Yesterday Trump Once And For All Admitted He Makes Things Up
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/15/why-trumps-admission-that-he-made-stuff-up-to-justin-trudeau-is-particularly-bad/?utm_term=.739f8d241907
In a fundraising speech Wednesday, President Trump admitted once and for all that he just makes stuff up . The man who has racked up more than 2,000 false and misleading claims as president said he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that United States runs a trade deficit with Canada — despite having “no idea” whether that was actually the case. (Surprise! It's not.)
“I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know,” Trump said. “I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid.”
None of this is hugely surprising. Trump utters way too many falsehoods for it to be a coincidence. And we've seen over and over again — particularly most recently in meetings with lawmakers about guns and immigration — that Trump simply doesn't do his homework beforehand. He generally doesn't seem to have even a cursory understanding of what Congress is up to or about the underlying policies.
But the fact that Trump would make up this particular fact is especially remarkable and ominous.
The first reason is that this is perhaps the one issue Trump has focused on for decades: Trade. It would be more understandable for him to make things up on guns and immigration, but trade is supposedly the issue on which Trump has been entirely consistent for many, many years. The idea that other countries are taking advantage of the United States was a talking point long before he became a politician.
Trump for years has talked about how the North American Free Trade Agreement is such a bad deal. And he threatened Canada with new steel and aluminum tariffs , before he decided to exempt them, for now, as long as the NAFTA negotiations go his way. Yet he didn't even know that the United States runs a trade surplus with Canada!? If he doesn't have that basic a level of background knowledge on an issue he apparently cares deeply about, what does he study?
The second reason is that it was a rather pointless invention. Trudeau knows the truth: He's been involved in policy-making for years and knows these things because it's very important to his job as a world leader. Why Trump would feel the need to make something up that is of such consequence to Trudeau doesn't even make sense for strategic reasons. It's not like Trump was going to pull one over on the prime minister and have the Canadians suddenly cave on NAFTA negotiations.
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Abraham Lincoln - "When I said " Four score and seven years ago" I had no idea if it was true or not."
The plain and simple truth is that Trump really has no idea, not even the most basic knowledge, of how international trade works. He doesn't really understand how trade deficits work when the concern the many countries around the world that we trade with and how tariffs affect all of the other countries when we impose them one. He brags about being a great businessman and that that is why we should trust him to negotiate our trade and the nations business, but if you look back on his businesses one can only conclude that he has spent his life as a really shitty business man. Think about it this way, when was the last time you sat at a bar in a Trump casino, sipping Trump Vodka, while waiting for your Trump steak to be properly prepared for you and knowing that you would not have been able to pay for any of it if you had not graduated fro Trump University? Trump is very, very smart, as a cheap con man. As a business man? He sucks dead baby bears.
The best part is that Drumpf's followers are even dumber than he is. Ignorance and stupidity are central values to them, and they despise education. Betsy DeVos is iconic in that regard.
No Value [ph]
Another brain fart?
Speaking of which.....
An imaginary bogeyman.
t's not like Trump was going to pull one over on the prime minister and have the Canadians suddenly cave on NAFTA negotiations.
But Trump will negotiate a better deal. That's what he does. That's the point of the threat of tariffs.
Trump does not know HOW to negotiate a deal. He is a phony as a businessman.
And the evidence of this is...?
And thus far all it has gotten is everyone telling us to fuck off and making their own threats.
Except a man (Trump) who quickly admits his stupidity is unable to negotiate a better deal. He's just too stupid.
How can you possibly negotiate a better deal when you don't know the facts of the relationship?
Trump is an abject failure as a businessman and always has been. Every business he has touched he has driven into bankruptcy to the point where the only loans he could get any longer were from Russian Oligarchs and shady Russian banks. No reputable bank in the world would touch him. His reputation as a great businessman is a joke! I walked past girls selling Girl Scout Cookies in front of the grocery store yesterday and they were better at business then he ever was.
Will somebody please tell me how this makes Trump a leader? Publicly admitting that you are complete moron does not connote leadership.
He is not a leader. He is nothing but a carnival level con man. No more. No less.
I can already see the day nobody will admit they voted for him or supported him, they will be so afraid of being THAT moron.
I wouldn’t even call him a conman, that’s giving him too much credit. He’s just a blunt business thug. The tariff thing makes it obvious. Out of the blue he’s going to start taking other countries’ lunch money - but he’ll be flexible about how much he shakes each one down depending on what they offer him. At some point one of them is going to kick him in the nuts like he deserves. Unfortunately we will all end up feeling it.
At that rally in Pennylvania this week for Saccone - donald rump called someone a son of a bitch.
How Presidential!
He would have made a good mafia thug...the kind who go to Mom and Pop grocery stores and shake them down for protection money
It's not like he hasn't learned from the most prolific mobsters of his era. His mob ties have been public knowledge for decades.
In New York City for decades and decades it has not been possible to do big real estate deals without working with either the Italian Mob or the Russian Mob. As Mueller checks out Trump's finances he IS going to run across illegal connections to one or both. It is a virtual certainty.
His long-term lawyer was literally a mob consigliere, Roy Cohn.
Because it appeals to other morons?
And they are his base - a bunch of freaking morons.
And his defenders will still support him, even when he flat out admits he is totally full of shit and has no idea what he is talking about.
Ah. But you are ignoring to equate the simplest fact that the 'Trump supporters' feel justified and vindicated that Trump's lines of crap are a true reflection of themselves. This phenomenon is psychological and bears proof of declining intellect wrought by three plus decades of Supply Side Economics and the emergence of a permanent societal upper economic classes.
How about that?
Trump tells his base what they want to hear with a thick topping of rhetoric and bullshit. When he says things like, "My inauguration crowd was the biggest ever in history", his base doesn't even look it up, they take it as an absolute truth, no questions asked. Why? Because they want trump to be all these fantastic things and fact checking him, (which ANYONE can do with a damn cell phone), fact checking his statements would reveal the truth and damage their image of him. In other words, they don't care if donny lies, as long as they are lies they want to believe to be the truth. It truly is a cultist attitude.
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Remember, the first thing a cult leader does is tell you everyone else is lying, and that's exactly what trump does.
Actually, Trump admitted nothing. To his base, his words, although meaningless, are sacred. Besides, there is so much going on with Trump and Trumpism that what he says a moment ago is null and void by the next moment.
He admits he lies, but some of his followers actually like that about him. It make him sort of the rouge that is going to go out and negotiate a deal for America by lying and fooling the other side a bit and being sneaky. What he and his blinded followers don't understand is that the people Trump is negotiating with know all of the bullshit, angles and secrets that Trump will try on them and each one will just lower their already small respect for him and America. Why does that matter? Because this is no longer the glory years of the post WWII economy when the U.S. was the only game in town. We have a lot of competitors now and have to act like it. We also have a lot of people who want to sell to us, but we are not the only market for them. They can pick up their goods and go elsewhere.
In other words....we're fucked
In those exact words. Well, unless we get rid of Trump. He has got to go. For there to be a real future for America, he has got to go.
Everyone knows this, it has to stop !
So after screaming, "fake news!!!!!!!!" for the last 18 months, trump finally admits that most of what come out of his soup cooler is....fake news. How shocking. /yawn/
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Just remember kids, literally everything trump has accused others of, he has been found guilty of.
How can so many evangelicals be totally bamboozled by this carnival barker, lying, cheating, egomaniac?
The right wing after the Bush years won't lay claim to how they voted and avoid bringing up Bush entirely, so how do these voters plan on spinning their votes for Trump when this goes down badly?
Bush was a complete failure and lied about WMD, etc., but Trump lies every day, every week, about everything.
Trump is a liar, he is an admitted liar, and no American should be proud of that.
Evangelicals bamboozelled
Nah. Worship the fetus--the hell with it all.
Poor married couples shouldn't be having sex if they can't afford children...that is the gist of the gop ideology
Part of me thinks that there is a reason for this latest bit of exposure. It seems a little too spoon fed. Maybe he's just trying to publicly establish precedent that he is a willful and flagrant liar, so that his lying seem less premeditated and more like simple Trump standard operating procedure.
It's similar to the Stormy Daniels situation. Most people who get caught in a hush money operation cannot say that it is routine business in their lives to pay off people who are threatening to hurt their careers with information, but Trump can fall back on that reality because he is such a scumbag that his disgusting lifestyle routinely comes back to haunt him. Ari Melber discussed that the other night on his show, and basically laid out the facts that might legitimize any perceived campaign finance violations related to the Stormy Daniels payoff. All Trump has to do is publicly admit to being the loathsome creep he is, and disclose the many routine times that he has paid off people for similar reasons. A man with zero sense of shame would be okay with that.
The sad thing is that....here's what I really hate about trump.. It's all we talk about now; the daily chaos in the WH. Who has been fired, who is about to be fired, what did trump say this time to embarrass the country, who is he bashing, (usually everyone except putin), what has he lied about, bashing the media, name calling, finger pointing, another person claiming trump fucked them behind his wife's back, (which apparently the moral right wing is totally ok with). It just goes on and on and on...every single day. Media's fault? No, the media is doing what they are supposed to do, report the news. Not their fault trump is a total dumpster fire. We have a jackass for a president. He is in WAY over his head. He is pathetic and will be viewed as the worst president in history....which is really saying something given that trump actually makes GWB look like a damn good president.
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But yea, that's all we talk about...trump, and it's really getting old. He won the election, he needs to stop acting like a petulant 12 year old boy with a shiny new toy.
I think the answer should be that the people of America can walk and chew gum at the same time. It is true that too much attention is paid to Trump, in one sense, and in the other that not enough of the right kinds of attention have been paid. It was well know before the election that Trump was mentally disturbed, that he is a crook, a bully, a misogynist and a pathological liar. The media did not do it's job and run him out of the race at the time by fully and emphatically revealing all these things, because keeping him around was good for their ratings and page views.
It is 100% true that Trump has no more business being president of the United States than a random person chosen out of a phone book. That is not the sort of thing that you can just ignore.
Still there are other important stories and issues that are being shortchanged. We have to both strive to rid the world of Trump and express opinions on the other issues as well. Gotta do both.
There's a revelation if ever there was one.
He lies about his lies, then lies about lying about them. He has been this way since the seventies, he has just become more prolific and adept at his art of late.
It is 100% true that Trump has no more business being president of the United States than a random person chosen out of a phone book.
In retrospect, we should have shelved the election and opted for the phone book.