Play Nice 45th President of the United States: Donald Trump - Part 12: This thread it’s going to disappear; One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear

[ShanDog]

Mod Notice

The level of vitriol and frankly toxic culture in this thread is getting out of hand. As such, the thread will be monitored actively for posters who drag down the quality of posting for all others, and they will have their access to the thread removed.

Further, reference to TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and its counterpart 'Trumpanzee' or anything similar will no longer be allowed. Much like other tropes of that nature, they serves as a conversational barrier and fall-back point for people to simply sling mud. That's unacceptable.

Thanks.

 

[Farmer2Goggin]

A sympathetic assessment of Trumpy's mental state. Excerpt below -- the whole thing can be read at:
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/09/dr...if-he-werent-president-he-would-be-in-prison/

I recently spoke with Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and now a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. We discussed the coronavirus pandemic and what this crisis has revealed about Donald Trump's mental health and behavior.
Dodes was a contributor to the bestselling volume "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," and is a regular guest on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell".
In this conversation, Dodes explains how the coronavirus pandemic offers further evidence of Trump's predatory, sociopathic behavior and his lack of care or concern for other human beings. Trump's programming and behavior, in fact makes him perhaps the worst person imaginable to lead the United States through the coronavirus crisis. Dodes also explains why too many people, especially in the news media, remain in a state of deep denial about Trump's behavior and the depths of his mental pathologies.
If Trump had not been born into money, Dodes told me, he would have wound up in prison by now. Instead he is president of the United States and vigorously protected by the Republican Party and its supporters.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Is Donald Trump the freest man alive? He has no internal restraints — and increasingly no external restraints either.
I think he is the least free man. You and I have some degree of choice about how we're going to behave and react to the world around us; we are complex and we make complex decisions because we have a conscience and we care about the effects of our actions on others. Donald Trump, in contrast, is very simple. Everything he says or does is for himself, either to have power over others or to hurt them in revenge against their disagreeing or standing in his way. Because he has shown himself to be incapable of either conscience or empathy, he is basically a predator, lacking the most essential parts of our humanity.
Despite this, he has two techniques that have allowed him to be successful in business and politics: He is a bully, and he lies continuously. Repeating his lies over and over is like the "big lie" technique made famous by Hitler. It works because when a lie is endlessly repeated, even decent people assume there must be some truth in it.
Donald Trump has lied at least 16,000 times. Why are there journalists, reporters, politicians and people among the general public who keep giving him the benefit of the doubt despite the overwhelming evidence that he is a compulsive liar?
People want to trust others. I, too, would rather believe that the president of the United States was an honest, decent, thoughtful person. For some people, having an authority figure be trustworthy is so important that they will not accept the obvious facts about Trump. Like other predators, or other sociopaths, Trump takes advantage of this very human quality by pretending to be trustworthy through endless lying about his real motivations and even his real actions.
Donald Trump has said and done many unconscionable things during his time in the White House. But his recent suggestion that doctors and nurses are stealing ventilators from hospitals is, even by standards, one of his most despicable comments. Is that just his instinct — to go to such an unbelievably dark place?
As my colleague Dr. John Gartner pointed out, if Trump were walking around wearing a tinfoil hat and talking about Martians controlling his mind, it would be easy for the public to recognize how severely ill he is. Trump is the most dangerous person we could have as a president precisely because his delusional core is not as obvious. When he makes these claims about ventilators and the coronavirus, they need to be understood as delusional beliefs that he summons from his imagination to protect himself, and which he is incapable of altering when presented with reality.

Disturbingly frank and telling article.
The last paragraph is yet to fully play itself out but it surely will and when it does it will create devastating divisions

 

[Crankitup]

Have you deliberately ignored that Trump accused "doctors and nurses" of thefts and none of these articles even suggest that the thefts are by doctors or nurses - indeed they are stating that member of the public are responsible for the thefts.

Another example of the pathetic lows to which Trump defenders will go. Disappointing from you, I thought you started to see through it yesterday.

Open your eyes. This is what he said ....

----------------------------------------------------

Something’s going on. And you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going?” he wondered. “So somebody should probably look into that.”

“I think people should check that because there’s something going on. I don’t think it’s hoarding. I think it’s maybe worse than hoarding,” he said. “Check it out. I don’t know. I think that’s for other people to figure out.”

“Are they going out the back door?” he added.

A mask manufacturer present at the briefing backed up those numbers.

-----------------------------------------------------

Now, where the hell did he mention doctors and nurses FFS??

 

[Maggie5]

It won't surprise you I concur with Joel B. Pollak's perspective.

------------------------------------------------------------------

We now know the cost of impeachment.

While Democrats were diverting the attention and energy of the entire country into a pointless trial that could not possibly have ended in anything other than President Donald Trump’s acquittal, the coronavirus pandemic was beginning in China and arriving in the United States.

The timeline of the two developments — impeachment and coronavirus — is shocking, and reveals the true cost of hyper-partisanship.

• January 11: Chinese state media report the first known death from an illness originating in the Wuhan market.
• January 15: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) holds a vote to send articles of impeachment to the Senate. Pelosi and House Democrats celebrate the “solemn” occasion with a signing ceremony, using commemorative pens. That same day, the first person with coronavirus in the United States arrives from China, where he had been in Wuhan.
• January 21: The first American case of coronavirus is confirmed at a clinic in Snohomish County, Washington.
• January 23: The House impeachment managers make their opening arguments for removing President Trump.
• January 23: China closes off the city of Wuhan completely to slow the spread of coronavirus to the rest of China.
• January 27: The White House convenes a special task force to deal with the emerging threat of coronavirus.
• January 29: The president chairs a meeting of the White House coronavirus task force for the first time.
• January 30: Senators begin asking two days of questions of both sides in the president’s impeachment trial.
• January 30: The World Health Organization declares a global health emergency as coronavirus continues to spread.
• January 31: The Senate holds a vote on whether to allow further witnesses and documents in the impeachment trial.
• January 31: President Trump declares a national health emergency and imposes a ban on travel to and from China. Former Vice President Joe Biden calls Trump’s decision “hysterical xenophobia … and fear-mongering.”
• February 2: The first death from coronavirus outside China is reported in the Philippines.
• February 3: House impeachment managers begin closing arguments, calling Trump a threat to national security.
• February 4: President Trump talks about coronavirus in his State of the Union address; Pelosi rips up every page.
• February 5: The Senate votes to acquit President Trump on both articles of impeachment, 52-48 and 53-47.
• February 5: House Democrats finally take up coronavirus in the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia.

For twenty days, from the day the first death from coronavirus was known, Democrats did nothing about it. They were too busy with the president’s impeachment trial — a trial Pelosi had delayed unnecessarily for several weeks.

To the extent that they commented on coronavirus at all, it was only to tear up the president’s remarks or to call him a racist. They told the nation that he, not coronavirus, was a threat to the national security of the United States.

In the midst of that all-consuming trial, it is remarkable Trump was able to do anything else at all. But he did, and one of the things he did was impose the China travel ban, just one day after the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global health emergency, and the day before the first victim of the pandemic died outside China.

For his trouble, he was criticized by the World Health Organization and called “hysterical” by his future 2020 rival.

When Republicans warned Democrats that impeachment was a waste of time, a divisive partisan exercise, and a distraction from the real issues facing the country — a lesson Republicans learned the hard way, in Bill Clinton’s impeachment, 21 years before — Democrats ignored them.

Just a few weeks later, our divided leaders were taken by surprise by the pandemic, and bickered on cable news, asking why nothing was done sooner.

But we know why.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Farmer2Goggin]

Head in the sand stuff right there.

Trump basically said "I don't know", "It needs to be looked into" and "Are they going out the back door?".

A week or two earlier Cuomo was much more definite with his comments.

People are stealing masks and other medical equipment from hospitals, New York Gov. Cuomo says

As fear over the new coronavirus in New York spreads faster than the outbreak, people have started to steal masks and other medical equipment from local hospitals.

www.cnbc.com

Numerous news reports around the same time and shortly after concurred.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article241238641.html

People are stealing masks and other sterile supplies from hospitals and research facilities amid a global shortage

As demand for masks increases, they have been reported stolen from hospitals and other facilities where they are necessary, like a Harvard lab.

www.businessinsider.com.au

Hospitals Grapple With More Than COVID-19, Forced To Crack Down On Theft Of Medical Supplies

Morning Insider Lauren Victory reports of another trend – products disappearing from medical supply closets.

chicago.cbslocal.com

What do you take from the expert opinion of Trumps mental disorder and how that is playing out in plain sight?
Inaccurate , fake news, biased?
What do you feel in his virus updates when it’s patently obvious all he is trying to do is tell us how great he is doing with lies and happy talk?
Would you work for him if he was your boss?

 

[Crankitup]

Would you work for him if he was your boss?

I don't think I've held back in this thread admitting several of his shortcomings. I agree he would be hard to work for at times too. However, I'm sure I'd much prefer to work for him than the alternative.

 

[LuvtheKangas]

Open your eyes. This is what he said ....

----------------------------------------------------

Something’s going on. And you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going?” he wondered. “So somebody should probably look into that.”

“I think people should check that because there’s something going on. I don’t think it’s hoarding. I think it’s maybe worse than hoarding,” he said. “Check it out. I don’t know. I think that’s for other people to figure out.”

“Are they going out the back door?” he added.

A mask manufacturer present at the briefing backed up those numbers.

-----------------------------------------------------

Where did he mention doctors and nurses FFS??

Yes, I saw that coming. The whole industry interpreted his comments the way he intended them to. If he was talking about the thefts by outsiders from hospitals (which were mainly highlighted subsequently), then it would have been simple to specify that and ask for people to respect the front line health workers.

No, he knew what he was saying, the targets of his veiled accusations knew what he was saying, and so did a large portion of the public.

On a related note, it's disturbing that this is your only take-out of the very chilling assessment of his behaviour.

 

[SBD Gonzalez]

While Democrats were diverting the attention and energy of the entire country into a pointless trial that could not possibly have ended in anything other than President Donald Trump’s acquittal,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What were they supposed to do, when they had irrefutable evidence of Trump's gross corruption?

With evidence like that, imagine the hue and cry if they'd decided to sit on it and not impeach him.

No, the take-away from the whole sorry impeachment saga - which I've hardly seen anyone mention - is that it has revealed there is a fatal flaw in the US Constitution.

Imagine setting the bar so incredibly high for impeachment of a sitting president - which the constitution does, and rightly so (so you can know without a doubt that the accusations against Trump were not vexatious or frivolous) - and then just having it put it to a vote in the senate, where surprise, surprise, it simply gets dismissed along party lines.

What. A. Joke.

Americans need to tidy up their own grossly flawed system before they start lecturing the rest of the world about their wonderful republic, their wonderful system of government, and democracy and accountability.

 

[Farmer2Goggin]

I don't think I've held back in this thread admitting several of his shortcomings. I agree he would be hard to work for at times too. However, I'm sure I'd much prefer to work for him than the alternative.

View attachment 855539

Don’t disagree - incredible that such a powerful Country can be so devoid of Political talent and Leadership of their Political Parties.
Still shouldn’t stop people from critiquing Trump or demanding better Leadership.

 

[mcnulty]

It won't surprise you I concur with Joel B. Pollak's perspective.

------------------------------------------------------------------

We now know the cost of impeachment.

While Democrats were diverting the attention and energy of the entire country into a pointless trial that could not possibly have ended in anything other than President Donald Trump’s acquittal, the coronavirus pandemic was beginning in China and arriving in the United States.

The timeline of the two developments — impeachment and coronavirus — is shocking, and reveals the true cost of hyper-partisanship.

• January 11: Chinese state media report the first known death from an illness originating in the Wuhan market.
• January 15: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) holds a vote to send articles of impeachment to the Senate. Pelosi and House Democrats celebrate the “solemn” occasion with a signing ceremony, using commemorative pens. That same day, the first person with coronavirus in the United States arrives from China, where he had been in Wuhan.
• January 21: The first American case of coronavirus is confirmed at a clinic in Snohomish County, Washington.
• January 23: The House impeachment managers make their opening arguments for removing President Trump.
• January 23: China closes off the city of Wuhan completely to slow the spread of coronavirus to the rest of China.
• January 27: The White House convenes a special task force to deal with the emerging threat of coronavirus.
• January 29: The president chairs a meeting of the White House coronavirus task force for the first time.
• January 30: Senators begin asking two days of questions of both sides in the president’s impeachment trial.
• January 30: The World Health Organization declares a global health emergency as coronavirus continues to spread.
• January 31: The Senate holds a vote on whether to allow further witnesses and documents in the impeachment trial.
• January 31: President Trump declares a national health emergency and imposes a ban on travel to and from China. Former Vice President Joe Biden calls Trump’s decision “hysterical xenophobia … and fear-mongering.”
• February 2: The first death from coronavirus outside China is reported in the Philippines.
• February 3: House impeachment managers begin closing arguments, calling Trump a threat to national security.
• February 4: President Trump talks about coronavirus in his State of the Union address; Pelosi rips up every page.
• February 5: The Senate votes to acquit President Trump on both articles of impeachment, 52-48 and 53-47.
• February 5: House Democrats finally take up coronavirus in the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia.

For twenty days, from the day the first death from coronavirus was known, Democrats did nothing about it. They were too busy with the president’s impeachment trial — a trial Pelosi had delayed unnecessarily for several weeks.

To the extent that they commented on coronavirus at all, it was only to tear up the president’s remarks or to call him a racist. They told the nation that he, not coronavirus, was a threat to the national security of the United States.

In the midst of that all-consuming trial, it is remarkable Trump was able to do anything else at all. But he did, and one of the things he did was impose the China travel ban, just one day after the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global health emergency, and the day before the first victim of the pandemic died outside China.

For his trouble, he was criticized by the World Health Organization and called “hysterical” by his future 2020 rival.

When Republicans warned Democrats that impeachment was a waste of time, a divisive partisan exercise, and a distraction from the real issues facing the country — a lesson Republicans learned the hard way, in Bill Clinton’s impeachment, 21 years before — Democrats ignored them.

Just a few weeks later, our divided leaders were taken by surprise by the pandemic, and bickered on cable news, asking why nothing was done sooner.

But we know why.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lol, I was wondering how long until this one was trotted out. The impeachment distracted him!!

Problem with that argument of course that Donny himself undermines it. He insists he’s done everything right from day one. Interesting to see how his fanboys manage to reconcile these two things- the Democrats prevented him from doing everything right, but he still did everything right anyway.

It might wash if Trump was capable of admitting error, but of course he’s not.

 

[Crankitup]

Yes, I saw that coming. The whole industry interpreted his comments the way he intended them to. If he was talking about the thefts by outsiders from hospitals (which were mainly highlighted subsequently), then it would have been simple to specify that and ask for people to respect the front line health workers.

No, he knew what he was saying, the targets of his veiled accusations knew what he was saying, and so did a large portion of the public.

On a related note, it's disturbing that this is your only take-out of the very chilling assessment of his behaviour.

A minute ago you were quite happy to say that the articles didn't suggest 'at all' that medical workers could be responsible for some of the theft. This despite at least one articie saying "At Northwestern Memorial Hospital workers are being threatened with termination if they take masks or other hospital supplies".

OTOH, Trump was very careful not to say anything of the sort and you used quotation marks to suggest he did. Some sort of weird illness/phenomena in operation there methinks.

There was and is a thriving black market for this stuff. Very large boxes of it were walking out the door. Pretty hard for members of the public (who have limited or no access to hospital storerooms and pharmacy departments) to be solely responsible for theft on that kind of scale, I would have thought.

 

[LuvtheKangas]

A minute ago you were quite happy to say that the articles didn't suggest 'at all' that medical workers could be responsible for some of the theft. This despite at least one articie saying "At Northwestern Memorial Hospital workers are being threatened with termination if they take masks or other hospital supplies".

OTOH, Trump was very careful not to say anything of the sort and you used quotation marks to suggest he did. Some sort of weird illness/phenomena in operation there methinks.

There was and is a thriving black market for this stuff. Very large boxes of it were walking out the door. Pretty hard for members of the public (who have limited or no access to hospital storerooms and pharmacy departments) to be solely responsible for theft on that kind of scale, I would have thought.

I was wrong to use quotation marks for emphasis. He was careful in his wording, but his meaning was clear, which I was focusing on. It's just fanboy fiction to interpret it as he "was very careful not to say anything of the sort" (correct use of quotation marks this time).

I'm also not denying the possibility that a small number of the tens of thousands of medical workers were doing the wrong thing, as will always happen. The law of averages will see to that. In that sense, it's no different to what happens all over the world, all the time (in basically every industry).

However, it's far from "head in the sand" stuff to suggest that it was despicable for him to make that accusation against the very group people put into the most danger by his negligent ignoring of expert advice due to his ignorance, narcissism and self interest.

 

[Maggie5]

Do the cheerleaders of the apocalypse squad have nothing better to do than wish death upon the innocent? Just stop it.

Still waiting for the 'source'.

 

[Crankitup]

Lol, I was wondering how long until this one was trotted out. The impeachment distracted him!!

It's not so much it distracted Trump as it distracted the Democrats. Because they were still in 'orange man bad' impeachment mode when he started ordering travel bans there's no way they could let themselves be bipartisan and fall in behind what he was trying to do. Instead they actively tried to undermine him and succeeded to a certain extent.

 

[Crankitup]

I was wrong to use quotation marks for emphasis. He was careful in his wording, but his meaning was clear, which I was focusing on. It's just fanboy fiction to interpret it as he "was very careful not to say anything of the sort" (correct use of quotation marks this time).

I'm also not denying the possibility that a small number of the tens of thousands of medical workers were doing the wrong thing, as will always happen. The law of averages will see to that. In that sense, it's no different to what happens all over the world, all the time (in basically every industry).

However, it's far from "head in the sand" stuff to suggest that it was despicable for him to make that accusation against the very group people put into the most danger by his negligent ignoring of expert advice due to his ignorance, narcissism and self interest.

In answer to your last sentence - he didn't. He merely asked questions and said someone should look into it. Remove the prism.

I appreciate everything you said before that however.

 

[mcnulty]

It's not so much it distracted Trump as it distracted the Democrats. Because they were still in 'orange man bad' impeachment mode when he started ordering travel bans there's no way they could let themselves be bipartisan and fall in behind what he was trying to do. Instead they actively tried to undermine him and succeeded to a certain extent.

View attachment 855560

View attachment 855561

View attachment 855562

I could post Schiff's post too but he thought better of it shortly afterwards and hastily deleted it.

“Like a miracle, it will disappear”. February 27.

 

[Stemp Fester]

Stolen from Youtube comments section...

"While stitching a cut on the hand of a 75 year old farmer, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Donald Trump and his role as President.The old farmer said, ” Well, as I see it, Donald Trump is like a ‘Post Tortoise’.” Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a ‘post tortoise’ was. The old farmer said, “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that’s a post tortoise.” The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor’s face so he continued to explain. “You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there, he’s elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb * put him up there to begin with.”

 

[Mick F]

Head in the sand stuff right there.

Trump basically said "I don't know", "It needs to be looked into" and "Are they going out the back door?".

A week or two earlier Cuomo was much more definite with his comments.

People are stealing masks and other medical equipment from hospitals, New York Gov. Cuomo says

As fear over the new coronavirus in New York spreads faster than the outbreak, people have started to steal masks and other medical equipment from local hospitals.

www.cnbc.com

Numerous news reports around the same time and shortly after concurred.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/coronavirus/article241238641.html

People are stealing masks and other sterile supplies from hospitals and research facilities amid a global shortage

As demand for masks increases, they have been reported stolen from hospitals and other facilities where they are necessary, like a Harvard lab.

www.businessinsider.com.au

Hospitals Grapple With More Than COVID-19, Forced To Crack Down On Theft Of Medical Supplies

Morning Insider Lauren Victory reports of another trend – products disappearing from medical supply closets.

chicago.cbslocal.com

Do we walk around with MORON tattooed to our foreheads? So why the endless bullshit and lies? It’s just never ending.
Embarrassing that a grown man thinks it’s a good use of his time.

Who do you think you are fooling? You’d be better off telling it to the petunias in the front yard. At least you would get some fresh air, and might do some pruning.

 

[Crankitup]

“Like a miracle, it will disappear”. February 27.

He probably thought that by closing the borders he'd averted a large outbreak occuring in the US. Didn't realise until later that the horse had already bolted when thousands of Wuhan and other Chinese residents flew around the world before the bans came. Imagine how much worse it would've been under Democrat control. When, if ever, would they have implemented travel bans?

 

[mcnulty]

He probably thought that by closing the borders he'd averted a large outbreak occuring in the US. Didn't realise until later that the horse had already bolted when thousands of Wuhan and other Chinese residents flew around the world before the bans came. Imagine how much worse it would've been under Democrat control. When, if ever, would they have implemented travel bans?

So back to where we started. He thought he’d done everything right, which of course undermines the argument that impeachment had anything to do with it.

 

[Crankitup]

Do we walk around with MORON tattooed to our foreheads? So why the endless bullshit and lies?

Never really thought about what if any tattoos you might have TBH. Forced to guess though I'd place bets on something like this.

Am I right?

 

[Mick F]

I don't think I've held back in this thread admitting several of his shortcomings. I agree he would be hard to work for at times too. However, I'm sure I'd much prefer to work for him than the alternative.

View attachment 855539

Trashing the reputation of people you have never met and will never meet. FFS why???

 

[Crankitup]

Trashing the reputation of people you have never met and will never meet. FFS why???

LOL. Some real FMD irony right there.

How many times have you called Trump and particpants in this thread village idiots and worse again?

 

[LuvtheKangas]

In answer to your last sentence - he didn't. He merely asked questions and said someone should look into it. Remove the prism.

I appreciate everything you said before that however.

This is like high school debating (or, indeed, our legal system). You take a side and argue it black and blue, even though the 'reasonable you' would acknowledge that the opposing interpretation is infinitely more likely.

Why do you think the majority of people reacting to his veiled accusation were so upset by it? Why is it essentially the globally accepted interpretation of what he said? Perhaps its because the obvious was, um, obvious. And only those invested in defending the guy choose to deny the obvious.

 

[Crankitup]

Why do you think the majority of people reacting to his veiled accusation were so upset by it?

Despite the fact I don't accept the premise of your question, there is a possible answer for the way some of them reacted. A guilty conscience.

 

[LuvtheKangas]

Despite the fact I don't accept the premise of your question, there is a possible answer for the way some of them reacted. A guilty conscience.

Oh dear, you didn't think that through at all. So, you're saying tens of thousands of doctors and nurses were involved in the thefts and felt guilty? That is beyond ridiculous.

The very small percentage that were perhaps involved in the pilferage would have STFU. The majority reacted strongly, because they correctly interpreted his words and were upset at being wrongly and unfairly accused. At a time when they were on the front line of the battle, put there by Trump's incompetence.