President Trump

[Slim Cognito]

Justin Trudeau coughing in front of Trump in the Oval Office is all you need to see today

I believe Trudeau coughed intentionally and nobody will convince me otherwise.

[Kendra]

https://mobile.twitter. com/funder/status/1141812155177676800

Justin Trudeau coughing in front of Trump in the Oval Office is all you need to see today

I believe Trudeau coughed intentionally and nobody will convince me otherwise.

Ditto.

[ZekeB]

If you're going to cough, go out of the room and do it somewhere else.

Author unmentioned to spare the guilty.

[Chilidog]

Trump wants to go to war without a SecDef?

[RTH10260]

Trump wants to go to war without a SecDef?

He only needs Generals! They will work it all out for him. As Idiot-in-Chief he gives orders directly.

[ZekeB]

He only needs Generals! They will work it all out for him. As Idiot-in-Chief he gives orders directly.

He's smarter than the Generals. That's another of his stupid campaign statements. He made so many idiotic statements. One forgets many of them.

[MN-Skeptic]

I firmly believe that the only reason that Trump called off the attack on Iran was that someone convinced him that it could be used against him in his re-election campaign.

I also firmly believe that the Pentagon informed him early in the process about the potential casualties and he pooh-poohed the deaths as the price of war.

[Gregg]

After all, they're poor, why else would they join the military?

[RVInit]

I firmly believe that the only reason that Trump called off the attack on Iran was that someone convinced him that it could be used against him in his re-election campaign.

I also firmly believe that the Pentagon informed him early in the process about the potential casualties and he pooh-poohed the deaths as the price of war.

I was going to post something very similar. Wouldn't the estimate of potential casualties typically be made BEFORE the planes are in the air? I sure wish we had the kind of journalism that would start asking this question. So far, I haven't heard any journalist or panel guest bring this up. Admittedly, I'm not glued to the news. Is anyone aware that this has been brought up in any news forum as a question or comment?

I'm concerned that Trump has just shown himself to be the coward we all thought he was. Talking big until the time comes to act. His excuses yesterday seemed silly and sounded a great deal like the crap he was saying about Saudi Arabian officials' culpability in the Kashoggi murder.

[MN-Skeptic]

I was going to post something very similar. Wouldn't the estimate of potential casualties typically be made BEFORE the planes are in the air? I sure wish we had the kind of journalism that would start asking this question. So far, I haven't heard any journalist or panel guest bring this up. Admittedly, I'm not glued to the news. Is anyone aware that this has been brought up in any news forum as a question or comment?

The idea that the Pentagon would have informed Trump much earlier about possible casualties is something I read at several spots but, naturally, can't find now. I did see that the New York Times did speculate about that in their original article:

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

But as to why Trump called off the strike, I haven't seen any reasonable speculations. However, knowing that, to Trump, the universe revolves around him, I figured that the reason had to have centered on what's best for him either financially or politically.

[Mr. Gneiss]

But as to why Trump called off the strike, I haven't seen any reasonable speculations. However, knowing that, to Trump, the universe revolves around him, I figured that the reason had to have centered on what's best for him either financially or politically.

The cynic in me says that he got a call from his handler Vlad, who reminded about a certain tape that Hope Hicks mentioned in her testimony earlier this week.

[Foggy]

Yeah, we've made it a joke, but the possibility that Putin told Trump to stand down is not outside the realm of potential reality.

[tek]

New players in this episode: Trump plays the part of Lucy and Bolton plays Charlie Brown.

Bolton's gotta be kicking the dog.. and anything else he can find.

[Slim Cognito]

Yeah, we've made it a joke, but the possibility that Putin told Trump to stand down is not outside the realm of potential reality.

After hearing Lindsey Graham yesterday practically orgasm at the thought of striking Iran, I wonder if he's locked himself in his room crying his eyes out.

[Mikedunford]

You don't get to be a flag officer in the US military without learning how to *thoroughly* cover your ass. Information on potential US and Iranian casualties, including possibilities for civilian casualties, would have been in the packet. Probably with "best case," "likely," and "worst case" ranges.

[much ado]

Yeah, we've made it a joke, but the possibility that Putin told Trump to stand down is not outside the realm of potential reality.

After hearing Lindsey Graham yesterday practically orgasm at the thought of striking Iran, I wonder if he's locked himself in his room crying his eyes out.

I sure hope so.

[tek]

Wednesday’s downing of a U.S. drone by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard exposes a weakness in U.S. operations. The United States has some of the world’s most sophisticated drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. But they were designed for past wars, for use against insurgent forces such as ISIS or the Taliban that cannot track and destroy high-flying aircraft. Iran and other potential adversaries, by contrast, have radar and missiles that can turn some of the U.S. military’s most important drones into expensive, conspicuous targets.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2 ... ne/157901/

[tek]

Veterans organizations plan to hand out USS John McCain T-shirts on the Fourth of July during President Trump’s speech on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Progressive group VoteVets and Rags of Honor announced Friday that they are honoring the former Arizona Republican following Trump’s public attacks on the late senator.

The T-shirts feature the Navy destroyer with its nickname, “Big Bad John,” that the White House asked to have moved out of the way during Trump’s visit to Japan last month.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing ... Xw.twitter

[Kendra]

Trump: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”

[RTH10260]

https:// mobile.twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1142180855927975936

Trump: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms. Carroll or New York Magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”

One would think that the personal lawyer of Teh Donald would be filing something by now. Rudy has been very quite and absent from the media recently, one wonders.

[Volkonski]

Urged to Launch an Attack, Trump Listened to the Skeptics Who Said It Would Be a Costly Mistake

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/p ... trike.html

He heard from his generals and his diplomats. Lawmakers weighed in and so did his advisers. But among the voices that rang powerfully for President Trump was that of one of his favorite Fox News hosts: Tucker Carlson.

While national security advisers were urging a military strike against Iran, Mr. Carlson in recent days had told Mr. Trump that responding to Tehran’s provocations with force was crazy. The hawks did not have the president’s best interests at heart, he said. And if Mr. Trump got into a war with Iran, he could kiss his chances of re-election goodbye.

However much weight that advice may or may not have had, the sentiments certainly reinforced the doubts that Mr. Trump himself harbored as he navigated his way through one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions of his presidency. By his own account, the president called off the “cocked & loaded” strike on Thursday night with only 10 minutes to spare to avoid the estimated deaths of as many as 150 people.

The concerns that Mr. Trump heard from Mr. Carlson reflected that part of the presidential id that has always hesitated at pulling the trigger. Belligerent and confrontational as he is in his public persona, Mr. Trump has at times pulled back from the use of force, convinced that America has wasted too many lives and too much money in pointless Middle East wars and wary of repeating what he considers the mistakes of his predecessors.

[Addie]

Raw Story

Trump goes on manic tirade after being asked about new rape allegation: Women get ‘paid money to say bad things about me’

On Saturday, facing reporters at the White House, President Donald Trump flatly denied the rape allegation of advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, attacked New York Magazine for publishing it, and suggested that women are being “paid money” to make false accusations against him.

“I have no idea who this woman is,” said Trump. “This is a woman who’s also accused other men of things, as you know. It is a totally false accusation. I think she was married, as I read, I have no idea who she is, but she was married to a — actually nice guy, Johnson, a newscaster.”

“There’s a photograph of you and her,” shouted one reporter.

“Standing with my coat on in a line, give me a break. With my back to the camera,” said Trump. “I have no idea who she is. What she did is terrible. What’s going on. It’s a total false accusation, and I don’t know anything about her, and she’s made this charge against others, and you know, people have to be careful because they’re playing with very dangerous territory, and when they do that and it’s happening more and more. When you look at what happened to Justice Kavanaugh and you look at what’s happening to others, you can’t do that for the sake of publicity.”

“New York Magazine is a failing magazine, it’s ready to go out of business from what I hear,” said Trump. “They’ll do anything they can, but this is about many men, and I was one of the many men that she wrote about. It’s a totally false accusation. I have absolutely no idea who she is. There’s some picture where we’re shaking hands it looks like at some kind of event. I have my coat on. I have my wife standing next to me, and I didn’t know her husband, but he was a newscaster, but I have no idea who she is, none whatsoever. It’s a false accusation, and it’s a disgrace that a magazine like New York, which is one of the reasons it’s failing, people don’t read it anymore, so they’re trying to get readership by using me. It’s not good.”

[MN-Skeptic]

Interesting how this works...

Trump pays women to lie.

He is accusing someone else of paying Carroll to lie.

[Volkonski]

Julia Davis
‏
@JuliaDavisNews
17m17 minutes ago
More
#Russia’s state TV concludes that all of Trump’s threats amount to nothing more than meaningless saber-rattling, designed to help him get re-elected. They say it’s just a theater, a one-man show.

[tek]

Julia Davis
‏
@JuliaDavisNews
17m17 minutes ago
More
#Russia’s state TV concludes that all of Trump’s threats amount to nothing more than meaningless saber-rattling, designed to help him get re-elected. They say it’s just a theater, a one-man show.

THAT is "The Art of the Deal"