ethanol industry. Um, weren’t you guys aware that you were voting for the anti-regulation party? And that your industry relies on government regulations? Did you think all that would happen is that women in New York would be denied abortions because: talking snakes? Maybe as you are being driven off your land to free it up for purchase by oligarchs is a bad time to point out that you also voted for the guys that want to eliminate food stamps. Lots of luck! ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35968 "2019-08-28T00:28:17Z")
[ **Donald Trump Has Worn Us All Out** _And maybe our exhaustion spells his end._](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/opinion/donald-trump.html?emc=rss&partner=rss) Thank you, Frank Bruni, for giving me some hope. You describe exactly the way I’ve been feeling. > [@](#): > > Donald Trump’s presidency has baffled me, enraged me and above all saddened me, because I’m a stubborn believer in America’s promise, which he mocks and imperils. > > But last week his presidency did something to me that it hadn’t done before. It absolutely flattened me. > … > > I was sapped — if not quite of the will to live, then of the will to tweet, to Google and to surf the cable channels, where his furious mien and curious mane are ubiquitous. What I was feeling was beyond Trump fatigue and bigger than Trump exhaustion. It was Trump enervation. Trump enfeeblement. > > And within it I saw a ray of hope. > … > > “Even Trump’s Supporters Are Getting Tired of His Daily Drama” was the headline on Jim Geraghty’s Monday column in National Review, which sometimes travels fantastically creative routes to reach the sunny side of Trump. Geraghty wrote that the publication’s editors “are exhausted with presidential tweets, from asking whether Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell or Chinese leader Chairman Xi is the bigger enemy, to ‘hereby ordering’ private companies to look for alternatives to operations in China.” > > He linked to a lament by the conservative writer Rod Dreher, who, he noted, “is exhausted from the president behaving like ‘a clown who refuses to meet with the prime minister of Denmark because she won’t sell him Greenland.’” > > Notice a theme? Apparently weariness with Trump’s wackiness does something virtually unheard-of in the United States circa 2019: It transcends partisanship. > … A good opinion piece. If your spirits need a credible boost, give it a look. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35969 "2019-08-28T01:31:39Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > [ **Donald Trump Has Worn Us All Out** > _And maybe our exhaustion spells his end._](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/opinion/donald-trump.html?emc=rss&partner=rss) > > Thank you, Frank Bruni, for giving me some hope. You describe exactly the way I’ve been feeling. A good opinion piece. If your spirits need a credible boost, give it a look. Read it, thanks. But there is a big problem with his opinion. Reasonable people knew all of this about Trump before he was elected. Reasonable people have been sick and tired of him for longer than 3 years. Those that elected him are not reasonable people, and love his bullshit and lies. Do they know they are lies? Many of them do. They don’t care as long as it pisses off people that are working to help them, the so called “opposition”. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35970 "2019-08-28T01:54:52Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Read it, thanks. But there is a big problem with his opinion. Reasonable people knew all of this about Trump before he was elected. Reasonable people have been sick and tired of him for longer than 3 years. Those that elected him are not reasonable people, and love his bullshit and lies. Do they know they are lies? Many of them do. They don’t care as long as it pisses off people that are working to help them, the so called “opposition”. I don’t disagree with you, but after 2+ years of him, don’t you feel like the level of “sick and tired” is way beyond what we (all of us) felt right after the election. Hasn’t his craziness exceeded anything you could have imagined back then? Remember back when he first picked his cabinet and everyone was waiting for and expecting him to finally start acting presidential-- doesn’t that seem like a naive dream? Bruni does make the point that the Dems need to offer something different and better and not just keep beating up on him. THAT will get old, too. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35971 "2019-08-28T01:59:37Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Those that elected him are not reasonable people, and love his bullshit and lies. Do they know they are lies? Many of them do. They don’t care as long as it pisses off people that are working to help them, the so called “opposition”. They don’t view TTC’s nonsense as lies. They see them as describing the world the way they want it to be. Electing him, they believe, creates that world. Of course they’re wrong. But they don’t see his comments as lies; it’s the Truth with a Capital T (no doubt a gold T). ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35972 "2019-08-28T02:24:50Z")
Trump wants his idiotic wall by Election Day and is offering pardons to anyone who needs to break the law to make that happen. > **[‘Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/take-the-land-president-trump-wants-a-border-wall-he-wants-it-black-and-he-wants-it-by-election-day/2019/08/27/37b80018-c821-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html)** > > The White House is making an all-out push to get hundreds of miles of border barriers built before November 2020, largely to fulfill Trump’s signature campaign promise. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35973 "2019-08-28T02:29:30Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > The Queen complained to the Prime Minister of Australia that Individual 1 ruined the lawn at Buckingham Palace. > [Queen Elizabeth Reportedly Said Donald Trump "Ruined" Her Property](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/queen-elizabeth-reportedly-said-donald-141500388.html) Guess she didn’t know about Trump’s habit of driving his cart onto the green. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35974 "2019-08-28T02:47:55Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > Trump wants his idiotic wall by Election Day and is offering pardons to anyone who needs to break the law to make that happen. > > [https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/take-the-land-president-trump-wants-a-border-wall-he-wants-it-black-and-he-wants-it-by-election-day/2019/08/27/37b80018-c821-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/take-the-land-president-trump-wants-a-border-wall-he-wants-it-black-and-he-wants-it-by-election-day/2019/08/27/37b80018-c821-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html) I like how when he says something particularly off-the-wall (like about the pardons for those who get his wall built), others in the White House excuse him by saying, “Oh, he’s joking of course.” And yet the guy seems entirely humorless. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35975 "2019-08-28T03:38:30Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I like how when he says something particularly off-the-wall (like about the pardons for those who get his wall built), others in the White House excuse him by saying, “Oh, he’s joking of course.” And yet the guy seems entirely humorless. Thing about Trump is, he is _never_ joking. I don’t think he has the capacity for humor. He only smiles or appears to laugh when crowds are cheering for him. He derives a certain primitive pleasure from the approval of the base, but actual humor is alien to him. Word play, self deprecation, irony, knowing hyperbole, understatement, self awareness, subverting expectations, hell even knock-knock jokes, are all as indecipherable to him as 12th grade English. Seriously, when have you ever seen the man make a joke, except for one of those dinners where he reads jokes written by someone else? Can anyone provide a single example of Trump appearing to formulate and deliver a joke? It doesn’t even have to be a _good_ joke, just something clearly recognizable as a genuine attempt at humor. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35976 "2019-08-28T03:50:42Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > Trump wants his idiotic wall by Election Day and is offering pardons to anyone who needs to break the law to make that happen. > > [https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/take-the-land-president-trump-wants-a-border-wall-he-wants-it-black-and-he-wants-it-by-election-day/2019/08/27/37b80018-c821-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/take-the-land-president-trump-wants-a-border-wall-he-wants-it-black-and-he-wants-it-by-election-day/2019/08/27/37b80018-c821-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html) What I enjoyed most about that article is how they just breezed right by Trump’s announcement that he’d pardon those who broke the law by misusing eminent. The Washington Post didn’t bother to mention that even if he pardons his flacks, the ladn will have been returned to the legal owners. But, hey, we already knew TTC isn’t what you’d call a a long-term planner. Oh, he has long-term goals (heheheh), but he doesn’t have any actual plans. > [@Defensive\_Indifference](#): > > Thing about Trump is, he is _never_ joking. I don’t think he has the capacity for humor. He only smiles or appears to laugh when crowds are cheering for him. He derives a certain primitive pleasure from the approval of the base, but actual humor is alien to him. Word play, self deprecation, irony, knowing hyperbole, understatement, self awareness, subverting expectations, hell even knock-knock jokes, are all as indecipherable to him as 12th grade English. Seriously, when have you ever seen the man make a joke, except for one of those dinners where he reads jokes written by someone else? Can anyone provide a single example of Trump appearing to formulate and deliver a joke? It doesn’t even have to be a _good_ joke, just something clearly recognizable as a genuine attempt at humor. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35977 "2019-08-28T03:58:47Z")
> [@Defensive\_Indifference](#): > > Thing about Trump is, he is _never_ joking. I don’t think he has the capacity for humor. He only smiles or appears to laugh when crowds are cheering for him. He derives a certain primitive pleasure from the approval of the base, but actual humor is alien to him. Word play, self deprecation, irony, knowing hyperbole, understatement, self awareness, subverting expectations, hell even knock-knock jokes, are all as indecipherable to him as 12th grade English. Seriously, when have you ever seen the man make a joke, except for one of those dinners where he reads jokes written by someone else? Can anyone provide a single example of Trump appearing to formulate and deliver a joke? It doesn’t even have to be a _good_ joke, just something clearly recognizable as a genuine attempt at humor. Of course he’s not joking. That requires human emotion. The man is now and always has been a sociopath. His idea of light discourse is to insult others. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35978 "2019-08-28T04:19:56Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Ouch. > > Well done, Sir! There’s no “ouch”. She doesn’t feel anything anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35979 "2019-08-28T04:23:33Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > His idea of light discourse is to insult others. Yeah. I never really got into Don Rickles’s act, but I understood that he was joking, and the targets of his barbs were generally happy to be a part of the joke. I assume Rickles was a pleasant and engaging guy when he wasn’t doing his bit. Anyway, I guess I never really thought about it critically, but whatever it was that made Rickles’s act, yaknow, an act, is entirely missing from Trump. He’s not a goofball up on stage saying, “you’re a hockey puck!” He’s flailing his arms around and mocking a reporter in a wheelchair. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35980 "2019-08-28T05:22:00Z")
> [@Defensive\_Indifference](#): > > … I assume Rickles was a pleasant and engaging guy when he wasn’t doing his bit. … Well, I have had friends who were decent enough but would periodically manifest dickishness. We put up with that because they were generally good people. Rickles, I suspect, may have had something like what plagues Lewis Black: he has to do the pissed-off act in order to suppress his stutter. Rickles may have been shy or repressed, resorting to his stage persona in order to be able to perform. As far as CFSG, he simply does not have that much depth of personality. I think the line in _Deteriorata_ was written with him in mind, _Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls Would scarcely get your feet wet._ ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35981 "2019-08-28T15:34:32Z")
**Re: Frank Bruni’s NY Times op-ed:**. As a resident of the NYC area since 1978 (and NYC proper since 1982), I can claim to be heartily sick and tired of the short-fingered vulgarian since 1978. He may have been new to the rest of the country in 2015, but we’ve been looking at his ugly pan on the tabloids’ front pages for over 40 years. I’d like to see him struck by lightning during one of his stupid helicopter Q&As, like the nasty little girl in **The Bad Seed** (movie version). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35982 "2019-08-28T16:01:22Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I’d like to see him struck by lightning during one of his stupid helicopter Q&As, like the nasty little girl in **The Bad Seed** (movie version). No, the pilots are blameless. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35983 "2019-08-28T16:03:02Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > No, the pilots are blameless. Trump, not the helicopter. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2019, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070/35984 "2019-08-28T16:09:13Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > **Re: Frank Bruni’s NY Times op-ed:**. As a resident of the NYC area since 1978 (and NYC proper since 1982), I can claim to be heartily sick and tired of the short-fingered vulgarian since 1978. > > He may have been new to the rest of the country in 2015, but we’ve been looking at his ugly pan on the tabloids’ front pages for over 40 years. > > I’d like to see him struck by lightning during one of his stupid helicopter Q&As, like the nasty little girl in **The Bad Seed** (movie version). I recently ran into some sort of Marvel ad-magazine where Profesor Xavier was declared “man of the year” by TIME and one of the blurbs on the cover mentions Trump. To think that Spanish glossies used to treat him as Ivana’s +1! Something which I’m sure would offend him mightily if he was capable of believing it. People like him can deny their own noses for the longest time, then suddenly take offense that it happens to have two holes: it’s got two holes! It’s defective!. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070.md?page=1798) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-trump-administration-a-clusterfuck-in-the-making/774070.md?page=1800)