Video today of Trump doing his best McCarthy impersonation on the White House lawn, complete with a prop.
For those wanting a slightly longer summation: Donald Trump claims to have a secret agreement AND THEN PULLS A TRI-FOLDED PIECE OF PAPER OUT OF HIS POCKET AND CLAIMS IT IS THE SECRET AGREEMENT! :eek:
He does not let reporters see it, claiming that he is letting Mexico announce it “at the right time”. He makes many guarantees of content and many denials for access. It’s quite implausible, IMO.
A photographer or videographer did get a great shot of it, but I can’t make the words make much sense. Is this the same text as the agreement we’ve already seen?
One piece of paper is the new ‘agreement’ with Mexico. He may have saved some paper over from the fake documents they made up about the divestiture of his business. Remember all the fresh copy paper laying on a table at a press conference. The blank copy paper.
Some staffer probably printed out his McDonalds order for the day and he found it in his pocket.
According to the image in that video, it says essentially that if the U.S. thinks Mexico hasn’t sufficiently stopped the flow of migrants after 45 days, Mexico promises to . . . .
His stubby little fingers cover up much of the letter, but the last paragraph is clearly visible; I transcribed it:
So… 45 days after issuance, if the US says “no bueno”, Mexico will do the same stuff it has been doing…um… I’m unable to make the words make sense. Mexico will continue to do stuff for 45 more days and then maybe the agreement goes into effect 45 days later? If the US says so?
So Trump thinks Mexico agreed to have him bully them?
Realistically, just the fact that it’s not a prop letter is the closest Trump has ever come to telling the truth, since becoming President. That it actually does look to be some form of signed agreement by Mexico that isn’t the same one as before and is favorable to the US is, realistically, the first known thing close to a diplomatic success that Trump has had in 2.4 years of destroying everything he has touched.
I would gladly put the guy up on trial for treason, but truth is truth. He’s accomplished something for once - at least to a sufficient level that he can publicly talk about it without having to bullshit much beyond reality.
I don’t expect that he’s turned a leaf of any form, but I’m willing to give him this one thing.
It’s just a toothless diplomatic statement that Mexico signed so Trump would shut up and go away. He hasn’t accomplished anything, let alone stopped the problem of people fleeing Central America.
No, his strategy is stupid and wasteful and has pretty well zero chance of success.
But I think it’s worth being honest and admitting that this is - for what he’s trying to do and how he’s trying to do it - in 2.4 years of trying to be President, his first and only known thing something like a success.
Personally, I feel like making that point is more telling than it is congratulatory.
Most delicious thing would be that, owing to him waving the deal in front of reporters and having detailed gleaned from it, Mexico breaks off talks.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
We have some recent experience, on this side of the water, of agreements that such and such a thing will irrevocably happen on a given date, and then it’s extended because it hasn’t happened…
Let him keep doing more of this shit. Trump is clearly unnerved. That poll that showed him getting his ass crushed by Biden yesterday made him see his own ghost. He probably had nightmares about being in an orange jump suit. People maybe, just maybe are starting to get that Trump is a bullshitter. Most of the people who voted for Trump are still on the Trump train, but even they have to confess how idiotic he looks at times.
This assumes that what he’s trying to do is to actually change something in the real world. His purpose, though, is just to give that appearance–to put on a show for his base. What actually happens is not important to him, as long as he can pretend that he has done something.
In that sense, yes, he has succeeded in putting on a make-believe show, though it’s just yet another performance in his larger, ongoing dog-and-pony act.
Didn’t Trump pull the U.S. out of NAFTA, and negotiate a new trade agreement among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico? That must have been written down on paper somewhere. I don’t think any of the countries have ratified it yet.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter if Trump has some new, double-secret agreement. He already had one and then threatened Mexico with tariffs, anyway. Trump will do what Trump will do, whether Mexico lives up to their side of the agreement or not. Mexico must know this, so they let Trump wave his piece of paper around, but I’d be surprised if they lift a finger to carry it out.
I’ll be honest: I struggled with whether or not what I saw was a comma or just speck on the paper. In the end, it looked more like a comma than a speck, so I went with it. You can see the image I used at 1:40 into the video linked in the OP.
This is why it bothers me so much that Mexico ran for the negotiating table: don’t they see that Trump is not trustworthy? Don’t they see that capitulating once means capitulating all the time? Their run for the table was like saying “Yes! We’re stupid; please fuck us over!” IMO.
