Trump's first press conference as president-elect

[Chefguy]

@Thudlow_Boink

Dude, don’t slander the Muppets like that.
I’m having trouble thinking of any actual Muppet that I wouldn’t rather have as President than Donald.

He does have that same rotted cottage cheese complexion that some muppets have.

[Ambivalid]

@Ukulele_Ike

I thought human piss was sterile?

It’s not.

[Little_Pig]

@octopus

Tell us how you really feel.

Ok. I really hope that they have film of the rodeo clown getting butt-fucked by a herd of goats wearing party hats.

[adaher]

@Trinopus

Making an enemy of the media is not a wise thing to do. Ask Richard Nixon.

Or Hillary Clinton.

[Little_Nemo]

@Chisquirrel

That’s a fight Trump can’t win. His Twitter account (which still runs the risk of being banned) versus the combined might of the media, who push out news and entertainment on TV, internet, and print? If they all black you out, nobody knows what you’re doing. If they only tear you apart, even if you’re doing awesome things, no one will know. If the press truly feels like their survival or influence is at stake, and solidarity forms among the major outlets, Trump doesn’t stand a chance.

Or if there’s a videotape of Trump having a piss orgy with a bunch of Russian prostitutes. That’s a fight Trump can’t win either.

People need to stop complaining about the way the press is acting and start thinking about the way Trump is acting.

[John_Mace]

@SenorBeef

Trump is going to fight them with every tool he has at his disposal - I hope for once in their lives they actually fight back.

Word on the street is that said tool is not too much to worry about.

[Savannah]

@Rick_Kitchen

Katy Tur of NBC tweeted that all of the other reporters should defer to the reporters that He Who Must Not Be Named won’t call on.

I like her.

She had an interesting summer covering the Perverted Cheeto.

[HurricaneDitka]

The “press should boycott Trump” ideas seem a bit weird. I’m sure liberals would find it gratifying, but it’s not like it would really keep Trump from communicating with people like it might have 3 or 4 decades ago. Now he’ll just have a Reddit AMA session, or stream on Facebook while his staff reads him (vetted) questions that the public submits, or something like that. Trump doesn’t need the press, and in fact has made a pretty successful go of things making them out to be the enemy.

[carnivorousplant]

@adaher

Or Hillary Clinton.

The media likes her.

[GIGObuster]

@HurricaneDitka

The “press should boycott Trump” ideas seem a bit weird. I’m sure liberals would find it gratifying, but it’s not like it would really keep Trump from communicating with people like it might have 3 or 4 decades ago. Now he’ll just have a Reddit AMA session, or stream on Facebook while his staff reads him (vetted) questions that the public submits, or something like that. Trump doesn’t need the press, and in fact has made a pretty successful go of things making them out to be the enemy.

As the election showed, most do rely on old media still, there is a significant group that do not trust the mainstream, but what you are relying here is indeed a bubble that includes more ignorance that eventually will caught up with them. While Trump won the electoral college a plurality of Americans did not vote for him.

2. Trust and accuracy

[ul]
[li]Social media, on the other hand, is trusted by a slim minority – only 4% of web-using adults have a lot of trust in the information they find on social media. And that rises to only 7% among those who get news on these sites.[/li][li]When those who get news online from each source type were asked specifically about each’s accuracy, news organizations again sit at the top; 15% of those who get news from news organizations online find them very accurate, compared with 7% who say the same about people they are close with and just 2% for people they are not particularly close with.[/li][li]Democrats are more likely than others to have “a lot” of trust in the information from national news organizations: 27% do, compared with 15% of Republicans and 13% of Independents. Those ages 50+ (22%) are also more likely than those ages 18-29 (10%) and those 30-49 (16%) to trust information from national news organizations a lot.[/li][/ul]

[ul]

[li]Three-quarters of Americans think that news organizations keep political leaders in check – preventing them from doing things that they shouldn’t be doing.[/li][li] But about the same portion (74%) say that news organizations tend to favor one side – including 75% of those who say the media prevents leaders from doing things they shouldn’t.[/li][li] Political differences emerge here with conservative Republicans most likely to think that news organizations are one-sided.[/li][li] This ideological difference is reinforced by earlier research that asked about trust of individual news organizations. Of the 36 sources asked about in our 2014 survey, 28 of them were trusted more than distrusted by respondents who expressed consistently liberal political views across a range of questions about political values; 24 of them were distrusted more than trusted by consistent conservatives[/li][/ul].

IMHO a good number of people that voted made it in the spirit of protest and against the stablishment, seeing Trump not draining the swamp but adding more mud to the system was not quite what they wanted; but it is clear to me that lots more expected anyhow that the current institutions would keep guys like Trump in check.

So in essence, I do not think what you want is going to happen. Sure, many very conservative guys will be happy to avoid the mainstream; but a very significant group that voted as it did, to protest the state of affairs, is not likely to ignore the mainstream when it checks on the overreach that the right will attempt now.

[Leaper]

So what DO Trump supporters think of the substance of this press conference?

[adaher]

I’m not a Trump supporter, but being a conservative there are always going to be times when I’m in his corner for a specific policy goal, so here’s what I liked:

1. We’re building the wall. Don’t care if Mexico pays or not, but Trump is right that there are ways to make that happen even if Mexico doesn’t agree. You could tax remittances, for example.

2. Repeal and replace should happen at the same time and Trump seems to be imposing his will on the Congressional GOP in that regard. That’s good. Repeal and delay was a chickenshit tactic. Actually, from what I understand Trump and Tom Price are supposed to unveil their own plan.

3. Trump approaches the office differently from past Presidents, to put it mildly, but one good aspect is that he seems to be using his dealmaking and networking skills to do things others can’t do. One example that he mentioned today was getting Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic to ally with the administration to fix veterans’ health care.

4. Won’t release his taxes because “I won”. What an asshole.

[Pearl_Clutching_Provocateur]

@Jack_Batty

Yeah. In the same kind of way that a video of 300 pound guy dressed in nothing but a tutu and swim fins pouring maple syrup over himself and then farting Yankee Doodle Dandy is more interesting than Citizen Kane.

But you’re still watching.

Frankly, CNN should be thrown out of the press room and Pravda should take its place.

Whatever happened to Jorge Ramos? Didn’t Trump place his size 14 shoes on his rear end and send him packing for being a loudmouth?

[running_coach]

@Pearl_Clutching_Provocateur

But you’re still watching.

Frankly, CNN should be thrown out of the press room and Pravda should take its place.

Whatever happened to Jorge Ramos? Didn’t Trump place his size 14 shoes on his rear end and send him packing for being a loudmouth?

Trump couldn’t stand the competition?

[Rick_Kitchen]

Bipartisan Report (which is not, despite its name), fact checked the press conference. Now, remember that they are not a neutral source. But this stuff seems pretty neutral to me:

Russians tried to hack the RNC as well but “didn’t break through”
Russians did not delve as deeply into the RNC

Hillary Clinton received debate questions
Her staff were sent a single question which would be asked of her in Flint regarding the water situation

“I have a no conflict situation because I’m president.”

“Some states have over 100% premium increase” with ObamaCare
22% is the average increase on premiums
71% is the highest in Oklahoma

We saved 1,000 jobs with Carrier
1,253 jobs are going to Mexico still
730 are staying and most of those were pre-planned

96 million people want work but can’t find it
95.1 million people are not in the Labor force; 93 percent of that 95.1 million do not want work, they are stay-at-home parents, disabled, students, retired etc.
The unemployment rate is 4.7%, or 7.5 million people

http://bipartisanreport.com/2017/01/11/just-in-the-fact-check-is-in-on-donald-trumps-first-press-conference-and-its-sad/

[AtomThought]

Was anyone else slightly horrified by the applause Trump was getting (presumably from his staffers)? I thought the whole thing seemed a bit Kim Jong-esque.

[Kimstu]

@adaher

IWe’re building the wall. Don’t care if Mexico pays or not, but Trump is right that there are ways to make that happen even if Mexico doesn’t agree. You could tax remittances, for example.

Actually, as my previously-quoted cite noted, Trump is not in the least right about there being effective ways to “make that happen”:

And Trump’s options for coercing payment from Mexico are limited and disruptive – increasing border crossing fees and slashing aid would do little to cover the cost, and seizing remittance payments and imposing an import tax would have serious macroeconomic consequences.

[QUOTE=adaher]
Repeal and replace should happen at the same time and Trump seems to be imposing his will on the Congressional GOP in that regard.

[/quote]

More likely, Trump is engaging in his usual fantasist rambling, and nobody either in the Trump administration or the Republican Congress has the least idea how to realistically create “a health care that is far less expensive and far better”.

[QUOTE=adaher]
[…] he seems to be using his dealmaking and networking skills to do things others can’t do. One example that he mentioned today was getting Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic to ally with the administration to fix veterans’ health care.

[/quote]

:dubious: Let’s hope it succeeds, but I don’t see how his current approach counts as innovative or groundbreaking, much less uniquely “skilled”. For one thing, Trump picked for his VA Secretary the same guy who’s currently running the Veterans Health Administration. If he’s so concerned about fixing health care for veterans, why is he handing the top post to the guy who’s actually been in charge of it and hasn’t fixed it?

And partnerships between the VA and private hospitals to improve medical facilities and care for veterans have been underway since 2014:

[…] The MyVA program will also put in place a single regional framework to let veterans navigate the agency more easily; expand public-private partnerships through Community Veteran Advisory Councils to coordinate veterans’ issues at the local, state and community levels; and look for ways to move the agency toward a shared services model […]

[…] a bipartisan deal that will give the embattled agency more funds to hire doctors and outsource medical care for veterans. […]

Earlier in August, Obama signed a $17 billion compromise bill known as the Veteran Access to Care Act, which provided approximately $10 billion for veterans to seek health care outside the VA from private or DOD facilities […]

[QUOTE=adaher]
Won’t release his taxes because “I won”. What an asshole.
[/QUOTE]

Yup. Maybe his supporters don’t care about what’s in his tax returns, but a lot of the rest of us certainly do.
Overall, Trump’s “policy goals” seem to be a mix of unrealistic PR bullshit and pretending to be the originator of existing serious initiatives so he can stick a big gold “T” on them and claim the credit.

Still, if he actually follows through on supporting existing initiatives to improve public services, he will definitely deserve some credit (though not as much as he will doubtless claim).

But I’m somewhat skeptical that he will, as it’s always so much easier for Trump to screw something up and just claim it was “yuuge, terrific, classy, people love it” anyway than to actually make it work out well for everybody involved.

[elucidator]

…You could tax remittances, for example…

There are men crossing our border every day who’s sole interest is finding a way to earn money to send to their families. They risk their lives to do it, and live in fearful shadows. You want family values? Its crossing into Arizona tonight. Family values up the wazoo!

Taxing the pittances they can send home in order to build a wall to keep them out, is beyond cruel and heartless, it’s downright Republican! Literally, food from the mouths of hungry children. Lord forgive them, they know exactly what they are doing.

At least they are trying to screw some poor Americans too, makes it more equal. Not racist that way.

[Jack_Batty]

@Jack_Batty

Yeah. In the same kind of way that a video of 300 pound guy dressed in nothing but a tutu and swim fins pouring maple syrup over himself and then farting Yankee Doodle Dandy is more interesting than Citizen Kane.

@Pearl_Clutching_Provocateur

But you’re still watching.

What choice do I have when it’s pop-up virus that’s thrown in my face at every turn. On the other hand, if someone asks me for a viewing recommendation, guess which I’m going to go with.

Oh, I’m sure you’d go with the fart-show, but that says more about you than about the videos.

(I love analogies)

[Kimstu]

@Pearl_Clutching_Provocateur

But you’re still watching.

Well, reading, at least. But yeah, of course we are: at this point it’s the responsibility of every concerned citizen to be keeping a sharp eye on this clown and his gang of evangelical activists and robber barons.