Donald Trump wonders why he hires so many incompetent lowlifes...
Donald Trump’s assessments of his own hires:
Vice President Mike Pence: “delusional”, “not a very good person
Defense Secretary James Mattis: “the world’s most overrated general”
Chair of the JCS Mark Milley: possibly deserve[s] “DEATH”
Chief of Staff John Kelly: “by far the dumbest of my military people”
White House Counsel Don McGahn: Trump was “never a big fan”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “he went through the nominating process and he did very poorly. I mean, he was mixed up and confused.”
Press Secretary and First Lady CoS Stephanie Grisham: “didn’t have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning”
Omarosa Manigault Newman: “When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out”
John Bolton: s a “dope” who “Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped.”
Defense Secretay Mark Esper: “weak and totally ineffective”
Attorney General Bill Barr: “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office”; “Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy”
Whattaboutism in the service of supporting fascists is no virtue:
JD Vance: ‘I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine. I do care about the fact that in my community right now the leading cause of death among 18- to 45-year-olds is Mexican fentanyl...
Most of us can think about more than one thing at a time. Not JD Vance.
Simone Biles is, as JD Vance would say, “obviously… not a white woman”. But she is the GOAT in what she does, a much greater ornament of and contributor to America than JD Vance should ever be, and so someone to be applauded and supported, rather than slagged by some attention-seeking dweeb:
Amanda: ‘I think it is interesting that the last thing JD Vance did before getting the VP nom was go speak at a conference that is little more than a gathering of unregistered foreign agents for Hungary, all seemingly in competition with one another to rack up the most FARA violations… <https://twitter.com/noturtlesoup17/status/1818042062035693737>
Pro Tip: When eating lunch at a hot dog place in Warren, Ohio, DO NOT sit down at the cash register! Eat your food at a table, like a normal non-weird person:
Once again, the absence of front-page coverage is a very black mark for newspapers:
Laffy: ‘Via Dean Gloster: “Until pertussis vax, pertussis was #1 killer of children worldwide. Trump says he'll cut all fed funds to any school that insists we vax children against pertussis, diphtheria, mumps, measles, polio. That is, basically, mass murder”. Andrea R MD: “Popping in to say a pres cand’t advocating to stop all childhood vax shd be nat news & disqualifying. Media failure literally takes my breath away. Childhood vax isn't both sides issue you fucking idiots, it's like a pub health thing…
Interesting to know that this is still what J.D. Vance believes, and interesting to wonder about what twin scorpions-in-a-bottle Vance and Trump think they are doing right now:
J.D. Vance: ‘I’m obviously outraged at Trump’s rhetoric, and I worry most of all about how welcome Muslim citizens feel in their own country. But I also think that people have always believed crazy s*** (I remember a poll from a few years back suggesting that a near majority of democratic voters blamed ‘the Jews’ for the financial crisis). And there have always been demagogues willing to exploit the people who believe crazy s***. What seems different to me is that the Republican Party offers nothing that’s as attractive as the demagogue…
Grifters: Read J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, and the very first thing that strikes you is that Vance’s identity as an Appalachian hillbilly is an invented and assumed one:
J.D. Vance: Hillbilly Elegy: ‘My address was where I spent most of my time with my mother and sister, wherever that might be. But my home never changed: my great-grandmother’s house, in the holler, in Jackson, Kentucky…. In Middletown, Ohio… I… grew up. But until I was twelve, I spent my summers and much of the rest of my time back in Jackson…. We stayed with Mamaw Blanton in the house where she’d lived since before her husband left to fight the Japanese in the Pacific. Mamaw Blanton’s house was my favorite place in the world…. Jackson was the one place that belonged to me, my sister, and Mamaw…. In Jackson, I was the grandson of the toughest woman anyone knew and the most skilled auto mechanic in town; in Ohio, I was the abandoned son of a man I hardly knew and a woman I wished I didn’t…
Thus this fits very badly with Vance’s speech to the Republican National Convention:
J.D. Vance: Transcript: ‘Greetings, Milwaukee. My fellow Americans and my fellow Republicans, my name is J.D. Vance, from the great state of Ohio. Tonight— “O-H-I-O”. You guys, we gotta chill with the Ohio love…. If, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to. Now. Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principle. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home… <nytimes.com/2024/07/17/us/politics/read…>
Is his home Ohio? Or is his home Eastern Kentucky? Seven generations… Vance’s children will have 128 ancestors born at the time of the U.S. Civil War, of whom well under a quarter will be buried in that cemetery. Why does their father’s mother’s father’s ancestral line get pride of place?
J.D. Vance is quintessentially American—we have come to a New World from an Old World in order to escape the mistakes of the Old World and choose who we want to be in this land. But to choose to be a blood-and-soil white-power nationalist is perhaps the most unAmerican choice you can make of what to do with your American freedom.
And all so that you can help kleptocrats pick the pockets of the gullible…
Donald Trump says that if elected he will cancel the 2028 election. If Kamala Harris were ever to say that things will be “fixed so good you won’t have to vote”, what would the reaction be?:
Donald Trump: ‘Christians get out and vote just this time! You won’t have to do it any more! Four more years! You know what? It will be fixed! It will be fine! You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians!… In four years you won’t have to vote again. We will have it fixed so good you won’t have to vote… <https://mastodon.social/@flexghost/112858436562896102>
J.D. Vance searches the internet for videos of human-dolphin attempted sexual congress. Apparently he did not realize that Twitter bolded your search terms before he began sharing:
Adam Bonin: ‘TIL that earlier this year, JD Vance posted the below without realizing that the bolded words indicated that he had intentionally searched for, and not merely stumbled upon, dolphin-related erotica on Twitter. Yes, friends, he did this on porpoise.… Trump… actually name[d] the possible second coming of Troy McClure to the Vice Presidency:
Donald Trump really thinks that the people seeking political asylum in the United States were previously incarcerated in a mental asylum in the country they are fleeing:
Donald Trump: ‘The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country. They are coming in from every corner of the earth… at levels that we’ve never seen before. It is an invasion indeed, and this administration does absolutely nothing to stop them…. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. I, you know the press is always on because I say this. Has anyone seen “The Silence of the Lambs”? The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’d love to have you for dinner. That’s insane asylums. They’re emptying out their insane asylums. And terrorists at numbers that we’ve never seen before. Bad things are going to happen… <nytimes.com/2024/07/19/us/politics/trum…>
What particular kind of dementia is signified by this—saying the right number of syllables, but getting each syllable wrong?:
Donald Trump: "‘Kamala is also a total radical on a word called imboten—you know this, right? A word called what—abortion…
America’s enemies in George Soros’s mind: George Soros, and Black women with two few children:
J. D. Vance: ‘I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally. Let’s say Roe v. Wade is overruled. Ohio bans abortion… you know, in let’s say 2024. And then, every day, George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity. That’s kind of creepy…. If that happens, do you need some federal response to prevent it from happening because it’s really creepy…<https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jd-vance-national-abortion-ban-soros-1235062748/>
Today’s idea is to replace generals with racecar drivers. If Kamala Harris were ever to suggest anything equally unbalanced…:
Donald Trump: ‘How you do it is amazing. It’s so amazing. We should send you into. I’ve always said: “Get some of these guys”. I have a lot of friends in that world. I don’t know. I think. Is it, Roger Penske not a great guy too? He won 20 Indianapolis 500s. This guy wins all the time. We appreciate talent. I said: “Let me use these guys to guide our military a little bit”. When you can win so many races, that’s OK. You know. You guide. Same thing with coaches. You take some of our greatest football coaches. You put them at the table. “What do you like, coach?” Because in its own way it is not so much really different… <https://www.threads.net/@kamalahq/post/C90s4Y-O8JO>
Trump cannot remember things he said earlier this month—and nobody in his circle dares tell him that he did say it:
Kate Sullivan: Trump said he’d consider Jamie Dimon for Treasury secretary but now says he doesn’t know who said that: ‘Trump said, “I have a lot of respect for Jamie Dimon.” He was then asked whether Dimon might be a future Trump administration Treasury secretary. “He is somebody that I would consider, sure.”… Tuesday Trump posted on Truth Social, “I don’t know who said it, or where it came from, perhaps the Radical Left, but I never discussed, or thought of, Jamie Dimon or Larry Fink for Secretary of the Treasury”… <https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/23/politics/trump-jamie-dimon-treasury-secretary/index.html>
Trump’s Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance says what the journamalists won’t—that Trump’s grabbing women by the pussy is his SOP:
Paranoid to the max. If Kamala Harris or Tim Waltz were to demonstrate this degree of paranoia, what would the New York Times say?:
J.D. Vance: ‘Vance accused Joe Biden of deliberately relaxing enforcement at the country’s border as a strategy to kill off Republican voters via fentanyl trafficking: “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl. . . . It does look intentional. It’s like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn’t vote for him”… <https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-45/politics/j-d-vance-changes-the-subject-2/>
Vance has no convictions. Trump has 34.
There are five and only five differences even worth noting between the Bush-Clintoln NAFTA and the Trump-Lighthizer USMCTA:
Automotive manufacturing rules… requir[ing] 75% of a vehicle's components to be manufactured in North America, up from 62.5%….
Dairy market access… expands U.S. dairy farmers' access to the Canadian market.
Digital trade… prohibitions on data localization requirements.
Environmental provisions… $600 million to address environmental issues and simplifies enforcement procedures.
Biologic drugs… remov[ing] provisions… which Democrats argued would have limited Congress's ability to legislate on drug pricing…
Perhaps—probably—Trump thinks that these differences are YUGE because Lighthizer told them they were, and he is gullible. But they are not YUGE. They are marginal—with the auto-parts one being the most consequential: good for workers in Michigan and neighboring states and for foreign automobile companies as US-firm production flexibility is reduced; bad for consumers in North America and for auto and auto-parts workers outside the Rustbelt:
Donald Trump: ‘I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one. Thereby saving the U.S. auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now and saving U.S. customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car…. Plants will be built in the United States and our people are going to man those plants. And if they don’t agree with us, we’ll put a tariff of approximately 100 to 200 percent on each car and they will be unsellable in the United States…. Remember, U.S.M.C.A. I got rid of NAFTA the worst trade deal ever made and replaced it with U.S.M.C.A. which is, they say, the best trade deal ever made… <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/19/us/politics/trump-rnc-speech-transcript.html>
Every time Joe Biden has a word-memory senior moment, the press…:
If Joe Biden were just once to threaten to imprison a successful tech entrepreneur…
Has Joe Biden ever said anything as stupid as this?:
George Conway: ‘omg:
Or this?:
Digby: ‘This is just so, so stupid in so many ways: Trump: “I say that the thing that's an existential threat is not global warming where the ocean will rise, maybe. And it may go down but may rise 1/8 of an inch in the next 497 years which gives you a little bit more waterfront property if you're lucky…
We know he does not know what he is talking about; but what does he even think he is talking about?:
Donald Trump: ‘You look at our airports where flights are being delayed four days where people are pitching tents in an airport because their flight is so, you know, it's never gonna even happen. We've never seen anything like it. And we’ve become like, you know, we, we are a failing nation where we've become a third world nation in many ways. Our elections are third world in my opinion, our airports are being run so badly, it's so badly. It's not even conceivable. People go the other night I had somebody going to the airport and they called up two days later to tell me that they've never gotten out. I said, but where are you still at the airport?…
Just think what the media reaction would be if Joe Biden were to claim he needed to go upstairs to deal with something outside his executive powers:
George Conway: Okay, guys, *now* can we have a full-blown discussion in the mainstream media about Donald Trump’s mental health?: Acyn: “Setoodeh: ‘Trump seemed to think he still had some foreign policy powers. There was one day where he told me he needed to go upstairs to deal with Afghanistan even though he clearly didn’t…
The “dementia” part here is Trump’s inability to think: When did Joan Rivers die? I should not lie about her personally telling me that she had voted for me until I get a chance to check that:
Just think what the media reaction would be if Joe Biden were to confuse Kamala Harris with Nancy Pelosi just once:
Jay Kuo: Trump’s Brain Is Not Okay: ‘An Ivy League graduate who once “tossed off well-turned phrases” had fallen to a 4th-grade level of speech. The MOCA dementia screening test that Trump brags about passing is slated to the mental age of a kindergartener (“Show me the picture of the lion?). Only a few grades to go…. More alarming is… [the] multiple former members of his administration [who] report being shocked that “he’s not the same person he was.”… Not only will Trump continue to get worse and worse, his rate of decline is accelerating, and if he is typical, he will fall off what they call the “cognitive cliff” relatively soon….
Forgetting names and dates is normal for people who are aging, like Joe Biden, and me, and millions of others. By stark contrast… “confusing people and generations” is a sign of advanced dementia. And this is the type of profound memory disturbance we’re seeing in Trump…. Trump confuse[s] Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi…. He’s said he’s running against Obama. How often does he say and think it in private?… Trump said it plainly, over and over. He didn’t look like he was joking (does he ever?) and said literally nothing to suggest he was referring to some Biden-Obama cabal. The more plausible explanation is that once again we are watching the workings of his demented mind in real time….
What happens to a nation when its chief executive has lost his capacity for executive functioning? Michael Wolff wrote that Trump not infrequently failed to recognize old friends. I don’t mean he forgot their names. He acted as if he’d never seen them before in his life. If you’ve ever had a relative with dementia you know how heartbreaking that stage of decline can be—to have to remind a loved one of who you are… <https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/john-gartner-trump-cognitive-decline>
Just think what the media reaction would be if Joe Biden were to go on a demented incoherent ramble like this just one time:
Donald Trump: ‘It's such a question I do get a lot. It's such an interesting question. I've met with pilots that look just like you, actually.... These are perfect people. And they're not conspiratorial. They're not crazy.
And they tell me stories that they've seen things that you wouldn't believe.... So I met with pilots, like beautiful Tom Cruise, but taller. Handsome, perfect people. "Sir there was something there that was round in form and going like four times faster than my super jet fighter plane". And I look at these guys and they really mean it. And am I a believer? No. I probably I can't say I am. But I have met with people that are serious people that say there's some really strange things that they see flying around out there. And you know, if you go to Nevada and you look at that little section of where they go to look at the aliens, where they think all the aliens are landing, that you know, it's one of maybe the number one tourist attraction in the United States. Roswell?... I have access... and I speak to people about it. I've had actually meetings on it. And they will tell you there's something going on. When they say things, things are going four times faster than my beautiful top of the line airplane that goes, you know, real fast. With no identifiable propulsion system.... They have that are very smart and very solid have said they believe there is something out there. And, you know, it makes sense that there could be...…
Just think what the media reaction would be if Joe Biden were to go on a demented incoherent ramble like this just one time:
Donald Trump: ’It must because of MIT, my relationship to MIT, very smart, he goes, I say, “What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now under water, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?”—by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lotta shark attacks—I watched some guys justifying it today, ‘Well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were… not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said, ‘there’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming,’ no, really got decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks.
So I said, ‘There’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?” Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. he said, “You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.” I said, “I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.”
But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks… <jefftiedrich.com/p/donald-trump-is-a-gi…>
Is Trump more like Rosanne Rosanadanna or Emily Litella? Discuss amongst yourselves.
Trump's comments in Las Vegas were more unhinged than even this sample suggests. Of his comments, one mighty justly say, "He jumped the shark."