The Weakest Strongman

Kim and Trump, love at first site.

Trump just can’t give up Obama. Even when sitting around, shooting the shit with murderous dictators, Trump is the guy on a date that wants to rag on his ex. He just brings everything back to Obama:

“I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump told Woodward in an interview for his new book, ‘Rage’. “I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.” Trump added that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un thought Obama was “an asshole.”

Kim Jong Un thought Obama was an asshole. Huh, great. Did you get those nukes from him Donny, like you promised?

No. What we learn from Woodward is that Trump has a sick crush on a killer.

Trump goes to say he was overwhelmed in meeting Kim for the first time in 2018 in Singapore: “Holy shit,” he thought, this guy Kim is “far beyond smart.”

“Beyond smart.” In comparison to Trump himself, I suppose.

Holy shit indeed.

Trump, the president of the United States, sitting around with Kim Jong Un, a dictator who thinks nothing of starving his own people to build up his nuclear arsenal, talking shit about the previous president like two Mean Girls in the cafeteria.

How is this not treason? How do we even deal with bullshit like this?

Good lord. And now we have those ‘beautiful’ letters, the ‘love letters’ between these two leaders. They write mash notes back and forth, praising each other in a psychotic mutual admiration society, Kim calling Trump "Your Excellency”, which Trump just giggles and gushes about. Trump also brags about Kim giving him all the details of how he killed his own uncle, Trump drinking it all in enviously, probably thinking about a few reporters he’d like to try these new pointers on.

A special, special friendship.

But the best (worst, most insane) quote?

This one right here (and thanks to Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark for pointing it out):

“Trump reflected on his relationships with authoritarian leaders generally, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them,” he told Woodward. “You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”

It needs no explanation, we all know what it means.

And it ain’t funny.

With Blood on His Hands

Donald Trump, lying about his lies, while blaming his lies on the person who recorded him lying and published his lies. Wednesday in TrumpLand.

200,000 Americans are dead.

Probably more really.  

And today, we find out that Trump was not ignorant of the facts, Trump was not just putting out happy talk of what he wanted in that crucial time from the end of January through April. He knew, he always knew just how deadly the coronavirus was, he knew it was worse than the flu, knew it was highly contagious, spreading through the air like dirt in the duststorm, knew it could/would kill tens of thousands of Americans. He knew all this and more.

He just didn’t care.

He didn’t care. He let it happen to protect his glorious stock market, his ‘amazing’ economy, (not his really, that’s another article), he let it happen to save his reelection. That’s what he cared about. Not your grandparents, not your husband, wife, partner, lover, friends, not your children. No. His reelection.

That’s all he cared about. Screw the rest.

How do we know? Because it’s an election year and Washington Post editor Bob Woodward has another damn book out, ‘Rage’, (I have it on pre-order), and he sat down with Trump 18 times, 18 TIMES! For interviews. And Bob records his stuff so people can’t come back later and claim, “I never said that!” And Bob will play the tape. Nixon taught him much. Trump? Trump never learns anything.

What did he tell Woodward?

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

He said “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed…It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.” This is while he was telling the American public they didn’t have to worry, that it was the flu, it was just going to go away….

Go away, no more dangerous than the flu, play it down, always down, that’s what he likes to do. How many people believed him? How many ignored doctors, ignored loved ones and didn’t take even minimal precautions because they believed the man they voted for, the man they trusted.

How many do you know believed Trump, believed him when he said it was nothing, it was a hoax, that it would blow over.

How many of those people are sick?

How many of those people are no longer here to praise the man who they believed, the man that helped get them killed.

200,000 dead, how many because they believed a man who never gave a damn about them?

Why would Trump admit to depraved indifference to human life? Why would he sit down and talk with one of the most notorious outers of presidential secrets? My guess it’s the same ego that makes him proclaim himself a genius, expert in all things, and the only one who can fix (fill in the blank). He thought he could beat Bob Woodward at the game Woodward has honed to a sharp point. Bob is just a member of the ‘fake news’ and He is ‘The Donald’. He lost. The proof is hours of stupid things on tape, and soon in print.

Trump now says it was a ‘political hit job’ and that his lying to the people ‘showed leadership’:

“We have to show leadership, and leadership is all about confidence. Confidence is all about confidence in our country.”

“I’m a cheerleader for this country. We want to show confidence. We don’t want to instill panic,” He now says.

All of this is the opposite of leadership, the opposite of what was needed. He lied for his own petty needs, showing how small a man he truly is… as if we needed more examples.

And thousands have died needlessly.

There is blood on his hands, the blood of people who put him in that office, blood that will not wash off.