Well Good Morning and Welcome to "How Stupid was That" Friday.
It went over so well Last Week we had Posters Pming me saying Please PLease do it again. And since we are closing a week with Awards To Hawk for his untiring and relentless search for the truth, where ever it takes Him, I thought "WHY NOT"!
SO HOW STUPID TO BE THE "COMPlAINER and Chief"????
“I’m not ranting and raving,” President Trump insisted Thursday, 47 minutes into a 77-minute tempest of a news conference in which he did just that.
With his young presidency besieged by disorder and discord, the commander in chief was at once angry and jovial.
Trump chided perceived enemies. He indicted leakers. He absolved himself of blame. And he excoriated the media — once the “fake news,” now the “very fake news.”
Journalists trying to probe for facts, hold the president to account and correct his grandiose exaggerations in real time became set pieces in the image Trump wanted to project to America during an afternoon of must-see television: The president is in charge.
“I love this,” Trump said. “I’m having a good time doing it.”
The question is how much control Trump has beyond his performance the gold-draped East Room of the White House. The president’s erratic showing seemed to leave much of official Washington alarmed and aghast and may not have convinced doubters that he can govern smoothly.
With Thursday’s news conference, Trump was trying to regain authorship of the story line of his presidency and distract from the burgeoning scandal surrounding reported communications to Russian officials by his now-ousted national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and members of his political team.
It was a classic Trump stroke — try to move past a difficult news cycle by creating a new one. During his campaign, Trump time and again staged news conferences or gave provocative interviews or unspooled fresh attacks at his rallies to divert the media’s gaze to an ever-shinier object.
He was the complainer in chief. Resentful and melancholy, he sought to assign blame for just about everything that he believes ails America.
Not enough people feeling optimistic about his presidency? It’s the media’s fault.
“The press, honestly, is out of control,” he said. “The level of dishonesty is out of control.”
Companies moving jobs overseas? Wages too low? Crime in Chicago? Conflict in the Middle East? Terrorism spreading? Aggression in North Korea? It’s former president Barack Obama’s fault.
“To be honest, I inherited a mess,” he said. “It’s a mess. At home and abroad — a mess.”
The failure of his executive order to institute “extreme vetting” on all refugees and travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations? It’s the federal judiciary’s fault.
“That circuit is in chaos and that circuit is, frankly, in turmoil,” he said of the 9th Circuit, where the Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that halted enforcement of Trump’s travel ban.
In a sign that Trump intends to govern as a permanent campaign, he dismissed citizens who have been demonstrating at congressional town hall meetings to preserve the Affordable Care Act.
“They are not the Republican people that our representatives are representing,” he said.
It has become a trademark of the 45th president to boast about his electoral-college victory — and, in signature Trumpian fashion, he exaggerated Thursday about his place in history.
“I guess it was the biggest electoral-college win since Ronald Reagan,” Trump said.
NBC’s Peter Alexander confronted Trump with his misstatement, pointing out that Obama received 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 electoral votes in 2012, and that George H.W. Bush received 426 electoral votes in 1988.
“Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive of being fake when you’re providing information that’s [incorrect]?” Alexander asked Trump.
Trump showed that, more than being an executive or a military commander, he is a media critic. He attacked reports of White House missteps and melodramas as sensationalist and unfair, and their sources as criminals.
“I turn on the TV, open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos,” Trump said. “Chaos. Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”
It went over so well Last Week we had Posters Pming me saying Please PLease do it again. And since we are closing a week with Awards To Hawk for his untiring and relentless search for the truth, where ever it takes Him, I thought "WHY NOT"!
SO HOW STUPID TO BE THE "COMPlAINER and Chief"????
“I’m not ranting and raving,” President Trump insisted Thursday, 47 minutes into a 77-minute tempest of a news conference in which he did just that.
With his young presidency besieged by disorder and discord, the commander in chief was at once angry and jovial.
Trump chided perceived enemies. He indicted leakers. He absolved himself of blame. And he excoriated the media — once the “fake news,” now the “very fake news.”
Journalists trying to probe for facts, hold the president to account and correct his grandiose exaggerations in real time became set pieces in the image Trump wanted to project to America during an afternoon of must-see television: The president is in charge.
“I love this,” Trump said. “I’m having a good time doing it.”
The question is how much control Trump has beyond his performance the gold-draped East Room of the White House. The president’s erratic showing seemed to leave much of official Washington alarmed and aghast and may not have convinced doubters that he can govern smoothly.
With Thursday’s news conference, Trump was trying to regain authorship of the story line of his presidency and distract from the burgeoning scandal surrounding reported communications to Russian officials by his now-ousted national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and members of his political team.
It was a classic Trump stroke — try to move past a difficult news cycle by creating a new one. During his campaign, Trump time and again staged news conferences or gave provocative interviews or unspooled fresh attacks at his rallies to divert the media’s gaze to an ever-shinier object.
He was the complainer in chief. Resentful and melancholy, he sought to assign blame for just about everything that he believes ails America.
Not enough people feeling optimistic about his presidency? It’s the media’s fault.
“The press, honestly, is out of control,” he said. “The level of dishonesty is out of control.”
Companies moving jobs overseas? Wages too low? Crime in Chicago? Conflict in the Middle East? Terrorism spreading? Aggression in North Korea? It’s former president Barack Obama’s fault.
“To be honest, I inherited a mess,” he said. “It’s a mess. At home and abroad — a mess.”
The failure of his executive order to institute “extreme vetting” on all refugees and travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations? It’s the federal judiciary’s fault.
“That circuit is in chaos and that circuit is, frankly, in turmoil,” he said of the 9th Circuit, where the Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that halted enforcement of Trump’s travel ban.
In a sign that Trump intends to govern as a permanent campaign, he dismissed citizens who have been demonstrating at congressional town hall meetings to preserve the Affordable Care Act.
“They are not the Republican people that our representatives are representing,” he said.
It has become a trademark of the 45th president to boast about his electoral-college victory — and, in signature Trumpian fashion, he exaggerated Thursday about his place in history.
“I guess it was the biggest electoral-college win since Ronald Reagan,” Trump said.
NBC’s Peter Alexander confronted Trump with his misstatement, pointing out that Obama received 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 electoral votes in 2012, and that George H.W. Bush received 426 electoral votes in 1988.
“Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive of being fake when you’re providing information that’s [incorrect]?” Alexander asked Trump.
Trump showed that, more than being an executive or a military commander, he is a media critic. He attacked reports of White House missteps and melodramas as sensationalist and unfair, and their sources as criminals.
“I turn on the TV, open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos,” Trump said. “Chaos. Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”
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