Sunday, July 22, 2018

You're not the boss of me

Whiney baby doesn't like being told what he can't do.
Mr. Trump has spent much of the four days since Monday’s summit with Vladimir Putin seeking to reverse or otherwise soften his comments at the news conference with the Russian leader, in which he appeared to side with Moscow over his own intelligence agencies about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

Yet on Thursday, he ordered a top aide to invite Mr. Putin to visit Washington this fall—around the same time as the congressional midterm elections in which U.S. intelligence agencies say Moscow is actively trying to interfere.

The conflicting messages out of the White House underscore Mr. Trump’s increasingly defiant approach in the wake of his own perceived missteps: In the face of criticism, persist.

  WSJ
Is that persisting or throwing a tantrum?
“The president doesn’t respect norms,” [a] person close to him said. “Norms are rules written by somebody else.”
Tantrum.
On Friday, he escalated his criticism of the Federal Reserve, saying in a tweet that its efforts to raise short-term interest rates hurt the U.S. economic expansion, a day after he was chided by some for saying he hoped the central bank would stop raising interest rates.

[...]

The White House raced to clarify his comments by saying he still respects the Fed’s independence.
Clean-up on aisle one.
Mr. Trump also threatened tariffs again on $500 billion in Chinese imports in the same week that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance panel and a longtime Trump ally, sent the White House a letter warning he would try to curtail presidential trade authority if Mr. Trump didn’t reverse course.

“I think he had the most challenging week of his presidency in terms of living up to his own expectations,” said Andy Card, who was chief of staff to GOP President George W. Bush. “I do think he’s come to recognize that it didn’t go the way he thought it would go.” But, Mr. Card added, “I’m not sure he likes learning the lessons he’s learned.”

Despite the criticism he has faced, Mr. Trump’s approval rating remains high among his base. Among registered GOP voters, 84% approve of his job performance, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted July 13 to 17.
He could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue.



For much of the White House, Mr. Trump’s conduct at the news conference with Mr. Putin on Monday was wholly unexpected.
That's almost impossible to believe.
Administration officials ahead of the summit had crafted a plan for Mr. Trump to confront Mr. Putin on Russia’s electoral interference, officials said.
That, too.
Before the summit, Mr. Trump had authorized the Justice Department to release an indictment of 12 Russians who allegedly hacked into Democratic computers during the 2016 campaign, agreeing it would strengthen his hand when he raised the issue of election interference, a White House official said.
Oh. I see.
In preparatory meetings, Mr. Trump and his aides discussed using the indictment to forcefully make the case. The plan was for Mr. Trump to invoke the indictment both in private meetings and in the public news conference afterward, a White House official said. The idea, the official said, was to “shove it in Putin’s face and look strong doing it,” depicting it as hard evidence of Russian crimes against America’s electoral process.
So what the hell happened?
“He did the exact opposite,” the official said.
Get a clue, folks. He's playing you. He likes playing the people he chose for his administration. Hell, he likes playing anyone he can.
One reason Mr. Trump might have gone his own way and discarded the initial planning, a White House official said, is because he is seeking a better relationship between the U.S. and Russia.
When will they ever learn?
White House aides had begun preparations to make Mr. Trump the public face of planned efforts by the administration to stop election interference in the midterms. Mr. Trump would be shown presiding over meetings and making announcements about an administration-wide commitment to safeguard the 2018 elections.
Jesus. With that kind of a grasp of reality, they're probably incapable of learning.
In the wake of the Putin summit, Mr. Trump may struggle to credibly make the case that he is spearheading the effort to protect U.S. election systems, the official said.
You think??!
One reason Mr. Trump is reluctant to spotlight the issue of election interference, White House officials said, is he can’t separate it in his mind from the outcome of the 2016 election. Accepting that Russia interfered, as he sees it, devalues his victory and unfairly casts doubts on his legitimacy as president, the officials said.

“We won the Electoral College by a lot,” Mr. Trump declared at Monday’s news conference, responding to a question posed to Mr. Putin about why Americans should believe his denial that Moscow interfered in the election. “We did a great job.”
It would be a sad tragedy if the world goes up in flames because the big baby is still fighting the fact that he's not as fabulous as he wants everyone to think he is. It's more likely that his constant harping about having won a brilliant race simply because he's so wonderful comes from the fact that he knows the truth - that he conspired with Russian mobsters to take the White House by fraud - and the truth is about to become irrefutable as Mueller tightens the noose.

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