Donnie from Queens filled us in on the French election today.

Very interesting election currently taking place in France.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2017

You get the feeling he’s not sure where France is? And knows nothing whatever about it?

The AP interviewed him on Friday. The transcript is scary.

I think I’ve established amazing relationships that will be used the four or eight years, whatever period of time I’m here. I think for that I would be getting very high marks because I’ve established great relationships with countries, as President el-Sissi has shown and others have shown. Well, if you look at the president of China, people said they’ve never seen anything like what’s going on right now. I really liked him a lot. I think he liked me. We have a great chemistry together.

No, he didn’t “like” you, Donnie. That’s not what this is about. It’s not about chemistry. It’s not about gazing into his eyes. It’s not about any of that. You need to grow up now.

I’ve developed great relationships with all of these leaders. Nobody’s written that. In fact, they said, “Oh, well, he’s not treating them nicely,” because on NATO, I want them to pay up. But I still get along with them great, and they will pay up. In fact, with the Italian prime minister yesterday, you saw, we were joking, “Come on, you have to pay up, you have to pay up.” He’ll pay.

It’s not about personal relationships. Good ones can make discussions easier, yes, but normal sane adult heads of state don’t make decisions for their countries based on their personal relationships with heads of state.

AP: Did he say that? In your meeting? Your private meeting?

TRUMP: He’s going to end up paying. But you know, nobody ever asked the question. Nobody asked. Nobody ever asked him to pay up. So it’s a different kind of a presidency.

And not in a good way.

TRUMP: But things change. There has to be flexibility. Let me give you an example. President Xi, we have a, like, a really great relationship. For me to call him a currency manipulator and then say, “By the way, I’d like you to solve the North Korean problem,” doesn’t work. So you have to have a certain flexibility, Number One. Number Two, from the time I took office till now, you know, it’s a very exact thing. It’s not like generalities. Do you want a Coke or anything?

AP: I’m OK, thank you. No. …

TRUMP: But President Xi, from the time I took office, he has not, they have not been currency manipulators. Because there’s a certain respect because he knew I would do something or whatever. But more importantly than him not being a currency manipulator the bigger picture, bigger than even currency manipulation, if he’s helping us with North Korea, with nuclear and all of the things that go along with it, who would call, what am I going to do, say, “By the way, would you help us with North Korea? And also, you’re a currency manipulator.” It doesn’t work that way.

Ah. It’s nice to have him explaining these things to us clueless mortals. Very sadly, very very sadly, the media don’t all see it that way. They’re stupid.

And the media, some of them get it, in all fairness. But you know some of them either don’t get it, in which case they’re very stupid people, or they just don’t want to say it. You know because of a couple of them said, “He didn’t call them a currency manipulator.” Well, for two reasons. Number One, he’s not, since my time. You know, very specific formula. You would think it’s like generalities, it’s not. They have — they’ve actually — their currency’s gone up. So it’s a very, very specific formula. And I said, “How badly have they been,” [recording inaudible] … they said, “Since you got to office they have not manipulated their currency.” That’s Number One, but much more important, they are working with us on North Korea. Now maybe that’ll work out or maybe it won’t. Can you imagine?

He sure showed them.

He’s surprised it turns out that being president is a big job. I guess he thought it was mostly just waving hello.

AP: Can I ask you, over your first 100 days — you’re not quite there yet — how do you feel like the office has changed you?

TRUMP: Well the one thing I would say — and I say this to people — I never realized how big it was. Everything’s so (unintelligible) like, you know the orders are so massive. I was talking to —

AP: You mean the responsibility of it, or do you mean —

TRUMP: Number One, there’s great responsibility. When it came time to, as an example, send out the 59 missiles, the Tomahawks in Syria. I’m saying to myself, “You know, this is more than just like, 79 (sic) missiles. This is death that’s involved,” because people could have been killed. This is risk that’s involved, because if the missile goes off and goes in a city or goes in a civilian area — you know, the boats were hundreds of miles away — and if this missile goes off and lands in the middle of a town or a hamlet …. every decision is much harder than you’d normally make. (unintelligible) … This is involving death and life and so many things. … So it’s far more responsibility. (unintelligible) ….The financial cost of everything is so massive, every agency. This is thousands of times bigger, the United States, than the biggest company in the world. The second-largest company in the world is the Defense Department. The third-largest company in the world is Social Security. The fourth-largest — you know, you go down the list.

AP: Right.

TRUMP. It’s massive. And every agency is, like, bigger than any company. So you know, I really just see the bigness of it all, but also the responsibility. And the human responsibility. You know, the human life that’s involved in some of the decisions.

Apparently he hadn’t realized that before.

It’s mind-numbing. He hadn’t realized that before. He’s so stupid and out of it that he’s telling a reporter that he hadn’t realized before that for instance dropping bombs means “people could have been killed.” I guess he thought they just got a headache or something. He’s telling a reporter he’s surprised that the US is bigger than a company.

He’s always worse than you think possible. Every, every time.

I’ll tell you the other thing is (unintelligible). I used to get great press. I get the worst press. I get such dishonest reporting with the media. That’s another thing that really has — I’ve never had anything like it before. It happened during the primaries, and I said, you know, when I won, I said, “Well the one thing good is now I’ll get good press.” And it got worse. (unintelligible) So that was one thing that a little bit of a surprise to me. I thought the press would become better, and it actually, in my opinion, got more nasty.

There’s a reason for that, Donald Trump. It’s because you’re terrible. It’s because you’re the worst president any of us have ever seen. That’s the reason. You’re bad at this thing you feel entitled to do, and we don’t like that, and the press are part of the “we” who don’t like it.

They talk about his address to Congress.

TRUMP: A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber.

AP: You seem like you enjoyed it.

TRUMP: I did. I did. I believed in it and I enjoyed it. It was a great feeling to introduce the wife of a great young soldier who died getting us very valuable information.

Oh, jesus. He said that. He said it was a great feeling to introduce the wife of a great young soldier who died. He said it was a great feeling.

Then he talks about his chemistry with Xi some more. Then he talks about the election yet again.

AP: … is do you think you have the right team in place for your next 100 days?

TRUMP: Yes. I think my team has been, well, I have different teams. I think my military team has been treated with great respect. As they should be. I think my other team hasn’t been treated with the respect that they should get. We have some very talented people, and very diverse people.

AP: Do you mean your White House team when you say that?

TRUMP: Yeah, my White House team. I think Reince (Priebus) has been doing an excellent job. I think that, you know, this is a very tough environment not caused necessarily by me. Although the election has, you know, look, the Democrats had a tremendous opportunity because the electoral college, as I said, is so skewed to them. You start off by losing in New York and California, no matter who it is. If, if Abe Lincoln came back to life, he would lose New York and he would lose California…

And he’s off on yet another rant about getting to 270 blah blah blah. Clinton spent more, Democrats don’t like him, Elijah Cummings is critical of him, blah blah blah. And then he gets back to the important stuff.

AP: And that’s one of the difficulties I think presidents have had is that you can have these personal relationships with people from the other party, but then it’s hard to actually change how people vote or change how people —

TRUMP: No I have, it’s interesting, I have, seem to get very high ratings. I definitely. You know Chris Wallace had 9.2 million people, it’s the highest in the history of the show. I have all the ratings for all those morning shows. When I go, they go double, triple. Chris Wallace, look back during the Army-Navy football game, I did his show that morning.

AP: I remember, right.

TRUMP: It had 9.2 million people. It’s the highest they’ve ever had. On any, on air, (CBS “Face the Nation” host John) Dickerson had 5.2 million people. It’s the highest for “Face the Nation” or as I call it, “Deface the Nation.” It’s the highest for “Deface the Nation” since the World Trade Center. Since the World Trade Center came down. It’s a tremendous advantage.

I have learned one thing, because I get treated very unfairly, that’s what I call it, the fake media. And the fake media is not all of the media. You know they tried to say that the fake media was all the, no. The fake media is some of you. I could tell you who it is, 100 percent. Sometimes you’re fake, but — but the fake media is some of the media. It bears no relationship to the truth. It’s not that Fox treats me well, it’s that Fox is the most accurate.

And the whole rest of the conversation, a few hundred more words, is about tv. He’s all about the tv.

It’s breathtaking. It’s as if he were literally about 8 years old, but without the curiosity children have at that age.

Trump put out a statement on Earth Day yesterday.

“My Administration is committed to keeping our air and water clean, to preserving our forests, lakes, and open spaces, and to protecting endangered species,” the statement read.

What a shameless liar. He just repealed a regulation protecting streams and other waterways a couple of weeks ago.

Here are some of the actions the Trump administration has taken on environmental issues so far:

• Trump signed an executive order rolling back former president Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The Clean Power Plan was aimed at reducing carbon emissions, reducing American reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, and promoting the use of alternative sources of energy to curb global warming
• Trump signed a bill repealing an Obama-era regulation that prevented coal mining companies from dumping debris and toxic waste into streams and rivers
• Trump signed a Congressional Review Act resolution which rolled back a financial disclosure requirement for energy companies
• Trump appointed Scott Pruitt, who said that carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to climate change, to head up the Environmental Protection Agency

There’s more.

It turns out that Trump didn’t know much about how to be president when he started.

Trump’s ascension to the presidency is an unlikely story. The flashy New York billionaire and former reality TV star cuts a very different image than any American president before him. He’s the first with no government, military or political experience. In an age of frustration with the political establishment on both sides of the aisle, that background had a certain appeal.

Only to people who don’t think.

No one would say that about any other job that relies on skills and knowledge. Why does anyone say it about as skill-heavy a job as being president? Why does anyone encourage this ridiculous idea? Pig-ignorance is not a good qualification for being president. I’m frustrated with the way airlines treat people; that doesn’t mean I want random bypassers assigned to fly the planes.

Trump’s unique background has also brought with it some problems. He’s faced setbacks and turnabouts, from immigration executive orders hung up in the courts and a failed health care overhaul attempt to changing his mind on his approach to Syria, Russia, China and NATO. All of it points to on-the-job training for Trump, who had a resume before taking office that could be considered, for a president, entry-level, experts say.

“This man is without experience, and it’s showing,” said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian and author of multiple books on presidents, from Roosevelt and Truman to Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan. “Particularly in his dealings with Congress, he’s been an utter failure in the sense that he’s gotten nothing passed. He’s issuing all sorts of executive orders, like immigration limits; they’re failing. The attempt to get health care reform failed. I’d give him failing marks for his 100 days.”

Also there’s the little matter of making us an international pariah within a week of taking office.

Here’s the thing: experience is not the same thing as corruption, and the first does not entail the second. The way to deal with corruption is to deal with corruption, not to put incompetent novices in the top job…especially when they’re more corrupt than anyone who has ever sat in that chair before.

Our orange Nazi will be holding another rally next weekend. How many rallies is that now? Four since he took office? Five?

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he is holding a rally the same night as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“Next Saturday night I will be holding a BIG rally in Pennsylvania. Look forward to it,” the president tweeted.

A rally why? He never explains that. Why does he keep throwing rallies?

Well we know the main reason. He’s a narcissist with an unslakable ravenous hunger for attention and applause. It’s the best fun he knows of, standing facing a big crowd of people who all think he’s the coolest Nazi ever. But that’s not a genuine reason for doing it. A genuine reason would be one to do with the public welfare, or national security, or something related to being president. Just saying “I have a bottomless appetite for frenzied public adulation” doesn’t cut the mustard.

Trump tweeted in February that he would not be attending the annual dinner. The business mogul turned politician has had a rocky relationship with the media throughout the presidential campaign and during his presidency, often times calling some organizations, such as the New York Times and CNN, “fake news.”

The correspondents’ dinner benefits a journalism scholarship and recognizes reporters for their coverage of the president and is traditionally attended by major media outlets, celebrity guests and the president.

It is, frankly, a rather creepy and sycophantic institution. On the other hand, when the alternative is a president who calls the press “the enemy of the people,” it’s not so bad.

Updating to add: this will be the fourth rally since he took office…unless I’ve missed one. Google is being cautious about answering my question. The three I turned up were

• Melbourne, Florida February 20
• Nashville March 15
• Louisville March 20

From Vox last week:

President Donald Trump recounted an absolutely astounding detail about one of his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping in comments published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday afternoon. Apparently, Trump came into his first meeting with the Chinese leader, in early April, convinced that China could simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. Xi then patiently explained Chinese-Korean history to Trump — who then promptly changed his mind.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. … But it’s not what you would think.”

Typical, innit.

He was telling us the same thing about health insurance. “It turns out to be complicated,” he said wonderingly. Yes we know, Donnie, and since it was your idea to go after this job, you should have known too.

He finds that out about everything. People brief him and he runs around full of astonishment, telling everyone what he just learned and bragging that he’s the only person who knows it.

It’s simply staggering that the US head of state is so abjectly stupid that he feels no need to become informed about the issues he has to deal with. It’s staggering that he has no qualms about admitting that the Chinese president had to tell him some basic facts about China and North Korea – subjects he’d been babbling about on Twitter and in campaign speeches for months or years – and that those facts instantly changed his mind. It’s staggering that he doesn’t realize he should have learned those facts a long time ago.

Oh look, another glaring conflict of interest:

Exxon Mobil is pursuing a waiver from Treasury Department sanctions on Russia to drill in the Black Sea in a venture with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, a former State Department official said on Wednesday. An oil industry official confirmed the account.

The waiver application was made under the Obama administration, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity, and the company has not dropped the proposal.

Exxon applied for the waiver while Obama was in office, so my goodness what a nice stroke of luck for them that when Obama left office the new guy put the CEO of Exxon in as Secretary of State. How touchingly generous of him!

Of course impartial observers might think the whole thing is rather inappropriate, but what do they know – they’re not Insiders.

The appeal did not come up during Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, who was Exxon Mobil’s chief executive before his nomination by President Trump and was known to have a strong working relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Why? Why did it not come up? It should have come up – that is, someone should have brought it up.

The Exxon Mobil waiver request for the Black Sea was reported Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal.

Asked about the waiver application, Alan Jeffers, an Exxon Mobil spokesman, said, “We don’t comment on ongoing issues.” A Treasury representative said the department would not comment on individual licenses or waiver requests.

In other words, shut up, little people, and go about your business. The Insiders are conducting Insider Dealmaking and it’s not for the peasants to ask questiions.

Hal Eren, a former official in the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said that such waivers were rarely requested or granted and that in most cases such permission was given only for environmental or safety reasons. The Exxon request is particularly unlikely to succeed, he said, because of the narrow nature of the current sanctions.

“I don’t think they would issue a license, especially given the political context in which this takes place,” Mr. Eren said.

But is he taking Trump into account? Is he taking Tillerson into account?

United States and European sanctions were imposed on Russia in March 2014 in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Even as the Ukraine crisis deepened, Exxon continued pressing for deeper involvement in Russia’s oil industry.

Shareholders. It’s Their Duty to put shareholders first. Don’t talk to them about Ukraine or Crimea, because SHAREHOLDERS.

As Exxon Mobil’s chief executive, Mr. Tillerson took issue with the initial sanctions, before the tightening in late 2014. At Exxon’s 2014 annual meeting, he said, “We do not support sanctions, generally, because we don’t find them to be effective unless they are very well implemented comprehensively, and that’s a very hard thing to do.”

Nonsense. They don’t support them because they’re inconvenient to them (and the shareholders).

Exxon’s waiver request drew criticism Wednesday on several fronts. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is a fierce critic of Mr. Putin, asked in a Twitter post, “Are they crazy?”

Michael A. McFaul, who was United States ambassador to Russia under Mr. Obama, said on Twitter that if the Trump administration granted a waiver, “then all that tough talk last week about Russia was just that — talk.”

Watch closely.