Get used to it

People telling tales on Trump's outrages is going to be a daily thing at least for the next couple of months.

I know this is beside the point, but do they look a bit Satanic?

Anyway, the rest of the story...

The incident was met with a mixture of amusement and astonishment at the time, but caused headaches for White House and State Department staffers, according to several people familiar with the episode who asked not to be identified due to its sensitivity.

[...]

While in Paris with other world leaders to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I, Trump stayed at the official residence of U.S. Ambassador Jamie McCourt, the palatial Hôtel de Pontalba. The mansion, in Paris’s chic 8th arrondissement, dates to 1842. It has served as a flagship of the State Department’s “Art in Embassies” cultural diplomacy program, and is open to tours.

  Bloomberg

Avoiding the visit to Belleau Wood left Trump with "about six hours of free time in the ambassador’s residence."

The next day, Trump pointed out a Benjamin Franklin bust, a Franklin portrait and a set of figurines of Greek mythical characters, and insisted the pieces come back with him to Washington.

McCourt, the ambassador, was startled, but didn’t object, according to people briefed on the incident.

How could he?! He's a diplomat. This is the president.

Trump later quipped that the envoy would get the art back “in six years,” when his potential second term in office would be winding down.

The art, worth about $750,000 according to one of the people familiar with the episode, was loaded aboard Air Force One while Trump visited another cemetery before the flight back to Washington.

[...]

Trump’s move prompted some hair-pulling and a furious exchange of emails back home between the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations and White House officials who organized the art transfer. Ultimately, because the art is U.S. government property, the move was deemed legal.

[...]

“The President brought these beautiful, historical pieces, which belong to the American people, back to the United States to be prominently displayed in the People’s House,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in response to questions from Bloomberg News.

[...]

The French art-collection episode comes with a curious footnote. After White House art curators examined the pieces Trump brought home, the president was told that the Franklin bust was a replica. He joked that he liked the fake better than the original, two people familiar with the episode said.

Because he can never make an error!

The asshole has never even seen the original or he wouldn't have wanted the replica.

The Franklin portrait snagged from Paris was also a copy.

[...]

The figurines that caught Trump’s eye found a new home on the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office. Depicting Greek gods, they date to the early 20th century and were made by Neapolitan artist Luigi Avolio, who was trying to pass them off as sculptures from the 16th or 17th centuries, according to London-based art dealer Patricia Wengraf.

Perfect!

Corroboration of Trump's anti-military stance

Whenever a new report with an inside account of President Trump’s immorality or ignorance appears in the press, it includes a paragraph for official White House spokespeople to issue an indignant denial calling the media and its dozen or two sources liars. Jeffrey Goldberg’s blockbuster revelation in The Atlantic followed the ritual in form, though not in degree. The scope and intensity of the pushback was nuclear: Virtually every White House press official, past and present, denounced the story. Additional support for Trump poured in from several unofficial White House spokespeople in conservative media.

[...]

Trump seemed to believe, correctly or otherwise, that the contempt for military service described in this report would be particularly damaging, given the emphasis he has placed on his standing as friend and protector of the troops.

[...]

[T]raditional journalistic practice grants more credence to on-the-record sources than anonymous ones, because sources who put their name behind a claim are risking reputational embarrassment if it is falsified. That method would lend more credence to the named sources denying Goldberg’s account than to the unnamed ones endorsing it.

However, that principle obviously does not apply to this administration. Lying is not only common in the Trump administration, it is the cultural glue that holds the president’s coalition together.

[...]

This does not prove Trump’s supporters are lying in this instance: Sometimes liars tell the truth. But are they telling the truth in this instance?

While it’s impossible to directly prove any of these allegations, there is an impressive amount of corroborating evidence. Almost all of it supports Goldberg’s reporting.

[...]

The Associated Press, New York Times and Washington Post quickly confirmed Goldberg’s reporting. The Post added several related details, in addition to Trump describing fallen soldiers as “losers.” “In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got, according to a person familiar with the discussion.”

[...]

Michael Cohen testified in 2018 that Trump admitted faking bone spurs to avoid serving in Vietnam and told him, “You think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.” Mary Trump, in a previously recorded interview, said Trump threatened to disown one of her sons if he enlisted in the military. (It’s significant that she offered this account before Goldberg’s story, and thus could not have crafted it to fit a narrative created by Goldberg.)

Trump’s denial itself contains provable falsehoods:

Trump did call McCain a “loser.” It’s on video. Trump even tweeted the video of himself saying it.

[...]

Second, while Trump claims he lowered the White House flag to half-mast to honor McCain’s death “without hesitation or complaint,” four sources told the Times in 2018 that Trump stubbornly refused until finally and belatedly submitting. Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor confirmed the account today, on the record.

And finally there is the obvious fact that Trump, in 2015, disparaged John McCain for being captured. That is to say, the private comments Trump is fervently denying are merely grosser versions of his publicly explicated view.

[...]

This is the most remarkable fact about the defenses of Trump pouring in from the right. Trump is obviously a massive liar. He has already made clear that he does not respect military service. They are throwing what’s left of their reputations on the line to deny nothing more than an incrementally worse version of a reality that Trump has already revealed.

  Intelligencer

They have no integrity whatsoever. They're proving that every day by their support and backing of this despicable, unworthy POS in the oval office.

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

UPDATE:

To think!

Who could imagine he'd say such a thing?  Everybody who heard him denigrate John McCain is all.

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

UPDATE:

Remember that bullshit about rain keeping him from going to the American Cemetery in France?

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.

[...]

When [John] McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral.

[...]

According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)

  The Atlantic

Trump holds a special disdain for "losers". Can't wait until he loses the November 3 election.

On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

I absolutely believe that. Everything is transactional to Trump. He is incapable of imagining sacrifice or anything that isn't self-serving.

. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend [said], “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

[...]

I’ve asked numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump’s seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as props.

[...]

Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”)

[...]

Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle.

[...]

Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members “many, many” times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called “virtually all” of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.

[...]

Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

And by nobody, he means himself, of course.

UPDATE:  He responds.

Who could imagine he'd say such a thing?  Everybody who heard him denigrate John McCain is all.

UPDATE:



  JFC.

UPDATE 9/11:

He absolutely hates Jim Acosta

I guess he couldn't keep him out of India, like he can out of the White House.

Also, the voices in his head went with him on this trip to India.

I regret to inform you that, much as they worship him in India, he will not be staying.

He likes walls

Indian authorities are reportedly constructing a half-kilometer-long wall in the state of Gujarat to hide low-income housing and slums from visiting U.S. dignitaries ahead of President Trump's visit.

  The Hill

The article doesn't say how much the wall will cost. Money that could be used to help de-slum the area.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the 4-foot-high wall was originally planned to be higher before public outrage resulted in officials changing the design.

Hahaha. As long as Trump doesn't get out of the vehicle, I guess. And chances are good that he wouldn't even think of doing that.

Ahmedabad's mayor, Bijal Patel, told the AP that the project was part of a "beautification" initiative and disputed allegations that the purpose was to hide the slums.

“Apart from security reasons, the wall is also part of a beautification and cleanliness drive,” he said.

Some families living in the area told the newswire that they were evicted from their homes to facilitate the wall's construction.

“We have been living here for the last 20 years and now we are suddenly being told to vacate because some important leader is visiting this city for a day,” resident Sanjay Patani told the AP. “This is injustice.”

I hope Sanjay gave a false name.

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

UPDATE:  And what a beautiful wall it is:

Before he took his toys and went home

President Donald Trump held official meetings with two foreign leaders and the head of NATO at the alliance summit in London on Tuesday -- and turned the public portion of each of the three sessions into his own highly dishonest impromptu press conference.

Trump treated NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to a selection of his favorite fictions, most of which we have fact-checked before, and sprinkled in some new nonsense for good measure.

Speaking to reporters for more than two hours in total, Trump made at least 21 false claims. That's our initial count. The total may well grow once we have time to do some deeper fact-checking.

Embarking on a dishonesty blitz while at a foreign summit would be strange behavior for any other president. For Trump, long impervious to norms of propriety and accuracy, it was just another Tuesday.

  Daniel Dale

Continue reading.

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

UPDATE:

NATO news

Donald Trump arrived in the UK to meet Nato allies who are fearful that he could pose a serious threat to the survival of the alliance if he wins re-election next year.

Days before Wednesday’s leaders’ meeting just outside London to mark Nato’s 70th anniversary, the US announced it was cutting its contribution to joint Nato projects.

Nato officials say the cut (which reduces the US contribution to equivalence with Germany’s) was mutually agreed, but it comes against a backdrop of Trump’s longstanding ambivalence about the value of the alliance, and suggestions that US security guarantees to allied nations were dependent on their military spending.

John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser until September, heightened fears among allies about the president’s intentions in a private speech to a hedge fund last month, in which Bolton (according to a NBC report) warned that Trump could “go full isolationist” if he wins re-election next November, withdrawing from Nato and other international alliances.

[...]

The New York Times has reported that Trump has said privately several times that he would like to withdraw from Nato.

[...]

Before leaving Washington on Monday, Trump repeated his complaint about “other countries that we protect, that weren’t paying”.

“They were delinquent. So we’ll be talking about that,” he told reporters, though he noted that allies were now spending $130bn more than before he took office, a development he took credit for.

[...]

A European diplomat in Washington pointed out that under the Trump administration, the US military presence on the alliance’s eastern flank has been stepped up, but expressed concern that such reinforcements were driven by other administration officials seeking to compensate for Trump’s personal affinity for Vladimir Putin and his denigration of his European allies.

“The greatest fear is what he would do in a second term. He would be more free from constraints,” the diplomat said, adding that he was under pressure from his capital to assess what a second Trump term would look like. “It is impossible to predict,” he said.

  The Guardian

But we all know it would be bad.

NATO allies are closing in on a deal to contribute more to allied running costs to reduce the United States’ share of funding, three diplomats familiar with the matter said.

Agreement would meet a demand by U.S. President Donald Trump, though France has made clear it will have no part in the deal, which the alliance hopes to reach before its 70th anniversary summit in London next week.

[...]

The agreement would mean European allies, Turkey and Canada contribute more towards the annual $2.5-billion budget to run the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headquarters, international staff and military assets under NATO command.

Compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars that allies spend on their armed forces each year, it is a small sum. But it is one that allies hope would silence Trump’s statement in July 2018 that the United States “pays tens of billions of dollars too much to subsidize Europe”.

“It is a political gesture,” one senior NATO diplomat of the possible deal. “There is no alliance without the Americans.”

France opposed the proposal long before President Emmanuel Macron described the alliance on Nov. 7 as “experiencing brain death”, French diplomats have said.

[...]

Paris will not block the proposal, but will abstain, the three NATO diplomats said. France’s defense spending is higher than Germany’s as a percentage of economic output, data shows. Paris says it will also meet a NATO target to spend 2% of national output on defense by 2025 at the latest, while Germany will reach that level only in 2031, according to French and German officials.

[...]

Italy has yet to decide its position.

[...]

All 29 NATO member states contribute to the budget on an agreed formula based on gross national income, but this formula would change after the proposed reform.

“It will be a more cumbersome mechanism,” a second NATO diplomat said.

Under the proposal being negotiated for the 2021 budget, the U.S. contribution to the alliance’s annual budget would fall to around 16% from 22%. Germany’s would rise to the same level as the United States and others’ contributions would also rise.

Only seven NATO countries currently meet or exceed the NATO target of spending 2% of national output on defense - the United States, Britain, Greece, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

  Reuters

The NATO budget is separate from the 2 percent of gross domestic product that each NATO member has agreed as their goal for defense spending by 2024.

Mr. Trump regularly complains about defense spending by other NATO members, but other countries in the alliance have increased their military spending since the Russian annexation of Crimea five years ago by about $130 billion, a NATO diplomat said, a figure that Mr. Stoltenberg is expected to announce next week.

[...]

At a news conference with Mr. Stoltenberg after their meeting in Paris, Mr. Macron defended his own criticism about NATO. The French leader, in an interview with the magazine The Economist, said that the alliance was approaching “brain death” because of a lack of coordination.

He was particularly irked that Mr. Trump had told President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey that he would pull American troops out of Syria without having spoken to other NATO members.

[...]

In [a] gesture to President Trump, NATO announced on Thursday that it had agreed to reduce the United States’ contribution to the alliance’s relatively small central budget, a move aimed at ensuring a calm leaders’ meeting next week in London.

[...]

NATO leaders are trying to keep Mr. Trump from disrupting this meeting, a short one to celebrate the alliance’s 70th anniversary, as he did the last Brussels summit meeting in July 2018.

  NYT

Talk about your unreasonable hopes.

Donald Trump has lashed out at Emmanuel Macron on the first morning of a two-day Nato meeting, saying the French president’s description of Nato as brain dead was insulting and a “very, very nasty statement”.

[...]

“Nato serves a great purpose. I think that’s very insulting.”

He added: “Nobody needs Nato more than France. It’s a very dangerous statement for them to make.”

[...]

At a news conference alongside the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, the US president also accused Macron of trying to break away from Nato, as well as running a failing economy.

Trump has described Nato as obsolete on previous occasions.

  The Guardian

Obsolete is ok. Brain dead is nasty. Got it.

Macron made his criticism of Nato in an Economist interview partly to reflect his frustration that Turkey, a Nato member, had entered northern Syria in October without coordination with any Nato partner apart from Trump. Macron believes the invasion has undermined the fight against Islamic State.

[...]

Defending his decision to pull US troops out of north-east Syria, and to green-light the Turkish invasion, he said: “I wanted to get our soldiers out of there, but I wanted to keep the oil.”

Why does no one bring that up? He keeps saying it, and everybody just seems to let it ride.

He also reeled off a string of insults against France, saying: “I think they have a very high unemployment rate in France. France is not doing well economically at all.

“It is a very tough statement to make when you have such difficulty in France, when you look at what is going on with the yellow vests [anti-government protesters].

“They have had a very rough year. You just can’t go around making statements like that about Nato. It is very disrespectful. I’m looking at him [Macron] and I’m saying that he needs protection more than anybody, and I see him breaking off [from Nato]. So I’m a little surprised at that.”

Not nasty at all.

“When I came in, I was angry at Nato, and now I’ve raised $130bn,” Trump said, referring to the sum Stoltenberg says Canada and European members will have added to their defence budgets by next year.

“And yet you still have many delinquent – you know, I call them delinquent when they’re not paid up in full,” the US president said.

And here is where people should stand up and recite the list of contractors Trump has stiffed.

Trump also said a trade agreement with China might have to wait until after the US presidential election in November 2020, denting hopes of a quick resolution to the dispute that has weighed on the world economy.

Every time he touts a great deal with China, nothing happens. Every time.

The Trump attack came only hours after divisions opened up elsewhere in the alliance, with Turkey vowing to oppose a NATO plan to defend Baltic countries unless the alliance backs it in recognizing the Kurdish YPG militia as a terrorist group.

The YPG’s fighters have long been U.S. allies on the ground against Islamic State in Syria. Turkey considers them an enemy because of links to Kurdish insurgents in southeastern Turkey.

[...]

In an interview with Reuters, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned Ankara that “not everybody sees the threats that they see”, and he urged it, in the name of alliance unity, to stop blocking the Baltics plan.

Queen Elizabeth will host the leaders at Buckingham Palace. But even the British hosts, for generations among the most enthusiastic champions of the trans-Atlantic partnership that NATO represents, are disunited over their project of quitting the EU and distracted by a rancorous election due next week.

“The question is, as we celebrate 70 years, are we waving in celebration or do people think we are drowning?” said a senior European NATO diplomat.

  Reuters

Brain dead.

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

There are those that say - Part 2

On Thursday, a day after his first state visit to Britain ended, [Trump] raved in an interview with the Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he had developed a deep bond with the queen and that she had been very taken with him.

[...]

A day earlier, while sitting with President Emmanuel Macron of France, Mr. Trump called the queen “an incredible lady,” adding, “I feel I know her so well right now, and she certainly knows me well.”

  NYT

Oh, that she does. That she does.

This time, even as Britons hit the streets in protest with a giant Trump balloon, Mr. Trump was feted at a lavish state dinner at Buckingham Palace, where he sat to the right of the queen at the horseshoe-shape table, and they exchanged toasts.

[...]

Addressing Mr. Trump, she said, “Mr. President, as we look to the future, I’m confident that our common values and shared interests will continue to unite us.” She also pointedly spoke of the multilateral institutions that Britain and the United States helped to create after World War II to prevent another war — institutions, like NATO, that Mr. Trump has denigrated. “While the world has changed,” the queen said, “we are forever mindful of the original purpose of these structures.”

[...]

On Wednesday, he left for Ireland, where he owns a golf club in Doonbeg, and met with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. He reassured the Irish leader that Britain’s exit from the European Union would “work out very well,” including for Ireland, “with your wall, your border.”

[...]

“We have millions of Irish. And I think I know most of them because they’re my friends,” he said. “We love the Irish.”

He knows most of them.

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

There are those that say...

More from the voices in his head.

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

God, he's ignorant

Besides the fact that he can't put together a coherent sentence beyond first grade level or focus on topic at that level.




 Charles must have been sorely challenged trying to have a discussion about climate change with this idiot.

Also, no, he can't name cities. 

The Divine Miss M

Gaze upon the awesome sight of him. 

Not real people

Jared, trying to look like a real person, and Ivanka doing her best to imitate the royals.  Frankly, I think they blend right in.

In the annals of terrible White House staff work, the decision to send Jared Kushner out there alone and unarmed against Jonathan Swan of Axios is going to rank right up there with Alexander Haig's one-man coup d'etat after Ronald Reagan was shot, and whoever it was that handed Ollie North Manucher Ghorbanifar's phone number. When he was not being transparently ill-informed, the Dauphin was being transparently dishonest.

[...]

Swan: So you agree with him on economics, on foreign policy. Where do you stand on abortion?
Kushner: Again, I was not the person who was elected.
Swan: So you agree with the president’s position?
Kushner: I’m here to enforce his positions. His position is the one that as a staffer in the White House, we’ll work to push.

I am not animatronic.

[...]

Swan: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she calls, she has called President Trump a racist. Have you ever seen him say or do anything that you would describe as racist or bigoted?
Kushner: So the answer is no. Absolutely not. You can’t not be a racist for 69 years and then run for president and be a racist. What I’ll say is that when a lot of the Democrats call the president a racist, I think they’re doing a disservice to people who suffer because of real racism in this country.
Swan: Was birtherism racist?
Kushner: Um, look, I wasn’t really involved in that.
Swan: I know you weren’t! Was it racist?
Kushner: Like I said, I wasn’t involved in that.
Swan: I know you weren’t! Was it racist?
Kushner: Um, look, I know who the president is, and I have not seen anything in him that is racist. So, again, I was not involved in that.

I am not entirely conscious much of the time.

[...]

Jared Kushner doesn't care if he sounds like three geese trying to honk the Messiah. He doesn't care that he's supposed to be doing all these important jobs and clearly doesn't know any more about the Middle East than he knows about the sacrificial rituals of the Aztecs. This is not a drawback in anyone's effort to rise in this administration*. Marry the boss's daughter is an extra, for sure. But this guy was born to be a Trump.

  Charles P Pierce

I've seen a couple of clips of the interview, including one where he says the Palestinians aren't ready to govern themselves, and not only is he ignorant, he's smugly ignorant.  I'm sure you can find some video online if you really want to.



"Look, children.  This is what our palace will look like one day."

What does it mean that he took Tiffany but not Barron?  The kid who has already been given his royal title by name.  Do they call those two older idiots Duke and Earl?  I'm sure Ivanka is called Princess.  But how did Tiffany get an invitation?  Oh, wait, I know:  it's the royal equivalent of the Queen's children - 2 boys and 2 girls.

Donnie goes to Buckingham Palace

And apparently they're taking the piss.

That's from this Daily Beast article:

Prince Harry and his brother Prince William have successfully denied Donald Trump the opportunity of appearing in a photo with either of them or their glamorous and popular wives during his state visit to the U.K.

[...]

Prince Harry is thought to have been angered by [Trump's] undiplomatic remarks [calling Harry's wife "nasty"], made to a reporter from The Sun newspaper, and although he did not pull out of a scheduled private luncheon with Trump and his family on Monday, he had a face like thunder when he was pictured shortly afterward processing into a specially curated exhibition of American artifacts from the Royal Collection.

Harry appeared to be escorting Trump’s daughter Ivanka; however, when the prince appeared to realize the walkthrough of the exhibit was being filmed, he quickly ducked out of the event.

Maybe he didn't want Meghan to see him with Ivanka?

Meghan is on maternity leave and therefore has a completely plausible and diplomatically watertight excuse not to attend any functions this week at all.

[...]

Trump’s cold-shouldering by William and Kate is arguably a more provocative move on the part of the young royals.

As second in line to the throne, it could be argued that William and his wife do have a responsibility to greet Trump one-on-one in front of the cameras, but so far they have studiously avoided doing so.

[...]

It was also noticeable that when Trump visited Westminster Abbey on Monday to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, he was not accompanied by William, as might have been expected, but by Prince Andrew, the queen’s second son.

  Daily Beast

By all accounts, someone more sympatico with Trump himself.

“He is sensitive about the perceptions that he offended… the Queen,” a former White House official said, referencing a moment last year when the U.S. president appeared to briefly and awkwardly walk in front of the then 92-year-old Queen Elizabeth II. “He also really just wants the [British] royal family to like him.”

[...]

The Times reported last year that “Prince Charles and Prince William were unwilling to meet Donald Trump on his visit to Britain, leaving the Queen to greet the US president alone.”

[...]

Two people close to the president said that on multiple occasions he’s complained privately about a media narrative that he believes portrays the British royal family as hating Trump and not wanting to spend time with him while he’s in town. “The president thinks that it’s ‘fake news’ trying to make it look like they don’t like him personally, when really [he feels that] they do love Trump,” one of these sources said.

Of course he does.

Further, a Whitehall official told The Times that the queen’s meeting last year with President Trump was “kept to the bare minimum. The Queen will do her duty, but among the wider family, they were not as enthusiastic as they were when [President Barack] Obama came over.”

Sad!

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

Royal Assclowns

Good one.

Hey, those look like some cheap sheers. 

Daddy, I want to be a princess, too.

One more

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

UPDATE:

Like father, like son.



UPDATE:

Daniel Dale back on the trail

Trump and Theresa May.



What does she think she's going to get from him in return for kissing his ass?

As @AshaRangappa_ notes, WaPo reported that Trump was furious when he found out he was expelling so many Russians.  

May says that she supports the Iran nuclear deal but that she and Trump share “the same goal” on the issue.

Not if she supports the deal.

May said they had “positive discussions” on the issue of a US-UK trade agreement, but she provided no details.

Because there aren't any.  Positive discussions:  "We're going to have the best deal in the history of the world."  "Yes, we are."

Trump, like May, notes the anniversary of D-Day and the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. He adds, “It was a liberation like few people have seen before.”

Trump is asked about Corbyn’s criticism of him, over his criticism of the mayor of London among other things. Trump says of Khan, “He’s a negative force, not a positive force.” He says Khan hurts the people of this country. Trump says Corbyn is “somewhat of a negative force.” He says he doesn’t like “critics” as much as people who “get things done.”

Trump says the protests he saw were “a very, very small group of people put in for political reasons.” There is no apparent basis for the conspiratorial suggestion that they are inauthentic protesters.

If all he saw was a very, very small group, he was snuck in by the back alleys or he had his eyes closed.

Trump says he saw “thousands of people” on the street cheering him as he passed. Imaginary thousands of cheering people are a staple of Trump’s accounts of his trips places, even in the US.

Trump repeats his lie about having predicted Brexit the day before the vote at his golf course in Scotland. He wasn’t at the golf course until the day after the vote. He didn’t make a prediction the day before.

Trump tells his usual lie that he has a record approval rating among Republicans, “94%.” (It’s consistently been in the high 80s; GWBush reached the high 90s post-9/11.) “I love records,” he adds. I say “lie” with confidence because Trump once explained he knows Bush had a higher approval rating among Republicans, but it doesn’t count as a record because it was for a short period.

Trump concludes by calling May a “tremendous professional” and the US-UK alliance “the greatest alliance the world has ever known.”

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

So much love

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

Can't stop laughing

Who dresses that idiot?  The waistcoat is like the extra long tie.  Stupid.  And could the tails even reach around him?   That's the worst penguin suit I've ever seen.  Makes Mnuchin's look good!  LOLOLOLOL.

UPDATE:



UPDATE:

Can't even make a toast

He had to read it.

And it sounds like tha's the first time he's seen it.



What's with Theresa's plunging neckline?

And does Steve Mnuchin have to pee?  Could he not afford a better-fitting tux?



Why is he even there?

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

UPDATE:  Oh my dear lord.