I don’t know about you, but I absolutely love my Saturday morning “covfefe.”
In what has become an American tradition, Donald Trump is kicking off the weekend with some inspirational tweets that are aimed at uniting a divided nation around a set of noble principles and a shared vision of hope.
Just kidding.
He’s tweeting about himself and hurling accusations at everyone who isn’t him.
Specifically, Trump is fired up about a Fox News report about the pee-pee tapes. Here are some excerpts:
The company behind an infamous anti-Trump dossier also worked “on behalf of the Russian government” to fight U.S. sanctions that had enraged Moscow’s elite, a key witness testified to a Senate committee on Thursday.
The testimony of Bill Browder, the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital, shed new light on the dealings of the controversial company Fusion GPS — which was tied to the dossier of spurious claims about President Trump. According to Browder, the company also conducted a “smear campaign” against him in a bid to fight Russia sanctions.
Further adding to the complexity, Browder also testified that this campaign was orchestrated by Natalia Veselnitskaya — the same Russian attorney who sought the highly scrutinized Trump Tower meeting last June with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“They were talking about a repeal of sanctions so that Russian torturers and murderers could keep their money in America,” he testified.
Now first of all, there’s a whole lot to this story and context is absolutely critical. We’ll have more on that in a subsequent post.
Of course Trump doesn’t care anything about context and indeed, far from doing any background research on this, it kind of seems like he didn’t even bother to read the whole Fox article, because here’s what he just tweeted:
Yes, “in other words,” “I only read the first couple of sentences.” (He also refers to himself in the third person there, which is awesome.)
If Trump had bothered to read below the fold, the Fox article also says this:
But more broadly, Browder’s testimony skewered the Fusion firm itself, along with co-founder Glenn Simpson.
He said Natalia Veselnitskaya, working through an intermediary, hired Simpson to “conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky in advance of a congressional hearing on the Global Magnitsky Act.”
Browder’s testimony was rich with knowledge of the Russian government and corruption within, giving details of Veselnitskaya’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials.
Browder said that Veselnitskaya had worked for the FSB, which is a successor to the KGB.
“There is no such thing as a former KGB agent,” Browder said, adding that there was also “no such thing” as a former intelligence officer, mentioning Rinat Akhmetshin who attended the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya. “It’s like Hotel California–you can check out any time you like, but never leave.”
Any questions?
I didn’t think so.
But again, Trump didn’t read that far, so all he got was “Russia was against me.” What he didn’t get was: “My son met with KGB agents.”
Anyway, that was just the first of Trump’s Saturday tweet barrage. Here’s the rest of it:
Right.
So basically a long-winded (or as long-winded as one can be on Twitter) ramble complete with lots of superfluous punctuation and caps lock.
It feels like a Trumpish Saturday and here’s hoping he keeps this up for a couple of more hours because as you’re undoubtedly aware, these rants have a demonstrable tendency to get more absurd after he gets some momentum built up.
*****
I try not to focus on the substance of our Fair Leader’s public utterings, but FFS, can someone teach him that an ellipsis is THREE (3) dots … ?
I think you are all missing the critical focus here. Trump is just a partially sentient, but malignant clump of mostly human cells occupying the WH. At 71, overweight, emotionally imbalanced – in the worst case he will not be there forever – even in the unlikely case he is re-elected at 75. Whoever and whenever he is replaced – that person is far more important the Trump, because that person not only has the same duties and responsibilities of the Office of the Presidency that Trump has failed so badly in filling – he also has to repair both the national and global damage (real and perspective) that Trump’s gross leadership incompetence has created
What we should be focusing on is the dysfunctional election system that allowed Trump to be elected (as well that allowed Hillary’s negative baggage to qualify as a candidate). Equally, if not more important the correction of the dysfunctional Republican Party leadership system that keeps him in office – for their own personal well being – at the expense to everyone else in the nation.
The US democracy has a major problem in that it has allowed that democracy to be entirely monetized by a 24/7 election industry that includes if not is all the media. That has to change. We need a media that actually tries not to be partisan and that reports the facts independent from sponsor and advertiser pressure. What we have is obviously partisan – some more than others, but clearly not unbiased – and entirely too often with purposefully deceitful inaccuracies and hyperbole.
Additionally, we need Constitutional mechanism for the “We the People” to call for a “Vote of No Confidence.” regarding not only the President, but Congressmen and Governors. Frankly, if a public servant offical can’t keep a minimum of a 50% of the constituents that elected them satisfied – they aren’t representing their voters desires and probably not their needs.
Yes, there may be a brief period of high political turn over, but rapidly you would see the politicians and their attuned leaders – once again shift their focus back to the public/voter welfare, not their major donors/corporate welfare, and certainly not their own financial interest and welfare. Public service and governance was never meant to be a for profit enterprise.
It’s not just the WH that is imploding under the intellectual vacuum that currently resides there, its the entire dysfunctional and vastly corrupted (not just criminally, but functionally corrupted) US political system.
Yes, the “fish rots from the head down,” but even a rotten fish can be “red herring” – that distracts us from the fact that if we don’t fix the GD “refrigeration system” that preserves the fish quality, the entire catch will rot – as it is currently and demonstrably doing.