Donald Trump presidency discussion thread V

volchitsa

Water John wrote: »

Indeed Shia Muslims are far less extreme than Sunni.

Not if you're a woman, they're not.

Fail to see why fences with Iran haven't been mended long ago. But then SA wouldn't be happy.

Probably. "Oil" is always the right answer, I guess.

mcmoustache

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

What Mattis resigned because Trump wanted to end another illegal occupation of a middle eastern country? Should speed up the process of ending the Syrian war with them gone. Let Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iran sort it out, there problem

Trump still hell-bent on destroying Iran, don't forget.

I think most people here believe that the USA shouldn't be in Syria. Most Irish people were against the Iraq war too.


The point being ignored here, perhaps willfully, is that people object the means of pulling out. It was impulsive and screws the Kurds over (again).


I'll repeat an analogy i made earlier:


This is like having a knife in your chest. It shouldn't be there but pulling it out would be stupid.

Cheerful Spring

mcmoustache wrote: »

I think most people here believe that the USA shouldn't be in Syria. Most Irish people were against the Iraq war too.


The point being ignored here, perhaps willfully, is that people object the means of pulling out. It was impulsive and screws the Kurds over (again).


I'll repeat an analogy i made earlier:


This is like having a knife in your chest. It shouldn't be there but pulling it out would be stupid.

Trump has not provided a timeline and, he could in a month time change his mind again. Who to say the US will completely redraw from Syria? Trump could be doing this to gain some support from his voter base. Trump told his supporters he would end wars in the middle east?

The Kurds have no right to occupy lands in the North of Syria anyhow. The Kurds instead of choosing the Americans to support them should have allied itself with Syria and Russia and Iran. They picked the wrong guys to ally with and now they are left alone to defend against Turkey.

dr.fuzzenstein

"fcuk the Kurds, but what about Yemen?"
Silly argument.

Rjd2

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

Trump has not provided a timeline and, he could in a month time change his mind again. Who to say the US will completely redraw from Syria? Trump could be doing this to gain some support from his voter base. Trump told his supporters he would end wars in the middle east?

The Kurds have no right to occupy lands in the North of Syria anyhow. The Kurds instead of choosing the Americans to support them should have allied itself with Syria and Russia and Iran. They picked the wrong guys to ally with and now they are left alone to defend against Turkey.

Trump always did hint at isolationism and is on record of wanting troops out of these wars. I expect he will change his mind when it comes to Syria as the backlash has been astonishing.


Rand Paul, some lesser libertarian house members and true leftists such as Ro Khanna and Ted Lieu are along with the likes of Glen Greenwald are some of the few who have shown some nuance on the issue by backing him withdrawing the troops.

However the rest of the media have disgraced themselves, supposed lefty Maddow had Bill Kristol on debating the merits of this. Yep the same Kristol who got Iraq so wrong and is one of the vilest war mongers in America atm. For balance she had some other Bush neocon. Greenwald called her out on twitter over it thankfully. Others have refused to debate the merits of withdrawal, instead scream Russia at him like an idiotic resistance Krassenstein brother.

Highlight is a bloodthirsty war hawk like Mattis been lionised for disagreeing with Trump slightly pulling back American troops from these stupid wars.

Their will never be a correct time for Trump to withdraw from Syria or even Afghanistan. They will constantly scream Russia at him. The same neocons that are dominating the conversation are the same ***** that have got so many previous US invasions so wrong.

Trump is an abomination of a president , and the fact that America are aiding the Saudis in bombing the **** out of Yemen means that even his overseas policies is a disaster, but he deserves credit for at least trying to start a conversation about Americas supposed overseas exceptionalism.


A great article which captures my thoughts from a genuine lefty who loathes Trump. He calls out Maddow, the neocon garbage such as Kristol, how pointless these wars and how ultimately Trump has screwed himself by suggesting withdrawing from Syria and Afghanistan.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-syria-withdrawal-772177/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-syria-withdrawal-772177/

So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East.

GOOD!

What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half?

For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.

It will be difficult for each of us to even begin to part with our share of honor in those achievements. This must be why all those talking heads on TV are going crazy.

Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads.

“Today’s decision would cheer Moscow, ISIS, and Iran!” yelped Nicole Wallace, former George W. Bush communications director.

“Maybe Trump will bring Republicans and Democrats together,” said Bill Kristol, on MSNBC, that “liberal” channel that somehow seems to be populated round the clock by ex-neocons and Pentagon dropouts.

Kristol, who has rarely ever been in the ballpark of right about anything — he once told us Iraq was going to be a “two month war” — might actually be correct.

Trump’s decisions on Syria and Afghanistan will lay bare the real distinctions in American politics. Political power in this country is not divided between right and left, and not even between rich and poor.

The real line is between a war party, and everyone else.

This is why Kristol is probably right. The Democrats’ plan until now was probably to impeach Trump in the House using at minimum some material from the Michael Cohen case involving campaign-finance violations.

That plan never had a chance to succeed in the Senate, but now, who knows? Troop withdrawals may push a collection of hawkish Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse and maybe even Mitch McConnell into another camp.

The departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — a standard-issue Pentagon toady who’s never met an unending failure of a military engagement he didn’t like and whose resignation letter is now being celebrated as inspirational literature on the order of the Gettysburg Address or a lost epic by Auden or Eliot — sounded an emergency bell for all these clowns. The letter by Mattis, Rubio said:

“Makes it abundantly clear we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.”


Talk like this is designed to give political cover to Republican fence-sitters on Trump. That wry smile on Kristol’s face is, I’d guess, connected to the knowledge that Trump put the Senate in play by even threatening to pull the plug on our Middle Eastern misadventures.

You’ll hear all sorts of arguments today about why the withdrawals are bad. You’ll hear Trump has no plan, which is true. He never does, at least not on policy.

But we don’t exactly have a plan for staying in the Middle East, either, beyond installing a permanent garrison in a dozen countries, spending assloads of money and making ourselves permanently despised in the region as civilian deaths pile up through drone-bombings and other “surgical” actions.

You’ll hear we’re abandoning allies and inviting massacres by the likes of Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If there was any evidence that our presence there would do anything but screw up the situation even more, I might consider that a real argument. At any rate, there are other solutions beyond committing American lives. We could take in more refugees, kick Turkey out of NATO, impose sanctions, etc.

As to the argument that we’re abandoning Syria to Russians — anyone who is interested in reducing Russian power should be cheering. If there’s any country in the world that equals us in its ability to botch an occupation and get run out on a bloody rail after squandering piles of treasure, it’s Russia. They may even be better at it than us. We can ask the Afghans about that on our way out of there.

The Afghan conflict became the longest military engagement in American history eight years ago. Despite myths to the contrary, Barack Obama did not enter office gung-ho to leave Afghanistan. He felt he needed to win there first, which, as anyone who’s read The Great Game knows, proved impossible. So we ended up staying throughout his presidency.

We were going to continue to stay there, and in other places, forever, because our occupations do not work, as everyone outside of Washington seems to understand.

TV talking heads will be unanimous on this subject, but the population, not so much. What polls we have suggest voters want out of the region in increasing numbers.

A Morning Consult/Politico poll from last year showed a plurality favored a troop decrease in Afghanistan, while only 5 percent wanted increases. Polls consistently show the public thinks our presence in Afghanistan has been a failure.

There’s less about how the public feels about Syria, but even there, the data doesn’t show overwhelming desire to put boots on the ground.

When Trump first ordered airstrikes in Syria over Assad’s use of chemical weapons, 70 percent favored sanctions according to Politico, while 39 percent favored sending troops. A CBS poll around that time found 45 percent wanted either no involvement period, or airstrikes and no ground troops, versus 18 percent who wanted full military involvement.

Trump is a madman, a far-right extremist and an embarrassment, but that’s not why most people in Washington hate him. It’s his foreign-policy attitudes, particularly toward NATO, that have always most offended DC burghers.

You could see the Beltway beginning to lose its mind back in the Republican primary race, when then-candidate Trump belittled America’s commitment to Middle Eastern oil states.

“Every time there’s a little ruckus, we send those ships and those planes,” he said, early in his campaign. “We get nothing. Why? They’re making a billion a day. We get nothing.”

As he got closer to the nomination, he went after neoconservative theology more explicitly.

“I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore,” he said, in March of 2016. He went on: “I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’re blown up. We build another one, we get blown up.”

Trump was wrong about a thousand other things, but this was true. I had done a story about how military contractors spent $72 million on what was supposed to be an Iraqi police academy and delivered a pile of rubble so unusable, pedestrians made it into a toilet.

The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction noted, “We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate.”

SIGIR found we spent over $60 billion on Iraqi reconstruction and did not significantly improve life for Iraqis. The parallel body covering Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, concluded last year that at least $15.5 billion had been wasted in that country between 2008 and 2017, and this was likely only a “fraction” of financial leakage.

Trump, after sealing the nomination, upped the ante. In the summer of 2016 he said he wasn’t sure he’d send troops to defend NATO members that didn’t pay their bills. NATO members are supposed to kick in 2 percent of GDP for their own defense. At the time, only four NATO members (Estonia, Poland, the U.K. and the U.S.) were in compliance.

Politicians went insane. How dare he ask countries to pay for their own defense! Republican House member Adam Kinzinger, a popular guest in the last 24 hours, said in July 2016 that Trump’s comments were “utterly disastrous.”

“There’s no precedent,” said Thomas Wright, a “Europe scholar” from the Brookings Institute.

When the news came after Trump’s election that he’d only read his intelligence briefings once a week instead of every day as previous presidents had dutifully done, that was it. The gloves were off at that point.

“The open disdain Trump has shown for the agencies is unprecedented,” said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA official for both George W. Bush and Obama.

All that followed, through today, has to be understood through this prism.

Trump dumped on basically every segment of the political establishment en route to Washington, running on a classic authoritarian strategy — bash the elites, pose as a populist.

However fake he was, there were portions of the political establishment that deserved abuse, the Pentagon most of all.

The Department of Defense has been a money pit for decades. It has trillions in expenditures it can’t account for, refused an audit for nearly 30 years and then failed this year (as in failed completely, zero-point-zero, not producing any coherent numbers) when one was finally funded.

We have brave and able soldiers, but their leaders are utter tools who’ve left a legacy of massacres and botched interventions around the world.

NATO? That’s an organization whose mission stopped making sense the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. We should long ago have repurposed our defense plan to focus on terrorism, cyber-crime and cyber-attacks, commercial espionage, financial security, and other threats.

Instead, we continued after the Soviet collapse to maintain a global military alliance fattened with increasingly useless carriers and fighter jets, designed to fight archaic forms of war.

NATO persisted mainly as a PR mechanism for a) justifying continued obscene defense spending levels and b) giving a patina of internationalism to America’s essentially unilateral military adventures.

We’d go into a place like Afghanistan with no real plan for leaving, and a few member nations like Estonia and France and Turkey would send troops to get shot at with us. But it was always basically Team America: World Police with supporting actors. No wonder so few of the member countries paid their dues.

Incidentally, this isn’t exactly a secret. Long before Trump, this is what Barney Frank was saying in 2010: “I think the time has come to reexamine NATO. NATO has become an excuse for other people to get America to do things.”

This has all been a giant, bloody, expensive farce, and it’s long since time we ended it.

We’ll see a lot of hand-wringing today from people who called themselves anti-war in 2002 and 2003, but now pray that the “adults in the room” keep “boots on the ground” to preserve “credibility.”

Part of this is because it’s Trump, but a bigger part is that we’ve successfully brainwashed big chunks of the population into thinking it’s normal for a country to exist in a state of permanent war, fighting in seven countries at once, spending half of all discretionary funding on defense.



We’re about to have a very graphic demonstration of the near-total uniformity of the political class when it comes to the military and its role. The war party is ready for a coming-out party.

Rjd2

While I dislike Rand for not been true to his libertarian beliefs as his father, he deserves credit for baiting the neocons for so long especially this weekend. The abuse he and his Dad took from war monger Mc Cain was never fair, he may as well cherish a rare moment when a president briefly teases some sort of withdrawal.

https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1076928058375000064

My friend Lindsay Graham is a bit mad right now. You see, he’s never seen a war end before. He’s going to have to console himself with the fact that we still are in about 8 more. I know it will be hard for him, but I think he’ll get by.

I’m going to go a bit easier on the grievances against the neocons and warmongers this year though. The Weekly Standard has folded, wars are ending — I really think their holiday is already bad enough, I don’t want to pile on.

I opposed John Bolton being hired. But I really can’t think of anything that makes me happier then thinking of him having to end wars for the rest of his time in the White House.

Christy42

The man is doing it because he was asked by Erdogen. Stop trying to give him serious motives for this.

Syria is a mess. Sending the Kurds to the firing line won't help this.

Instead of announcing a withdrawal maybe he could have looked at other options to scale this back and do it in a more structured fashion instead of simply announcing the fact on Twitter.

But sure, simply label anyone who does not want the Kurds to be massacred as neo cons. I don't want the US involved in foreign wars either but randomly (well by request from a dictator or dictator wannabe) withdrawing and creating power vacuums is hardly a great answer.

I would also point out no war is over. No war will be ended by this decision.

Igotadose

Well, like so many things Trump touches, it all goes to hell eventually. Now, the stock market (I wonder if it'll still be part of tGOP talking points as to how well the economy's doing). S&P and DJIA setting record percentage declines for December. 2d worst ever. First was the Great Depression. December's usually a good month, too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/17/worst-start-to-december-for-the-stock-market-since-great-depression.html


So let's see... crashing economy. Crumbling WH administration setting records for people resigning. Incoherent foreign policy. I just can't believe all the winning that's going on under Trump. If the job reports are off, watch out and look out below.

Rjd2

Christy42 wrote: »

The man is doing it because he was asked by Erdogen. Stop trying to give him serious motives for this.

Syria is a mess. Sending the Kurds to the firing line won't help this.

Instead of announcing a withdrawal maybe he could have looked at other options to scale this back and do it in a more structured fashion instead of simply announcing the fact on Twitter.

But sure, simply label anyone who does not want the Kurds to be massacred as neo cons. I don't want the US involved in foreign wars either but randomly (well by request from a dictator or dictator wannabe) withdrawing and creating power vacuums is hardly a great answer.

I would also point out no war is over. No war will be ended by this decision.

I disagree, but that's the internet!

I admit Syria is messy for sure. Their will never be a good time to leave for America when it comes to the military industrial complex, well maybe when Assad is dead and that fabled democracy is their.

Out of curiosity, do you at least think he is right on Afghanistan?

That's the one thing that has been tough about the debate, he can be right on one country and wrong on the other.

FrostyJack

Rjd2 wrote: »

Out of curiosity, do you at least think he is right on Afghanistan?

That's the one thing that has been tough about the debate, he can be right on one country and wrong on the other.

I doubt there are many that think the US should be in Afghanistan, same with Syria, but the planning, or lack there of, at leaving is the problem, that along with the motive. I know everything thing he does is declared a distraction (with good cause) but why would he announce it like he did, the way he did. There is no logic it to it. He gets off the phone from Erdogan and boom he is pulling out. If it were 2 other people you might give the benefit of the doubt.

Sierra Oscar

Igotadose wrote: »

Well, like so many things Trump touches, it all goes to hell eventually. Now, the stock market (I wonder if it'll still be part of tGOP talking points as to how well the economy's doing). S&P and DJIA setting record percentage declines for December. 2d worst ever. First was the Great Depression. December's usually a good month, too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/17/worst-start-to-december-for-the-stock-market-since-great-depression.html


So let's see... crashing economy. Crumbling WH administration setting records for people resigning. Incoherent foreign policy. I just can't believe all the winning that's going on under Trump. If the job reports are off, watch out and look out below.

The fact that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had to intervene yesterday and publicly state that the US Banks are not facing a liquidity crisis is ominous. Turbulent few months ahead by the looks of things. The political upheaval between Trump and Brexit is not helping.

dr.fuzzenstein

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

The fact that US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had to intervene yesterday and publicly state that the US Banks are not facing a liquidity crisis is ominous. Turbulent few months ahead by the looks of things. The political upheaval between Trump and Brexit is not helping.

Maybe it's the shock people need.
Morons voting Trump and Brexit because they think some golden land of milk and honey lies ahead need to land flat on their face.
And maybe next time they won't be so gullible when some blowhard promises them easy money and a golden future with unicorns and rainbows.

Panrich

Some Christmas cheer spread by the Grinch.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/25/christmas-cheer-trump-tells-boy-that-believing-in-santa-at-seven-is-marginal?

Whoever came up with the idea to let him talk with kids was at fault here. He is deteriorating mentally and he wasn’t very clever or stable to begin with.

Phonehead

correct horse battery staple wrote: »

I would agree with you if it wasn't my pension and investments going down drain too for 2nd time in last 10 years

This, it's actually crazy watching the value of my pension investments fluctuate over 2018, granted the last 2 months has been a crazy spiral downwards. How many Companies used the tax windfall on stock buybacks, safe to say the majority. Those are in negative value now, watch for companies tightening their budgets and laying off staff in 2019 because of these loses. The real trickle down effect

20Cent

Like Bernie Madof found out fcuking with rich peoples money is a fast way to be taken down.

everlast75

Panrich wrote: »

Some Christmas cheer spread by the Grinch.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/25/christmas-cheer-trump-tells-boy-that-believing-in-santa-at-seven-is-marginal?

Whoever came up with the idea to let him talk with kids was at fault here. He is deteriorating mentally and he wasn’t very clever or stable to begin with.

This was a brilliant tweet under that story on twitter...


https://twitter.com/adamcbest/status/1077441921218473984?s=19

Penn

Panrich wrote: »

Some Christmas cheer spread by the Grinch.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/25/christmas-cheer-trump-tells-boy-that-believing-in-santa-at-seven-is-marginal?

Whoever came up with the idea to let him talk with kids was at fault here. He is deteriorating mentally and he wasn’t very clever or stable to begin with.

You just know his own kids were never allowed to believe in Santa because Santa would have gotten the credit for giving them presents instead of Donald.

aloyisious

Happy XMas folks, I hope that the adults forgot to get batteries for Don's phone today.

Franz Von Peppercorn

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Maybe it's the shock people need.
Morons voting Trump and Brexit because they think some golden land of milk and honey lies ahead need to land flat on their face.
And maybe next time they won't be so gullible when some blowhard promises them easy money and a golden future with unicorns and rainbows.

Until capitalism actually starts giving people good jobs then that’s not going to happen. Next “blowhard” might be socialist though.

Igotadose

I've voted in POTUS elections since 1980. I remember LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter...all of them. None were perfect, not one. Some were actively malevolent like Nixon. Some were indirectly so - GWB, GHWB, taking their orders from their corporate lords & masters. I really thought Nixon was the all time worst, and still do.


Not one of them ever, EVER, would say 'poor me.' The POTUS just tweeted to the world, Poor me. The putative head of the western world looking for pity. On Xmas. A time when really, the rest of us would like a break from the turmoil he causes every minute of every day.

If there's history written about this in the future - if there's in fact a future with this maniac at the helm and his daily demonstrations of his inability to do anything, not even talk with 7 year olds about Santa - maybe that history will say this is when America and the rest of the world got some sense back.

Maybe. Time will tell. Maybe post-Trump there'll be a full-on de-Trumpification. But the Democrats, heck, even if it's another non-Trump GOP'er, win in 2020, they need to do way more. Enough ignoring the enormous economic divide in the US. Enough reveling in the stupidity of conspiracy theories. Oh, and yes, immigration is good for the US. Crime is not. Plenty of resources available in the richest economy in history to deal with both in humane ways. Personally, I don't believe there's much to be done about global warming without addressing its real cause, that of human global overpopulation, but that's not palatable to the global warming crowd. And that's certainly a discussion for another thread.

Happy holidays to all. Forget about US politics till after New Years, it's what I'm planning to do, I just saw my POTUS whine and not be able to talk to a 7 year old. Nothing will change until he's gone.

dr.fuzzenstein

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Until capitalism actually starts giving people good jobs then that’s not going to happen. Next “blowhard” might be socialist though.

Well, I'm not saying it's any better. The problem is populists promising people the world, based on nothing whatsoever.
And the people, with their collective IQ of 50 falling for the same sh*te over and over again.
I also believe the system unfairly gets the blame.
Take any system you want and it will be exploited by greedy people for their own gain and at the expense of everyone else.
Human beings are the problem. We are greedy, stupid and selfish and we keep falling for conmen like Trump who are basically nothing but parasites. Whatever system gets implement, it will be exploited for person gain and people will get shafted.
As we keep saying, Trump is not the problem, but the symptom.

Christy42

Rjd2 wrote: »

Christy42 wrote: »

The man is doing it because he was asked by Erdogen. Stop trying to give him serious motives for this.

Syria is a mess. Sending the Kurds to the firing line won't help this.

Instead of announcing a withdrawal maybe he could have looked at other options to scale this back and do it in a more structured fashion instead of simply announcing the fact on Twitter.

But sure, simply label anyone who does not want the Kurds to be massacred as neo cons. I don't want the US involved in foreign wars either but randomly (well by request from a dictator or dictator wannabe) withdrawing and creating power vacuums is hardly a great answer.

I would also point out no war is over. No war will be ended by this decision.

I disagree, but that's the internet!

I admit Syria is messy for sure. Their will never be a good time to leave for America when it comes to the military industrial complex, well maybe when Assad is dead and that fabled democracy is their.

Out of curiosity, do you at least think he is right on Afghanistan?

That's the one thing that has been tough about the debate, he can be right on one country and wrong on the other.

This does not contradict my point. I agree the warmongers will never want to leave. That does not mean that simply disappearing is the right way to do it which is the gap in your argument.

Nor does it mean that doing it under orders from a foreign country is the right way to do it.

Did Trump at least get some agreement that would protect the Kurds out of this?

Is he pulling out of Afghanistan as well? I hadn't realised. I thought it was just Syria. That seems like it would be easier to do alright.

In other news Trump takes an easy home run and messes it up. Again. As others have said the 7 year old believing in Santa is better than a scientifically illiterate president.

Never mind that world leaders around the world were calling for unity at Christmas while he is still ranting furiously at the Democrats and "fake news". It is just kind of pathetic at this point. No talk of working together just more brinkmanship because that is all he knows.

Water John

Just did a quiz on The Guardian on Donald's year. Got 12/12, must get a better perspective on life.

everlast75

Water John wrote: »

Just did a quiz on The Guardian on Donald's year. Got 12/12, must get a better perspective on life.

Link please?

Leroy42

What most terrifies the US President? Take the Donald Trump quiz of the year

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/26/donald-trump-quiz-of-2018?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

Tell me how

Leroy42 wrote: »

What most terrifies the US President? Take the Donald Trump quiz of the year

Click on Link

To be fair, it's written to make everyone get high scores but even so, it's pretty incredible.

He probably has entered that space where what he does isn't actually that bad because it's so unbelievable.

Surprised they didn't include "What did he say to a 7 year old about Santa". Expect the article was prepared before that gem.

Headshot

I got 12/12. It's frightening the amount of the WTF moments

relax carry on

Tell me how wrote: »

Click on Link

To be fair, it's written to make everyone get high scores but even so, it's pretty incredible.

He probably has entered that space where what he does isn't actually that bad because it's so unbelievable.

Surprised they didn't include "What did he say to a 7 year old about Santa". Expect the article was prepared before that gem.

God that's depressing.

You got… 12/12

I suggest you cancel the papers, hide your phone and switch off the radio. You are following this man too closely. Even Donald Trump doesn’t remember everything Donald Trump says.

Pretty much all of those are 3 normal responses with one crazy one which must be Trump. Still depressing though.

pixelburp

12/12 here too, though to be fair the man has so concistently said the wrong thing in public circles, that where I didn't know the answer, I picked the worst-sounding as a guess & was right.

Leroy42

Tell me how wrote: »

To be fair, it's written to make everyone get high scores but even so, it's pretty incredible.

He probably has entered that space where what he does isn't actually that bad because it's so unbelievable.

pixelburp wrote: »

12/12 here too, though to be fair the man has so concistently said the wrong thing in public circles, that where I didn't know the answer, I picked the worst-sounding as a guess & was right.

It was clearly designed to highlight just how crazy it all is. Even if you had no idea about Trump, all the options direct you at selecting the most crazy and unbelievable one.

Tell me how wrote: »

Surprised they didn't include "What did he say to a 7 year old about Santa". Expect the article was prepared before that gem.

That one is quite incredible. Of course the child believes in Sana, they were ringing a number to track Santa across the globe for fecks sake. It was the whole point of the exercise. It is a nice little meaningless gesture, the equivalent of kissing babies on the campaign trial.

But the man just seems totally incapable of human understanding or contact. It is obviously clear that he has little to no empathy or understanding of the normal human.

Quite why anyone thinks that is the right type of person to look after their interests is beyond me.