How Trump Avoids Doing Any Work

09 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by therealmcteag in 25th Amendment, How Trump Avoids Work, Trump's Failure to Fulfill Oath of Office, Uncategorized

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25 amendment, 25th Amendment, bone spurs, Can Trump Read?, Infrastructure week, mitch mcconnell, Notable draft dodgers, Trump ad hoc government, Trump doesnt do any work, Trump is bad at everything, Trump Lazy, trump russia collusion, Trump sleep deprived, trump tantrum, why is trump so fat and stupid?

One thing we can be sure of in the 4 awful years since Trump announced his candidacy – the guy hates work.

It’s beyond obvious he’s delegated (through inaction) all responsibilities to the least qualified and most inept people to handle any given thing. That’s how you get so many failed ideas on things like the Southern Border and the infamous, repeated ‘INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK’ Meltdowns.

During the campaign he was able to show up for a lot of rallies and puff out a lot of anger and it sort of looked like he was able to work. But it turns out boasting in front of an all white crowd of angry, intolerant people is actually Trump’s preferred form of recreation. So let’s not call campaigning “Work”.

He came prepared with a host of methods to avoid doing his job. Essentially, he’s faking it. It’s not like he’s all that good at it, but Trump doesn’t really care how it plays. Laziness is at the core of his “Leadership Style”, if you can call it that.

Let’s look at a few of his “Go-To” ways to dodge things; like reading (CAN he read?) or working in any way.

A Major Announcement is Coming…

There’s a MAJOR policy announcement coming on whatever he’s been asked about; and really any and all topics. When? In about 2 weeks. It never ends up happening.

As the president has stonewalled off all transparency and minimized his exposure to the press there’s been no way to really follow this up.

Busy Looking Meetings

The president likes to look like a work-a-holic who also has the time to develop and keep a very deep tan. These two at odds traits make it hard to look all that busy, but he goes through the motions anyway.

The meetings traditionally have gone one of two ways. Either the president will sit back and drink in praise from whoever he’s invited to a meeting, and it could be anyone from Mitch McConnell to Kanye. It looks so Banana Republic because it is.

The other track these meetings and brief press availabilities go is that Trump will take exception to a question and have a tantrum.

Either way the meeting gets on TV and the Dear Leader looks busy

Create A Crisis

Instead of getting down to the brass tacks of Trade or Infrastructure the president will start tweeting something crazy and draconian that he may or may not do. Insulting a world leader, screaming about a perceived Trade Injustice or just attacking some random person are all possible when he goes this route.

‘Solving’ the Created Crisis

When a tweet goes sour or an idea goes viral in the wrong way the president will use the aforementioned “A Major Announcement is coming very soon” stall.

Then, a day or so later, an aide or cabinet member will say on the record the president wasn’t serious about the crisis he created or the horrible things he was ‘forced to say’.

Sometimes we find out that he’s simply bitching about something that was settled months ago. It’s just done for it to be on TV anyway. Again, he could care less how it plays. He considers it a win.

We just saw this in the Mexico Tariff Shell Game. At the last minute he pretended he had issues with Mexico and would impose tariffs. Then nothing happened and BLOTUS tweets he’s made a major deal. The Mexicans, for their part, were rightly confused and a little annoyed that an issue from a deal previously signed and settled is coming up again.

The media usually notes the deal is weeks or months old and there was never much chance Trump was going to do any of the things he threatened. It doesn’t matter, he looked busy. Mission Accomplished.

The Kremlin loves this too, by the way.

Wrong Time

The president will make threats and spitball policy ideas on Twitter at 4:56 am and then not show up anywhere until like 1 pm. When the rest of America wakes up hes passed back out but it looks like he was working.

This is part of a deeper theory I have. It’s that Trump doesn’t fall asleep and wake up like a normal person. In fact I think he’s like 2 days of sleep behind all the time. This would explain his constant confusion and brittle disposition. He can’t ‘sleep’, he only passes out from being awake too long for say 4 hours about every 20 to 30 hours. 12 Diet Cokes a day will do that to you.

So in a nutshell; my theory is he passes out from sheer exhaustion (and a caffeine crash) after 20 to 30 hours of ‘wakefulness.” Less than 5 hours later he wakes up in a cold sweat screaming the moment his body has been in stasis long enough for his mind to start to panic again. Then he ‘wakes up’ and starts the cycle again. He’s never anything but overtired, grumpy and scared.

Most of the time in he’s just in a torpor half out of it half watching Fox News Opinion shows that tell him he’s great. This is so his ego never has to stop grazing.

Wrong Place

This is maybe the Kremlin’s very favorite thing Trump reliably does.

The ‘president’ will just go somewhere and be completely inappropriate. Time and again we’ve seen him showing absolute contempt for his surroundings. He hates to work at all but has to make it look like he must be doing his job. Whether he looks like he’s doing it badly just doesn’t matter to him.

Be it standing in front of the CIA Wall of the Fallen while just lying about the size of the crowd and weather at his inauguration, saluting a murderous North Korean General, accepting Putin’s offer to investigate the 2016 Election, or sitting in front of the graves of 9,300 Americans who were killed storming the beach at Normandy; he says and does the wrong thing every time.

Remember when he shoved the Prime Minister of Montenegro out of the way? Or scared the shit out of thousands of Boy Scouts and angered their adult leaders with a crazy militaristic speech? That last disgraceful move has the president BANNED from any Boy Scout function. There’s a presidential first! The guy’s plain old inappropriate and he doesn’t care.

The president will act badly, provably lie and say completely inappropriate things in places you would consider sacred or at High Stakes Summits.

He has no idea about protocol and disgracefully supplicates himself to Putin and other nefarious figures regularly. He just wants the Photo Op to make it seem like he’s working.

He then dominates the news cycle with whatever disgraceful move he made, every crazy lie he told and/or bizarre threat he made.

Since getting on TV and getting things accomplished are pretty much the same thing to Trump, he considers it a win. At least no one’s talking about his terrible poll numbers or the multiple failed dictator moves like the Travel Ban, right?

Some people seem to buy it.

Fighting With Dead People

Death isn’t the end of Trump having a nonstop problem with you. No one is dead enough to escape his perma-rage.

One thing this president has shown is a boiler-plate pattern of being highly inappropriate and crude, especially about things that scare him. For instance – Military Heroes and the whole concept of death.

Usually it’s a beloved or revered Military hero that he focuses on. It’s the sheer insecurity of a Draft Dodger who didn’t even have the courage to say he was against the War. He just invented a disability and when the war ended he was magically cured. I’m sure most of the people with Incurable Bone Spurs would love him to share how he made them go away. No such luck.

Since dead people cant really fight back and he could care less how his words affect their families, he does it all the time. Be it refusing to lower the White House flag when John McCain died or mocking the parents of a soldier whose made the ultimate sacrifice, Trump feels like this makes him look on task and in charge.

Again, some people buy it.

Showing Off His Toys

Informal and insane statements while walking to his helicopter, with engine roaring, are a great way to look busy. So this is how we usually see Trump. The fact he usually yells when he talks anyway is slightly less out of place, but he makes up for it by being extra caustic in these moments.

So what if he’s flying to his own club to play golf or to one of his “Show-Rallies”? Any guy getting into helicopters that much must be working. Same thing with Air Force 1. He makes a few scathing comments in front of the plane, engines warming up, and he’s off.

Way to go, he just looked like he was working!

WHY?

Why would anyone act so stupidly? The short answer is “Donald Trump is LAZY and BAD AT EVERYTHING.” This extends to, well, everything. Be it what he tweets or who he hires and even to what information he takes in. He’s not an able Chief Executive.

In fact, were Articles of Impeachment built around an inability to fulfill his Oath of Office as such it would be hard for anyone to argue it wasn’t valid and would probably pass the House of Representatives.

Ever since his unexpected win Trump’s shown he’s unable to fulfill the Oath of Office. Nonetheless, he’s the president. Could it be that the Russians were punking all of us AND Trump too ? Like maybe he never thought he was going to win? It’s pretty easy to make the case he wasn’t trying to win with insane ad hoc policies and actions we saw on the trail. He was on the Low Road the whole time.
He’s never spent 10 seconds considering the importance of his job or shown any reverence to the office he holds.

And those are some of the ways Trump avoids doing any work.

Trump’s Clueless, Inappropriate 9-11 that Just Kept Getting Worse

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by therealmcteag in #toc, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Maria Response,, Trump 9-11 2018, Trump Hurricane Florence, Trump Hurricane Maria, Trump's Clueless, Inappropriate 9-11 Keeps Getting Worse

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17 years after 9-11, 9-11, bungled by trump, Can Trump Read?, donald trump, Hurricane Maria Unsung Success, inappropriate Trump, Obama 9-11 tweet, Russia Collusion, shanksville memorial 2018, Trump 9-11 exploitation, Trump 9-11 lies about muslims, Trump 9-11 tweets, Trump bungles, Trump clueless 9-11 performance, trump clueless hurricane florence, Trump clueless responses, trump poor approval rating, trump shrinking vocabulary, Unsung Success

Well we never expected Very Stable Genius Trump to distinguish himself on the anniversary of the worst attack on this nation in its history, but so far its been one mistake after another.

At best he was untethered to reality, at worst he’s invited speculation that he’s presenting some pretty sure signs of a growing Cognitive Impairment.

Here’s how he went about the day –

The Petulant Morning Tweets

In an early morning tweet storm he went after the FBI

“‘We have found nothing to show collusion between President Trump & Russia, absolutely zero, but every day we get more documentation showing collusion between the FBI & DOJ, the Hillary campaign, foreign spies & Russians, incredible.’ @SaraCarterDC @LouDobbs

Yup, he went into the weeds and mud to trash the FBI and political opponents. That was a rabbit hole that lasted a few raging tweets. At this point he must’ve looked at the calendar.

So he decided to demonstrate he could still do basic Algebra –

Wow. Inspiring, feel the solemnity? For contrast our previous president said This –

The Half-Hearted Speech in the Middle of Nowhere

So the fact the current president is always Inappropriate was fully on display in time for him to go to the only 9-11 Memorial where he’s not unWelcome- The sad, lonely and today, rain-swept field in the middle of Pennsylvania’s farmlands where there’s no one really around to be upset by his presence or protest him.

Could you IMAGINE the reaction he would get at home in New York? They’d have to helicopter him out of Manhattan for sure when tens of thousands of angry New Yorker’s, already in a bad mood, came out to protest their city’s least favorite son!

So of course, he blew the optics getting off the plane and just went into Campaigning Mode. It was gross and looked like this-

Then he gave a not too bad and fairly sedate speech at the actual Shanksville Monument. If anything it was sort of ironic when Trump said Americans would never bow to a tyrant. You had to wonder if he meant it regretfully.

The Very Bad, Not Good, Off-Topic Oval Office Hurricane Florence Address

Next there was a largely unnecessary and completely chaotic appearance in the Oval Office hours later as the afternoon wore on. The traits that have driven this president’s personal approval ratings to a dismal place in the low 30’s simply ran rampant. The president was lost to his worst impulses.

This part of the day was so out of control and outright concerning it’s been expanded into a larger post speculating Trump may have a Cognitive Disorder .

Stubborn, dim, defiant, ignorant, inarticulate, dishonest, unrealistic, outright wrong and of course, inappropriate pretty much describe where Trump was at mentally for this whole sad display of non-leadership in the face of an unfolding Natural Disaster.

The subject of the ‘address’ was an off the cuff and unscripted science lesson where the president sent up a couple of people to explain what he simply couldn’t about dangerous Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 (for the moment) heading toward South Carolina.

While the ‘experts’ were okay, when the president spoke it was as garbled and imprecise as ever. Using his ever shrinking vocabulary seems more and more difficult for Trump.

As the image shows better than any words can- the president looked dazed and confused as the dumbed down science was spoon-fed him.

“Its very very wet. Tremendously wet. Wetter than anything we’ve seen, maybe ever,” is almost an exact quote. He had no other term for what most people just call ‘rainfall” or even simply “rain”. Trump only knows ‘wet’.

In fact the president seemed to be having a hard time grasping anything and simply made inexact statements about the storm being really huge and really wet. We’re back to wondering if the president can even read. After recently mistakenly describing a 10 year market anomaly as a 100 year market anomaly I guess “Is Trump Dyslexic?” is in the mix now too.

Perhaps it’s because the president was focused on the wrong Hurricane and simply needed to blow off steam with some angry lying?

To finish off the press conference Trump was set off by a question and went with cobbling together three of his very favorite rhetorical tactics in a row- 1- veering wildly off-track; 2- to tell needless lies; 3- peppered with defiant, dishonest boasting.

The president cluelessly ruminated on Hurricane Maria, fast becoming accepted as one of the worst disasters of the century, rather than sticking with the matter at hand. There was no need to talk about the Hurricane Maria disaster at all from the administration perspective. Still, the impulsive president couldn’t resist the opportunity to simply start lying. Could it be he was uncomfortable from all his experts smart talk going over his head? Was he simply showing he was out of his depth?

It comports well with accounts of erratic self interrupting non-reality hindered rants we get from the Anonymous New York Times Op Ed, Bob Woodward’s book “Fear”, dropping today and the now venerable tome ‘Fire and Fury”. Except it was on Live television in real time. Ugly isn’t a strong enough word.

He gave himself and his administration high marks while bullshitting about Puerto Rico being some kind of primitive backwater that was a mess before the hurricane. “One of the best jobs we’ve done,” he lied. While Hurricane Maria was a subject best ignored, it was suddenly front and center right there on live TV as Trump regaled in his own ignorance and displayed no regard for American citizens in jeopardy. Basically he co-opted his own press conference to lie about something else. HE should have simply left it to his experts and not taken part in the whole affair. It would have been blessedly NORMAL in fact.

“An Incredible Unsung Success,” was how he summed up his administrations totally bungled response to Maria at the end of his long, insincere boasting session of pure falsehoods. Seems the president has just been living in his own little world of narrow minded ignorant fantasy about Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria this whole time. Upsetting to say the least.

This has to chill people living in the Carolina’s! He thinks losing 3000 people to the last hurricane was a success? Whats the definition of success for this storm? In fact Trump is seeming more than a bit like the Emperor Nero these days.

This ‘president’, as usual, didn’t concede an inch to reality. He blatantly lied and misrepresented the situation in a petty, improvised manner. The fact that Hurricane Maria was as bad and as important as 9-11 will eventually sink in and he’ll be on the wrong side of History once again, but til then we’re stuck with this. The fact the president under performed and was ignorant and probably more than a tad racist all coalesced into a completely bungled disaster response that killed far more than the storm itself. It would be fair to call it MACABRE, actually.

Personally, I’m shocked he didn’t repeat his worst false claim about 9-11 from back in November, 2015 when he told the biggest lie he’s told about this day. That “thousands and thousands” of ethnic muslims celebrated on the streets of New Jersey as the Towers burned and fell. Take it from someone who was there- if that was true we’d be talking about dozens of people murdered by angry mobs. EVERYONE but trump and Giuiliani were sad on the first 9-11.

And that’s how Trump spent his 9-11. Acting angry and out of it most of the time, never striking the right tone and lashing out at reality.

The Dysfunctional Trump Adhocracy

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by therealmcteag in The Trump Adhocracy, Trump Ad-hoc Governing, Trump Administration Firings, Trump Unadvised, Trump White House Chaos, Trump White House Short Handed, Trump White House Staff, White House shorthanded

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Olympus Has Fallen

Welcome to start of year two of the abortion that is the Trump Presidency. While we never had a lot of faith that Trump’s hiring prowess would pan out we at least thought he would get a core of mediocre people to mitigate the damage of his own bad impulses. If that was ever the case it’s a distant memory now.

Right now a confluence of events has us living with an Executive Branch too chaotic and arbitrary to be called anything but Ad-hoc.

This past week was more chaotic than most. It saw an overdue end to Temporary Security clearances for the dozens of White House staffers who couldn’t obtain ACTUAL Top Secret Clearance.

Among the casualties are the presidents shady son-in-law Jared Kushner and maybe his wife Princess Ivanka too. In fact both the Kushner’s are almost daily the subject of more revelations of shifty deals and questionable ties.

The Kushner’s seemingly are now about on par with an army lieutenant in the kind of secret information they would be allowed to see. In other words- damn near nothing. CNN reported that even the White House Calligrapher now has higher security clearance than Kushner. That’s just humiliating and validates the litany of critics who have called him unfit to serve.

If theres any good news no one expected them to accomplish much. In Kushner’s case the idea he would share information with anyone for a few bucks figures deeply in. Good luck as Mideast Peace Envoy (with less clearance than your driver now) Jared.

The idea that Trump could just reverse himself and simply restore the security clearances of these risky people is in the mix too. And of course all of this is out the window if Trump’s Chief of Staff General Kelly quits or gets fired.

It’s that chaotic. And its not like this Administration ever enjoyed any kind of acceptance from the public.

The Birth of Dysfunctional Adhocracy

I’m calling whats going on right now A Dysfunctional Adhocracy. Rather than streamlined and tailored to handle any given crisis; this administration, through indifference and nepotism, ended up being a vain and incompetent soap opera of blameshifting lies and firings. Also- it’s governing by whim (and tantrum) and is more or less completely spur of the moment. Right now America’s policies are unplanned assertions from the president and nothing more.

It’s Ad-Hoc in all the worst senses of the word.

Yet another, not to be forgotten, part of the chaos is a desperate Trump kicking the can one day at a time to stay head the Mueller Probe.

Nobody’s Home

The part where everyone keeps getting fired dovetails with an always laissez faire ( and often transactional) hiring policy that knew no urgency and started out behind.

Trump’s Campaign was perhaps the smallest (and shiftiest) in History. For instance; their so-called ‘coffee boy’ was also a liasion to the governments of Australia and Greece. It relied on Force Enhancers like Dark Money and cyber crimes from sources like the NRA and the Russians. The smallest campaign bred the smallest transition. No urgency was ever felt by anyone to have a fully staffed White House that could hit the ground running. That gap was never addressed and the Trump White House always lagged behind and kept on fading.

There’s no one to review policy, there’s no one to write up talking points and there’s no larger discussions of hard facts by highly informed people (if that ever even happened). There’s just a random collection of people best described as ‘yet to be fired’.

Typical of the leftover weirdo survivors would be someone like crazed, angry bigot Stephen Miller. Unqualified and uninformed; they’re just manipulating a president who never really had any ideas, just angry inclinations.

Its ad-hoc and in no way thought out. It’s also dangerous as all Hell.

Which brings us to the precipice of doom otherwise referred to as ‘now’.

The result of all this outright chaos and havoc is that not only are they desperately short

Dum-dum DUMMM! It’s Captain Chaos!

handed. They also have had to shift people from job to job in dizzying fashion. Predictably, work didn’t get done. Look at a poorly thought out and immediately shredded bad idea like the first attempt at a Travel Ban as proof of this . And it happened in every way possible. Unqualified people like Betsy DeVos bought their way in and others still just plain old walked in and convinced Trump to hire them based on being early loyalists like General Flynn. DeVos, the only one of the two not currently facing jail time, is the most unpopular secretary of education ever and the first to need a robust security detail. And she’s the success story.The cavalcade of defections, firings and resignations under a cloud has been unrelenting since General Flynn was forced out (and is now looking at jail time) after 24 days in his National Security Adviser gig. Right now it’s civilian hating General Kelly, HR Puffin’ Stuff McMaster, Jared, Ivanka, Ben Carson and Attorney General Sessions who are on the griddle or looking to flee.

In Kelly’s case he just can’t stop talking about how it was a fluke his closest adviser (and most important hire) was a serial wife beater (Rob Porter). It’s crazy but true that right now a really unqualified person or an outright racist who merely hasn’t committed any crimes that might embarrass the administration is a commodity, even if they’re also plain stupid. Miller again comes to mind.

Complicating everything is the Third Tier losers who were willing to work with Trump to begin with. Unsurprisingly most of them have led such shady lives that the idea they will ever be cleared to look at secret material on a permanent basis is not merely Utopian, its straight up delusional.

How troubled, unstable and incompetent are the president’s hand-picked staff? As I write this HUD Secretary and dim bulb brain slicer Ben Carson, is fighting off criticism of a 30 thousand dollar table and other hard to fathom wastes of cash. It’s actually a typical issue for “the Dumbest and the Dimmest” cabinet and department secretaries of this administration. If Carson gets fired for it (or has to resign) he would be in good company among wife beaters, tax cheats, suspected foreign agents and luxury plane ride aficionado’s who’ve been chased from office already.

Winging It from Tantrum to Tantrum

So here’s how I see it right now – It’s Government by Ad Hoc Tantrums. What were once Frequent Ill Advised Comments have now degraded to Frequent Unadvised Comments.

An isolated and irritable president bereft of staff and loathe to work is free-styling his way through every situation. NBC in particular provides a public service detailing some of his insanity in a great political blog post by Stephanie Ruhle and Peter Alexander you might just want to check out.

Since this went live – The Rachel Maddow Show chronicled the intense Human Resources disaster in a lengthy piece on March 6th and New York Senator Chuck Schumer just plain said there’s no Executive Branch staff to do even the most basic tasks in one of several stories on White House Chaos that aired or blogged by CNN the next day.

Whacked out statements that don’t consider anything beyond the immediate and the moment litter the recent weeks. The last two weeks have been perhaps the worst of his poorly regarded presidency as far as terribly ignorant statements. The presidents increasingly angry and bizarre behavior reaffirmed his lack of any decency, civility or any character.

Among the low-lights; All over the map statements on gun control with only the unpopular and outright ridiculed Armed Teachers concept as his True North. Then there was a whimsical statement about wanting a trade war over metal imports; a hypothetical story of how he would have confronted a gunman and stopped a massacre were only he there to intercede. Then he pondered the Death Penalty for drug dealers. Throw in a bunch angry delusional tweets and caustic that were uninformed or untrue. All of this seems more desperate and angry than even similar outbursts in the recent past. He’s basically the guy who scared the Hell out of those poor Boy Scouts all the time now.

Americans took notice and Trump’s approval ratings, which had recently rallied up to 40% per Gallup, returned to the 35% he’s lived at from the very first months of his presidency.

It’s unclear if any president existed at approval ratings so low for so long. We’re talking End Time For Nixon level. Apparently the only way to run a country that way is to freak out and throw tantrums between delusional lies.

Storytime is Over

I’ve had a lot to say about Trumps repeated problems reading a teleprompter and other signs he can only sort of read. It’s not hard to find references to it in things like the Fire and Fury book or in comments from staffers, former employees and what friends he has. Trump was never big on reading and at 72 he’s not going to change now.

Many said the reading averse president depended on Hicks especially to read things to him (after she read and summarized them to bullet points). Kushner probably didn’t so much read to Trump as handle a bunch of stuff Trump didn’t want to read or hear about at all and just have happen (like Middle East peace).

For Hicks, if not Jared, it seems the job also involved listening to or being the subject of the bosses rantings and tantrums over any gven topic at any given moment.

They’re not going to be able to provide that for him anymore.

You’d imagine losing Hope Hicks, a woman whose last 2

a furious Trump and his human voodoo doll Hicks

relationships have been with guys who verifiably rough up women, removes that last human punching bag he really has to blame and vent at. I’m not sure what a 28 years old one time aspiring model adds to the president’s staff except maybe “designated person to get screamed at”, “messenger to be killed” and “Official Re-Assure-er”.

Is Trump taking in ANY information with the people who seem to have the job of reading for him iced out or gone? Whose giving him bad news and lying for him now?

Maybe no one.

The crazy assertion about putting a protectionist tariff on metal imports was not part of a prepared set of remarks. Nor was it the result of research into the current situation in metal trade. Nor was it the result of something as cursory as checking out the guests at the trade forum where Trump blurted out the Tariff idea.

Was he influenced by someone? He does tend to agree with the last person he speaks to. Whatever caused him to just up and say it, the comment immediately sent the Stock Market plunging 500 points despite daylong efforts by whoever is left at the White House to defuse and / or walk back the remarks.

No One Can Be Fired

Which brings us to another problem; right now no one can really be fired. Unleashing a round of firings to shake things up is actually a tried and true way to right a troubled presidency and we’ve seen guys pull it off in the past. That method is just not available when you’re also running the least transparent, most dishonest and secretive administration in history.

That’s right, the White House Human Resources merry-go-round has built up so much centrifugal force that its throwing people off every few days. It’s created an environment where the word Chaos is being used in every paragraph. Attorney General Sessions and Secretary of State Tillerson are just two people Trump absolutely despises who can’t be fired simply because there’s been nothing but tumult since day one. There’s so much staff upheaval that even firing openly frustrated serial Trump trasher Tillerson would just turbocharge the now constant “White House Down” stories that are further inhibiting an already foundering presidency.

And then there’s also the embarrassing racial component to the White House’s make-up. Overwhelmingly make and white. The fact is this administration shed half its African Americans just by firing Omarosa So Ben Carson may be safe no matter how many thirty thousand dollar furniture projects he undertakes. ANd he’s just one person they can’t fire.

What does all this say about Trump, a guy who sold himself as a great ‘Hiring Master” and excellent judge of business acumen? It sure looks like he is the kind of fool who would buy the Brooklyn Bridge from the same con man every few days thinking somehow this time would be different.

The weakness has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world.

Crucial Everyday Tasks Neglected

Looking weak because so many people had to be let go is a real issue but another problem, just as bad is complicating things even more. Simply put- There’s just no one to do any of the important jobs it takes to keep a president on point and out of useless rhetorical problems and fights. Right now the White House is so understaffed and in such turmoil that the mundane has become potentially disastrous. Just a trade conference over metal imports kneecaps the stock market over what amounts to Trump spitballing ideas. This isn’t supposed to happen. A normal White House would have given him some safe talking points, vetted the people coming and maybe not have some of the wildest people at the meeting so they couldn’t influence “Stand for Nothing/ Fall for Everything” Trump to, for instance, blurt out a destructive comment someone fed to him, like a tariff on metal.

“Angry and Unglued” were the terms sources used to describe the president as he just up and said a bunch of damaging things on trade. NBC actually got deep into the nuts and bolts of how dysfunctional and understaffed the White House has become. It’s so bad that the day during the War of 1812 when a bunch of drunken Canadian’s torched the Executive Mansion is now a distant second (and fading) on the list of Awful Days at the White House.

A Dangerous Phase with No End in Sight

I’m not so sure this dangerous phase ever ends. Trump may serve whatever time he has left just throwing ideas against the wall. This would be bad no matter who was doing it, but this is Trump. He can’t admit he’s wrong. Just look at his now near daily insistence Gun Free School Zone be eliminated and Teachers armed. There’s literally no one outside the NRA (who were that last people he talked to before he started blurting out the Armed Teacher thing) who thinks this is a good idea. It would sell more guns and that’s all the NRA cares about. No matter the universal mockery of this moronic idea Trump wont back down. He said it once and therefore it has to be repeated and eventually some sort of Executive Order will get signed at his extra small correspondence desk at a photo-op.

Hold on tight, it’s gonna be bumpy.

Can Trump Even Read? (seriously)

04 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by therealmcteag in Can Trump Read?, donald trump, Is Donald Trump Illiterate

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Can Trump Read?, fire and fury, inside the trump white house, ivanka, michael wolff, Mueller Probe, steve bannon, Wolff book

Months ago there was a buzz over President Trump’s apparent inability to actually read. It sort of blew over before reemerging today as just one of many explosive or outright frightening revelations about Trump in excerpts from soon to be released book, Fire and Fury, Inside the Trump White House, by a guy named Michael Wolff, who Trump thought would I guess lionize them all. Instead, faced with a bunch of insane petulant people perpetually in full freak out mode things just changed!

The quote about Trump’s literacy is as follows-

“Here, arguably, was the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.”

With a few key edits and additions here’s the original post —

Well we’ve had 100 Days of Fail from no longer all that new President Trump and wow has it ever been a whirlwind. Storming angrily from Failure to Failure and finding new ways to bottom out in Approval Polls, Trump seems dazed and confused most of the time.

Could it be because he can barely read? Podcast Host David Pakman was early to pick up on this. In early February Pakman examined the compelling visual evidence Trump can barely read or comprehend anything. Trumps only added fuel to the fire on this one, but watch the excellent podcast here before i add some of my own thoughts.

Pakman’s theory is backed up by some convincingly presented evidence.

Since the podcast in February, which is his second on the topic, we’ve all seen Trump doing things that suggest he is either functionally illiterate or has a deep reading comprehension problem.

Most obvious to me is the dead and passionless way he reads when he sticks to the teleprompter on the rare occasions he uses one . Droning and devoid of emotion he needs to go off script every few sentences to bash someone or to get a laugh or cheer of approval from the crowd (which he seems to always desperately need and luxuriate in too long).

Then there’s the verbal and visual tells Trump has that again are eerily close to the bullet pointed checklist from the Canadian Police for identifying Illiterate People.

The Canadian Police Publication on How to Identify people with Low Literacy that Pakman references is an enlightening document. It has numerous checklists and bullet pointed items to help you identify people with low literacy traits uncovered by using Police Science. That’s a pretty good provenance. Most people (maybe not Trump) could easily utilize it to make a decent assessment.

Here’s an excerpt – (Forgive the British style spelling, our friends to the north like to use extra letters as often as possible)

People who have difficulty understanding verbal and written information have other tell-tale behaviours. Many people with low literacy:

• give what seem to be indirect, confused, or irrelevant answers to questions

• act confused or ask questions that do not seem to relate to the problem or situation

• not ask any questions at all (rather than reveal they don’t understand what’s going on)

• nod to indicate they agree or understand something, but then not do what you expect

They may also:

• not show up for meetings or hearings (because they did not understand the instructions on a written notice)

• sign statements or legal documents that they do not understand (rather than admit they have a reading problem)

• look dazed or uncomfortable when someone gives them something to read They may show their confusion when they:

• give the impression that they don’t understand the seriousness of their situation (We’ve seen plenty of this in Trump’s unnerving tweets about Nuclear War)

• become frustrated and angry easily; they may storm out, or become physically confrontational (We’ve seen plenty of this with the press)

Is there anything on this list we haven’t seen from Trump in some form? I can’t think of one. certainly “give(s) the impression that they don’t understand the seriousness of their situation’ seems applicable to everything. Just look at some of the crazy tweets he’s put out there about North Korea. And getting angry? Like anyone hasn’t seen that. Remember his meltdown at on the phone with the Prime Minister of Australia when confronted with a complex issue?

I can think of numerous examples of everything on this list right down to storming out of the Oval Office when asked a question he doesn’t like (or comprehend?) and throwing reporters out of abruptly ended press conferences and interviews.

Another standout moment of seeming illiteracy would be when he asked a black

Trump vacantly staring straight through a copy of Variety

reporter if she knew how he could contact members of the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus; members of Congress whose contact information is literally at his fingertips. Everyone knows this.

Lastly we have the presidents baffling and hilariously Historically inaccurate statements about Frederick Douglass and repeated ignorant statements about Andrew Jackson. The Jackson comments are very disturbing as a cursory review of his presidency would present so many frightening and outright brutal actions and policies.

Genocide with WMD’s (anthrax laden blankets) against the Native Americans is just one aspect of Jackson’s murderous, racist, removal and extermination policies. He literally tried to exterminate all of the Native Americans east of the Appalachian Mountains. He, like Trump, was a stranger to compromise and tolerance. Follow this link to the awful tale of the Trail of Tears . Essentially, Jackson Death Marched entire Indian Tribes, men woman and children, from areas like Florida to places like Michigan, making no allowances for things like feeding them properly on the way. If there had been photography at that time endless comparisons to Hitler (rather than Napoleon) would dog Jackson’s memory.

As an administrator of government Jackson was petulant and incompetent with all the wrong priorities. In his spare time Jackson continually warred politically with Congress and the Supreme Court; expanding his power at every opportunity. He was particularly out of touch and bellicose about how to run the nations finances and was considered irresponsible. He presided over a major recession which was partly his own fault and probably was only curtailed by westward expansion and the free labor from slavery. In short, he was just terrible.

With these kinds of violent and anger driven behaviors being pretty much the Top and Bottom lines of the Andrew Jackson Presidential Tale of the Tape its safe to say only an idiot could fail to see him as anything but akin to America’s 19th century version of Hitler. Even in the south Slave Owning lunatics like Andrew Jackson are a political legacy most seem content to avoid.

Mentioning he was deeply moved by a visit to Jackson’s home and grave you would have to assume he lacked the curiosity to look at the dates on it or just doesnt know when the Civil War was.

Jackson, dead almost two decades before the Civil War, is now credited by Trump as working to prevent it. Any sane person would probably reason that Jackson’s prevention of the Civil war would have been to expand and protect slavery, which he loved. Is it possible Trump’s fascination with Jackson is that most statues and memorials have just a one line inscription? Perhaps his most famous and succinct quote was “Our Sacred Union Must be Preserved”. After the War the Union put it on every statue of him they could find, especially the ones in the Old Confederacy. So Jackson’s whole appeal may be he has a memorable quote. Its almost a tweet. It fits with the Low Literacy theory well. Jackson’s one big quote is about as much information as he can remember on a topic he is actually interested in but clearly has avoided reading about.

In examining his personal style and his repeated lauding of another terrible role model, General George S Patton, I detailed how Trump had missed the entire point of the eponymous semi biographical movie about the fiery soldier. Masterpiece “Patton” is a very watchable movie which he often references. Unfortunately he failed to grasp any of the movies more subtle points. He misses Patton’s obvious conflicts.

Iconic opening moments of Patton (1970)

The movie clearly paints Patton as a mixed bag of contradictions with as many problems as gifts. Trump simply misses how Patton’s professional training and top notch merit promoted staff are completely the OPPOSITE of the ‘Dumbest and Dimmest’ collection of Yes-Men the under-educated he’s assembled. Trump misses this entirely. Instead of a cautionary tale of the need to moderate destructive personal traits Trump sees a blueprint for an success through fiery arrogance. Its possible the Dunning-Kruger Effect is operting even in

Where have we seen this before?

something as simple as a relatively straight forward bio-pic.

He also is known to frequently blow off important meetings on complex topics.

For good measure I would throw out there that in his hard to follow spoken comments he rarely finishes a sentence, interrupting himself frequently. When all is said and done its hard to auger what he said.

Mangling quotes, some really badly spelled tweets and non stop misstatements of Historical facts have piled up on a near daily basis.

The most frightening part of this is that his illiteracy precludes any historical perspective. So in an analogous situation to say the Cuban Missile Crisis its likely Trump would be freelancing his way through a situation that historical perspective would give him some tried and true options on. The idea he could negotiate his way out of anything seems highly unlikely too. The command of details this demands seems beyond our pitiful So Called Leader.

The Mounting Evidence Trump May Just be Functionally Illiterate

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by therealmcteag in Can Donald Trump Read?, donald trump, Is Donald Trump Illiterate

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andrew jackson, andrew jackson biological warfare, Can Trump Read?, Cuban Missile Crisis, donald trump, evidence trump cant really read, Frederick Douglass, Humour, police science, signs of functional illiteract, Slavery, Trump History, trumps ignorance explored, why is trump so stupid?