Trump: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[kmoney]

@WizardofOz

From whitehouse.gov:

1. August 12: Remarks by President Trump at Signing of the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act

2. August 14: Statement by President Trump

As far as I can tell, there's no transcript of his August 15 remarks at whitehouse.gov.

So from NPR

3. August 15: Transcript: Trump Shifts Tone Again On White Nationalist Rally In Charlottesville


And in between all these there've been some crazy tweets which bear examination as well, like his unpresidential bashing of CEOs leaving his councils, shutting down the councils before they tendered their own closure, attacking (R) members of Congress and in general lashing out in all directions. This isn't normal.

After seeing the comments laid out I don't think it's as bad as I initially thought. I think Trump's disjointed style of talking can hurt him.
I still have criticism though.
1) I think he's waffling on the terrorism label because it isn't Islamic terrorism.
2) I think he's wrong on the statues.
3) I think he should have spoken about the moral ground for each side instead of avoiding the question. He denies he talked about moral equivalence but then refused to put either side on a moral plane when asked about it. He could have spoken more firmly against white supremacy.

 

[annabenedetti]

After seeing the comments laid out I don't think it's as bad as I initially thought. I think Trump's disjointed style of talking can hurt him.
I still have criticism though.
1) I think he's waffling on the terrorism label because it isn't Islamic terrorism.
2) I think he's wrong on the statues.
3) I think he should have spoken about the moral ground for each side instead of avoiding the question. He denies he talked about moral equivalence but then refused to put either side on a moral plane when asked about it. He could have spoken more firmly against white supremacy.

Thanks for posting the transcripts in full - I started here last night with the links and then I ended up spending my time on a different thread.

My list:

1. I'll be very careful how many times I say "very" or "many" in the future. He's ruined me for these (as well as other words). I did a search on "very" in the last transcript and he said it 13 times. Three times it was "very, very."

2. He hasn't called it terrorism (nor has he called other domestic terror incidents terrorism). He needs to call it what it is. He hasn't, and I doubt he will.

3. David Duke reminded him who put him into office, and he's aware that's who he has to pander to, the rest of the country and moral justice be damned. That was made so clear in the juxtaposition of the one prepared set of comments against Trump unchained in the last transcript. This is also known because his aides were aghast that he said in public what they already knew he said in private. We know we have a president that stands WITH the alt-right and their mix of white supremacism, white nationalism and Nazi ideologies.

4. He made a reference in one of the transcripts to the statue removal being an attack on America's "culture." This is code for the "blood and soil" chant of the white nationalists. These statues represent Confederate culture, not American culture. They represent a violent tearing apart of our country, not the founding or protection of our country.

5. There is no moral equivalency. Period.

Probably more to come, I'm on my second cup of coffee and I still can't get my brain in gear this morning.

 

[kmoney]

Trump fired Bannon. :noway:

 

[annabenedetti]

Trump fired Bannon. :noway:

Not soon enough.

 

[kmoney]

Not soon enough.

There's just no pleasing you is there?

 

[annabenedetti]

There's just no pleasing you is there?

:chuckle:

With this... no. Bannon should never have been there in the first place.

It stil flabbergasts me that he was allowed a seat at the NSC.

 

[annabenedetti]

They're having a meltdown over at Breitbart.

 

[Rusha]

Trump fired Bannon. :noway:

Not soon enough.

I am thinking that Little Steve will have quite a story to tell.

 

[annabenedetti]

It sure looks to me like he's encouraging divisiveness instead of unity in the country as a whole, because who's had time to talk about Russia since Charlottesville?

Athough I don't think Mueller has lost any momentum at all, so that train is still on its way to the station.

Speaking of which...

Newly Leaked Emails Just Revealed Trump Family Implicated In $350 Million Fraud Investigation

It’s beginning to look like Special Counsel Mueller will catch President Trump and his three eldest children committing the first ever reality TV show assisted financial crime, all collaborating in a $350 million dollar bank fraud related to the Trump SoHo Condominium Hotel.

The fraud-riddled Trump SoHo project ultimately failed and was foreclosed upon by lenders in 2014, but its legacy lives on in a byzantine web of lawsuits.

We’ve obtained leaked copies of those emails related to a key lawsuit related to the Trump SoHo – which are embedded below – that outline the Trump family’s complicity in a major financial crime. . .​

 

[annabenedetti]

I am thinking that Little Steve will have quite a story to tell.

Considering the interview this week, I think we can expect that.

BTW - supposedly he handed in his resignation on Aug. 7, but in his Scaramucci-flavored interview this week he was talking about ousting people and "getting hawks in." That doesn't sound like someone who's already resigned and just waiting for the announcement. There were expectations that Kelly would move to get Bannon out, so maybe that's closer to the truth.

 

[Town Heretic]

Trump fired Bannon. :noway:

Trump Fires Loose Bannon...it sort of sings, doesn't it.

 

[annabenedetti]

 

[drbrumley]

Don't worry, Trump will be gone pretty soon as well. You will get your wish.

 

[drbrumley]

Trump Fires Loose Bannon...it sort of sings, doesn't it.

At least Wall Street will get its tax cuts now! Also, more pointless wars!!!

 

[ok doser]

Trump fired Bannon. :noway:

lead story on the cbc today

ahead of mooslims killing people in spain, mooslims stabbing people in finland.....

Also, more pointless wars!!!

yay!

 

[patrick jane]

Trump Fires Loose Bannon...it sort of sings, doesn't it.

Like a fat lady. It's all over

 

[kmoney]

Like a fat lady. It's all over

A new phase is just beginning though.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-bannon-right-idUSKCN1AY2JQ WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With Stephen Bannon, the worry always was that he could be even more disruptive to President Donald Trump’s White House from outside than he was within. In the hours following his firing on Friday, those fears seemed warranted, as the conservative voices who viewed Bannon as one of their own howled in rage over Trump's decision to fire his chief strategist. The reaction was most notable from Breitbart News, the hard-right news site that Bannon ran before he joined Trump’s presidential campaign last year. “WAR,” tweeted one of the site's editors, Joel Pollak, who published a piece questioning whether Trump would now move in a more moderate direction with Bannon out of the White House. "Steve Bannon personified the Trump agenda," Pollak wrote. Bannon rejoined Breitbart as executive chairman only hours after his firing was announced. He is now expected to use it as a platform to blast those within the White House - and perhaps Trump himself - when they don't hew to the fiercely nationalist policies Bannon advocated as an inside adviser. As Trump's chief strategist, Bannon fought numerous battles with senior Trump aides and top Republicans in Congress over the administration's policy agenda. Breitbart frequently backed him up, ripping establishment Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, blaming them for obstructing Trump's agenda. More recently, the site trained its fire on Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, after he removed officials who espoused Bannon's foreign-policy world view. In recent days, Bannon had told friends he is worth tens of millions of dollars, is a worldwide leader in the populist-nationalist movement that propelled Trump to power, and could go back to Breitbart, which he refers to as a “killing machine”, or perhaps other endeavors financed by the family of hedge-fund tycoon Robert Mercer, his longtime ally. “Steve has a powerful voice, and he’s going to keep that voice up,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign adviser and Bannon friend. “He’s going to continue to promote policies that got Donald Trump in the White House.”

 

[annabenedetti]

It sure looks to a lot of people that he sandwiched what he was forced into saying between saying what he knew his alt-right base wanted to hear. Which is why he got praise from the alt-right base and from white supremacists for his first and third comments.

​
Steve Bannon yesterday:

"His natural tendency — and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville — his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected."

 

[annabenedetti]

A new phase is just beginning though.

Yeah. I saw last night at Breitbart that after a few hours had gone by the meltdown had stabilized, and the general apoplexy was a mixture of anger at McMaster, uncertainty about Trump, scary hero-worship of Bannon, and a forced bravado that went something like "oh, you leftists think you had us there for a minute, hahaha wait until you see Steve Bannon unleashed hahaha he'll be stronger outside the White House hahaha" and it was clear that last was evolving as the result of a lot of soothing words being built up around them like psychological sandbags.

Time will tell what Bannon will be like, armed with the information he's gleaned from his months in Trump's inner circle. Maybe formidable, or maybe they've built him up into a demi-god he can't maintain to their satisfaction.

 

[annabenedetti]

Also - much of what I saw commenters at Breitbart saying about Jared and Ivanka I wouldn't reproduce here. They're seen as interfering with Bannon's sacred work, and of course there are unsurprising references to their being Jewish.