A nauseating betrayal of American values
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A nauseating betrayal of American values
Many weeks - every week? - in the age of Trump are depressing. This last one has been sickening.
That is strong language for a moment that President Trump has declared a triumph, with his historic meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The problem is not the fact of the meeting itself. Diplomacy - even Trump's brand of slapdash, what-me-prepare diplomacy - is better than the warmongering alternative, and the president deserves credit for putting out even a fire partly of his own creation.
But.
Trump's consistent, unnecessary, escalating praise for Kim merits the word "sickening." Diplomacy may entail saying nice things to bad people for good ends, but Trump's language about Kim represents a nauseating betrayal of American values - and a telling exposure of Trump's own.
"Hey, he's a tough guy," Trump told Fox News's Bret Baier. "When you take over a country - a tough country, tough people - and you take it over from your father, I don't care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean, that's 1 in 10,000 that could do that. So he's a very smart guy. He's a great negotiator."
Baier persisted: "But he's still done some really bad things."
Trump: "Yeah, but so have a lot of other people have done some really bad things. I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done."
Shades of Trump's moral equivocating on Russian President Vladimir Putin ("There are a lot of killers. We got a lot of killers," Trump told Fox's Bill O'Reilly last year. "What, you think our country is so innocent?"), but so much worse. Consider Trump's own words less than five months ago: "No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea."
Contrast Trump's new fawning, in person and afterward, with President Barack Obama's 2015 encounter with Cuban President Raúl Castro. Agree or not with Obama's outreach to Cuba, fault him for not doing enough to insist on improvements on human rights - at least he brought the subject up, to Castro's face. At least he didn't praise Castro's toughness.
Having left the summit with the gauziest of assurances about denuclearization, Trump assured us, in a tweet, that "there is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea." Is he a charlatan or a fool? The categories are not mutually exclusive. Nothing concrete was promised, by an adversary that has proved itself untrustworthy.
Trump's North Korea performance is bad enough on its own. Add the jarring, unwarranted mistreatment of our closest allies, before, during and after the Group of Seven summit. Add the jarring, unwarranted suggestion that Russia - the country that interfered in the 2016 election, on Trump's behalf; the country that the United States and others have just penalized for trying to assassinate a former spy - should be invited back into the G-7.
And add, if your stomach isn't already churning, what is happening on the home front. Parents are being separated from their children in the service of deterring illegal border crossings - and with the false excuse that it is "the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats." One Honduran woman claimed that immigration agents took her daughter while she was breast-feeding . Others have reportedly been told, chillingly, that their children are being taken off to bathe, only to have them disappear. It is hard to believe I am typing these words about my own country.
And it's almost as hard to believe that spineless Republicans acquiesce in the behavior of a president who, again this week, asserted that "Our Country's biggest enemy is the Fake News." There are episodic, ineffective bleats of protest from lame-duck lawmakers with no election left to lose.
But as the results of Tuesday's primary elections made clear, the Grand Old Party has degenerated into the Don't Poke the Bear Party. Elected officials, as soon- to-be-former Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) can tell you, cross Trump at their peril.
Wednesday's chilling message from the chair of the Republican National Committee: "Anyone that does not embrace the @realDonaldTrump agenda of making America great again will be making a mistake." Proving the point made by departing Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)
that Republicans "have a cult-like situation as it relates to a president that happens to be purportedly of the same party."
Meanwhile, the president of what was formerly known as the party of Lincoln cheers the election of Corey Stewart, a white-supremacist sympathizer, to be the Republican Senate candidate in Virginia.
The word "sickening" is not strong enough.
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Trump's authoritarian moves are expanding day by day. The country is in a crisis.
If that's the case, John Boy, it's way past time to start looking for a safe space.
Deleted, skirting {SP}
99% of your comments are 'sound bites' based on right wing media. It seems very suspicious.
Interestingly you just described yourself .... except with a heavy left leaning bias.
You can see that right?
Sparty, I post seeds articles and comments that I am well prepared to defend in specific
Greg does not do any of that.
You are a lot more like him than I am.
I am really getting sick of you people.
Yes i understand. It can be tough on a guy when "us people" point out such things.
And thats okay. I didn't think you would make the connection ....
Removed for context
I've been saying that for a long time here. One of a number of truly unwavering sycophants who retreat in the face of indisputable evidence, but offer knee jerk attacks at the drop of a seed.
I'd be embarrassed to come on a forum and be as incompetent as some of these people are.
Is that the name of a band?
And there it is, the completely uninformed, sanctimonious insult from the left ..... from the party of inclusion ....... hilarious!
(Removed for context ) 99% of your comments are 'sound bites' based on right wing media. It seems very suspicious.
99% of your comments are 'sound bites' based on left wing lies and fake media. It seems very suspicious.
Aw....you poor baby. Go complain to the head moderator, but you gain nothing with all the personal attacks.
You would know all about that wouldn't you?
Deleted, skirting {SP}
You must live in a different country than the USA. That statement is indefensible for the USA.
You don't think that having a president who is a pathological liar is a crisis? ( Deleted, Skirting {SP} )
So tell what exactly is the crisis....
Trump told Fox News he wants Americans to obey him like North Koreans do Kim Jung Un
It was disgusting but not surprising from the mini dick tater wannabe.
Is that just an accidental repeating of a lie?
The word President Trump used was "listen". Heard that with my own ears.
Now please somebody tell me what leader of any government doesn't want his people to listen to him?
Trump: Kim's people sit up when he speaks, 'I want my people to do the same'
Good question. Michelle can tell you whom to listen to though.
I heard "at attention".
Context matters, too. He wants to be more like a murderous dictator, and wants "his people" to be more like that dictator's subjects, who "sit at attention" because he's a murderous dictator.
"(Kim) speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same,"
"(Hitler) speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same,"
"(Stalin) speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same,"
"(Mao) speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same,"
"(Pol Pot) speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same,"
It's not about wanting people to listen to you, it's about who you're emulating in order to make them do so.
When in school many a teacher would tell us to sit up straight and pay attention. Should these teachers be considered control freaks? Ironfisted demigods of discipline? Perhaps they only wanted to take their jobs seriously and help us to learn?
Have you ever been a leader? I can't think of a single politician, businessman, shop foreman or babysitter that doesn't want the people they are responsible for to listen to them.
This is nothing more than another one of those media word twisting games used because they have nothing of substance to use. President Trump knew this would happen. Keeping the press jumping around playing semantical games keeps them occupied while he attends to real business.
Okay, bring on all the speculation about how real business to him means the destruction of America. That's all you have, partisan speculation.
When in school you are a child/teenager so that is being respectful to a teacher.
The rest are adults, too friggin' bad for trump that people don't "Sit at Attention" for him, he is a president, NOT a dictator.
As long as people are paying attention to him, what does it matter how they are sitting.
A wanna be dictator is what he is emulating.
When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke, his people not only sat up, they stood up and paid attention
What a stupid game you seek to play.
Really, reporting his praise for Kim is "word twisting"?
Is he praising a dictator?
Yes.
Does he wish "his people" would behave more like that dictator's subjects?
Yes.
Those were his words. No twisting necessary. Reporting his actual words isn't twisting them.
The only "word twisting" going on around here is yours, when you said "at attention" was "listen". I notice you didn't address the fact that either your memory or your hearing is failing.
I think it's worse than that. "Paying attention" in N Korea means obedience. That is what Trump wants, complete agreement with whatever he says and obedience.
That's because they wanted to.
And he had the moral authority to get that type of respect.
You demonstrate my point. Emulating MLK Jr. would be an excellent way to get people to sit up and listen. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke with moral authority, he made personal connections, he listened to his crowds, he was eloquent, he was prepared, he would stay up till 4 am some nights before a speech re-writing and refining it, he took lessons from other great historical orators like Abraham Lincoln.
In contrast, Trump is looking up to an authoritarian dictator whose people are forced to stand up and listen to him because if they don't not only they but their families risk being sent to a concentration camp where they are starved, beaten and forced to do hard labor. It has nothing to do with Kim's oratory skills, he doesn't have to inspire anyone with eloquence, he reads from his list of demands and uses the military to carry out and enforce them. He would have no fans and no supporters if the people he has subjugated were free to speak their minds.
Trump is one of the worst orators in history, he doesn't prepare, he goes off on self aggrandizing tangents that add nothing to the topic he's speaking on, he regularly butchers words and grammar and he speaks with no moral authority or eloquence. He's the Larry the Cable Guy of speeches by which I mean, he speaks to one group only, his base, in the ignorant grammar style they apparently understand. So when he speaks, HIS people already do listen, just the rest of America who see him as the intellectually deficient bigot he is cover their ears in disgust.
My memory? My hearing? That second block quote is a falsehood.
Exactly who is it doing the word twisting around here?
Some things never change. attackers come out of the woodwork in droves when they think they can draw blood on someone they hate hoping they can grab a piece of the credit for doing so. Oops another blind alley. Just like on Newsvine, fuck with the Owl and you end up fucking yourself.
Please continue having your fun, every comment counts and I am still reading the IG report.
Well, pardon the fuck out of me....
The exact quote is: "He (Kim Jong Un) speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same,".
No where in that quote does it use the word "listen".
The funny thing is, is that Trump said it in sarcasm, and y'all lapped it up like spilled milk
Sure....he said that after he got blasted for it. I doubt the man knows the meaning of sarcasm
Do we have another bad ass on NT.
...Trump said it in sarcasm, and y'all lapped it up like spilled milk
Greg, like poker players, are you able to see a "tell" when Trump speaks? If so please advise so the rest of us will know truth from sarcasm. The "just kidding" was cute the first month or two...now, not so much.
Oh, that's rich. Anything he says that gets a bad reaction he just says "Oh, I was joking". BULLSHIT. He said it then it was hours later after the reactions that he said he was just kidding. So I guess when Obama said "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it" he should have just said "Oh, I was joking, didn't you get that?" and you all would have just said "Oh, it was a joke, okay, never mind..."
Yeah and Roseanne said it was all about anti-semitism....
Yeppers, she keeps digging herself in deeper and deeper every time she opens her mouth. I would not be surprised if the makers of Ambian do not sue her for blaming Ambian for her making her initial screw up.
Except that several people here have watched the clip, and know that you're either mistaken, or lying. Take your pic.
A legend in his own mind.
Roseanne just don't get it....it is better to let people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and prove them right.