No, we can’t. We must keep pressure up. We saw at the mid-terms what happens when we slack up. We ended up with this mess in the House of Representatives we now have. A “cluster-fu*k!”
This just in from a friend, but it is proof positive that those closest to Trump admit that he is a misfit and unfit to be POTUS.
Exclusive: John Kelly goes on the record to confirm several disturbing stories about Trump
Jake Tapper, Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent
Mon, October 2, 2023, 2:58 PM PDT·7 min read
John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.
Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand.
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”
In the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Those details also include Trump’s inability to understand why the American public respects former prisoners of war and those shot down in combat. Then-candidate Trump of course said in front of a crowd in 2015 that former Vietnam POW Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, was “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” But behind closed doors, sources told Goldberg, this lack of understanding went on to cause Trump to repeatedly call McCain a “loser” and to refer to former President George H. W. Bush, who was also shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II, as a “loser.”
CNN reached out to the Trump campaign Monday afternoon, telling officials there that a former administration official had confirmed, on the record, a number of details about the 2020 Atlantic story, without naming Kelly, and seeking comment. The Trump campaign responded by insulting the character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story.
The Atlantic article also described Trump’s 2018 visit to France for the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, where, according to several senior staff members, Trump said he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During that same trip to France, the article reported, Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.
And Kelly’s statement adds context to a story in the book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in which Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells Kelly he wants no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in his honor. Inspired by the Bastille Day parade, except for the section of the parade featuring wounded French veterans in wheelchairs, Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”
“Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.”
“I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”
The story squares with another recent story from Goldberg in The Atlantic, a profile of retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, in which Trump does not react well to seeing severely wounded Army Captain Luis Avila singing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for the new chairman. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”
Kelly’s statement also refers to a remark Trump made in response to that same article, which describes Milley, in the closing days of the Trump presidency in 2020, receiving intelligence that the Chinese military feared Trump was about to order a military strike on it. Milley, in a call authorized by Trump administration officials, reassured his Chinese counterparts that such a strike was not going to happen.
That call was first reported in 2021 in the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, but Trump said this past week on his social media site that the call was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
Asked for reaction to the suggestion that he deserves execution, Milley told Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” that he wouldn’t “comment directly on those, those things. But I can tell you that this military, this soldier, me, will never turn our back on that Constitution.”
Kelly’s statement to CNN comes days after former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson sat down with CNN in an interview promoting her new book, “Enough,” and warned the public that “Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”
“Enough,” interestingly, contains a scene in which Hutchinson and then-White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin push back against Goldberg’s 2020 story. Griffin issued a statement to The Atlantic after that story posted denying the report.
Reached for comment over the weekend, Griffin said, “Despite publicly praising the military and claiming to be the most pro-military president, there’s a demonstrable record of Trump bashing the most decorated service members in our country, from Gen. Mattis to Kelly to Milley, to criticizing the wounded or deceased like John McCain. Donald Trump will fundamentally never understand service the way those who have actually served in uniform will, and it’s one of the countless reasons he’s unfit to be commander in chief.”
No other presidential candidate in history has had so many detractors from his inner circle. His former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN in November 2022, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”
Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS in June that “he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”
Richard- thanks for amassing this material. It is an outrage that Trump's shocking behavior continues to go unpunished and that he views Americans who put others ahead of themselves as losers. When are the public, the courts, going to hold him accountable? How can he make threats against judges and other officers of the court and not be charged with contempt of court? He is the ultimate challenge to the resilience of American institutions. It's almost 2024 and the jury is still out on who will prevail.
True, but this issue has been on the burner for a long, long time - racism. What binds the Evangelicals to Trump is their racism. Christs' teachings (Matthew 25: 34-46) mean nothing. Google "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" These people are manipulated by the oligarchs. Several books address this, including Thomas Frank;s "What's the Matter with Kansas," and HCR's just published, "Democracy Awakening." We're in the battle of our lives right now against the most serious threat to our democracy, and it is coming from Americans.
Isabel Wilkrson, in her book "Caste" lays out the continuing racist caste system in the US as a direct cause of Trump's unlikely success in 2016 and since. The oligarchs supply the money, but caste-conscious racism - the antithesis of "All Men are created equal" - supplies much of the motivation.
I am not familiar with Wilkerson's book. I'd be interested to see how she treats the issue of implicit bias. I just checked her out. Impressive resume. I'll get caste. I grew up in abject poverty in Jim Crow Texas in the '40's and '50's, a white male. My mom, a New Yorker, was telling me as I was going to school barefoot because my only pair of shoes was in the repair shop that I could be anything that I wanted to be, that it was up to me. I took that as fact generally but when I was 20 years old I encountered two phenomena. I was at the Army Language School learning Chinese when I saw a Black soldier and a white soldier sharing the same dorm room. I reacted to it, but I immediately realized that my reaction would be what I came to learn was implicit bias. I also realized that my mom was only correct in a certain respect: I might be able to be what I wanted but it was because I was white and male. I have fought for equal rights for all ever since, putting my wife through medical school in the 1970's when 10% of her Stanford Med School was female. It is now 50%.
We are, perhaps, at the most dangerous point in our nation's history, even more dangerous than the Civil War because the threat is no longer confined to geographical boundaries. It's like a cancer that has metastasized throughout the body.
No need to stoop to his level. Being an adult is recognition of true maturity and will win in the end. Voters will be the judge and jury. God knows how tired we are of all this drama in elections in our beautiful country.
But, how to explain 70 million Republican MAGA members still supporting a low life, a completely worthless human like Donald Trump? My belief is that white Protestant supremacy is more important to them than the democratic process: one person, one vote, majority rule. I dare say that among those racists there are some who unknowingly have some "Black blood."
Kelly did make some efforts to rein Trump in, and quit/got fired for his efforts. Barr rode the crazy train much further before he bailed, and if Trump had prevailed, I am not sure that Barr would have left at all. They both state, as personal revelations, what most people have seen in Trump from the beginning. Hutchinson’s excuse, that she was very very young, and as blinded by power as those old men were blinded by her youth and beauty, but managed to hang on to some inner moral compass, is slightly more believable, but I have quit jobs when I was told to falsify data, or told to tolerate sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace. The fact that 2 of them stuck around throughout the whole process of Trump setting up the treasonous plan to bring down the government does not speak well of their judgement or their character, does it?
While I am grateful to those former staffers speaking up and out, I can’t imagine this was new news to any of them. This has always been who and what Trump is. Always.
Yes these reports have been floating around for years....like gnats on a summer evening. Annoying but basically ignored. Why, how, did MSM treat these glimpses into the soul of a president, or lack thereof, as mere blips on a screen? Mere profit motive?
Agreed that he planted the anti-democracy seed, but since he is incapable of doing anything “lovingly,” I would substitute the word “hatefully.” Every utterance, every step he takes is drenched in mendacity, deceit, and projection.
Thank you Maureen: ‘mendacity’. A perfect description of the shrinking t-balloon. Also ‘drenched in ...deceit and projection’. As he deflates 🙏 my hopes rise.
(I remain vigilant & concerned about his cadre of fervent too often violent followers everywhere)
Oh yes. I’m wondering if those ‘vile dictators’ serve as a person’s dark side? That way each one of these unconscious individuals doesn’t need to own their individual shadow side.
I learned that word when I was a senior in high school in civics class, used by Mr. Victor Wattner, of Van Zandt County, Texas. I don't see "facetious" used too often but love it when I do see it. He was a good teacher.
The 'bad seeds' have always existed among us. Trump was the extremely effective grower who tended his garden of criminality just affectively enough to harvest enough voters to give him free pass to the presidency of our great nation. It's up to us to remember the lesson learned here, and to pass it on to further generations. Strengthening our public education system is key. With more than 30 years in service there, I know first hand. Teach them to know and demand better, or get this again, and far worse the next time.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Every one of us should read the book about the “dug out” schools in the Midwest in the 19th century. Half underground in winter (doing crops during growing season)!students and teachers learned history, Latin, and math, the bases of a liberal education. It wasn’t “job training” as our corporate “sponsors” would have US learn now so we can be serfs and back half underground spiritually if not literally. Never forget Monty Python: “If you don’t know the Latin, ya gotta do the hackin’ and the hewin’.”
Having had a year of the Latin and one of the Greek, plus a semester of Comp lit to read Aristophanes (still hilarious after a few thousand years), during these difficult years since 2016, it’s been “and the gods laughed” almost every day. Then TODAY, a book entitled, “How to Be Abe Lincoln in Seven Steps.” The first step: Laugh. Remembered vaguely that Abe was a jokester, but that people came to the White House for his jokes is not what you get in history class. But it’s closer to home for US than Aristophanes. Now if we can just get funding for Ukraine....Everyone can watch “Servant of the People” and laugh together.
And, teach them how to think critically: This website https://thinkingispower.com/ is run by Melanie Trecek-King, an associate professor of biology at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts. Brilliant.
Yes! But gerrymandering has reduced the results of democratic and Black voters. We must stop the redistricting of the vote to unfairly influence elections.
Will he accept he's a loser? I think he is unable. I hope his cult may be able to if we use our voices in addition to our votes. He is a liar, a thief and a dictator wannabe. And the republican party has been complicit, up until an hour before closing last week.
Cults do not listen to voices from outside. They did not in Waco, nor among Jim Jones' followers. And neither will Gaetz, Greene, and the rest of that crew. Voting them out is the only answer.
Lynn, As in the NY City trial currently running, I fear that his definition of "rigged" is "following the rules" or "Expecting someone to present the truth" in a financial statement. Similarly his definition of "the deep state" is bureaucrats, judges and lawyers actually adhering to the rule of law and precedent. I'll take that kind of "rigging" by "the deep state" any day. I choose to be "awake" to facts!
I think it is clear that a great many things point to a weakening of the "GOP's" hold on the narrative, which is not to say they are no longer a serious threat.
Continuing serious threat, the cult nuts even have Chump, Jr. In line for the presidency, so I have heard. Even a heart attack will not end the insanity.
When chump was running in 2020, I saw a tee with chump til 2028, Don Jr 2028 til 2036, Ivanka 2036 til 2044. Forgot about Baron, guess he could take over after Ivanka. Apparently, Eric was not a favorite. Crazy is devoted. So glad Biden interrupted that nightmare.
I feel so bad for kids whose parents hang their emotional hangups around their necks.
I sure hope you’re correct that the tide is turning.
Even if it is, we can not let our guard down.
No, we can’t. We must keep pressure up. We saw at the mid-terms what happens when we slack up. We ended up with this mess in the House of Representatives we now have. A “cluster-fu*k!”
We can NEVER afford to let our guard down.
I agree!
Now all we gotta do is call out his even bigger(!) lie that the 2024 election is already rigged against him!
OMG!
This just in from a friend, but it is proof positive that those closest to Trump admit that he is a misfit and unfit to be POTUS.
Exclusive: John Kelly goes on the record to confirm several disturbing stories about Trump
Jake Tapper, Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent
Mon, October 2, 2023, 2:58 PM PDT·7 min read
John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.
Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand.
“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.
“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”
In the statement, Kelly is confirming, on the record, a number of details in a 2020 story in The Atlantic by editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, including Trump turning to Kelly on Memorial Day 2017, as they stood among those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery, and saying, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Those details also include Trump’s inability to understand why the American public respects former prisoners of war and those shot down in combat. Then-candidate Trump of course said in front of a crowd in 2015 that former Vietnam POW Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, was “not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” But behind closed doors, sources told Goldberg, this lack of understanding went on to cause Trump to repeatedly call McCain a “loser” and to refer to former President George H. W. Bush, who was also shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II, as a “loser.”
CNN reached out to the Trump campaign Monday afternoon, telling officials there that a former administration official had confirmed, on the record, a number of details about the 2020 Atlantic story, without naming Kelly, and seeking comment. The Trump campaign responded by insulting the character and credibility of retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, who had nothing to do with this story.
The Atlantic article also described Trump’s 2018 visit to France for the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, where, according to several senior staff members, Trump said he did not want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” During that same trip to France, the article reported, Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.
And Kelly’s statement adds context to a story in the book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, in which Trump, after a separate trip to France in 2017, tells Kelly he wants no wounded veterans in a military parade he’s trying to have planned in his honor. Inspired by the Bastille Day parade, except for the section of the parade featuring wounded French veterans in wheelchairs, Trump tells Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade.”
“Those are the heroes,” Kelly said. “In our society, there’s only one group of people who are more heroic than they are – and they are buried over in Arlington.”
“I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”
The story squares with another recent story from Goldberg in The Atlantic, a profile of retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, in which Trump does not react well to seeing severely wounded Army Captain Luis Avila singing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for the new chairman. “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”
Kelly’s statement also refers to a remark Trump made in response to that same article, which describes Milley, in the closing days of the Trump presidency in 2020, receiving intelligence that the Chinese military feared Trump was about to order a military strike on it. Milley, in a call authorized by Trump administration officials, reassured his Chinese counterparts that such a strike was not going to happen.
That call was first reported in 2021 in the book “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, but Trump said this past week on his social media site that the call was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
Asked for reaction to the suggestion that he deserves execution, Milley told Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes” that he wouldn’t “comment directly on those, those things. But I can tell you that this military, this soldier, me, will never turn our back on that Constitution.”
Kelly’s statement to CNN comes days after former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson sat down with CNN in an interview promoting her new book, “Enough,” and warned the public that “Donald Trump is the most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”
“Enough,” interestingly, contains a scene in which Hutchinson and then-White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin push back against Goldberg’s 2020 story. Griffin issued a statement to The Atlantic after that story posted denying the report.
Reached for comment over the weekend, Griffin said, “Despite publicly praising the military and claiming to be the most pro-military president, there’s a demonstrable record of Trump bashing the most decorated service members in our country, from Gen. Mattis to Kelly to Milley, to criticizing the wounded or deceased like John McCain. Donald Trump will fundamentally never understand service the way those who have actually served in uniform will, and it’s one of the countless reasons he’s unfit to be commander in chief.”
No other presidential candidate in history has had so many detractors from his inner circle. His former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, told CNN in November 2022, “I think he’s unfit for office. … He puts himself before country. His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”
Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS in June that “he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”
CNN’s Kristen Holmes contributed to this story.
Richard- thanks for amassing this material. It is an outrage that Trump's shocking behavior continues to go unpunished and that he views Americans who put others ahead of themselves as losers. When are the public, the courts, going to hold him accountable? How can he make threats against judges and other officers of the court and not be charged with contempt of court? He is the ultimate challenge to the resilience of American institutions. It's almost 2024 and the jury is still out on who will prevail.
True, but this issue has been on the burner for a long, long time - racism. What binds the Evangelicals to Trump is their racism. Christs' teachings (Matthew 25: 34-46) mean nothing. Google "The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?" These people are manipulated by the oligarchs. Several books address this, including Thomas Frank;s "What's the Matter with Kansas," and HCR's just published, "Democracy Awakening." We're in the battle of our lives right now against the most serious threat to our democracy, and it is coming from Americans.
Isabel Wilkrson, in her book "Caste" lays out the continuing racist caste system in the US as a direct cause of Trump's unlikely success in 2016 and since. The oligarchs supply the money, but caste-conscious racism - the antithesis of "All Men are created equal" - supplies much of the motivation.
I am not familiar with Wilkerson's book. I'd be interested to see how she treats the issue of implicit bias. I just checked her out. Impressive resume. I'll get caste. I grew up in abject poverty in Jim Crow Texas in the '40's and '50's, a white male. My mom, a New Yorker, was telling me as I was going to school barefoot because my only pair of shoes was in the repair shop that I could be anything that I wanted to be, that it was up to me. I took that as fact generally but when I was 20 years old I encountered two phenomena. I was at the Army Language School learning Chinese when I saw a Black soldier and a white soldier sharing the same dorm room. I reacted to it, but I immediately realized that my reaction would be what I came to learn was implicit bias. I also realized that my mom was only correct in a certain respect: I might be able to be what I wanted but it was because I was white and male. I have fought for equal rights for all ever since, putting my wife through medical school in the 1970's when 10% of her Stanford Med School was female. It is now 50%.
Great books, all. I think Wilkerson reads and writes like a poet.
Richard S you are exactly right. It’s the racism.
Yes. It’s racism. It has always been racism.
The bible said Judge not lest ye be judged. Includes Evangelicals too. Yes! we are in a very dangerous time.
We are, perhaps, at the most dangerous point in our nation's history, even more dangerous than the Civil War because the threat is no longer confined to geographical boundaries. It's like a cancer that has metastasized throughout the body.
I don't understand, either, how he can make threats against a judge publicly.
No need to stoop to his level. Being an adult is recognition of true maturity and will win in the end. Voters will be the judge and jury. God knows how tired we are of all this drama in elections in our beautiful country.
But, how to explain 70 million Republican MAGA members still supporting a low life, a completely worthless human like Donald Trump? My belief is that white Protestant supremacy is more important to them than the democratic process: one person, one vote, majority rule. I dare say that among those racists there are some who unknowingly have some "Black blood."
Kelly did make some efforts to rein Trump in, and quit/got fired for his efforts. Barr rode the crazy train much further before he bailed, and if Trump had prevailed, I am not sure that Barr would have left at all. They both state, as personal revelations, what most people have seen in Trump from the beginning. Hutchinson’s excuse, that she was very very young, and as blinded by power as those old men were blinded by her youth and beauty, but managed to hang on to some inner moral compass, is slightly more believable, but I have quit jobs when I was told to falsify data, or told to tolerate sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace. The fact that 2 of them stuck around throughout the whole process of Trump setting up the treasonous plan to bring down the government does not speak well of their judgement or their character, does it?
It does not speak well at all.
Well said, Notes.
"It doesn't look good for me". He has an unpleasant idea of what does "look good" for him.
Trump is a pure narcissist, making G.W. Bush look like a piker. The condition has dehumanized him.
I think his father dehumanized him in his crib. And his father before him, a draft dodger germany kicked out.
He comes from a long line of disgusting men.
While I am grateful to those former staffers speaking up and out, I can’t imagine this was new news to any of them. This has always been who and what Trump is. Always.
Thank you.
Yes these reports have been floating around for years....like gnats on a summer evening. Annoying but basically ignored. Why, how, did MSM treat these glimpses into the soul of a president, or lack thereof, as mere blips on a screen? Mere profit motive?
He stated in 2016 that if he lost, the election was rigged. He planted and lovingly tended that seed from the word go.
Agreed that he planted the anti-democracy seed, but since he is incapable of doing anything “lovingly,” I would substitute the word “hatefully.” Every utterance, every step he takes is drenched in mendacity, deceit, and projection.
Thank you Maureen: ‘mendacity’. A perfect description of the shrinking t-balloon. Also ‘drenched in ...deceit and projection’. As he deflates 🙏 my hopes rise.
(I remain vigilant & concerned about his cadre of fervent too often violent followers everywhere)
The most vile dictators in history had supporters.
Vote as if your life depends on it. It just might.
Oh yes. I’m wondering if those ‘vile dictators’ serve as a person’s dark side? That way each one of these unconscious individuals doesn’t need to own their individual shadow side.
Unfortunately, that would include 3 of my 4 remaining siblings. Have been waiting for the fever to break for 6 years now.
Addicted. Awful. Maureen, you have my sympathies: plural for 4.
There ought to be a program like Alanon for those with family who are sleep walking and glued to little t?
I’m deeply grateful my siblings swing as I do, and all on Cape Cod like you.
I was being facetious in my choice of wording.
I learned that word when I was a senior in high school in civics class, used by Mr. Victor Wattner, of Van Zandt County, Texas. I don't see "facetious" used too often but love it when I do see it. He was a good teacher.
Every game that he loses must be rigged. How could it be otherwise? How could the Great and Awesome God Emperor Trump _ever_ lose if it isn’t rigged?
Spot on about dumpster fire trump
The 'bad seeds' have always existed among us. Trump was the extremely effective grower who tended his garden of criminality just affectively enough to harvest enough voters to give him free pass to the presidency of our great nation. It's up to us to remember the lesson learned here, and to pass it on to further generations. Strengthening our public education system is key. With more than 30 years in service there, I know first hand. Teach them to know and demand better, or get this again, and far worse the next time.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Every one of us should read the book about the “dug out” schools in the Midwest in the 19th century. Half underground in winter (doing crops during growing season)!students and teachers learned history, Latin, and math, the bases of a liberal education. It wasn’t “job training” as our corporate “sponsors” would have US learn now so we can be serfs and back half underground spiritually if not literally. Never forget Monty Python: “If you don’t know the Latin, ya gotta do the hackin’ and the hewin’.”
Having had a year of the Latin and one of the Greek, plus a semester of Comp lit to read Aristophanes (still hilarious after a few thousand years), during these difficult years since 2016, it’s been “and the gods laughed” almost every day. Then TODAY, a book entitled, “How to Be Abe Lincoln in Seven Steps.” The first step: Laugh. Remembered vaguely that Abe was a jokester, but that people came to the White House for his jokes is not what you get in history class. But it’s closer to home for US than Aristophanes. Now if we can just get funding for Ukraine....Everyone can watch “Servant of the People” and laugh together.
And, teach them how to think critically: This website https://thinkingispower.com/ is run by Melanie Trecek-King, an associate professor of biology at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts. Brilliant.
Zelensky won the presidency with a comic sitcom!
All we need do is VOTE by the millions!
Yes! But gerrymandering has reduced the results of democratic and Black voters. We must stop the redistricting of the vote to unfairly influence elections.
And do something about the electoral college
There are things Democrats can do, in addition to voting. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/02/democrats-rule-changes/?
Will he accept he's a loser? I think he is unable. I hope his cult may be able to if we use our voices in addition to our votes. He is a liar, a thief and a dictator wannabe. And the republican party has been complicit, up until an hour before closing last week.
Cults do not listen to voices from outside. They did not in Waco, nor among Jim Jones' followers. And neither will Gaetz, Greene, and the rest of that crew. Voting them out is the only answer.
Georgia Girl, Hillary won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. It’s the Electoral College that puts an evil finger on the scales of Justice.
Remember tfg’s plans with false electors. 🎃https://ourwhitehouse.org/getting-the-votes-and-getting-elected-the-popular-vote-vs-the-electoral-college/
Poor guy, he only has one schtick : oh poor pitiful me.
The childish howls of “unfair”!
He really is dull, isn’t he?
He’s boring as hell. Tank his ratings.
That’s his campaign slogan, always. Accuse others of what you do. Goebbel’s best
Lynn, As in the NY City trial currently running, I fear that his definition of "rigged" is "following the rules" or "Expecting someone to present the truth" in a financial statement. Similarly his definition of "the deep state" is bureaucrats, judges and lawyers actually adhering to the rule of law and precedent. I'll take that kind of "rigging" by "the deep state" any day. I choose to be "awake" to facts!
Yes. I can’t believe he’s started that already!
It is only rigged if he loses. What a jerk. That is the nicest pejorative one can use for the likes of ____, I have trouble writing his name.
TFG is the ultimate loser. Let’s work together to ensure it stays this way.
ENORMOUS CROCKS !, of Steaming B S !! ( and LOSERS, BUY ! , that Schitt !! )
I think it is clear that a great many things point to a weakening of the "GOP's" hold on the narrative, which is not to say they are no longer a serious threat.
Continuing serious threat, the cult nuts even have Chump, Jr. In line for the presidency, so I have heard. Even a heart attack will not end the insanity.
His whole family should be stripped of their USA citizenship and banished.
Along with Rupert and his crew of vipers
Remember that Trump Jr is named The Baron which is right up there with Musk naming his son after a number, I believe. Wing nuts all.
When chump was running in 2020, I saw a tee with chump til 2028, Don Jr 2028 til 2036, Ivanka 2036 til 2044. Forgot about Baron, guess he could take over after Ivanka. Apparently, Eric was not a favorite. Crazy is devoted. So glad Biden interrupted that nightmare.
I feel so bad for kids whose parents hang their emotional hangups around their necks.
Perhaps 2 heart attacks will.
CHUMP !!, Keep Poundin' Down !, Those 'BIG MACS !!'
one can dream
Certainly feels like it is....
And not turning too early, I hope