22 thoughts on “Trump’s Press Conference”

  1. “Unfortunately, the delusion that the United States would remake Russia in its own image persisted through the Bush and Obama administrations. I have no reason to doubt the allegations that a dozen Russian intelligence officers meddled in the U.S. elections of 2016, but this was equivalent of a fraternity prank compared to America’s longstanding efforts to intervene in Russian politics.”

    Maybe US should pass a constitutional amendment, which prohibits US government from governing other nations..
    One might think it is obvious, like free speech is obvious, but US government is the worst at interfering with other nations in the world.
    Of course such a restriction applies to the government, and would not be, that US government is suppose to restrict it’s citizen from messing with other nations in the world [to any degree or manner], but for example, it would not fund such citizens in whatever effort they might choose to do- or the US government simply does not get involved with “improving other nations”.

    Or US private citizens have done a lot to “improve” the world, and the US government has failed repetitively.

    The US government can’t even improve it’s own government- and it’s main magical ability is limiting what the government can do- don’t interfere with citizen speech, citizen ability to govern itself and the government, citizen’s self defense, nor having government manage religions, etc. And having equal branches of government checking the power of the other branch of government.

    For instance if US were conquer some nation, the most important thing would be to first establishing a government which checks the power of US government.- that would be an America manner of doing it.

  2. There are a couple of problems I had with Trump’s statement. First, the notion of wanting to know what the servers are saying. It may be coy like Hillary’s “wipe, like with a cloth”. Still, it seems an odd statement for an inanimate object. Second, yeah he criticized a segment of our government on foreign soil, and that is something that others get dinged for doing when they do it.

    None of my concerns warrants the asshattery on display yesterday by the elites on the coast, inside the beltway, and among the Acela corridor. They need to get a grip. In my mind, I replayed the scene from Airplane! with the rest of the US is lining up to slap these fools back to reality.

    1. “Second, yeah he criticized a segment of our government on foreign soil, and that is something that others get dinged for doing when they do it.”

      Everyone in the rest of the world knows the US ‘intelligence community’ is a joke. The failed to spot 9/11, they failed to spot that the USSR was on the verge of collapse, they found ‘mass graves of hundreds of thousands’ in Kosovo, and WMDs in Iraq.

      We don’t need Trump to tell us.

      1. Re: WMDs in Iraq, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Iraq was hiding something with the way they treated weapons inspectors. Chemical weapons stashes (in dangerously degraded condition) were found after the invasion. We may never be sure what was on the convoy to Syria on the eve of the invasion. Though it’s been proposed that part of what Saddam was hiding, was trying to maintain an image to Iran that he did have forbidden WMD, not counting on G. W. Bush to do something about it.

  3. BTW, for those calling Trump’s statements treasonous and upset about his tweet about US/Russian relations never being left because of US stupidity. How is that tweet about different than the rationale proved by Obama and Hillary for conducting her infamous “reset button” gag? A difference besides that Trump isn’t silly enough to stage a symbolic moment with an Office Depot plastic toy.

    1. Even when Obama promised to be more flexible to Russia, he wasn’t accused of treason by former heads of the CIA on national TV.

      The Obama administration and DNC media have stepped over a lot of lines and they should know they are setting precedents for other’s actions. They can’t assume they will win all the elections and the opposition will be a permanent underclass to be dehumanized and abused.

      2. It will be interesting if Trump takes up Putin’s offer to investigate the transfer of $400 million from Russia to the Clinton campaign.

        1. IIRC, this was something brought up in the meeting with the “Russian Lawyer”, working for Hillary/DNC/Fusion, and Trump Jr and Kushner. They didn’t think it was important.

          It would be nice to know if our intelligence services helped funnel almost half a billion dollars to Hillary. It seems unlikely but so does spying on a presidential campaign and engaging in an attempted coup.

          1. I have a very cynical view of Putin’s $400 million comment. It goes like this.

            We know various countries have given millions to the Clinton Foundation, and most of us recognize this as a pay-for-play scheme. They spent this money expecting her to win and then have some influence. But she lost, making the money they gave her useless.

            They can’t ask for it back, because a) she wouldn’t give it back anyway (as she refused to give back the Saudi money) and b) giving it back would expose the truth of pay-for-pay (after all, the money was to help those needing charity, outside Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc…). So how might you get it back?

            Claim it was illegally sent to the Clinton campaign. The US could freeze the assets, but its not like the US earned them, so internationally, the thing to do would be to return the money to the country from which it came. The people giving the money to the Clintons may have violated crimes, but its hardly the same crime as the Clintons taking the money and the scheme developed to do this over and over. And Putin can say the entire time, “I had no idea this was happening, and I’m glad Trump is looking into it”. This punishes Hillary, gives an outside change of getting the money back, and the whole investigation will piss off Democrats even more to a new energy of attacks on Trump.

            It’s wins all around for Putin. And it is a tempting treat for those on the right.

      3. They can’t assume they will win all the elections and the opposition will be a permanent underclass to be dehumanized and abused.

        They do seem to be acting as if they think that’s the case.

    2. So I noticed that my “smartphone” has gone from just predicting the wrong word, to predicting the wrong phrase. I know I wrote “relations never being worse”. The most annoying thing now is that I swipe a bit upwards on the keyboard with nothing else written, it types “CNN”. This is an Android phone, which allows swipe typing, but CNN? Ugh.

      I’m glad thought that wodun can still decipher it all. Thanks!

  4. Roger Simon’s article could be rewritten to describe Kennedy’s meeting with Khrushchev in June 1961. I mean, as long as it was written just after the Vienna Summit, and not a few months later.

    1. Yeah, completely identical, like when Khrushchev sent 500 soldiers in disguise at Guantanamo and JFK allowed his generals to wipe them out, just a few months before they met.

  5. Can we play too, bob?

    Beethoven’s 9th Symphony could be rewritten to sound like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. I mean, as long as the rewrite isn’t written in Vienna prior to 1822, because then it wouldn’t be a rewrite.

  6. I don’t think Trump got it all right but he certainly didn’t get it all wrong.

    There were some other op-eds pointing out that Trump should do a better job differentiating between Russian meddling and Russian collusion. Part of that effort would be getting the media to acknowledge that the Russians also used these same tactics against the RNC and various Republicans only they were not as successful because Republicans had better security. And why wouldn’t they? Democrats probably try and hack the Republicans all the time.

    1. The differentiation between Russian meddling and Russian collusion is the same gimmick of differentiating between Global Warming and Climate Change. How about we get all these differentiators to acknowledge that the Hillary Clinton campaign colluded with a British Intel officer to sway the election. Where is that indictment?

  7. I did not like Trump’s comments regarding “I don’t see why it would be the Russians” and then his silly walk-back that he misspoke and meant “wouldn’t”, 36 hours later. If he really did accidentally use the wrong word, he’d have corrected it far sooner.

    So, I think Trump put his foot in it in Helsinki. It was a dumb thing to do, particularly because he’s taken heavy flack for this same kind of thing (basically disparaging US intel) the last time he met Putin.

    That said, I think the media (and some Republicans) reaction is massively overblown. It’s not as if he loaded up planloads of cash and sent them to Putin (Obama, to Iran), or whispered in the Russian president’s ear (and was caught on tape) offering to be more flexible on US missile defense in return for some help with his election (Obama), or let Putin take control of 20% of US uranium, etc. The media, of course, was mainly silent on those.

    1. I think the media (and some Republicans) reaction is massively overblown.

      That’s why Trump continually gets a pass for “putting a foot in it.” All the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have to do is not be insane, but they can’t.

      1. I agree, Rand.

        By turning the hysteria up to 11 every single time, over every little thing, they undermine themselves. Also, rather amusingly, that kind of massive overreaction to everything is literally is a symptom of clinical insanity.

        1. Agree with it all CJ.

          When I look back at the conference, I think Trump was tired. He didn’t seem fully on his game, so I’m willing to accept he misspoke. But then, if all that’s true, then he wasn’t in the best condition to negotiate with Putin. And he put himself in that situation, so its all on him.

          Unfortunately, that criticism, which could be like a 6 or 7 on some faux pas scale was overlooked for something I never saw that was cranked up to 11.

          1. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, because Trump is rumored to have eaten a salad that day. What if it’s true and he had RUSSIAN! dressing on it?!?!!??

            The media will surely turn the hysteria about it up to 11, because that’s the only setting they have these days.

Comments are closed.