Trump The Man Page

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell There is renewed interest in the 25th Amendment after Trump’s recent tweet attacks.  Lawrence O’Donnell talks to psychiatrist Dr. Prudence Gourguechon who evaluates Trump’s recent behavior using criteria set forth in the US Army Field Manual.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Former Senator Gordon Humphrey left the GOP the day after Trump was elected.  After Trump’s “dangerous” rhetoric on North Korea, he tells Lawrence O’Donnell why “Trump should be relieved of the powers of the presidency at the earliest date” under the 25th Amendment.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Conservative Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss Donald Trump’s “dangerous” inability “to think and speak clearly” and what Americans must do about it.  And here you can read George F. Will’s full article ‘Trump has a dangerous disability’ in the Washington Post.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Lawrence O’Donnell points out the President is making claims about his campaign’s ties to Russia that directly contradict other claims he’s made about his campaign’s ties to Russia.  The White House is doing everything it can to manage that.

On All In with Chris Hayes Donald Trump’s daily ‘propaganda document’.  The president ‘gets a folder full of positive news about himself twice a day,’ according to a report from Vice News.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell VICE reports White House staff prepare a 20-page “propaganda document” twice a day for Trump with positive tweets, cable news screenshots, and sometimes pictures of him.  Former WH Press Secretary Josh Earnest and WH correspondent Eli Stokols join Lawrence O’Donnell.

 

Trump thinks the National Enquirer and Alex Jones’s Info Wars and Breitbart News are real news, they are made up fake news.  As examples of Alex Jones’s Info Wars fake news Alex Jone was spreading the fake news about a child sex ring at a Washington, D.C., pizzeria after an armed man stormed the place looking for victims.  Then Alex Jones moved the fake child sex ring to Mars and claimed NASA was running it.  To make sure this conspiracy theory didn’t catch fire, NASA was forced to deny it.  Seriously, did anyone actually believe that NASA was running a child sex slave colony on Mars?  There are no humans even on Mars.

 

 

And on June 15th 2017 Trump tweeted: “Why is that Hillary Clintons family and Dems dealings with Russia are not looked at, but my non-dealings are?”  What?  Who is going to believe that Hillary and the Democrats had the Russians hack their own campaign and the election?  Here on The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Indira Lakshmanan, Jeff Mason, and Eugene Robinson react to Trump’s tweets attempting to turn the Russia probe into a discussion about Hillary Clinton.

But Hillary is certainly not the only woman Trump attacks.  June 29th 2017 Trump attacked MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski on Twitter.  In the 1st tweet Trump tweeted “I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..”.  In the 2nd tweet Trump tweeted “…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”.  Photos of Brzezinski at the time show that not only was she not bleeding from anywhere on her face but she had not had a facelift (and what is it with Trump repeatedly referring to women bleeding from somewhere?).

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Trump once again showed his true character in a vulgar attack on Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski, another self-inflicted problem as he struggles to implement his agenda.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Ambassador Wendy Sherman tells Lawrence O’Donnell that Donald Trump’s latest Twitter attack proves he is not ready to represent America on the world stage.  Annie Karni and Ana Marie Cox also join.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell The investigation into Donald Trump is often compared to Watergate, but President Nixon proved surprisingly resilient… until he was forced to resign.  New York Magazine’s Frank Rich joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss how long it took, and how Trump compares to Nixon.

The morning after being viciously attacked by Trump on Twitter, MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski said she wasn’t exactly reeling as a result of the president’s vulgar and deeply personal social-media assault.  But on “Morning Joe” on June 30th, Brzezinski said she is worried about what Trump’s tweets seem to reveal about him.  “I’m fine,” she said. “My family brought me up really tough.  This is absolutely nothing for me personally.  But I am very concerned about what this once again reveals about the president of the United States.  It’s strange.”  She added: “It does worry me about the country.”  Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, said he and Brzezinski had heard from numerous friends and relatives since the president’s attack.  “We had so many people saying, ‘Hey, hope you’re okay,’” he said June 30th.  “… We’re okay.  The country is not.”

But the feud between Trump and the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, did not end there it escalated on June 30th.  Scarborough said June 30th that three top White House staffers told him Trump could arrange to “spike” a negative story about him in the National Enquirer if Scarborough would call the president and apologize for his negative coverage of Trump.  He described the White House officials as “three people at the very top of the administration.”  “They said if you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike the story,” Scarborough said.  Scarborough said his response was, “Like ‘are you kidding me. I don’t know what they have, run a story, I’m not going to do it,’ Scarborough said.  “The calls kept coming and they were like ‘you need to call, please call’,” he added.  (Isn’t that blackmail?)

Trump has often spoken of his long-standing personal relationship with David Pecker, the owner of the National Enquirer.  During the 2016 campaign, Trump several times referred to negative stories in the tabloid aimed at his rivals, such as Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.  After Scarborough’s appearance Friday (June 30th) morning, Trump tweeted:  “Watched low rated @Morning_Joe for first time in long time.  FAKE NEWS.  He called me to stop a National Enquirer article.  I said no!  Bad show.”  Scarborough quickly responded with his own tweet to deny that he had phoned Trump.  “Yet another lie.  I have texts from your top aides and phone records.  Also, those records show I haven’t spoke with you in many months.”  Scarborough and his co-host and fiance Mika Brzezinski postponed a vacation and appeared on “Morning Joe” on Friday (June 30th) to respond to a series of very personal tweets from Trump on Thursday (June 29th).

Member’s of Trump’s own party are not even defending Trump on this one, for now.  Nobody is afraid of Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski, nor anyone else for that matter, were going to beg or bow down to Trump and kiss his ring or whatever.

On All In with Chris Hayes Republicans may condemn the president’s latest tweets, but Joy Reid and Dan Rather argue they won’t have the courage to disavow him as long as they stand to gain from his presidency.

 

On All In with Chris Hayes Thing 1/Thing 2: The West Virginia Republican Party had to make an awkward explanation for their recent Twitter attack on the state’s formerly Democratic Governor, Jim Justice, when he announced he’s switching his party affiliation.

Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy even said “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post.  Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment.  Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”  Representative Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.  House Speaker Republican Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) even tried to swear the Republicans present at the time to secrecy (well obviously that didn’t work).  When asked about the statement McCarthy lied and denied saying it but when told about the recording then McCarthy just lied more and tried to claim “It was a bad attempt at a joke”.  But Trump is a liar of a different caliber.  Here Lawrence O’Donnell discusses the secret GOP audio.

Trump is also a hypocrite; his “Hire American, Buy American.” executive order is ridiculously hypocritical since Trump and his family hire foreign and buy foreign.  Trump has more than 500 foreign workers working at his various properties.  Trump has had his products made in foreign countries for years.  And Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who also has products made in foreign countries, was granted 3 new trademarks in China, on April 6th 2017, the same day that Trump and Ivanka had dinner with the President of China.  Ivanka even has a cult following in China to the point that they refer to her as Goddess Ivanka and Ivanka’s children even speak Chinese.

On All In with Chris Hayes Thing 1/Thing 2: In the middle of the White House’s “Made in America Week,” Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club applied to hire 70 foreign workers for the upcoming fall season.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Joy-Ann Reid shows how Donald Trump is making the bare minimum effort to find American workers for Mar-a-Lago so he can claim that he needs to hire foreign workers to staff his resort.

In the past Trump used to complain about the cost when Mr. Obama traveled or took an occasional vacation trip but Trump is on track to spend more on travel in less than one year what Obama spent on travel in eight years.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow relays a report on Golf.com that Donald Trump explained his frequent visits to a New Jersey golf course by calling the White House “a real dump.”

On All In with Chris Hayes Trump leaves D.C. for a 17-day vacation in Bedminster, where, according to Sports Illustrated, he once called the White House a ‘dump.’

On All In with Chris Hayes Thing 1/Thing 2: President Trump is on what he insists is a working vacation at his property in Bedminster, New Jersey, but he found time to play some golf and interact with wedding guests – as a brochure for Bedminster weddings said he would.

On All In with Chris Hayes Thing 1/Thing 2:  President Trump hit a major milestone just over 200 days in to his presidency…his 50th day spent at one of his golf properties.

On All In with Chris Hayes Secret Service can’t afford command post inside Trump Tower.  The Secret Service has vacated its Trump Tower command post over a lease dispute with Trump’s company, the Washington Post reports.

In 2013, during Mr. Obama’s last term in office, Trump tweeted over and over and over again for Mr. Obama to NOT go into Syria, stay out of Syria.  But then Trump started blaming Obama for not going into Syria after the April 4th 2017 chemical attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime on innocent Syrian civilians including women and children.  What?  Mr. Obama did ask Congress for permission to go into Syria at the time, 2013, but Congress wouldn’t even vote on the matter and ignored it.  In addition there was no external support from our allies for going into Syria either.  So if Trump, the hypocrite-in-chief, wants to blame somebody for something from years ago he should either blame the majority Republican Congress that ignored Mr. Obama’s request or our allies.  And Trump is President now; if he was suddenly so worried about the Syrian people then he could have done something before April.  But wait…Syria is supported by Russia; need I say more about why Trump didn’t do anything before April?  This may only have been a distraction from the Russian issue.  And Lawrence O’Donnell of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell has a very interesting theory as to why Trump made any kind of change at all which he calls The Trump-Putin theory on Syria that can’t be ruled out.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Lawrence O’Donnell reacts to Donald Trump’s newest lie about fighting terrorism, as well as top Republican senator Bob Corker saying Donald Trump lacks the “stability” and “competence” to be president.

 

On All In with Chris Hayes The little-known local news giant Sinclair Broadcast Group forces its stations to run right-wing commentary – and it’s poised to get even bigger.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA Center for Global Digital Cultures, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about how Donald Trump’s FCC chairman helped pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcasting find a loophole to purchase a huge number of local TV stations, which it is forcing to air right-wing commentaries.

More than 6 months in Trump is still having rallies even with Boy Scouts.  Boy Scouts are not usually old enough to vote but that didn’t seem to make a difference to Trump though.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Trump discussed his election victory, the media and the so-called War on Christmas while addressing 30,000 Boy Scouts in West Virginia.  Ashley Parker, Vivian Salama and Eli Stokols weigh in.

On Tuesday (August 1st 2017), Politico got its hands on a previously unpublished transcript of Trump’s July 25 interview with the Wall Street Journal.  In that interview, Trump makes a bold claim about his controversial Boy Scouts speech the day before.  After someone from the Journal suggested that Trump got a “mixed” reaction to his speech, Trump — as he often does — seemed to overcompensate.  “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful,” Trump said.  “So there was — there was no mix.”  Except a source for the Scouts said this doesn’t appear to have happened at all.  “We are not aware of any call from national BSA leadership to the White House,” the source said.

On All In with Chris Hayes White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to admit the President was lying, even though the Boy Scouts released a statement saying they are unaware of any such call.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Eugene Robinson and Steve Schmidt reflect on Trump’s comments on the Russia investigation and his tone with supporters at a campaign rally in Huntington, West Virginia.

On All In with Chris Hayes Top military brass, Republicans in Congress, members of his own administration, and even the boy scouts are standing up to the president.

 

On All In with Chris Hayes Donald Trump’s speech to members of law enforcement on Long Island centered on the kind of lurid depictions of terrifying violence he often falls back on.  Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin joins Chris Hayes.

On All In with Chris Hayes Thing 1/Thing 2: The Trump Team often passes off disturbing or offensive comments as ‘a joke’ – which is a great tactic when you’d rather not apologize.

On All In with Chris Hayes Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut says he ‘won’t be distracted by [Trump’s] bullying tactics.’

 

He threatened to send troops to Mexico which would mean a war and he’s had a fight with the Prime Minister of Australia which is a long time friend of the US, they’ve been in every war with us helping us fight. 

August 3rd 2017 The Washington Post has obtained transcripts of two conversations President Trump had with foreign leaders: one with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and another with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.  The transcripts were prepared by the White House but have not been released.  The Post is publishing reproductions rather than original documents in order to protect sources.  The reproductions also include minor spelling and grammatical mistakes that appeared in the documents.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Aswin Suebsaeng, politics reporter for The Daily Beast, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about the leaking of the transcripts of Donald Trump’s phone calls with president of Mexico and prime minister of Australia.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Donald Trump campaigned on making Mexico pay for the border wall.  Lawrence O’Donnell explains what the transcript of Trump’s phone call with Mexican President Peña Nieto exposes:  that Trump knew Mexico would never pay for it – it was all political.

Here on All In with Chris Hayes Thing 1/Thing 2: In new leaked audio from what was supposed to be an off-the-record dinner, Australian Prime Minister Turnbull roasts the American president.

Here on The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Candidate Trump warned the world was laughing at the US.  But now that he’s president, are world leaders laughing at him?  Anne Gearan of The Washington Post joins MSNBC’s Brian Williams. 

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Buzzfeed’s Alberto Nardelli reports European diplomats say Donald Trump’s “only real position” is doing the opposite of Barack Obama, and that he’s a “laughing stock” who lacks historical perspective.  Nardelli, Christina Greer and Jonathan Alter join Joy Reid.

 

 

 

 

 

  • And now the UK doesn’t trust the US enough to share information with us anymore after leaks of detailed information about the Manchester attack of the Ariana Grande concert investigation to US media by US government officials.  British officials are so angry that they told CNN “We quite frankly can’t afford to risk it anymore,” the Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said.  British Prime Minister Theresa May told reporters, “I will be making clear to President Trump today that intelligence that is shared between law enforcement agencies must remain secure.”  The US-UK relationship has been sacrosanct for years, and much of it is based on the trust the two countries have sharing intelligence with one another.  They even form two of the five countries in “Five Eyes,” a small club of English-speaking countries that share almost all of their intel with each other.  But now that trust is compromised and the United States is at fault.  Vital information the US could learn from the Manchester investigation will no longer flow to this side of the pond.  This comes at a time when many of America’s allies are worried Washington just can’t keep a secret, mostly because the President of the United States is giving away sensitive intelligence to autocratic regimes.  Loose lips may sink ships. But, as we’re finding out, it can also sink important friendships too.

May 25th 2017 Trump went to a NATO Summit in Brussels, he used the opportunity to scold and lecture NATO allies, Trump pushed aside a Prime Minister and generally threw his weight around at the NATO Summit.  Even though Trump did all of that Trump did not publicly and explicitly reaffirm that an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all as every US President has done since President Harry S. Truman.  When Trump addressed NATO leaders during his debut overseas trip Trump surprised and disappointed European allies who hoped and expected he would use his speech to explicitly reaffirm America’s commitment to mutual defense of the alliance’s members, a one-for-all, all-for-one provision that looks increasingly urgent as Eastern European members worry about the threat from a resurgent Russia on their borders.  But what was not known is that Trump also disappointed and surprised his own top national security officials by failing to include the language reaffirming the so-called Article 5 provision in his speech.  National security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all supported Trump doing so and had worked in the weeks leading up to the trip to make sure it was included in the speech, according to five sources familiar with the episode.  They thought it was, and a White House aide even told The New York Times the day before the line was definitely included.  Putin must have been happy. 

For years the United States was the dominant force and set the agenda at the annual gathering of the leaders of the world’s largest economies.  But on July 7th 2017, when Trump met with other leaders at the Group of 20 conference, he found the United States isolated on everything from trade to climate change, and faced with the prospect of the group’s issuing a statement on July 8th 2017 that lays bare how the United States stands alone.  Trump seemed to relish his isolation.  For him, the critical moment of July 7th was his long meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, which seemed to mark the reset in relations that Trump has been desiring for some time.  It also provided Putin the respect and importance he has long demanded as a global partner to Washington.

As reported in the Washington Post Trump had an undisclosed hour-long meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit.  After his much-publicized, two-and a quarter-hour meeting early this month with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Germany, Trump met informally with the Russian leader for an additional hour later the same day.  The second meeting, unreported at the time, took place at a dinner for G-20 leaders, a senior administration official said.  Halfway through the meal, Trump left his own seat to occupy a chair next to Putin.  Trump was alone, and Putin was attended only by his official interpreter.

The encounter underscores the extent to which Trump was eager throughout the summit to cultivate a friendship with Putin.  During last year’s campaign, Trump spoke admiringly of Putin and at times seemed captivated by him.  Meeting each other face-to-face for the first time in Hamburg, the two presidents seemed to have a chemistry in their more formal bilateral session, evidenced by the fact that it dragged on for more than two hours.  But Trump’s newly-disclosed conversation with Putin at the G-20 dinner is likely to stoke further criticism, including perhaps from some fellow Republicans in Congress, that he is too cozy with the leader of a major US adversary.  (Trump probably wanted to thank Putin for getting him elected as president.)

On All In with Chris Hayes Trump held a second informal meeting – with no US government record of it – on the same day that he had already held a more than two-hour official meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Ian Bremmer, political scientist and president of The Eurasia Group, talks with Rachel Maddow about the revelation of an undisclosed second encounter between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that left US allies concerned and no official record.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Former State Department officials Michael McFaul and Evelyn Farkas are worried about the unattended and undisclosed conversation between Trump and Putin, and David Frum points out that Putin is a former Russian intelligence agent.

(Now being called the “G19” rather than the “G20” because of the isolation of the United States.)  The “G19” reaffirms its commitment to the Paris Climate Deal without the US.  But elsewhere — including trade and migration, as well as other areas of climate change — the leaders of the world’s biggest economies have compromised around President Trump’s positions.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams With Trump in France plagued by Russia probes & the scandal around his son’s meeting with a Russian attorney, veteran foreign journalist Christopher Dickey assesses how Europe sees Trump.

And did I mention that Trump is a hypocrite too, On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams On his own turf, Trump sounds pretty downtrodden about a lot of foreign nations and leaders.  But when he heads overseas, he seems to change his tune quite a bit.

This man can not represent the United States to the world.  Trump is fighting with our friends, complementing our enemies and cozying up to any dictator he can find such as Russian President Vladimir Putin (of course), Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, even to the point that Trump praised North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Trump said that he would be ‘honored’ to meet with Kim Jong Un.  And to top it all off Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week at the G20 summit, the White House confirmed June 29th 2017.  Trump must be so excited.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow reports on the recent political shift in Poland that is the context for Donald Trump’s visit, and notes that where previously a meeting with a US president is an earned honor, what Vladimir Putin has done to earn his meeting with Trump is not clear.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, talks with Rachel Maddow about how Vladimir Putin will likely tell Donald Trump things he wants to hear to manipulate Trump into serving Russia’s interests.

 

Other US politicians, including Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), have reacted with consternation. Rubio suggests that partnering with Putin on cybersecurity would be like partnering with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on a “Chemical Weapons Unit” (Assad is widely believed to have carried out chemical weapons attacks on his own people). Critics in the United States have unsurprisingly interpreted this proposal as a transparent ploy by Trump to sideline accusations that Russian hackers helped him win the presidential election. However, even if Trump’s proposal is taken at face value, it doesn’t make much sense.

If the proposed cybersecurity unit were to work effectively, the United States would need to share extensive information with Russia on how U.S. officials defend elections against foreign tampering. The problem is, however, that information that is valuable for defending US systems is, almost by definition, information that is valuable for attacking them, too. This is one reason US officials have not previously proposed any far-reaching arrangement with Russia on cybersecurity. Providing such information would almost certainly give the Russians a map of vulnerabilities and insecurities in the system that they could then exploit for their own purposes.  It would not only provide the fox with a map of the henhouse, but give him the security code, the backdoor key, and a wheelbarrow to make off with the carcasses.

US officials have determined that Russian hackers have probed US election systems, presumably to discover vulnerabilities that they could exploit. Although there is no evidence that Russia actually manipulated machines to alter the vote in the 2016 election, there is excellent reason to believe that Russia has carefully considered the pros and cons of direct intervention, as well as the hacking and leaking that it did engage in. Furthermore, when Trump says that this unit would be “impenetrable,” he implies that Russia and the United States would cooperate on making it secure against outside hacking by third parties. Again, such cooperation is wildly unlikely to work well. To make it work, the United States would have to share sensitive methods with Russia, as well as vice versa. Neither side is going to want to do this, because again it would provide potential adversaries with a deep understanding of protective measures, which might allow those adversaries to penetrate them.

In short, the kind of cooperation that Trump is proposing would be very hard to accomplish between close allies with deeply shared security interests (the United States shares a lot of secrets with select allies — but it does not share everything, for the same reasons that they do not share their deepest defensive secrets with the United States). It is more or less impossible to carry off with a state that not only is often an adversary but has recently demonstrated its desire to hack US elections, if only it could get away with it.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Brendan Boyle introduces legislation to block funding for Trump’s suggested cybersecurity unit with Russia.  Trump is already backpedaling as another Russia story breaks.  Representative Boyle and Evelyn Farkas join Lawrence O’Donnell to react.

On The Rachel Maddow Show with On Assignment with Richard Engel Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, reports on the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit, and talks with prominent Putin critic, political activist, and chess master Garry Kasparov.

But there are consequences to being friends with dictators.  One of the consequences with Trump being friends with dictators is that since dictators either do not necessarily follow the laws of their own countries or they change or make the laws in their own countries and they are not used to having to follow laws then they do not necessarily follow the laws of the US either.  And in those cases there is not a lot that US law enforcement can do because those people have Diplomatic Immunity, they can kick them out of the country, that’s about it.  For example, when Turkish dictator, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was in Washington DC on May 16th members of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s personal security entourage as well as employees of the Turkish embassy beat down peaceful protesters on American soil.  9 people were injured when Turkish security personnel punched and kicked protesters waving Kurdish flags.  The altercation occurred outside the residence of the Turkish ambassador on the same day that the increasingly-autocratic Turkish President met with Trump.  2 people were ultimately arrested, briefly, and released because they had diplomatic immunity.  After months of violent repression at home, Erdogan appears to have brought his draconian tendencies with him to the United States.  Shockingly, this isn’t the first time Erdogan’s bodyguards have attacked protesters.  At a Brookings Institution event last year featuring Erdogan as a keynote speaker, the Turkish President’s security detail assaulted both protesters and journalists mercilessly.

And another consequence of Trump’s behavior is if Trump keeps fighting with our friends, complementing our enemies and cozying up to any dictator he can find then the US will be in a war but have no friends at all.  Leaders of other countries can not be expected to get insulted and just totally forget about it 5 minutes later and still be friendly with the US after that as though nothing ever happened.  Something like that may not start a war but it would not help if we were in a war.

But Moscow condemned the American military’s downing of a Syrian maned warplane and threatened to target aircraft flown by the United States and its allies west of the Euphrates.  And Russians also said they had suspended their use of a hotline that the American and Russian militaries used to avoid collisions of their aircraft in Syrian airspace.

 

And on August 7th 2017 as reported in The New York Times:  Stung by onerous new sanctions from the United Nations Security Council, nuclear-armed North Korea on Monday (August 7th 2017) threatened retaliation, saying the United States would pay dearly “thousands of times.”  In its first major response to the sanctions drafted by the United States and adopted on Saturday (August 5th 2017), North Korea said it would never relinquish its missile and nuclear arsenals and called the penalties a panicky American-led response to its growing military might.

The North Korean response, in statements from its official news agency, foreign minister and United Nations mission, suggested that the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, was doubling down on his goal of developing a nuclear-armed missile that could hit the continental United States.  The warnings began with a statement from North Korea’s official news agency, threatening to make the United States “pay the price for its crime thousands of times,” referring to the new sanctions.  “There is no bigger mistake than the United States believing that its land is safe across the ocean,” the news agency said.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Courtney Kube, NBC News national security producer, talks with Rachel Maddow about the latest developments in North Korea’s military capabilities, a missile with intercontinental range.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Donald Trump’s failure to lead as North Korea launches its most successful missile test yet is causing alarm among leaders in the US and around the world.  What can Trump do to alleviate the situation?  Nicholas Kristof and John McLaughlin join Lawrence O’Donnell.

August 8th 2017 as reported in The New York Times:  Trump threatened on Tuesday (August 8th 2017) to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangers the United States as tensions with the isolated nuclear-armed state grow into perhaps the most serious foreign policy challenge yet in his young administration.  “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.  “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.  He has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

The president’s comments came as North Korea earlier in the day escalated its criticism of the United States, as well as its neighboring allies, by warning that it will mobilize all its resources to take “physical action” in retaliation against the latest round of United Nations sanctions.

The statement, carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, was the strongest indication yet that the country could conduct another nuclear or missile test, as it had often done in response to past United Nations sanctions.  Until now, the North’s response to the latest sanctions had been limited to strident yet vague warnings, such as threatening retaliation “thousands of times over.”  “Packs of wolves are coming in attack to strangle a nation,” the North Korean statement said.  “They should be mindful that the D.P.R.K.’s strategic steps accompanied by physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength.”  D.P.R.K. stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  North Korea’s statement on Tuesday (August 8th 2017) appeared to defy efforts by both Washington and Beijing to defuse the tense situation.

August 8th 2017 North Korea said it is “carefully examining” plans to attack Guam with medium- to long-range ballistic missiles, state-run media reported.  The rogue nation’s statement follows Donald Trump’s comments hours before, during which he warned North Korea that any threats to the U.S. “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen”.  The North Korean army made the announcement in a statement distributed by its state-run news agency that the military is reviewing a plan to create an “enveloping fire” in areas around the U.S. territory, located in the Pacific Ocean about 2,100 miles from North Korea.

The statement said the decision to review such plans is in response to a recent ICBM test.  There are 7,000 US military personnel on Guam.  The main base on the island is Andersen Air Force Base that is home to long-range B-1 bombers that have recently been used for “show of force” missions to South Korea following North Korea’s two ICBM missile launches.  Andersen Air Force Base is just one of the installations on Guam; Naval Base Guam also has a significant number of personnel.

Guam’s offices of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defense said in a statement that its threat level remained unchanged, and that it will “continue to monitor the recent events surrounding North Korea and their threatening actions.”

If this keeps up, threatening statements back and forth between Trump and North Korea, we will end up in a war with North Korea, possibly even a nuclear war.

On All In with Chris Hayes Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts responds to Trump’s ‘fire and fury’ remarks about North Korea.

On All In with Chris Hayes ‘We need to curb this president, who seems to think he’s negotiating the Taj Mahal or some other casino with Steve Wynn,’ says Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson about Trump’s actions with regard to North Korea.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow reviews what is known about North Korean military capability and its history of overblown threats and notes that the Donald Trump administration’s inconsistency on policy and equally overblown threats are the new, frightening variable in …

On The Rachel Maddow Show Joe Cirincione, president of The Ploughshares Fund, talks with Rachel Maddow about why Donald Trump is taking the exact wrong approach to North Korea with his empty threats and bellicosity.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Courtney Kube, NBC News national security and military reporter, talks with Rachel Maddow about whether Donald Trump is seriously considering privatizing the war in Afghanistan, and whether Trump’s bluster on North Korea has any basis in strategy.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Lawrence O’Donnell looks at what Trump was doing as news broke that North Korea has “successfully produced a miniature nuclear warhead” and the potential consequences of Trump’s later reaction, threatening “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Former NSC staff member Robert Litwak details the consequences of a military strike on North Korea to Lawrence O’Donnell, while Trump biographer David Cay Johnston says the military must refuse any unlawful orders from Trump.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams After Donald Trump threatened North Korea with ‘fire and fury,’ Pyongyang threatened to attack the U.S. territory Guam.  Andrea Mitchell, General Barry McCaffrey, and Malcolm Nance discuss.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Reacting to Trump’s threat of ‘fire and fury’ to North Korea, former Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD) says the generals have to ‘get the president under control.’

On All In with Chris Hayes Trump wasn’t delivering a carefully vetted statement crafted by top national security aides when he said North Korea ‘will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.’

On The Rachel Maddow Show Andrea Mitchell, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about whether US intelligence agencies are yet unified on their assessment of North Korea’s military capability.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams After Donald Trump promised ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea, the secretive state responded directly saying ‘sound dialogue is not possible’ with the US president.  Our expert panel reacts.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow explains why this week’s frantic bellicosity from Donald Trump toward North Korea does not seem to have had a distinct trigger.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow shows the contrasting messaging from different members of the Trump team in how they’re speaking about the potential threat from North Korea.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Sue Mi Terry, former NSC senior analyst on North Korea, talks with Rachel Maddow about the intelligence on North Korea’s military capability and why it is dangerous that the Trump administration is not able to deliver a clear policy message on North Korea.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Taking questions on camera from reporters twice in one day, Trump talked North Korea, Russia, and so much more.  Our expert reporter panel reacts to the deluge of headlines.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Trump took his threats against North Korea to new rhetorical heights speaking to reporters on Thursday, but one critic says his rhetoric is just ’empty and dangerous.’

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Noting ‘it’s hard to sleep well at night,’ conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes says Trump facing off with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is basically two erratic narcissists playing chicken.

On All In with Chris Hayes The president is dangerously inflaming tensions with North Korea, according to Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas, who called on Congress to step in and exercise more control over nuclear decision-making.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, talks with Rachel Maddow about the pace of North Korea’s nuclear development and the lack of anything especially new this week in that development to justify Donald Trump’s burst of blustery brinkmans…

Some how Trump has now gone from threatening North Korea to threatening Venezuela, what?  How did Venezuela get in the middle of this?

On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow shares video of Donald Trump raising unbidden the prospect of a U.S. “military option” for addressing the crisis in Venezuela.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Trump ended the week with new threats against North Korea and now, Venezuela.  Jonathan Alter, Ned Price, and Betsy Woodruff join Joy Reid to discuss.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams On Friday (August 11th 2017) Trump again took reporters’ questions and again warned North Korea in an escalating war of words.  He also wouldn’t rule out a ‘military option’ for the crisis in Venezuela.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Trump reached out to the governor of Guam after again ratcheting up the rhetoric on North Korea.  Retired Colonel Jack Jacobs and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) who was once stationed on Guam discuss.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) says that Trump should try to seek a ‘diplomatic solution’ for the crisis in North Korea.

 

  • Or even war with Syria and Syria’s ally, Russia (Putin didn’t get his money’s worth), since the White House appeared to threaten military action against Syria.  Only by some miracle would we not end up in a war with somebody.  And fighting with our friends would make it very easy for any enemies to attack us because after our former friends say ‘F you’ then we’ll have no help and we’ll be like a sitting duck in the water and fighting alone.

 

  • Trump and his people are incompetent; they literally didn’t even know how to turn the lights on in the White House.  A member of his own party said that he was almost criminally incompetent.  Trump has already gotten at least 1 person in the military killed and several wounded in a raid in Yemen, because “almost everything went wrong” that’s how incompetent he is.  And 10 different officials said that they didn’t even get anything out of the mission, nothing of value or that is useful.  They got a dead Navy Seal out of it and not much else, but Trumps people kept lying and saying that this disaster of a mission was a success and that we got all this stuff out of the mission.  He didn’t even care enough to think that we need to do this the right way so nobody gets killed; he decided to do the mission while he was busy shoving food in his mouth.  Then he just lied about it after the Navy Seal was killed, it was Obama’s fault, no it wasn’t.  Then after enough people said that Obama had nothing to do with it then he started blaming the military generals.  It’s everybody’s fault but Trump’s.  The dead Navy Seal’s father wouldn’t even talk to Trump, he said up until then we were doing drone attacks why all of a sudden did we need to do some big grand gesture like a raid.

Trump and his people are so incompetent that the question has been asked is our current administration stupid or nefarious; part of the problem with Trump is that his administration could be both stupid and nefarious at the same time.  And then there is the issue of Trump and several of his people saying that a ship, an aircraft carrier, was being sent to North Korea but the ship went in the opposite direction.  Stupid or nefarious?

The USS Fitzgerald collided with the Philippine-flagged container ship ACX Crystal off the coast of Yokosuka, Japan, June 17th 2017 before 2:20 a.m. local time, according to the US Navy.  The Fitzgerald sustained damage on its starboard side and experienced flooding in some spaces as a result of the collision, according to the Navy.  The destroyer was operating about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka when it collided with the ACX Crystal.  Most of the Fitzgerald’s 300 crew members on board would have been asleep at the time, The Associated Press reported.  Weather conditions were clear at the time of the collision, the AP reported.  The area is often busy with sea traffic, with as many as 400 ships passing through it every day, according to Japan’s coast guard.  7 sailors were killed.  Initially after the collision, five sailors aboard the USS Fitzgerald were reported injured, and seven sailors were reported missing.  The remains of the missing sailors were later found in flooded berthing compartments.

August 21st 2017 as reported in The New York Times:  United States Navy ships worldwide will suspend operations for a day or two this week to examine basic seamanship and teamwork after the second collision of a Navy destroyer and a commercial ship in two months, the top naval officer said Monday (August 21st 2017).

The officer, Admiral John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said he had ordered two major actions after the collision between the destroyer John S. McCain and an oil tanker early Monday off the coast of Singapore that left 10 sailors missing and five injured.

First, Admiral Richardson said he had ordered an “operational pause” for Navy fleet commanders to review within the week teamwork, safety, seamanship and other “fundamentals.” During that time, commanders will suspend ship operations for a day or two.  Second, the admiral said he had ordered a broader, monthslong review to examine the specific situation in the western Pacific, where the Navy has suffered four major ship accidents since February.  “That gives great cause for concern that there’s something out there that we’re not getting at,” Admiral Richardson told reporters at the Pentagon.

Off the Singapore coast, search teams scrambled on Monday to determine the fate of the missing sailors from the John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer that had been passing east of the Strait of Malacca en route to a port visit in Singapore.

At 5:24 a.m. local time, before dawn broke, the destroyer collided with the Alnic MC, a 600-foot vessel that transports oil and chemicals, the Navy said.  The destroyer was damaged near the rear on its port, or left-hand, side.  Ten sailors on the ship remained unaccounted for.  Five others were injured, none with life-threatening conditions, a Navy official said.  Ships with the Singaporean and Malaysian navies and helicopters from the assault ship America were rushing to search for survivors.

Families of the ship’s crew members waited through the night in the United States, hoping for news of their loved ones.  “No word yet but some sailors have called on cell to families,” wrote Marla Meriano, the mother of Meghan Meriano, a 24-year-old electrical officer, in a Facebook post.  “Thank you for all the prayers and remarks,” she wrote two hours later.  “God has his plan and we serve him.”

Obviously Trump has a problem with the military especially with the Navy, there have been several incidents with the Navy since Trump has been in office that have never happened before.  I am not saying that these specific ship collisions are Trump’s fault since Trump was not on board the ships to screw anything up but something is going on with the Navy.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Courtney Kube, NBC News national security and military reporter, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about Donald Trump’s frustration at the inability of the US to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral resources, and his criticism of his military advisers.

On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell An NBC News exclusive report shows a president angry about the direction of the war in Afghanistan and describes a tense meeting in which Donald Trump compared the conflict to an NYC restaurant renovation.  David Cay Johnston and Tim O’Brien join Lawrence O’Donnell.

 

Trump actually said that he thought being President would be easier (of course he did because he’s ignorant).  While a business may very well be a type of dictatorship because the owner of that business can dictate exactly what happens with that business the US government is not supposed to be a dictatorship.  The President does not own the US government; as a matter of fact our government was specifically designed by the Founding Fathers to not be a dictatorship, autocracy, kingdom or business-like because they had enough of that.  It is a democracy and we, the American people, own the US government; we, the American people, are the bosses, the shareholders and the customers, the President works for us and a business does not work that way.

Although it is not the same type of situation but just as Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Bill Shine eventually learned the hard way, by being fired from Fox News, that they can not just do whatever they want to women, so too will Trump eventually learn, whether he wants to or not, that he can not just do whatever he wants to the American people.  By the way, Roger Ailes, former CEO of Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, who left Fox amid sexual harassment allegations last year, died at age 77 May 18th 2017.

And Trump is so ignorant that rather than learning the history of China and North Korea on his own or asking any of the Americans working around him in the government before having a meeting with the President of China he had to learn China North Korea history from the President of China, Trump actually said “After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy.”

 

 

  • And even his people that do know something can’t tell him anything so they are leaking stuff to the media because he listens to cable news so much that they’re getting their messages through to him that way so the place is leaking like a sieve.

Trump said that “the leaks are real but the news is fake”, that doesn’t even make any sense.  Leaks like that tend to happen when the people working there find what’s wrong and they know that it won’t do any good to talk to their boss about it so they leak to the media because ultimately the real bosses are we, the American People.  The same things happened when Nixon was in office.  Nixon even came up with something he called “the plumbers unit” to try and find and stop the leaks.  Trump does not have a plumbers unit but he is trying to stop the leaks, he can not stop the leaks.  Nixon could not stop the leaks and neither can Trump.

August 4th 2017 as reported in The New York Times:  Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Friday that the Justice Department is pursuing about three times as many leak investigations as were open at the end of the Obama era, a significant devotion of resources to hunt down disclosures that have plagued the Trump administration.

Mr. Sessions vowed that the Justice Department would not hesitate to bring criminal charges against people who had leaked classified information.  He also announced that the F.B.I. had created a new counterintelligence unit to specialize in such cases.  “I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country,” he said.  The announcement by Mr. Sessions comes 10 days after President Trump publicly accused his attorney general of being “very weak” on pursuing these investigations.

Mr. Sessions also said he had opened a review of Justice Department rules governing when investigators may issue subpoenas related to the news media and leak investigations.  “We respect the important role that the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited,” he said.  “They cannot place lives at risk with impunity.”

The news conference came against the backdrop of repeated pressure by Mr. Trump, in public and in private, for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to search harder for people inside the government who have been telling reporters what was happening behind closed doors.

The Trump administration has been bedeviled by leaks large and small that have brought to light information ranging from White House infighting and the president’s rancorous phone conversations with foreign leaders to what surveillance showed about contacts by Mr. Trump’s associates with Russia — and even what Mr. Trump said to Russian visitors in the Oval Office about his firing of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.

Not all leaks are illegal, and many of the disclosures about palace intrigue at the White House that have irritated Mr. Trump violated no law.  However, the Espionage Act and several other federal laws do criminalize unauthorized disclosures about certain national security information, like surveillance secrets.  Officials declined to discuss which specific leaks are under investigation or who the suspects may be.

Several advocacy groups for reporters and First Amendment issues sharply criticized the statements made during the news conference, as did Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post.  “Sessions talked about putting lives at risk,” Mr. Baron said.  “We haven’t done that.  What we’ve done is reveal the truth about what administration officials have said and done.  In many instances, our factual stories have contradicted false statements they’ve made.”

Matt Purdy, a deputy managing editor of The New York Times, said: “There’s a distinction between revelations that make the government uncomfortable and revelations that put lives at risk.  We have not published information that endangers lives.”  The Post and The Times declined to comment about whether the government had contacted them regarding leak investigations.

In a move derided by critics as an attack on the free press, Sessions said the administration was reviewing policies on forcing journalists to reveal their sources.  It is, however, difficult to prosecute members of the news media in the United States for publishing leaked information.  “One of the things we are doing is reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas,” Sessions told reporters as he announced administration efforts to battle what he called a “staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country.”

A media subpoena is a writ compelling a journalist to testify or produce evidence, with a penalty for failure to do so.  The fact that the administration is reviewing its policy leaves open the possibility of sentencing journalists for not disclosing their sources.  “Every American should be concerned about the Trump administration’s threat to step up its efforts against whistleblowers and journalists,” said Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union.  “A crackdown on leaks is a crackdown on the free press and on democracy as a whole.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told reporters the department was just starting to review the policy on media subpoenas and could not say yet how it might be changed.  But he did not rule out the possibility of threatening journalists with jail time.

When a president starts putting the media in jail, especially en masse, that is step 1 to formally and officially being under the rule of a fascist dictator.  Trump is a fascist dictator, also known as autocracy.  And that is the beginning of the end of the free press and of democracy.  See Trump’s Fascism Page.

Historically, government employees or contractors who give sensitive information to the media are much more likely to be prosecuted than the reporters who receive it.  U.S. regulations give journalists special protections, barring them from law enforcement that might “reasonably impair newsgathering activities.”

Federal prosecutors must get special permission from the U.S. attorney general before issuing a subpoena to try to force a member of the news media to divulge information to authorities.  New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed in 2005 for refusing to reveal a source about stories on Iraq, but she cut a deal with prosecutors before she was formally charged.  In addressing the wider issue of leaks, Sessions said the Justice Department has tripled the number of investigations into unauthorized leaks of classified information and that four people have already been charged.

It is not illegal to leak information, as such, but divulging classified information is against the law.  Some of the more high-profile leaks in the Trump administration have revealed White House infighting in articles that would appear not to involve divulging classified information.  Sessions did not immediately give the identities of the four people charged, but said they had been accused of unlawfully disclosing classified information or concealing contacts with foreign intelligence officers.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Charlie Savage and Carrie Cordero talk about the Justice Department’s plan, how it could backfire and Trump’s use of the word “leak.”

 

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Trump’s 200th day in office marked with more bad poll numbers.  With the president beginning a ‘working vacation,’ his 200th day in office sees poll numbers showing most Americans disapprove of the job he’s done so far and don’t believe the White House.

On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Greatest hits from Trump’s second 100 days in office.  It’s now been 200 days since Donald Trump was sworn in as President.  Here’s a look back at the second 100 days of his headline-generating time in office.

 

 

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DemV

Just a Democrat with an opinion and enough insight to share my 2 cents.