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Politics : A Hard Look At Donald Trump -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Brumar89 who wrote (21359)9/10/2020 6:47:37 PM
From: Brumar89  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 46806
 
"Tucker Carlson’s Fishsticks-n-Fascism Power Hour"

Trump Fed Himself This Shit Sandwich, and Trumpists Pecked at His Table Scraps
KILLER CLOWN SHOW
by Rick Wilson
disq.us

Set aside that Trump’s foundering campaign has burned through a billion-with-a-b dollars to end up down in key swing states and nationally. That the vaunted digital Death Star magic of Brad Parscale has been replaced by the basic-bitch campaign of Bill Stepien—no wartime consigliere but a struggling accountant canceling polls, media buys, and field operations around the country to try and stop the political bleeding. Trump barely knows who Stepien is, except as That Guy I’m Going to Fire Next.

All that’s just icing. No, this week’s wounds are from Trump’s own quivering, liverish lips and the shit sandwich he stuffed between them on Wednesday. It’s not every day that your hubris and dumbfuckery leads you to do 18 on-the-record taped interviews with Bob Woodward confessing to, oh, 200,000 fucking cases of manslaughter because you lied and lied and lied and lied and lied and lied and lied again to the American people about the impact of COVID. It’s not some vague J’Accuse from the resistance now; Trump admitted early on that he knew just how deadly and how dangerous the virus would be, and lied anyway. That’s some killer clown show.

Trump sat in those meetings with Woodward while the recorder was rolling and confessed to downplaying the impact of the virus. Even his second-rate intellect was able to process that the COVID death rate was much higher than the regular flu. One of his many talking points during the course of the pandemic has been that it is no worse than the flu, nothing more than a bad cold and a liberal hoax. Liberate Michigan!

That was a really, really, really dumb lie, a lie of such blazing, white-hot stupidity that you wonder what possible world Trump thought it would work on.

The ads write themselves: First play the tape of Donald, bored and smug in the residence at night on the phone in February with his new bestie Bob admitting the danger of a virus maybe five times “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” Then the press conferences where he insisted day after day and month after month that COVID was a trifle.

That admission was such a blockbuster that it obscured the news, also from Woodward’s book, that Trump thinks his generals are “a bunch of pussies”—capping a week where he alienated a meaningful fraction of his political base by shitting on America’s war dead and our currently serving troops by wondering aloud just what is in it for them since there’s no real money in service.

Such a blockbuster that it obscured the news about Trump—who is not a smart man—announcing a highly classified program for the development of an “incredible” nuclear weapon. Bragging to Woodward about how “We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before” is ludicrous to the point of slapstick, circa Strangelove.

Finally, the Woodward interview peeled back another layer of Trump’s con game with his rubes: the idea that everything is fake news. The tapes are unspinnably and unequivocally pure Trump. This isn’t some reporter’s interpretation of Trump. This isn’t some editor cherry-picking facts to make Trump look like more of a stooge that he does on his own. This isn’t some headline writer sniping at a president he doesn’t like.




No, this was Donald Trump in an act of stupidity perhaps unparalleled in Washington media history. He tried to play Bob Fucking Woodward. Nothing about these interviews can be unspun or unrung. No matter how gamely his enablers and the comms shop grunt out excuses, his words are there, on tape. This wasn’t a president trying to calmly lead the nation through crisis; this was Trump simply not giving a fuck.

Even among his supporters, there’s a sense that these interviews weren’t exactly the smartest move. Like crabs in a bucket mutilating each other, Wednesday night’s episode of Tucker Carlson’s Fishsticks-n-Fascism Power Hour laid bare just how bad they know this was. Carlson lit up Lindsey Graham, Trump’s No. 1 shinebox boy, taking the parasitic senator to the woodshed for encouraging Trump to sit down with Woodward and even attending one of the conversations himself.

This is the part of the show where we enjoy a delicious glass of 2020 schadenfreude. It has a light crisp nose and a beautiful snappy finish.

Yes, trying to roll Bob Woodward was deeply on-brand for Trump, who never met a person he wouldn’t at least try to con. But it was also deeply, profoundly off-brand for a man who sells himself as an iconoclastic outsider and drainer of Washington swamps. There’s nothing more swampy than sitting down with Woodward to try and get him to tell your version of history. For Washington insiders, the whole thing comes across as both pathetic and pedestrian.

Speaking of pathetic and pedestrian people having miserable days, Kaleigh Mendacity, the White House spokesbot, opened her briefing Wednesday with the whopper of all whoppers that the president had never lied to the American people about COVID—never mind what we heard him say on that tape. Her function is not to inform the public but to troll the press like a lower-end OANN host, which is what she’ll be after Trump leaves office one way or the other.

Trump’s Senate defenders were their usual profiles in chickenshit. You’ll be shocked, shocked to hear that many of them have never heard of reading or Bob Woodward or newspapers or websites or the Internet. They stared at reporters as if the questions were coming in Urdu and mumbled excuses: I haven’t read it. I don’t know about it. I didn’t hear that. What are words? Who am I? Why am I here?

These are men and women serving in the highest legislative body in the land who are unable to summon any courage whatsoever to face their tormented fear of Donald Trump. They all know it’s true, that he lied and has been lying from the beginning. If they weren’t a pack of opportunistic political jackals nipping at Trump‘s leavings, they would roundly condemn him. Instead they’ll stick with groveling and crotch sniffing.

Donald Trump and his enablers had their worst day yet, with worse still to come. You love to see it.









To: Brumar89 who wrote (21359)2/25/2021 8:38:05 AM
From: scion  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 46806
 
U.S. report on Khashoggi death expected to single out Saudi crown prince: sources

By Mark Hosenball, Jonathan Landay, Trevor Hunnicutt
FEBRUARY 24, 20216:44 PMUPDATED 4 HOURS AGO
4 MIN READ
reuters.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A declassified version of a U.S. intelligence report expected to be released on Thursday finds that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, four U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.

The officials said the report, for which the CIA was the main contributor, assessed that the crown prince approved and likely ordered the murder of Khashoggi, whose Washington Post column had criticized the crown prince’s policies.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat who succeeded the Republican Donald Trump five weeks ago, told reporters on Wednesday he had read the report and expected to speak soon by phone with Saudi Arabian King Salman, 85, father of the crown prince, the country’s 35-year-old de facto ruler.

The report’s release is part of Biden’s policy to realign ties with Riyadh after years of giving the Arab ally and major oil producer a pass on its human rights record and its intervention in Yemen’s civil war.

Biden is working to restore the relationship with Riyadh to traditional lines after four years of cozier ties under Trump.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday Biden would only communicate with the Saudi king and said the declassified Khashoggi report was being readied for release soon.

While Biden restricts his contacts to the king, others in the Biden administration are talking to Saudi officials at various levels.

“We have been in touch with Saudi officials at numerous levels in the early weeks of this administration,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price.


The 59-year old Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, and killed by a team of operatives linked to the crown prince. They then dismembered his body. His remains have never been found.

Slideshow ( 2 images )

Riyadh eventually admitted that Khashoggi was killed in a “rogue” extradition operation gone wrong, but it denied any involvement by the crown prince. Five men given the death penalty for the murder had their sentences commuted to 20 years in jail after being forgiven by Khashoggi’s family.

In 2019, a U.N. human rights investigator, Agnes Callamard, accused Saudi Arabia of a “deliberate, premeditated execution” of Khashoggi and called for further investigation.

“There is sufficient credible evidence regarding the responsibility of the crown prince demanding further investigation,” Callamard said after the six-month probe.

A classified version of the report was shared with members of Congress in late 2018.

But the Trump administration rejected demands by lawmakers and human rights groups to release a declassified version, seeking to preserve cooperation amid rising tensions with Riyadh’s regional rival, Iran, and promote U.S. arms sales to the kingdom.

Biden’s new director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, committed at her confirmation hearing to complying with a provision in a 2019 defense bill that required the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to release within 30 days a declassified report on Khashoggi’s murder.

Biden pledged during the 2020 presidential campaign to reassess U.S.-Saudi ties in part over Khashoggi’s murder. Since taking office, he has ended sales of offensive arms that Riyadh could use in Yemen and appointed a special envoy to boost diplomatic efforts to end that country’s grueling civil war.


Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis in Washington and Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Mary Milliken, Alistair Bell and Howard Goller

reuters.com

Bradley P. Moss

Trump on the Woodward tapes all but admits he was bought off with $400 billion in Saudi purchases as a way to back off looking too closely at MBS' role in the gruesome murder of Khashoggi. He all but put a "Bribes Welcome" sign up at the White House.

Kyle Griffin

Breaking: Trump bragged to Bob Woodward that he protected Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. "I saved his ass," Trump said in 2018. "I was able to get Congress to leave him alone."


'I saved his a--': Trump boasted to Woodward that he protected Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin...

businessinsider.com