It's a statement, I guess

If everyone would have joined, that would have been a STATEMENT.

He's already abdicated

Not that he was actually doing his job in the first place.

The event featured remarks from leaders, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, and was focused on the “coordinated response to the coronavirus pandemic and improved global pandemic preparedness”, according to its description.

[...]

Trump’s apparent disinterest in the summit started earlier on Saturday when he started tweeting about the election results after the scheduled start time of the summit at 8am ET. The president appeared via video link during the summit’s opening remarks but by 10am, Trump was leaving the White House to go to his golf course outside of Washington DC, according to CNN.

[...]

“I look forward to working with you again for a long time,” he told leaders, according to audio obtained by the Observer.

  Guardian

Jesus Tapdancing Christ.

And he's still got two whole months to take us all down with him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

G20 virtual meeting

G20 leaders vowed Thursday to fight the coronavirus crisis with their collective wealth and political might, declaring they are injecting a staggering $5 trillion into the global economy. And that's just a start.

Following an extraordinary virtual "summit" organized by Saudi Arabia, which currently chairs the club of the world's top economies, the leaders issued a joint statement urging a coordinated international response — including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank — both to contain the pandemic and to address the accompanying economic shock. And in all respects, they pledged a "whatever it takes" approach.

  

Even the US? I'm skeptical.

"We will expand manufacturing capacity to meet the increasing needs for medical supplies and ensure these are made widely available, at an affordable price, on an equitable basis, where they are most needed and as quickly as possible," the leaders wrote. "We stress the importance of responsible communication to the public during this global health crisis."

[...]

But it's far from clear that leaders will be able to live up to their lofty aspirations. The global response to the pandemic so far has been characterized at times by a mix of both solidarity — with some nations ready to share medical equipment and expertise — and political missteps and backbiting, including initial secrecy by China at the start of the outbreak, and more recent efforts by the U.S. to label the coronavirus as a Chinese pestilence and to blame Beijing for its spread.

Productive and critical. Critical and productive.

Jesus Christ - Ivanka's giving a "readout" of a G20 meeting - and poorly:

Between her and Jared, there won't be any need for anyone else in the Trump administration.

And not a positive comment one.

And on and on and on.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Trump Show

Although Donald Trump Jr.'s maliciousness was shocking, it was Ivanka Trump's arrogance that was truly breathtaking. Moment by moment — from the G20 at Osaka, to a jaunt into the DMZ — she inserted herself into the middle of high-level conversations, assuming the role of equal among people with vastly greater qualifications. In a sea of serious black and grays, she stood out in colorful high fashion that seemed designed to steal the limelight.

Her father's commentary about her presence — "She's going to steal the show" — betrays much truth. This is a showbiz family, treating world affairs like a performance, and in the process making the United States look ridiculous

  CNN

That ship has sailed. The United States IS ridiculous.

A viral video of Ivanka Trump, who is an adviser to the President, chatting with International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde and the elected leaders of three powerful democracies — Great Britain, France and Canada — prompted commentary about her intrusion and the discomfort felt by the others.

[...]

In the video, May says, in response to a comment from Macron: "As soon as you talk about the economic aspect of it, though, a lot of people start listening who wouldn't otherwise listen." Ivanka Trump offers: "It's the same with the defense side. In terms of the whole business that's been, sort of, male-dominated." She smiled eagerly and nodded at her own comment.

Jesus.

Ivanka Trump jetted to Japan on Air Force One, where — in addition to her painful exchange with May and Lagarde — she played the role of instant diplomat because, well, [...] she's a Trump. At the G20 gathering of major economic powers in Osaka and then in North and South Korea, she inserted herself into one moment after another, mugging for the cameras, as well as striking very serious poses.

[...]

Like [her husband Jared] Kushner, who has staked a leadership claim in Middle East negotiations, Ivanka Trump has no training in government, foreign policy or diplomacy. But like Kushner, who undermined Trump's first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, Ivanka Trump seems quite comfortable disrespecting the real diplomats.

At a major photo op, where the American and South Korean delegations gathered to mark the occasion, Ivanka inserted herself in fourth position, next to South Korea's first lady, as Pompeo wandered around looking for a spot. She eventually stepped aside.

[...]

Just as many world affairs professionals are appalled by the Trump family approach to foreign policy, serious politicians would find her brother's drift into birtherism a sign of ham-handed heedlessness. Donald Jr. retweeted a nasty attack on candidate Harris after the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday. "Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black," read the original tweet. "She is half Indian and half Jamaican. I am so sick of people robbing American Blacks like myself of our history..." With his retweet, the younger Mr. Trump added, "Is this true? Wow."

Born in Oakland, California, Harris is, of course, an American and she is black, but the tweet and Donald Jr.'s "Wow" challenged her legitimacy and played on an old trope that has been used to divide the black community for generations. Though the President's son removed the tweet from his account, he left behind proof that as a chip off the old block, he is willing to dabble in the kind of racism his father used against Barack Obama for many years. Not surprisingly, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders answered by writing, "Donald Trump Jr. is a racist too. Shocker."

[...]

Anyone who followed the clan as I did when it operated a string of businesses, understood that being a Trump was the main qualification that Donald Jr., Ivanka, and their brother Eric brought to their positions as top executives in the organization.

As the Donald Trump once told me, he values natural talent far more than experience, thus it is natural for him to insist that his offspring — and in Jared's case his son-in-law — will be the best choices for any job.

[...]

Who better to mimic Donald Trump's style, and give him the total loyalty he demands, than little Trumps?

At the risk of being the broken record:  Impeach.

Ivanka 2024

Set against a tense, eerie silence in the landmine-riddled mountains separating South and North Korea, the Demilitarized Zone may be the highest-stakes negotiation site on earth. It’s not the sort of place for mistakes.

[...]

On Sunday, Ms. Trump, the president’s elder daughter, used an impromptu meeting between her father and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to further slip into the role of unofficial spokeswoman and budding stateswoman for the Trump administration. With her husband, fellow senior adviser Jared Kushner, at her side, Ms. Trump delivered news interviews, posed for photos and attended a closed-door meeting between her father and Mr. Kim.

[...]

“We are on the precipice of ushering in potentially a golden era for the Korean Peninsula,” Ms. Trump told Bloomberg News in the hours before her father took the historic step of crossing into the North. But by the time she emerged from the closed-door meeting between the leaders hours later, she only had one word for journalists about her encounter with North Korea.

She called it “surreal.”

[...]

“Ivanka Trump is not on the National Security Council — she is not an adviser on the issues being discussed,” Michael A. McFaul, an ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, said of Ms. Trump’s presence. “So her presence undermines the professional look of the Trump delegation, both to other countries and to national security professionals in the Trump administration.”

[...]

But for Ms. Trump, 37, the visit to Asia over the past week represented a prominent step onto a bigger stage.

[...]

She appeared ready to assert herself from the start of the trip. She was the most visible woman from the Trump administration to go. Her stepmother, the first lady Melania Trump, stayed behind in Washington.

[...]

Ms. Trump was repeatedly flanked by her father and a roster of world leaders, including Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, and Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

[...]

Observers and critics used a snippet of digital footage as a way to show that she might be out of her depth: A short video posted to Instagram by the office of Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, showed Ms. Trump in conversation with Theresa May, the departing prime minister of Britain, and Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund managing director, as Mr. Macron and Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, listened.

In the clip, Ms. Trump seemed to be looking to find a place to jump into this diplomatic game of double Dutch. First Mrs. May spoke: “As soon as you charge them with that economic aspect of it, a lot of people start listening who otherwise wouldn’t listen.”

And then Ms. Trump jumped in: “And the same with the defense side of it, in terms of the whole business that’s been, sort of, male-dominated.”

[...]

On Sunday, a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations, pushed back at the characterization that Ms. Trump had interjected or annoyed others in the conversation — particularly Ms. Lagarde, who the official said had, like the others, been attending a women’s empowerment event where Ms. Trump had been invited to speak when the interaction was filmed.

That official said Mr. Trump had requested that his daughter accompany him to several G20 events, and even delayed the start of one so he would not miss her giving an introductory speech.

[...]

Gone are the days when Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner kept relatively low profiles inside the West Wing, grappling with waves of bad press as they sought to establish their profiles behind the scenes. And gone are the days when senior aides, such as John F. Kelly, the former chief of staff, tried to curb their influence.

Ms. Trump’s participation in the G20 trip illustrated just how unchecked her ascent in the White House has been in recent months, and how few people who might have raised doubts remain.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Endless whining

The Trump Foundation was shut down because it was self-dealing.



Endless projection as well.  Using his attorney general as a bludgeoning tool for his own purposes and suing on everything.  Who does that sound like?



Abuse of women?



They are not fleeing New York in any number.

I wonder what's coming down the pike that prompted him to tweet this now.

And speaking of his children...

From the Guardian  (Don't worry, Ivanka honey, they're just jealous.):

c

More here

Ivanka 2024

Impeach.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ivanka speaks at the G20 women's empowerment event

Ivanka Trump in pictures with world leaders at the G20.

The "G20 presidency".

If Trump does leave office in 2020 - and I know that's a big "if", they're going to run Ivanka in 2024, aren't they?  Even if he doesn't leave.












...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of Jair Bolsonaro at the G20...

NPR reports police arrested Sgt. Manoel Silva Rodrigues in Seville, Spain, Tuesday after the Brazilian Air Force plane made a stop on its way to the summit.

Bolsonaro was on a separate plane following behind but changed its route following the arrest.

Rodrigues was reportedly carrying 86 pounds of cocaine that was split up into 37 different blocks. He told local authorities that it was cheese and not drugs.

The Brazilian Defense Ministry put out a statement confirming the arrest and noted that it is investigating the incident.

Bolsonaro in a tweet Wednesday stressed that the arrest was not related to his team, calling the incident “unacceptable.”

"We will not tolerate such disrespect to our country!” he wrote.

  The Hill

Is that the proper response?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He's not joking

As they sat for photographs at the start of their first formal meeting in nearly a year, the US president lightheartedly sought common ground with Putin at the expense of the journalists around them in Osaka.

“Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia but we do,” Trump said.

To which Putin responded, in English: “We also have. It’s the same.”

Twenty-six journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin first became president, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), many of them investigative reporters scrutinising governmental abuses.

[...]

It is a year to the day since five Capital Gazette employees were killed in their newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. The shooting led to the organisation Reporters Without Borders adding the US to its list of the five deadliest countries for journalism.

  Guardian

As you can tell, however, he IS joking when he says, "Don't meddle in the election."

When journalists asked Trump just before he left for Japan what he would like to talk to Putin about, he told them it was “none of your business”. As they sat alongside each other, a reporter asked whether he was going to tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election.

Trump said: “Yes, of course I will,” drawing a laugh from Putin. Then, without looking at Putin, Trump said briskly: “Don’t meddle in the election, please,” and then repeated the phrase with a mock finger wag as Putin and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, smiled broadly.

It's just so quaint, the idea of fair elections.

Trump later held talks with Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. “He is a special man, doing very well, very much loved by the people of Brazil,” Trump said, smiling broadly. For his part, Bolsonaro told the US president: “I have been a great admirer of you for quite some time, even before your election. I support Trump, I support the United States, I support your re-election.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Can't focus on the task at hand

Impeach this dickhead

President Trump said Wednesday that he'll have a "very good conversation" with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 (G20) summit, but declined to say whether he plans to warn him against interfering in U.S. elections.

  The Hill

Too obvious even for him to bother answering.

"I’ll have a very good conversation with him. What I say to him is none of your business," Trump said.

Very presidential.

Asked over the weekend on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether he would directly confront Putin on the issue of election interference, Trump said, "I may."

I guess he didn't think "none of your business" would work on Meet the Press.

Trump will hold meetings with the heads of state of Australia, Japan, India, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China at the Summit.

"I’m meeting with Russia, I’m meeting with China, I’m meeting with many countries," Trump said Wednesday outside the White House. "We’ve been ripped off by everybody over the years. They’re not ripping us off anymore."

Very diplomatic. Very presidential.

Burn it all down

Is this Trump's retaliation for Putin throwing him over for MBS at the G20?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



UPDATE:

Andrew, I think we all noticed

Consider the following timeline: on July 7–8, 2017,Trump attends the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany the site of his first face to face encounter with Putin.

On the morning of July 7, 2017, the New York Times informs the White House--for the first time--that it has learned about the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with Russian government connections, Natalya Veselnitskaya. The New York Times asks the White House to comment.

On the afternoon of July 7, 2017, Trump and Putin, accompanied only by Rex Tillerson, Sergei Lavrov and their interpreters, meet for 2 and 1/2 hours. We now know from @gregpmiller that after the meeting Trump seizes the US interpreter’s notes and tells her not to brief senior NSC or State Department aides about the conversation with Putin.

Later that evening on July 7, 2017, during the formal G20 summit dinner, Trump seeks out Putin for another conversation. Putin’s interpreter is the only other participant. The fact of this meeting is not publicly revealed until more than a week later after @ianbremmer hears about it from other G20 attendees. (The White House doesn’t officially confirm it until July 18, 2017.) As Bremmer points out, Trump oddly doesn’t even inform his own staff afterwards that he’s had this second conversation with Putin.

On the AF1 flight back to Washington the next day on July 8, 2017, Trump dictates the text of the now infamous, misleading statement (for Don Jr. to release) about the Trump Tower meeting. Don Jr.’s statement to @nytimes emphasizes: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” at the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya. The @nytimes story about the Trump Tower meeting appears later that same day (July 8, 2017).

On July 11, 2017 the same @nytimes team breaks the story that Don Jr was told in advance that Veselnitskaya intended to provide dirt on the Hillary Clinton campaign at the behest of the Russian government. Don Jr. replies: "I love it."

On July 19, 2017 Trump repeats the false assertion that he talked to Putin about adoption in a conversation with @peterbakernyt, @nytmike and @maggieNYT.  In the same interview, Trump also floats the idea that there was nothing inappropriate about his senior-most campaign officials meeting with foreign emissaries who wanted to help his campaign. “Who wouldn’t have taken a meeting like that?”

All of this begs the question: What did Trump and Putin actually discuss at that impromptu one-on-one dinner meeting at the Hamburg G20 on July 7, 2017?

Hmmmmm.  Could it be removing Russian sanctions and turning over Bill Browder?

Moreover, why did they huddle together by themselves within hours of the White House learning that the at-that-point-still-secret Trump Tower meeting between Trump, Jr. and the Russians was about to become public?

Could it be what to tell the media about Junior's meeting regarding Russian sanctions and turning over Bill Browder in return for dirt on Hillary? 

Put another way, shortly after the New York Times reached out to the White House to ask about a secret meeting with the Russians, Trump himself sought a secret meeting with the Russians.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Message to Kim

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in [who is hoping to host North Korean leader Kim Jong Un soon] has said, a day after meeting the US president at an economic summit in Argentina [...], Trump had asked him to pass on a message.

"The message is that President Trump has very favourable views toward Chairman Kim and he likes him," Moon told reporters aboard a flight from Argentina to New Zealand, where he started a three-day state visit on Sunday.

"As such, he asked me to tell Chairman Kim that he wants to implement the rest of their agreement together and he will fulfil Chairman Kim's wishes."

  alJazeera

Why does that sound ominous?

"We're getting along very well. We have a good relationship," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from the G20 summit.

Trump added that at some point he will invite Kim to the United States.

[...]

The two leaders signed a vaguely worded document on denuclearisation, but progress has since stalled as Washington and Pyongyang spar over the meaning of the document.

North Korea has taken few concrete steps to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was due to meet a top North Korean official in early November, but the meeting was abruptly put off, with Pyongyang insisting that Washington ease sanctions.

The cat and the canary

Image source: Politico

Jumped up Jesus

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.