If gloating was an activity that could somehow be converted to raw energy, the amount of gloating that Donald Trump is doing nowadays would power the sun. He just thinks it’s so cool that he got elected to a second term and now he can crucify his enemies. That’s precisely what he’s got planned. Anybody who has ever slighted him is now being intimidated, including many Republicans. What I will say for now is remember the old adage: pride goeth before a fall. And another adage: the bigger they come the harder they fall.
Trump appointed former Fox News contributor Morgan Ortagus to serve as Deputy Special Envoy for Middle East Peace on Friday. (Is there anyone left at Fox News now besides the camera operators, anybody know?) Ortagus had disagreed with Trump in the past and he’s not letting her forget it.
In a post to Truth Social, Trump admitted that he had squabbled with Ortagus in the past and added that nominations like this “usually don’t work out.”
“I am pleased to announce Morgan Ortagus as Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Middle East Peace… Early on Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson,” Trump wrote. “She will hopefully be an asset to Steve [Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East].”
Ortagus previously served as a State Department spokesperson under Trump and worked before that as a national security contributor for Fox News. It was on that network that Ortagus blasted Trump’s “isolationist” foreign policy and “disgusting” behavior, a 2019 CNN report found, before later reinventing herself as a pro-MAGA personality.
The president-elect indicated he could look past her anti-Trump record but seemed less than thrilled about the appointee in the announcement. He went so far as to clarify that he was mainly throwing a bone to his GOP allies with the pick, despite personal reservations.
“These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens,” Trump wrote. “Good luck, Morgan!”
Ortagus has the backing of high-ranking Republicans, including many in the national security community. Axios reported that her appointment was boosted by closeness with Trump’s Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Trump’s national security adviser pick Mike Waltz.
The moral of the story appears to be that if you cross Trump you’re toast, but if Marco and Lindsey and a few others put in a good word for you, you might get rescued from the fire of Trump’s wrath before you turn into total charcoal and repurposed in some other role. That is what has happened to this woman.
But the takeaway here is something altogether: Trump puts his ego above all else. He could have just as well appointed this woman to her post and not said a word. But he had to let the world know that this woman was not sufficiently deferential to him and he was grudgingly giving the job, because he’s such a big guy and willing to throw the Republicans a bone from time to time.
That’s the way a child, or maybe a teenager thinks, but this is not statesmanlike behavior. Not that we expect that from Trump. History has told us what to expect and common decency — or common sense — is definitely not on the list.
But what I marvel at is that people still vote for a man who acts this way. There probably isn’t a MAGA that would want to work for a boss like Trump really is: somebody who stiffs his workers, mocks the people under him, intimidates and threatens subordinates. Nobody wants to work for somebody like that. Nobody even wants to be around somebody like that.
Yet America gave this slug its most important job. That is what I marvel at. If any of you have MAGA relatives, neighbors, whatever, could you simply ask them about this? Why would they vote for somebody like this? The only MAGA I’ve ever known first hand was an evangelical wingnut and her reasoning was that he was “born again” which is a lie fabricated by a faux historian, David Barton, in Texas, after it became clear that Ted Cruz wouldn’t get the nomination.
Barton had to come up with a maneuver to get the religious vote and he did so, and fast. But beyond that one abysmally ignorant woman who told me about “baby Xian Trump,” I haven’t spoken with another MAGA. I would like to know how they justify a vote for this creature. I sincerely would.
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I ride around with my old truck as a billboard. I want the facts staring people in the face. I point out I’m a vet and R=Nazis…along with FAFO. My common law wife worries about me getting accosted. I remind her I grew up in hell, facing guns and knives as a CHILD. I also remind her I was illegally sent to prison, without a record, and after FOUR MONTHS of holding rapists and killers at bay, the parole board admitted I was a victim of injustice, and wrote me a letter supporting a pardon. These fat, deluded aholes are just ’empty barrels’, all hat an no cattle. Clearly fear is not something I carry around…I had to abandon it long ago to survive. The closest character on TV that reminds me of the refusal, or inability to be intimidated, is Beth on Yellowstone. She’s just a make believe character…my life is all too real. I tell her if anyone comes at me with their made up bullshit…they aren’t messing with a rich pampered politician, or a journalist…they will, at the least, have their perspective altered, if nothing worse. We are at war. If you don’t believe it now…just wait til this child killer gets back into office…then we’ll talk. We are going to witness evil that makes his first go around seem like Disneyland. As Danzel Washington said in Man On Fire…there’s no such thing as tough…there’s trained and untrained…and I have been trained all my goddamn life for battle. Bring it on assholes…just remember when you pray for rain…you will have to deal with the mud. I’m quicksand. Draw your own goddamn conclusions you nazi loving evil bastards.
I predict we’re all going to find out many who accept appointments by Coward 45 will quit within a few weeks or months. Coward 45 is a psychic vampire control freak who is mentally ill & now acting as the First King Dictator of the Divided Russian controlled States of America. In his deranged mind not a single law applies to him and every act will be to extort, steal, bully and oppress everyone. The atmosphere is already so toxic surrounding him, anyone in his staff or Cabinet might be arrested or shot dead for speaking out of turn or saying anything perceived to be out of alignment with Coward 45’s Nazi plan. Or else outed from the GOP-Nazi Klan for not toeing the line resulting in instant death threats to them and their families from his brainwashed MAGAts. No one will ever advise Coward 45 with the real facts either (assuming they know the real facts) – only the truth they think Coward 45 wishes to hear – which will change daily. They shall all find out rather quickly that nothing of substance will get accomplished from working in this environment and even if they only care about collecting a salary for doing little or nothing…no amount of salary will be worth the stress aggravation and personal safety risk of the job.
Re: “Yet America gave this slug its most important job.” That presumes a majority of voters actually voted for Coward 45 in every single swing state. For example….Statistical analysis of information on the voting trends, sex, ages, party affiliations, and voting precincts of all actual voters in Nevada 2024 revealed only a 1 in 3 million chance that Coward 45 “won” Nevada when comparing the same Nevada 2020 voter trends by category. Digging deeper into the trends it was discovered that the source of the anomaly came only from early vote ballots tabulated, which showed a strong anomalous number of votes for only Coward 45 at the top of the ticket and those same voters voting Dem the rest of the downballot – with anomalously little variation by sex, party, age or precinct. Considering the same anomaly did not show up in 2020 in Nevada, and because early voting is strongly favored by Dem voters over Repub voters – the data strongly suggests electronic voting machine hacking occurred to flip just the votes from Harris to Coward 45 at the top of the ticket for a huge percentage of the early votes. A similar but less detailed analysis in North Carolina revealed a similar statistical anomaly resulting in Coward 45 “winning” NC by 183,000 votes (3.3% points) but it was a near clean sweep for all statewide Democrats. For example, Josh Stein, a Dem, won Governor of NC by 828,00 votes (14.8%). You may recall that Republicans demanded and carried out a recount when Biden won in 2020. Guaranteed if a forensic audit was performed of the electronic voting machines traces within a few days after November 5, the election fraud would have been revealed in every “swing” state and the actual results would have showed Harris/Walz won by a landslide. And why didn’t Biden have Elon Musk arrested & his security clearance revoked when 1 month prior to the election he met secretly with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, in criminal violation of the Logan Act?
Re: “But what I marvel at is that people still vote for a man who acts this way.”; and “Why would they vote for somebody like this?” The answer to those Qs depends on the MAGAt. They fall into at least 8 main categories for different reasons, which will take a whole chapter to go into. But the one reason I have heard no one anywhere talk about is this: MAGAts think the rich multimillionaires and billionaires (US Oligarchs) control the majority of jobs in the US – whether in small to large Government jobs in red states or in most corporations. MAGAts worship money as their God. They believe with Coward 45 as Dictator more jopbs will go to MAGAt workers everywhere and those who voted against Republicans will be punished as second class citizens, passed over for jobs or eventually lose their jobs by saying anything against their Orange Feurer. This is already ingrained in practiced for decades in large corporations. For example, General Motors secretly allowing only Republican voting employees to be selected up the corporate ladder for management positions. And look no further than Coward 45’s role model practice of Nepotism, Favoritism, and Cronyism in appointing & hiring staff. MAGAts look at Coward 45 & they all find something in him that reminds them of themselves. They want to be like him (including his $$$) and think they will get a leg up over anyone else when it’s time to pass out the jobs, especially after kicking all the illegals out of the USA, which will open up more jobs for them too. It doesn’t have to be logical or make sense, but that’s how a lot of the MAGAts think. This group of MAGAts erroneously believed that voting for Coward 45 WAS an act of voting for their own self-interest.