Trump, May 2017: 100 days of [unintelligible]

Pence's entrance in this interview is amazing.

central casting

i imagined pence bursting through the wall like the kool-aid man yelling 'MORNING ALL'

Historically, he has been extraordinary adept at assembling words he doesn't understand into statements that almost conform to the standard structure of a sentence (which he still doesn't understand) and which relate to a subject of discussion or inquiry just enough that a charitable human brain will make the cognitive leap of filling in much of the gulf between what he actually says and anything that might be considered a coherent response. But for most of his adult life, this aptitude was only really ever exercised within bubbles where he supposedly excelled and had some degree of experience (e.g. real estate and reality television). Outside of that bubble, when speaking on matters about which he has no knowledge or curiosity, he sounds like someone who's just had half of their head caved in with a tire iron. He may as well spare himself some effort and string together random phonemes and strangled ululations at this point. It would communicate exactly the same thing that his current utterances do to his supporters and to his detractors.

Historically, he has been extraordinary adept at assembling words he doesn't understand into statements that almost conform to the standard structure of a sentence (which he still doesn't understand) and which relate to a subject of discussion or inquiry just enough that a charitable human brain will make the cognitive leap of filling in much of the gulf between what he actually says and anything that might be considered a coherent response

He spent a year and a half doing ad-libbed, two hour speeches on politics every day! People found the performances convicing. He's such a bullshit savant.

Maybe Pence entering is a signal that the interview has to end.

Is it pretty much SOP that the president doesn't ever do interviews without a half dozen people hanging around? Imagine the trouble this guy would get in on his own.

He does get into trouble on his own. He says insane things in every single interview.

This guy is quickly depreciating the value of words.

He's almost literally speaking in tongues at this point.

He's priming the pump. The value of words will skyrocket soon.

i love that trump takes credit for inventing the phrase 'prime the pump' - like there's not a single thing that he's involved in that he can't turn into an opportunity for self-praise

xpost, ha! Wait, did you just invent that phrase? I've never heard that before. 'Priming the pump.' Huh. That's really something.

Like, I really don't know how people who unfortunately find themselves within his physical presence refrain from just beating him senseless.

of course since the invention of viagra there's been less need for him to prime the pump amirite

@pareene
when Trump petulantly resigns we get the most ideologically pure conservative admin since Coolidge, run, unlike now, with some discipline

We have nations where…they’ll get as much as 100% of a tax or a tariff for a certain product and for the same product we get nothing, OK? It’s very unfair. And the very interesting thing about that is that, if I said I’m going to put a tax on of 10%, the free-traders, somewhat foolishly, they’ll say “Oh, he’s not a free-trader”, which I am, I’m absolutely a free-trader. I’m for open trade, free trade, but I also want smart trade and fair trade. But they’ll say, “He’s not a free-trader,” at 10%. But if I say we’re putting a reciprocal tax on, it may be 62% or it may be 47%, I mean massive numbers, and nobody can complain about it. It’s really sort of an amazing thing.

Trump is the Clickhole "They said what?" section

again I don't wanna belabor this but here's Tommy Wiseau, you tell me who's more coherent:

Yeah, that’s part of it. Because you see, a lot interviews what I have, I emphasize this. One of the biggest problem we have at the time of production, we use the two cameras. So again, you don’t have to be expert, and I don’t know you, it seems to me you have a nice voice, and you know what you’re doing. But the fact is, logically, any person will logically say, “Wait a minute, where’s the film, where’s the HD?” You see, the HD came, it doesn’t cost so much. So before production, they ask you brainstorm the plan, what is the ratio? Any filmmaker, big directors, and I’m not dropping any names—I actually have couple names I want to say, but I will not—we have a ratio. Each thing you repeat, my ratio is one to four. This choice, you see, we have a lot of footage, that we don’t have it, we don’t put in the movie because it’s the same footage, the same scene, and that’s what we call ratio one to four. Actually some people are ratio one to 34, for your information. I know couple directors, big directors, they are just shooting over and over, you know.

my other favourite ('favourite') trump thing is when he starts throwing numbers at random into conversation - croutons for the word salad. bonus points if he just says like 'we're up 72!' without any kind of anchoring referent

say what you like about tommy wiseau but at least he appears to be a self-made man in a way that trump just isn't

Does that $70bn deficit have to come to zero to be fair?
Not necessarily. And certainly it can come over a, you know, fairly extended period of time, because I’m not looking to shock the system. But it has to become at least fair. And no, it doesn’t have to immediately go to zero. But at some point would like to get it at zero, where sometimes we can be up and sometimes they can be up.

Just astounding - the President of the United States literally does not know what a trade deficit is

He doesn't have Mike Flynn to ring at 3am anymore (j/k he totally still does that)

Also, I don't think it's possible to belabor the point that a very odd and delusional man raving in a second language is more coherent than our current president is in his employment of a language he's spoken for 70 years.

it'd be easier to enumerate the things the president of the united states does understand:

- his own greatness
- being a sex predator
- junk food
- er...
- that's it

say what you like about tommy wiseau but at least he appears to be a self-made man in a way that trump just isn't

he at least answers questions about money the same way

AVC: How did you get the $6 million for the film?

TW: Well that’s basically what I’m saying, and today I would say to you the same thing, so you already know the answer. I usually don’t like to talk about money, but I talk about the movie, and the other aspects of directing, etc. They ask me for example similar question like what is my favorite car, what’s my favorite colors, et cetera, you can go on.

Trump is the best example of the prion disease caused by a lifetime of eating KFC.

jfc @ that Economist interview.

i simply can not believe one of those pathetic also-rans during the GOP debates didn't just go fuck it and say "tell us, Donnie, what even is NAFTA?? no seriously, walk us through it" or "how does a bill become a law? you actually don't know do you?" or "you're wearing diapers right now, aren't you, you mentally afflicted orangutan?"

it was so debased already who would have even give a fuck?

his supporters don't know either, so they don't give a fuck

we're living in a post-knowledge society

yeah but it wouldn't really be about imparting knowledge; just making him look like a weak beta chump

i guess the only guy with the temperament for that was Christie and he was getting his balls polished by Trump's team. so if nothing else you gotta respect the gamesmanship of Trump's ppl in that respect.

i was gonna say he's like the monolith from 2001 impressing a bunch of screaming apes just by standing there but a) the monolith carries itself with a silent gravitas unknown to trump and b) the monolith was a product of an impossibly advanced civilisation which uh trump is not either

yeah but it wouldn't really be about imparting knowledge; just making him look like a weak beta chump

if 'beta' was an actual social status and not a meaningless term applied by maniacs to anyone who they don't agree with, maybe

yeah should have put that in scare quotes

Oh hey, another interview:

http://time.com/4775040/donald-trump-time-interview-being-president/

On the future USS Ford-class carriers:

"You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern (technology). I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, "Ah, how is it working?" "Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air."

"It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be–"Sir, we’re staying with digital." I said no you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good."

Can we have "It sounded bad to me. Digital." as the name of the next thread.

...this tweet is apparently not a joke?

Instead of a special prosecutor, @realDonaldTrump should nominate Merrick Garland to replace James Comey.

— Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) May 11, 2017

Spox for Sen Lee says this is not a joke: https://t.co/DSdg3DJ1Or

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) May 11, 2017

Optics optics optics. And more!

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/10/james-comey-firing-trump-lavrov-putin-215124

The chummy White House visit—photos of the president yukking it up with Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak were released by the Russian Foreign Ministry since no U.S. press was allowed to cover the visit—had been one of Putin’s asks in his recent phone call with Trump, and indeed the White House acknowledged this to me later Wednesday. “He chose to receive him because Putin asked him to,” a White House spokesman said of Trump’s Lavrov meeting. “Putin did specifically ask on the call when they last talked.”

The meeting was Lavrov’s first in the White House since 2013—and came after several years of the Obama administration’s flat-out refusal to grant him an Oval Office audience, two former senior White House officials told me. “The Russians were begging us for years to do that,” one of the former officials said. “They were constantly pushing for it and we were constantly saying no.”

The images of Trump putting his arm genially on Lavrov’s back—and a later White House official readout of the meeting that said Trump “emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia”—couldn’t have come at a more fraught political moment for Trump, amid a barrage of bipartisan criticism of his firing of FBI Director James Comey. On Wednesday morning before meeting with Trump, Lavrov even cracked a joke about his hosts’ political predicament, laughingly claiming not to have heard of the Comey firing while standing alongside Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

In other words, Lavrov was right where he has always wanted to be Wednesday: mocking the United States while being welcomed in the Oval Office by the president himself.

"Hee hee hee. That'll show those Democrats!"

"It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out.

has trump been watching pacific rim or something?

this is like the military equivalent of being a vinyl purist - 'the torpedoes have so much more depth and warmth when they're analogue'

Elsewhere

.@ChuckGrassley writes to DHS asking for a crackdown on EB-5, specifically calling out the Kushners. pic.twitter.com/ZHLCy0pt1B

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 11, 2017

He doesn't have Mike Flynn to ring at 3am anymore (j/k he totally still does that)

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, May 11, 2017 9:26 AM (twenty minutes ago yep

Report: White House Lawyers Have Had To Repeatedly Tell Trump Not To Contact Michael Flynn

http://uproxx.com/news/trump-talk-michael-flynn-white-house-no/

oh fuck trump is a steampunk

oh my god

re: the steam thing

just fuckin

god

So I mean, I have, it has, I haven’t been given massive credit for it yet,

In terms of the West Wing, lessons of this week: Kushner is mostly running things, Pence was a key player and McGahn has been 1/

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 11, 2017

2/ POTUS's Dr. Yes. Priebus in the room later, and Bannon not very involved https://t.co/zTG6XGWVWW

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 11, 2017

i guess trump is in favour of dismantling the world's most technically advanced military and... outfitting troops with handheld rubber catapults to lob nukes at the enemy?

You can't hack a catapult.

fuck catapults, trebuchets for life

A point that I don't see being made nearly enough: beyond all questions of whether it's advisable or potentially beneficial to foster good relations with them, the fact remains that Trump is clearly more concerned with being tight and friction-free bros with Russia than he is with soothing discord within the country over which he presides. It's like going to great pains to befriend your neighbor lady while you neglect and insult your own wife. You might be forgiven for believing he favors one over the other.

Republicans have been against 'gotcha' questions since the country elected _and re-elected_ GWB.

i was watching that bizarre tv interview with putin dressed in full hockey gear ahead of taking to the ice to let some world-class athletes give him an easy ride and i was thinking 'man i bet trump wishes he could do that'