President Trump cabinet meeting/Reality Presidency Show season premiere today garnered huge media coverage. Numerous comments the president made raised eyebrows and evoked critical media commentary, but the thing that struck me about this Trump show is it was a boring rerun of every other Trump show, when he’s trying to talk his way past some deepening controversy.
Trump really is a one-trick pony repeating the same media gimmicks over and over.
Today was a boring rerun of Trump’s staged attacks against his enemies. It’s just like his May 31, 2016 press conference he staged to silence the controversy over the funds from his January 2016 debate temper tantrum, where he staged a vet fundraiser rally. By the Spring of 2016, media questions started swirling about which veterans groups received funds from that January fundraiser and exactly how much money was raised:
Today, Trump repeated this same press conference, except he used his cabinet as stage props instead of some veterans, who support him.
Incoming Senator Mitt Romney penned a scathing op-ed about President Trump leadership and character for the Washington Post last night. Romney stated:
“The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.
It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. His early appointments of Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, Kelly and Mattis were encouraging. But, on balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.”
This op-ed added to the growing criticisms of Trump’s handling of announcing a Syria pull-out via a tweet, without even informing our allies or his own national security team about the decision first. The bad press escalated with General Mattis’ resignation as Secretary of Defense, followed by Trump’s spiteful announcement he was moving up Mattis’ departure.
As criticism over both Trump’s Syria decision and how he went about it escalated, the president began ramping up his mean tweeting in recent days. He retaliated over the weekend when General McChrystal answered a reporter’s question about whether he would ever serve in the Trump presidency and whether he believes the president is immoral. McChrystal, I believe, answered the questions honestly. In typical Trump fashion, Trump decided to wage the only strategy he knows – a vicious divide and conquer attack.
We now have a POTUS committed to playing American generals against each other and even more disturbing, publicly undercutting top retired generals to curry favor with the troops. He is undercutting confidence in the US military and its top leaders, all to win spin cycles…
The truth is these retired generals should tread very cautiously criticizing the President and avoid it. Engaging in public spin attacks back and forth with Trump will only damage military morale and could easily begin to damage confidence in America’s top military leadership. If these retired generals or former Trump administration officials feel strongly about Trump’s competency, conduct in office and handling of national security matters, the proper way to air that would be to testify to Congress, under oath.
The real big picture threat is America’s adversaries are watching the Trump Reality Presidency Show and they understand that Trump’s shallow narcissism makes him so easy to manipulate. Since Erdogan talked Trump into pulling out of Syria, both Kim Jong Un and Putin made public overtures to Trump about more meetings. They obviously feel confident they can easily play Trump again. All it takes is stroking Trump’s ego, by praising him as a strong leader. How much Trump will sell America down the river remains to be seen, but for a reality check, Trump doesn’t bother with facts or details.
The media latched onto a Trump comment in his presser that speaks to Trump’s colossal ignorance about American foreign policy and history. Trump touted the Soviet view on their invasion of Afghanistan, not the Reagan foreign policy view. It was a surreal comment coming from a sitting American president:
Trump: “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia.” This is simply not true. The Soviet Union ventured into Afghanistan as part of its effort to prop up communism abroad, not because terrorists were striking the Soviet homeland.
Any Republican who sticks his head up to rally opposition or a GOP insurgency against Trump will quickly be knocked out by Trump’s Spin Commandos. To wage a real insurgency against Trump would require careful planning & a comprehensive strategy to neutralize Trump’s Spin forces.
When Repubs respond to Trump outrages, they are playing into Trump’s spin game – that just feeds Trump and his Spin Commandos more free ammo. They wage smear campaign, mock, belittle… marginalize these attacks on Trump quickly. The real stakes are winning hearts and minds.
MoreThose Repubs against Trump would be smarter to ignore Trump’s outrages as much as possible, and use their public platforms to quietly work to pull Americans away from extreme partisanship, toward a saner middle ground.
MoreRetired generals are perfectly situated to be apolitical public leaders. They could work hard to unify Americans around core American principles, good citizenship, and treating everyone with respect.
Trump knows only one strategy – a vicious divide and conquer character assassination strategy. His minions rant about the horrific smear campaign waged against Brett Kavanaugh and, yes, it was, vile, but the truth is Trump and his Spin Commandos wage the same exact type of attacks from the gutter, as the Clinton/Dem smear merchants do.
The Dems/mainstream media have been throwing every type of smear against Trump since late 2015 and Trump is still standing, his followers mostly don’t even listen to most of these attacks anymore. Trump and his minions real threat is not from Democrats or the mainstream media, it’s from people Trump’s followers might admire – like a conservative or especially retired generals. That’s why Trump staged this phony cabinet meeting presser and that’s why the long knives came out for Mitt Romney and General Mattis.
Romney’s op-ed spoke to traditional values Trump’s followers used to espouse and General Mattis is a dedicated Marine, who devoted decades to keeping America safe. Trump recognized their threat and attacked.
libertybelle diaries 
Can’t tell if you are a Trump-hater or bootlicker, Ms Asbury? You seem able to see Trump’s faults, but it seems they are only minor character flaws, not things that should have him impeached for destroying America. A fence-sitter perhaps? Or a lap-dog? In post-sanity USA you are a marvel–someone who plays oth sides…
Here’s my rather long explanation. I assuredly am not a bootlicker. I also am neither a Trump-hater nor a fencesitter. I am a believer in The Constitution of the United States.
I refuse to ever hate anyone, it’s a personal choice.
I was a NeverTrump and NeverHillary voter, so in fact, I left the top of my ballot for president blank. I wrote many blog posts listing the many reasons why Trump was unfit to become president, but millions of other Americans voted for him. So, until he does something that equates to “high crimes and misdemeanors”, I wouldn’t support impeachment. Bolstering The Constitution matters more to me than working to destroy Trump.
Trump, aided by FOX News, is only one side in a mass media scorched earth SPIN information war engulfing America in virulent agitation propaganda 24/7.
The Dems and much of the mainstream media aren’t the light of truth or on the side of the angels. They are determined to “Resist”, which is a euphemism for delegitimize and destroy Trump, by any means necessary, waging 24/7 spin attacks of negative Trump stories. Our domestic spin war leaves America wide-open to hostile actors’ information warfare operations, who work to fan the flames of extreme partisanship, destabilize American institutions and destroy American credibility on the world stage. So, whatever damage we aren’t inflicting on ourselves, our adversaries avidly are assisting in our self destructive spin war.
Ending our scorched earth spin war is more important than just removing Trump from office.
If Trump resigned tomorrow, the Left’s Resist spin attacks would pivot immediately to vicious attacks and mass hysteria about Mike Pence, working to destroy him and immobilize his presidency. And because of Trump, the GOP, which had never mastered the Left’s corrupt SPIN tactics, has now become totally corrupted by the use of the Left’s SPIN information warfare tactic. This spin war leaves ordinary Americans left trying to sift through the smoldering piles of spin rubbish for reliable information.
I remain, always, on the side of defending That Constitution of America.
Hope that clears up where I stand.
Not being American, and therefore not knowing your constitution as you do, no. All I can see is that everything the Dems are doing is exactly what the GOP is doing, and both sides are wrong.
But, seeing as the Repubs are in power, what they are doing is worse than what the Dems can do right now, they are killing American society. They have taken the bottom out of most social, environment, and medical safety nets. The way Trump tried to destroy everything Obama accomplished, give power “back to the whites, even though they had never lost it!”, tried to join certain religious thoughts to the government, lying lying and more lying, America is now the laughingstock of the world outside America, and a pretty big one inside America too, from what I read. He promised to make America great again, but all he is doing is making the rich richer, and the poor more likely to die young. He does not realize that his whole economy rests on having poor, voiceless people to work to bolster the rich, which is already bad enough in and of itself, but his solution is not to give food and medical aid to the poor, but to commit a form of class genocide.
And as for defending the parts I do know about your constitution, the present bunch of GOP politicians are mostly hell-bent on destroying that too.
I appreciate and respect your desire to not hate anyone, but that is not one of DJT’s virtues. He hates 95% of Americans, and super-loves the 5%. The rest of the world can go to hell, as far as we non-Americans are concerned. And that too is an oversight on Trump’s part, because by maintaining the conditions for climate change and climate catastrophes, he is killing Americans along with the rest of the world. He may yet get his biggest wish, to die the richest man on earth (though I doubt it), but what he ignores is that his money will soon be worthless, because of what he is doing right now. And I know he will never realize HE could personally be responsible for killing all life on this planet.
I now need to ask you a question, what good is defending the constitution of America if there are no more Americans? That is like defending the Brooklyn Bridge when the only ones to use it will be cockroaches! And they will die before they get from one end of the bridge to the other…
Oh that i were at my own desk Mr Raw,
Your “truth” is decidedly myopic, and apologies for the inside joke here but, all the golden bits having been extracted your rant is left with solely that with which was the greater portion.
I would encourage you to hit our host’s archives and travel back to past administration’s periods before plopping your fibrous steampiles so loosely.