Not so fast. With Putin standing next to him, Macron called out Russian media’s meddling in the French election.
Between the handshake, the swerve, and calling out Putin to his face, Macron is my new hero.
Define sane here.
Its been tried, but he refuses because he says he knows dinosaurs never existed…
I could point out that it’s inappropriate to wish anyone a “happy” day on a day that starts with the flags at half-staff honoring those who died for their country. But that would be petty. 
So on the positive side: newsflash! Trump managed to get through a wreath-laying ceremony without whining about how mistreated he is or showing off his electoral map. So he’s making progress, people!
When Trump refers to money “pouring in to NATO”: is that really how it works? As I understand it, each nation’s commitment to NATO is actually represented by a commitment to their own military spending – the goal is that each country spend 2% of their GDP on their own defense;not that they write a 2% check to NATO.
It’s possible that I’m not well-informed, so I’m willing to be corrected. Unlike our president.
On a side note, this is similar to my bemusement at Memorial Day sales in stores. Gee, nice of all you guys to die so I can get 30% off my next sofa.
Meanwhile, whoever tends Trump’s POTUS account (as opposed to the ‘realDonaldTrump’ account on which he so graciously expressed himself above), finally managed to mention the three-days-earlier Portland MAX train attack, in which two men lost their lives while trying to defend a Muslim woman from a knife-wielding Islamophobe.
Trump had been urged for all those three days to say something. But apparently he wasn’t willing to criticize someone who’d been yelling abuse at a Muslim, because, hey, those are Trump’s people!
The staffer tending the POTUS account finally put together a firm message:
Since the staffer took care of that tiresome chore, Trump was able to ‘be Trump’ freely with his “haters and losers” greeting. Classy!
He doesn’t need another word. That one word says everything he needs/wants to say.
I said Putin was cosying up to Macron, not the other way around.
Whenever I see them talking to Trump supporters on the news, they’re never respectable looking people in business attire. They always look like a Larry the Cable Guy clone or the Egg Lady from “Pink Flamingos”.
I find nothing creditable in crushing the hand of a senior citizen.
If that senior citizen has made it a very public habit of turning every handshake into a dickish and insecure dominance ritual, it’s pretty funny.
This is interesting, because the ones I run into at this point are “fiscal conservatives”. They’ll sell their souls to get a tax break, and look like business folks or ladies that lunch. I think the ones we see interviewed on TV are the ones the media is digging up to show the little guys that Trump is screwing over. I wonder how long his support will really last with that group.
So on top of bringing back mass incarceration, Trump wants to eliminate an important civil rights division within the Dept. of Labor.
I know people think that we can’t ever go back to the days of Jim Crow, but be careful. These things don’t happen all at once. Nazism, Jim Crow – they happen as a result of relentless attacks on institutions and they relentlessly assault the public’s senses about what is acceptable and what is appropriate behavior.
Here is a decent and short article about it. NATO itself does have a pretty small budget, to cover very select activities and the admin overhead of its headquarters, but Trump certainly wasn’t referring to that.
If Trump really wanted to put his (or our) money where his mouth is, he could have upped the U.S.'s force contribution to NATO. As it is, the U.S. has substantially reduced the number of service members who are stationed in Europe over the last 15 years. During the later years of the Cold War, the U.S. had 350,000 personnel in Europe and even around 15 years ago had around 100,000. These days there are barely 60,000, with less than half of those being Army personnel.
A really bad thing happened in Portland Oregon. We shall see whether the WH ever even notices the event. Because the targets were slimy Muzzy girls who are not even welcome in the US, so welcome to alt-normal.
My mistake. He tweeted. Makes me feel so much better.
:rolleyes:
The White House acknowledged it this morning (in Trump’s name).
One girl is Muslim; the other is her not Muslim friend.
Fucking tweets aren’t exactly on a par wiTh FDR’s fireside chats, are they?