Re: Failure Trump Says Americans Don't Deserve His Empathy or Kind Words or Consolation [Because You're The Fools Who Have Him As a "Leader"]

On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 23:41:18 -0000 (UTC), Mary Rosh <[email protected]> wrote:

>David Hartung wrote
>
>> On 5/15/2020 10:32 AM, Obsidian Order wrote:
>>> Failure-in-Chief tRUMP only cares about himself, not you.
>> 
>> Trump doesn't care about anyone but himself.  He would throw his 
>> mental-defective son Barron into Guantanamo if he thought it would get
>> him reelected.
>> 
>>
For SURE not the looters and burners.  Crack some heads.
 
>>>  How dare you
>>> even dream that he should be like previous presidents during national
>>> disasters and give a fucking shit about a gaggle of ignorant fucking
>>> losers-in-life who can't even come up with enough money to get an
>>> invite to Mar-a-Lago and those epic child sex parties and rent boy
>>> orgies he's famous for.   Besides, he's the one looking like a total
>>> fucking moron out of his depth in countless ways, not you!  The
>>> pandemic and the Trump recession are all about him!  Over 100,000 dead
>>> and 5 million deathly ill Americans probably didn't have the money
>>> anyway to give to his campaign or his corrupt criminal Trump
>>> Foundation.   You should be worried about him, not yourselves or your
>>> families because only HE matters. He says you suck because you don't
>>> love him enough. 
>>>   
>>> 2020 Time Capsule
>>> Carlos Barria / Reuters
>>> 
>>>   
>>> 11:24 AM / May 4, 2020
>>> 2020 Time Capsule #17: ‘Empathy and Simple Kindness’
>>>   
>>> 
>>> As the past week began, the Unites States was crossing 50,000 reported
>>> deaths from the coronavirus pandemic. As the new week arrives, the U.S.
>>> death total is 70,000.
>>> 
>>> Of the countless extraordinary events in these seven days, a few that
>>> are worth noting:
>>> 
>>> 1) “Empathy and Simple Kindness.â€? This past Saturday, former
>>> President George W. Bush released a brief video whose subtweeted
>>> message was unmistakable. It recognized the suffering of those who had
>>> lost family members, or economic prospects, or hope itself; it
>>> emphasized the all of us rather than the us and them response to
>>> national crisis; and it appealed to the generous rather than the
>>> resentful in human nature. 
>>> 
>>> In short, it was the kind of message that leaders of any nation have
>>> been expected to transmit, as part of their duty, in time of national
>>> hardship. And it highlighted by contrast the signals of “empathy and
>>> simple kindness� that Donald Trump himself had never managed to
>>> convey or even feign.
>>> 
>>> I have been as harsh as anyone on George W. Bush’s responsibility, in
>>> his time in office, for America’s foreign-policy and economic
>>> travails. (For more, see this, this, this, and this.) But it would be
>>> wrong not to recognize the way he was trying, 11 years after leaving
>>> office, to express the thoughts a nation expects from its leaders.
>>> 
>>> The video raised a further possibility and question for this former
>>> president: What will he say as the next election draws near? The three
>>> other living former presidents—Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack
>>> Obama—are all Democrats. So for them, there will be no conflict
>>> between policy goals and party loyalty. All will, of course, try to
>>> help Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.
>>> 
>>> In the 2016 election, the extended Bush family made no secret of its
>>> distaste for Donald Trump, who had after all ridiculed “Low Energy
>>> Jeb� Bush in the primaries. This new video suggests that George W.
>>> Bush’s estimation of Trump has not gone up. (For the record, two
>>> years ago, during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fight, Bush did his
>>> best to persuade Republican senators to stick with Kavanaugh—who had
>>> been a White House staffer for Bush.)
>>> 
>>> But would a former Republican president dare go public with a plea to
>>> save the country, and what he thinks of as his party’s principles, by
>>> voting for the opposition? The logic of this video suggests that Bush
>>> should. Could he actually do so? I’m not holding my breath, but Bush
>>> loyalists should be raising the question with him.
>>> 
>>> 2) “A great success story.â€? This past Wednesday, Donald Trump’s
>>> son-in- law, Jared Kushner, went on the First Family’s favorite TV
>>> program, Fox and Friends. He told the hosts that the federal government
>>> “rose to the challengeâ€? and “this is a great success story.â€?
>>> You can listen to him yourself, starting 9:00 minutes into this clip.
>>> 
>>> The day before Kushner spoke, the confirmed U.S. death toll from the
>>> pandemic exceeded the 58,000-plus U.S. fatalities inscribed on the
>>> Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the famous black granite wall in Washington.
>>> Since then, they have increased by about 2,000 per day.
>>> 
>>> It is conceivable that selected parts of the federal response will
>>> eventually be seen as successes, though overall they appear to be
>>> catastrophic now.
>>> 
>>> It is inconceivable that a favored in-law’s cheery declaration of a
>>> “great success story,â€? as tens of millions of people are losing
>>> their jobs and tens of thousands have lost their lives, will stand up
>>> well. 
>>> 
>>> 3) “I will never lie to you.â€? I noted last month that the new White
>>> House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, differed from her immediate
>>> predecessor in planning to hold press briefings at all. But she
>>> differed from past administrations’ press secretaries in that her
>>> history as a public figure was entirely in the role of cable-news
>>> partisan advocate. 
>>> 
>>> At her first press briefing, this past week, she told the assembled
>>> reporters:
>>> 
>>>      “I will never lie to you. You have my pledge on that.â€?
>>> 
>>> You see her saying so 8 minutes into this C-SPAN video. Then she
>>> proceeded to … lie, on matters ranging from the Mueller
>>> investigation, to the prosecution of Michael Flynn, to the history of
>>> sexual-assault allegations against Donald Trump, to a range of others.
>>> Dan Froomkin set out the details in Salon and Annie Karni did so in the
>>> New York Times. 
>>> 
>>> My earlier argument was: The best press secretaries have recognized the
>>> fundamental torment of the job. The good ones are torn day-by-day
>>> between their assignment to put the best face on the administration’s
>>> policies, and their desire to stick as close as possible to the truth.
>>> 
>>> Like Trump himself, Kayleigh McEnany seemed in her debut to be
>>> unconflicted. Her duty is only to the administration.
>>> 
>>> 4) “The plague should never have happened.â€? Back in March I noted
>>> Donald Trump’s penchant for “projectionâ€?: that is, attacking
>>> others for the failings that seem most evident in himself.
>>> 
>>> Bear that in mind, in considering Trump’s comments at a White House
>>> event this past week—and comparing them with the verdict likely to be
>>> rendered upon his administration. Trump said (as shown in this C-SPAN
>>> video): 
>>> 
>>>      This plague should have never happened.
>>> 
>>>      It could have been stopped, but people chose not to stop it, and
>>>      it's 
>>> a very sad thing for the world
>>> 
>>> Indeed.
>>> 
>>> James Fallows
>>> 2:47 PM / April 25, 2020
>>> 2020 Time Capsule #16: Disinfectant
>>> Dr. Deborah Birx listens as President Donald Trump speaks about the
>>> coronavirus on April 23.
>>> Dr. Deborah Birx listens as President Donald Trump speaks about the
>>> coronavirus on April 23. Associated Press
>>> 
>>> On the day when the Access Hollywood tape came out, one month before
>>> the 2016 election, I wrote a “Trump Time Capsuleâ€? item whose first
>>> paragraph, in its entirety, was:
>>> 
>>>      “Good God.â€?
>>> 
>>> That tape, of course, was the one on which a vintage-2005 Donald Trump
>>> was recorded, in his always-recognizable voice, saying that “when
>>> you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.â€? Leading
>>> up, of course, to “Grab ‘em by the pussy, you can do anything.â€?
>>> Then, as captured on tape, Trump swallowed some Tic Tacs, stepped off a
>>> bus, and smilingly greeted and embraced the female TV host he had been
>>> ogling and talking about while aboard the bus.
>>> 
>>> “Good God,â€? because personal crudeness of this scale was far beyond
>>> revelations that had stopped pre-Trump political campaigns. Edmund
>>> Muskie early in 1972, Thomas Eagleton later in 1972, Gary Hart in 1988,
>>> Howard Dean in 2004—I won’t go into details, but by the standard of
>>> “Grab ’em by ....â€? these previous political storms would qualify
>>> as minor showers. (Actually, I encourage you to look into the
>>> possibility that the “embarrassmentsâ€? that stopped Gary Hart’s
>>> campaign in 1988 could have been the result of a political setup, as I
>>> wrote in 2018.) 
>>> 
>>> But of course Trump’s campaign was not derailed, by this or anything
>>> else. Recall what happened next:
>>> 
>>>      Trump initially dismissed the comments as “locker room talk.â€?
>>>      The next day he released a video in which he said, for one of the
>>>      few 
>>> times ever, that he “regrettedâ€? his remarks on tape. He read the
>>> following while looking straight at the camera: “Anyone who knows me
>>> knows these words don’t reflect who I am [sic]. I said it, I was
>>> wrong, and I apologize.�
>>>      On the same afternoon that The Washington Post broke news of the
>>> recording, WikiLeaks began releasing hacked emails from Hillary
>>> Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. (A witness for the Mueller
>>> report later said that Trump’s advisor Roger Stone coordinated this
>>> timing with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. Stone denied being involved
>>> but last year was found guilty and sentenced to prison for lying about
>>> the case.) As was apparently intended, this immediately competed with
>>> the “grab ‘emâ€? story for news coverage.
>>>      Some elected GOP officials criticized Trump—including,
>>>      amazingly, his 
>>> running mate Mike Pence, and then-Senator John McCain, who called on
>>> Trump to drop out.
>>>      But within a week, most Republicans were aboard again, and for
>>>      Trump, 
>>> a potentially campaign-ending event became just another bump in the
>>> road. His party, and his voters, would stick with him.
>>> 
>>> What’s the connection to current events? These past few days have
>>> been another “Good Godâ€? moment, even by the standards of the past
>>> few years. 
>>> 
>>> At his multi-hour rally/�briefing� on Thursday evening, Trump
>>> speculated that heavy external (or internal) exposure to ultraviolet
>>> light, or perhaps drinking or injecting disinfectants, could be a
>>> solution to the virus.
>>> 
>>> Because Trump later falsely claimed that he had been quoted out of
>>> context, or had just been joking, it’s important to observe what he
>>> looked and sounded like when saying these (preposterous) things.
>>> Starting at time 26:00 of this C-SPAN video, you can see that he was in
>>> dead earnest—and acting as if he was offering a great insight, which
>>> had escaped the detail-minded professionals—when he said the
>>> following words: 
>>> 
>>>      Here’s a question that some of you [the press] are probably
>>>      thinking 
>>> of, if you’re totally into that world [of science], which I find to
>>> be very interesting.
>>> 
>>>      Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s
>>>      ultraviolet 
>>> or just very powerful light … Supposing you brought the light inside
>>> the body [sic], either through the skin or some other way.
>>> 
>>>      And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute
>>>      — 
>>> one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that by
>>> injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the
>>> lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be
>>> interesting to check that.
>>> 
>>> While Trump was saying these words, one of his scientific advisers, Dr.
>>> Deborah Birx, was captured on film as her face went ashen at the idiocy
>>> of his comments. But she was then called to the microphone, and as she
>>> has done several times before, she pointedly avoided saying that
>>> Trump’s comments were not just ignorant but actively dangerous,
>>> especially if anyone was considering drinking disinfectant. As noted
>>> earlier, her medical colleague Anthony Fauci has continued to pull off
>>> the remarkable (and public-spirited) trick of maintaining his
>>> long-earned reputation for honesty, while retaining a position in
>>> Trump’s retinue. Fauci is unique in that status. Everyone else who
>>> has entered Trump’s service has fallen into the pit of reputational
>>> destruction. 
>>> 
>>> The next day, Trump claimed that he was being “sarcasticâ€? and only
>>> joking with the comments. This is his standard last line of defense
>>> when caught in a particularly egregious statement. For instance, he
>>> says his public call on “Russiaâ€? to release Hillary Clinton’s
>>> emails had just been a joke. That excuse was a lie, and anyone who saw
>>> the “disinfectantâ€? video knows he is lying about this now.
>>> 
>>> Almost immediately, the manufacturers of Lysol and other disinfectants,
>>> along with numerous public health agencies, put out statements warning
>>> against drinking these products. Reporters from the Washington Post
>>> quoted Dara Kass, of Columbia University Medical Center, on the
>>> difference between this and Trump’s previous, now-discredited advice
>>> that people start taking a certain kind of pill:
>>> 
>>>     “The difference between this and the chloroquine [pills] is that
>>> somebody could go right away to their pantry and start swallowing
>>> bleach. They could go to their medicine cabinet and swallow isopropyl
>>> alcohol,â€? Kass said. “A lot of people have that in their homes.
>>> There’s an immediate opportunity to react.â€?
>>> 
>>> Kass explained to the Post that people who ingest such chemicals often
>>> die, and those “who survive usually end up with feeding tubes because
>>> their mouth and esophagus were eroded by the cleaning agents.�
>>> 
>>> “It’s horrific,â€? she said.â€?
>>> 
>>> And of the 53 Republicans who make up Mitch McConnell’s Senate
>>> majority? How many have spoken up to criticize the president—on the
>>> specifics of this new “plan,â€? or on what the comments reveal about
>>> his approach to reality in general—or to warn the public against his
>>> advice? 
>>> 
>>> As best I can determine, two days after Trump’s comments, that number
>>> is zero. This is the Vichy Republican bargain they made after the
>>> Access Hollywood tapes. It is the bargain that keeps an obviously
>>> unwell man in power now. It is the bargain for which they should be
>>> remembered. 
>>> 
>>> https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2020/04/2020-time-capsule-16-
>>> disinfectant/610720/
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>He's too busy dodging responsibility and laying blame.   Even the dead 
>piss him off for making him look bad.
the dukester, American-American