Donald Trump does so want to appear to be in charge and more than that, even, he wants to staunch those terrible rumors that the game is over and he’s being consigned to the dust bin of irrelevancy. So even though he walked away from COVID-19 negotiations last week and went golfing, he needs to appear to be the eye of the hurricane, the only one who is calm and handling things, while chaos reigns all around him, as unemployment benefits and the Paycheck Protection Program end.
It’s not known if one of his aides persuaded him to interrupt his vacation and at least give the appearance of doing a spot of leadership but in any event, Trump decided to announce his executive orders Saturday night, in front of a live audience of wine drinking, uber wealthy Bedminster club members. He also bragged about how he’s been personally involved in negotiations all along — even though he contradicted himself and said that he was involved “through my representatives,” i.e. Mnuchin and Meadows. In any event, according to Trump, he’s so ferociously on top of the issue that the Democrats are in awe and dying to confer with him on details. The only problem with that allegation, is that nobody on that side of the aisle knows anything about it. Politico:
SHOT: PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP said this Sunday evening about restarting Covid relief negotiations: “The Democrats have called. They’d like to get together. And we say if it’s not a waste of time, we’ll do it. … I hear that Nancy Pelosi wants to call, and she wants to see if she can do something. But they’re much more inclined to make a deal now than they would’ve been two days ago,” TRUMP said at the Morristown, N.J., airport. Video
CHASER: Two senior Democratic aides told us Sunday night Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Senate Minority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER have had no contact with the White House since the Friday meeting with MARK MEADOWS and STEVEN MNUCHIN. Unless it’s SCHUMER and PELOSI calling, it doesn’t matter — generally speaking.
Trump might be careful what he wishes for. The last time that Nancy Pelosi spoke to Trump was over a year ago, at the time of the last government shut down, where she humiliated him and he eventually was forced to cave in over the budget. That same scenario is likely to repeat, because his unilateral rewriting of the tax code may sound impressive to low information people, but it doesn’t work that way.
But what’s really going on is that it is Trump who is dying to speak to the Democrats. That’s evidenced by his plaintive tweet, “They know my phone number!”
So now Schumer and Pelosi want to meet to make a deal. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it. Where have they been for the last 4 weeks when they were “hardliners”, and only wanted BAILOUT MONEY for Democrat run states and cities that are failing badly? They know my phone number!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2020
Well, at least he’s not calling them Chuck and Nancy, or Charlie and Lucy, or something else out of a cartoon about kids. That’s some improvement.
Plus, Trump’s irrelevancy is way beyond wishful thinking on the part of Democrats, as he would wish to characterize it. It’s very real. He’s done nothing but engineer it himself with his mind numbingly stupid and uninformed comments, most recently on the explosion in Beirut, which Trump characterized as a “terrible attack.” Washington Post:
More than 3½ years into his presidency, Trump increasingly finds himself minimized and ignored — as many of his more outlandish or false statements are briefly considered and then, just as quickly, dismissed. The slide into partial irrelevance could make it even more difficult for Trump as he seeks reelection as the nation’s leader amid a pandemic and economic collapse. […]
Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, a political consulting firm with a global emphasis, said that when Trump made his claim about the bomb in Lebanon, much of the global community intuitively understood that the president “is inclined to think that of course it must be terrorism because it’s the Middle East and people blow up stuff up there.”
“And so he said it, and it’s stupid, but after almost four years of Trump, we all kind of know that he doesn’t really listen to experts and briefings,” Bremmer said…. “They understand that a lot of stuff that Trump says does not remotely equate to policy and they’ve had enough experience with that to understand, most of them, when you can just tune it out,” he said.
This is Trump’s credibility in the world. This is where he has taken the United States in terms of its credibility as a nation. They just tune him out.
I feel like he’s irrelevant all the time – he’s a convenient figurehead for the people who are looting the treasury and breaking government so they can loot some more.
He’s absolutely the figurehead, always has been. Dubya was the front man for the band of thieves that ran the show in Washington for eight years and it was desired that Trump be the same thing. But the GOP bit off a lot more than they could chew this time.
W was at least literate and average-smart. And not a raving narcissist.
Spot-on (again) Ursula: the corrupt GOPers thought their lovely game of Gravy Train would carry on uninterrupted with Trump, just as the corrupt “elite” in Germany thought they would continue unmolested by the upstart rabble-rouser Hitler. The Germans underestimated Hitler’s cunning and ruthlessness, just as the Republicans under-estimated Trump’s ineptitude and clumsiness. Trump’s blundering and lying has exposed the rotten underbelly of GOP politics instead of masking it. He’s simply too stupid to be the devious mouthpiece they expected.
You’re right and his stupidity is the only thing that has saved this country. If he was as smart and cunning as he believes himself to be, we would be totally screwed. Trump doesn’t know when to turn on the racist juice and when to calm down and be presidential and actually do the business of governing. If he did, this would all be worse than it is, and that’s horrible to contemplate.
he’s never learned how to business, let alone govern.
You’re right … had the GOPers found someone equally sleazy but even a tad smarter, we’d be well on our way to a fascistic purgatory which, I fear, still awaits unless we swamp them with votes in November. I admit to being somewhat puzzled that they haven’t dumped Trump before now, in order to present themselves as a Republican party rather than a Trumpian one. Maybe they’re all too stupid to realise they erred bigtime and are too cowardly to try to fix it.
Dubya could at least stand in front of a camera, recite his lines and not hurl kindergarten-level insults at people. Although there were times when I thought if I heard him say “Stay the course” one more time I would break something.
“Stay the course” was W’s dad, whom I have no warm fuzzies for either.
That’s one faction, P J. Don’t forget the theocrats, neo-Confederates, neo-cons and other dregs of the GOP. Unless they’re making money off this racket too, those True Believers are going to be sorely disappointed by what’s coming.
I’m reminded of the second series on the British TV show Luther (the one that made me acknowledge Idris Elba as the coolest man on the planet right now). A serial killer has taken a cop hostage, plays sounds of his screams to make the cops talk to him over a phone line (it’s muted on their end). Going against the mood in the room, DCI Luther has everybody just let him count down to call his bluff. It works; the guy is all but begging them to pick up the phone after that.
THAT is where Trump is right now.
I don’t mind that the world, or our allies and neutral countries have tuned him out. What bothers me is something that I’ve said many times before which is that the world gave us a “Mulligan” with Bush 43. Trump proves not only was that not an aberration but that we could offer up something/someone far worse. So they’ve decided to just tune out Trump’s excesses. But no matter what from here on, no matter how great a President(s) we inaugurate should they “tune in” one of our Presidents it will be the equivalent of using one of those old, beaten up (with a weak battery) pocket transistor radios we used as kids back in the 1960s to pull in AM stations. Sometimes you simply couldn’t adjust the dial just right to get, or hold the station and decided not to bother and do something else than listen to that P.O.S. radio. IF the world can easily dial in a clear signal they might listen for a while but they WON’T count on that signal holding, and have their own plans for what to do when the signal is no good.
i believe Covid will be in AmeriKKKa for Years because we are too fucking stupid {repubs} to fix it. And we have ZERO leadership from the vomitous scum in our whitehouse
Believe what you like. Here’s mine: enough people have lost their lives, livelihoods and loved ones to let the status stay quo. We’ll be clawing our way out for years to come but life will get better in a few months, if marginally, because adults will once again be in charge.
Eventually there will be a working vaccine. And intelligent people will take it. After that, if the idiots still want to be sacrificial animals, it’s their problem.
I also have his phone number but when I try to call I am told that his mailbox is full. 1-917-756-8000.
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