Tag: Trump

No laughing matter

Trump today:

A lot of people say, oh, oh, Trump was only kidding with the wall. I wasn’t kidding. I don’t kid. I don’t kid. I watched this and they say I was kidding. No, I don’t kid. I don’t kid about things like that, I can tell you.

So what does he kid about?

Invading Mexico: “President Trump’s comments that he was ready to send US troops to Mexico to stop the “bad hombres down there” were “lighthearted” and not meant to be threatening, the White House said Thursday.”

Accusing President Obama of treason: “After repeatedly suggesting Thursday that President Barack Obama was the literal founder of ISIS, the terrorist group the U.S. is currently waging war against, Donald Trump called it “sarcasm” in a tweet Friday morning. The bizarre turn followed Trump’s assertion to a conservative radio host in an interview Thursday morning that he did not mean that Obama’s policies created the space for ISIS to flourish, rather that he was its actual founder.”

Destroying people who disagree with his policies: “President Donald Trump threatened to “destroy” the career of a Texas state senator after a Texas sheriff accused the lawmaker of getting in his way by promoting asset forfeiture reform.

“Want to give his name? We’ll destroy his career,” Trump told Sheriff Harold Eavenson of Rockwall County, Texas.

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/829075389184081920

The sins of the fathers

I was just reading Kevin Drum’s article on the fallout from the hapless US military raid in Yemen last week. He lists the costs:

Our adventure in Yemen last week failed to kill its target; caused the death of numerous Yemeni civilians; resulted in one dead American sailor; and ended with the loss of a $70 million helicopter.

This is not unusual of the commentary, and I find it weird that it fails to mention that a US civilian was among those killed: the eight-year-old daughter of American renegade Anwar Al-Awlaki, given that the sanctity of American life is the bedrock of American antiterror policies. I suspect this reflects the atavistic sense that the child of an evildoer is tainted, and somehow deserves to be punished for his crimes. Of course, the new president famously vowed to “take out their families”.

Who’s on first?

I love Der Spiegel, I consider it one of the best sources for international news, in addition to (of course) news about Germany, and it has to some extent maintained the idiosyncratic playful and sophisticated language style of its founder. I’m not usually wild about its graphics, though, and find it dull and obvious, as well as straining to find a reason to associate an image of naked breasts with any article. 

That said, I find this cover amazing. Obviously I’d feel differently about the image if I felt differently about Donald Trump, but it’s not simply a feeling of gratification at an enemy being publicly insulted. Like the best graphics — like the best scientific plots — this image combines familiar iconography and space to give substance to the horror that so many of us feel, crystalising an idea that was elusive. The Statue of Liberty and the iconography of terrorist self-promotion decapitation videos. Yes. It’s a good thing Germany just eliminated its lèse majesté law…

The association with Daesh puts the “America First” slogan in a different light as well. It’s a slogan that the murderers of the self-proclaimed caliphate could share, in the same spirit as the terrorist narrator of Leonard Cohen’s song, First we take Manhattan, Then we take Berlin.

It’s not even inappropriate, given that Stephen Bannon and his cronies have been fairly open about their intention to use Trump as the point of the spear to destroy liberal democracy in Europe, in favour of white ethnonationalism.

They really mean it (a continuing series)

Once again, I am forced to revise my impression of the Trump White House. I assumed that their failure to mention Jews in their statement for International Holocaust Remembrance Day was an oversight, sloppy drafting, which they then had to justify and insist was intentional because Trump. But no:

The State Department drafted its own statement last month marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that explicitly included a mention of Jewish victims, according to people familiar with the matter, but President Donald Trump’s White House blocked its release.

Together with the Trump administration’s decision that they really don’t like Israeli settlements, I wonder if the right-wing orthodox Jews and Israelis who thought they had the measure of the man are beginning to feel like building contractors on a Trump hotel project.

The Emperor’s New Wall

Fox News reported Thursday morning that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly said that parts of President Donald Trump’s border wall would be transparent.

Built with special transparent concrete purchased at a premium from Trump, Inc.

Transparent to unqualified coastal elitists and cuckservatives, that is. Smart Real Americans will be able to see how beautiful it is.

Donald Trump gets into refugees

The Washington Post reports on Donald Trump’s objections to an agreement to take in 1250 mostly Middle Eastern refugees currently in Australian detention sites:

Trump was also skeptical because he did not see a specific advantage the United States would gain by honoring the deal, officials said.

He can’t conceive of a deal whose purpose is to benefit someone else. This reminds me of Monty Python’s Merchant Banker sketch. A humble fellow raising money for charity wanders into the office of a very wealthy and self-centred banker:

Mr Ford: Oh. I wondered whether you’d like to contribute to the orphan’s home. (he rattles the tin)

Banker: Well I don’t want to show my hand too early, but actually here at Slater Nazi we are quite keen to get into orphans, you know, developing market and all that…

Mr Ford: So er, how about a pound?

Banker: A pound. Yes, I see. Now this loan would be secured by the…

Mr Ford: It’s not a loan, sir.

Banker: What?

Mr Ford: It’s not a loan.

Banker: Ah… Look, I think I’d better run this over to our legal department. If you could possibly pop back on Friday…

Mr Ford: Well do you have to do that, couldn’t you just give me the pound?

Banker: Yes, but you see I don’t know what it’s for.

Mr Ford: It’s for the orphans.

…

 

Banker: Well, I’m awfully sorry I don’t understand. Can you just explain exactly what you want.

Mr Ford: Well, I want you to give me a pound, and then I go away and give it to the orphans.

Banker: Yes?

Mr Ford: Well, that’s it.

Banker: No, no, no, I don’t follow this at all, I mean, I don’t want to seem stupid but it looks to me as though I’m a pound down on the whole deal.

https://youtu.be/YUhb0XII93I

Who are you calling illegal?

So this tweet came from the President of the United States:

The use of the term “illegal immigrants” has long been a point of contention between the right (who like the stigmatisation it implies) and the left (who don’t, and prefer terms like “undocumented immigrants”) in the US. The racist right likes to go further and simply call the people “illegals”.

Whatever the politics or the human considerations, at least it’s not entirely inaccurate when applied to people who crossed the border without proper clearance, or who overstayed their visas. How can anyone think it appropriate to call asylum seekers for whom an agreement has been negotiated by the US president to bring them legally into the country “illegal immigrants”? Except, of course, that for the racist right — of which DJ Trump is a charter member — illegal is not a legal description, but simply a term of aspersion against nonwhite people without large real estate portfolios who cross borders.

Judge Brinkema has made her decision. Now let her enforce it!

The president’s inner circle have been announcing the dawn of a new Jacksonian era with reality TV star Donald Trump in the role of the populist self-made plutocrat who drove the elites out of the White House. Now:

Trump’s Border Patrol Defies Judge, U.S. Senator at Dulles Airport as His First Constitutional Crisis Unfolds

Border Patrol flouted a federal injunction against Trump’s order, barring lawyers from reaching legal U.S. residents detained at Dulles airport.

UPDATE: Speaking of Jackson, who is that I see in the place of honour to the left of Trump’s desk in the Oval Office? The arch-racist himself…

gettyimages_633014098

The unexpected autocracy

One of my favourite logic paradoxes (does everyone have favourite logic paradoxes?) goes by the name of The Unexpected Hanging. There are numerous versions, but a standard story is: A man has been condemned to death for some crime. The judge tells him, “Today is Monday. You are to be hanged at noon some day in the next week, but you will not know until the morning of the day of the hanging which day it will be.” The man then reasons, it can’t be Sunday, because if I haven’t been hanged by Saturday noon, I’ll know it must be Sunday, which would contradict the judge’s order. Since it can’t be Sunday, if we get to Friday afternoon, I’ll know it must be Saturday. Again a contradiction. So it can’t be Saturday. Working backward in this way, he is confident that he cannot be hanged at all. But then Thursday dawns, and he is hanged, and he never anticipated it.

I was thinking about this, particularly in the light of this comment by Josh Marshall:

One thing we can say in Donald Trump’s favor, there was no bait and switch. They told us they would do all of this and more.

It’s true, and I’m not surprised. And yet… Trump did say he would ban Muslims. He would build a wall. He would ban abortion. He would revoke the Affordable Care Act. And yet, at the same time, he was saying over and over again, I’m going to be unpredictable. I won’t say what I’m really going to do. More than that, his whole demeanor suggested that you couldn’t believe the specifics of what he was saying. So, in the end, he does exactly what he said he would do, and it actually is somewhat surprising. Continue reading “The unexpected autocracy”

Massive success

An anonymous White House official has called the Muslim travel ban a “massive success story”. Assuming this reflects general feeling within the Trump administration, we have to assume that it has accomplished much of what it was intended to accomplish. Which presumably does not include having prevented terror attacks in the US, but does include provoking widespread protests; showing Trump untethered to considerations of custom, law, or humanity; and persuading perhaps wavering foreign governments, particularly in majority-Muslim nations, of the value of pursuing ongoing business relations with Trump, Inc.