The performance
In case you want to watch the waking nightmare that is that Trump press conference.
CBS picks out some highlights.
Mr. Trump reiterated his support for Kavanaugh throughout the press conference, lauding him as one of the great intellects of the country. But he did say he could change his mind after testimony from the women accusing the nominee. “That is possible,” he said.
Asked by CBS News’ Steven Portnoy what message the president is sending to young men with his stance on Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump decried a situation he sees as “guilty until proven innocent.”
“In this case, you’re guilty until proven innocent,” he said.
This is the guy who paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times demanding the death penalty for the Central Park 5, and who insisted they were guilty after DNA evidence showed they were not.
Mr. Trump was asked about an incident the day before when world leaders laughed, after he declared his administration had accomplished more than perhaps any other.
The president declared coverage of that event fake news.
“They weren’t laughing at me, they were laughing with me,” Mr. Trump said.
…
The president said he told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to get into the “time game” over denuclearization in North Korea.
The president said that, whether denuclearization takes two years, three years, or five months, it doesn’t matter.
…
Mr. Trump, pressed insistently by CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang, admitted that the accusations of sexual misconduct against him from multiple women “absolutely” affect how he views the allegations against Kavanaugh.
The president went off about how “women who got paid a lot of money to make up stories about me. We caught them and the mainstream media refused to put it on television.” Their accusations, false ones, the president said, certainly affect his view of the Kavanaugh allegations.
“It does impact my opinion,” the president said. ” Because I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me. I’m a very famous person unfortunately. I’ve been a famous person for a long time. I’ve had a lot of false charges made against me. Really false charges.”
“I know friends who’ve had false charges,” he continued. “People want fame, they want money. So when I see it I view it differently than somebody sitting home watching television when they say ‘Oh, Judge Kavanaugh, this or that.’ It’s happened to me many times. I’ve had many false charges.”
“I had a women sitting in an airplane, and I attacked her while people were coming on to the plane when I had a bestselling book coming out. It was a totally phony story. When you say, ‘does it affect my thinking in respect to Judge Kavanaugh,’ absolutely, because I’ve had it many times. If the news would have reported these four people. When I heard they caught these four people, I said this is a big story. And it was, for Fox.”
…
Fox News’ John Roberts asked the president if there was an opportunity missed in not having the FBI further review the allegations against Kavanaugh.
“Well the FBI told us they’ve investigated Judge Kavanaugh six times, five times,” but “here there was nothing to investigate,” Mr. Trump said.
The president then went on to say Democrats are carrying out a “con” job in pushing the allegations and allowing the process to slow down. Mr. Trump said that behind closed doors, Democrats “laugh like hell.”
It’s worth watching at least a couple of minutes of it, to get a sense of how off the charts nuts he seems. As in, advanced dementia.
Mano Singham has linked to a tweeted summary by Daniel Dale. This bit is rather….honest. I’ll bet Kavanaugh’s crew winced hard enough to tear the skin from their faces.
The whole thread sounds like the script to a comedy.
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1045055217585270789
Priceless!
Sorry, last one for now, I promise.
‘I’m a very famous person unfortunately,’ displays a self-awareness we all thought he lacked. :-))
AoS:
I prefer to read it as:
Existential question for today: would you board a plane if Trump was the pilot, and the one and only member of the aircrew who knew how to fly the thing?
For my part, no. And no matter how urgently I wanted to get from Point A to Point B.
Fortunately for the US, it has people other than Trump who can be President. In fact, Trump has proved that damn near anyone can be President. At a guess, I would say that the US possibly has about 200 million people so qualified right now inside its borders. And if that is not enough, there are plenty who could be hired for the job from elsewhere: particularly Russia.
I offer this observation to all Americans in the interest of their national peace of mind in these perplexing times.
I don’t think he’s done that at all. He’s proven perhaps that anyone lacking sufficient qualifications can be president, but his election has demonstrated that at least two groups of people need not apply. (1) Any individual who wishes to discuss policy with intelligence and coherence, and demonstrates the ability to understand the processes by which our government works; and (2) women.
With all due respect, Iknklast, I think you are confusing categories here: a. who Trump might like/not like to see appointed (as he has not yet proclaimed himself Emperor For Life – but stand by for developments on that front) and b. who could actually do the job.
He’s proven that anyone, and anyone lacking any qualifications can be President. Step up the town dog-catcher. You could be the next after Trump. A massive contribution surely to public morale.
I rest my case.
Why does everyone pick on the dog catcher? We act like that is such a minor position, but it takes real skill to catch dogs (and any other animal that might happen to fall within his/her responsibility). Not just everyone could be a dog catcher.
And I continue to maintain that it is not true that anyone could be president. I would have no chance whatsoever. I am a middle aged woman with a STEM degree (and a doctorate, to boot, which makes me doubly suspicious) who works in an Environmental Science field. I have only one child, and my ex-husband is gay. (My current husband is hardly an “alpha male”, having lived his life as a librarian.) I do not believe in God, and could never, ever say “God Bless America” without choking on it and dying. I am overweight, I have gray in my hair which I am not willing to dye because I have no problem with gray. I do not wear make up, high heels, or other accoutrements of the “feminine” persuasion.
All Trump has demonstrated is that the general public wants someone to entertain them. Oh, and that the Electoral College operated exactly as it was designed to do – to ensure that the will of the people could be overridden by bigots and assholes.
Before assuming that Trump’s election opens it to everyone, consider this: (1) Trump is rich. (2) Trump was already famous, having had his own TV reality show. (3) Trump is white. (4) Trump is male. All but 2 look exactly like every other president we’ve had in my lifetime, with the exception of one deviation from 3. And Obama, you have to admit, was very entertaining (though in a different way than Trump – you could listen to his speeches and enjoy them for the rhetoric). Trump has demonstrated that the same group of people who has always run things – the rich white male – is still running them, and that is still who the country is voting for. Maybe he’s a buffoon (maybe?). Maybe he’s ignorant (maybe?). Maybe he’s totally unqualified for the position (maybe?). But he is only a few steps away from Dubya Bush on most of those counts, who was only a few steps from Ronnie Reagan. It is a simple formula, and it isn’t a big change. The only thing changing is the competence level.
So, no, not anyone can be president. Go pick up a middle aged lesbian atheist black woman and tell her she can be president. She’ll laugh in your face.
My sincere apologies to all dog catchers. But not to any ignorant and totally unqualified white male buffoon who happens to occupy the Oval Office. At any time, not just right now.
And my advice to any middle aged lesbian atheist black woman who fancies the job is to change her name to Stormy Daniels, who IMHO is very well placed to pick up the Republican nomination for next time around, as well as the votes of all the Homer J Simpsons of America (though not the Marges, I grant you.)
But in the confusion, the black Daniels could well romp home. And I would raise a glass of Jack to that.
iknklast, ‘custodian of all knowledge’ sounds pretty damn alpha to me. Librarians have been among my most admired people since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
AoS – I was just going by common opinion, of course. Librarian is viewed as a woman’s job, therefore not alpha. But my husband is one of my most admired people, and I actually dedicated one of my books to librarians, because I have respected them for ever. So I was just referring to him the way an ignorant buffoon like Trump would – I’m sure Trump would dismiss a male librarian as some sort of sissy man. And people around town all assumed he was gay until the day we got married.
The ‘gay’ thing always aimed at men in supposedly women’s jobs always amuses me, not least because the so-called alpha professions, whether firefighter or pro-footballer, are likely to contain a greater percentage of homosexuals among their ranks than do the librarians or nurses. Not that the average buffoon would accept that, nor that their fetishisation of ‘alphas’ is rather homo-erotic in itself.
Bless their empty heads.
AoS, my mother always claimed that male elementary teachers were gay (and I guess wanting to prey on the young boys? She didn’t say that, but it was implied). And the one woman doctor in our town when I was younger just had to be a lesbian (she actually was, I think, but her failure to be that would not have stopped my mother from the assumption). And of course, said female doctor was having sex with her horses, of that my mother was certain.
When my current husband (the librarian) and I got engaged, my mother was truly nervous, since I had already been dumped by one husband to go live with another man. Plus, my husband collects art, and it is not art my mother understood or liked, and it was similar to the sort of art my ex liked, so instant gay. Silly Mom. She did have so many strange ideas.
So we’ve established that the perfect human is a librarian by day, dog catcher by night.
I’m cool with that.
latsot, my husband is librarian by day, dog walker at night. And he is the perfect human being.
Well, I can’t exactly call myself a librarian but I have amassed enough books to fill a small library, and I walk my dog two or three times a day, so I guess I’m three-quarters of the way to perfection :-)).
On the subject of ‘gay’ jobs and my earlier remark about ‘alpha’ professions, by sheer coincidence I learned only an hour ago that Willie Nelson* covered a song by Ned Sublette (a new name to me) titled Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other, and I think that says it all. Now I have to start digging to see if that song might have inspired Brokeback Mountain.
That song reminded me of my favourite (and only) gay cowboy joke. Two cowboys are together in bed. One says ‘Yup’, the other replies ‘Yep’.
*A recent quote from Nelson; “
Big fingers, small buttons!
That Nelson quote, about Trump’s wall; We have a statue that says: ‘Y’all come in, I don’t believe in closing the border. Open them suckers up!
Amen to that, Willie.