For sure, it’s a low bar for a president
Yesterday Trump made an attempt to convince everyone that he is totally not a fucking moron or a child or watching tv instead of doing his job. He held a Potemkin “meeting” on immigration and had the cameras in to show the world how good Meeting he can do.
The President took a victory lap on Wednesday at a Cabinet meeting, welcoming reporters “back to the studio.”
“Actually it was reported as incredibly good and my performance — some of it called it a performance, I consider it work — but, it got great reviews by everybody other than two networks who were phenomenal for about two hours,” Trump said.
The President also claimed news anchors sent the White House congratulatory letters about the meeting but then were told to cool their praise by their bosses.
Mmmmm…do I believe that?
No, I don’t think I do.
A senior administration official told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny that conducting the meeting on camera helped Trump to “seize the megaphone” and to show engagement in policy and was designed partly to lay to rest the “hyperventilation about him.”
Yet the compelling back-and-forth also exposed some of the President’s liabilities, notably a hazy command of policy details, a tendency to adopt multiple, contradicting positions on key issues at the same time as well as his habit of misrepresenting the facts in service of his political views.
Yet he thinks it showed how brilliant he is, which is typical of him…because, of course, he’s too stupid to know that things like ignorance of policy and incoherence are a liability. He’s a showpiece for Dunning-Kruger. He’s too thick to recognize his own lacks and too thick to understand why they matter.
Still, Trump, seated between top Democrats Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, projected a picture of confidence and flexibility, posing as the epitome of bipartisanship and civility while living up to his self-image as someone who is always on the lookout for a deal.
He was clearly able to follow the debate, and mount a defense of his own controversial positions — on a border wall, for example — without causing obvious offense, and appeared magnanimously open to other viewpoints.
For sure, it’s a low bar for a president. Those who reach the White House have often been among the cream of their generation, lauded for wisdom, steely dispositions and possessing the presence to redirect the political winds.
Not all that often. Bush Junior, Reagan…not much cream of their generation there.
But more to the point, yes, that is a disgustingly low bar. He didn’t take his pants off, he didn’t demand ice cream, he didn’t start raving about Pocahontas and Sloppy Steve – therefore he’s a goodenough president?
NO in thunder!
Have your media really been so cowed by the last year that they honestly think that Trump’s behaviour is anything better than completely outrageous? Have they forgotten your 44th president already?
“Seize the magaphone?” Hasn’t he had it the whole time?
Well, 45 has been busy erasing his accomplishments….
Perhaps I am as completely fluent in USAmerican as I thought, because no matter how much I tilt my head and squint my eyes, I am unable to parse that.
Re #4 – Yeah, that’s a mess. Best guess: Two networks, which have had only two phenomenal hours in their history, did not give it great reviews, while every other one (all of which may have had three or more phenomenal hours ever?) thought he rocked. I suspect the insult center of his brain interrupted the boasting part before the boasting part managed the epic struggle to construct a sentence in his first and only language.
But hey, great meeting!
Well, it’s more a matter of being fluent in Trump American. I have spoken US all my life, and am usually considered to have a good vocabulary and be a good speaker/reader/listener, and I can’t parse that.
Ya same here. I just stared at it and thought whaaa? and skipped over it.
Michael Wolff said on CNN Monday (to Don Lemon I think) that Trump is a motormouth. It was a question about how much he talked to Trump and did he interview him – he said he never interviewed him because he’s a motormouth, he does all the talking. Motormouths will talk gibberish like that and be too busy motoring to fix it.
A motormouth and a muttonhead.
And a malaprop and a moltroon.