slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Don't say it out loud – but Trump may have just t***sformed from completely unhinged to a normal President

The Independent David Usborne, Sept. 13, 2017...20 hours ago

Donald Trump has been on deck for almost eight months now and it’s been one storm after another. Most of them he either created all on his own or steered willfully into. Probably this will be proven wildly premature, but I’m wondering if maybe he is starting to find his sea-legs.

Partly it has to with the shuffling of his crew. Gone, most importantly, is Stephen Bannon, who, as campaign strategist and then top White House advisor, did more than anyone else to stoke Trump’s most destructive instincts. He is still around and spouting - notably giving a fiery interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday - but he’s no longer able to blow into the captain’s ear.

This does matter. In her just-launched book, Hillary Clinton describes Trump’s inauguration speech in January as 'a cry from the white nationalist gut’. That would be Bannon’s gut. It was his influence that led Trump to pursue a strategy of keeping this base contented while making an expansion of his support impossible. You know; failing to condemn white nationalists, not giving up on a Muslim border ban, stiffing the rest of the world on c*****e c****e, and so on.

Bannon, who interestingly said on CBS he wasn’t behind Trump’s decision in June to fire FBI director James Comey, instead calling it the worst mistake “in modern political history”, denied it was General John Kelly who forced him down the plank. No one's buying that. Kelly’s arrival as Chief of Staff to in July seems also to have calmed the swell. His disciplinarian style (some in the West Wing call him nanny) may irk Trump at times, but he has the president’s respect which was not the case for his predecessor, Reince Preibus. Trump thought him a ninny.

Fragments of Bannon and his influence linger. It was post his departure that Trump’s unveiled his decision to start winding down DACA, the Obama-era programme that allows i*****l i*******ts brought to the country as children, known as Dreamers, to remain without fear of deportation. It was one of the clearest promises he made during the campaign.

Yet Trump has been decidedly half-hearted about it. Rather than k*****g DACA outright, he asked Congress to consider codifying its provisions into law. He gave them six months to get it done and then hinted he’d take his own steps to stop Dreamers from being deported if they fail. This is most unBannon-like. Indeed, Bannon fulminated about it on CBS. “My fear is that with this six months down range, if this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion, in February and March, it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party,” he said, virtually booing his old boss.

Being soft on Dreamers is one thing, but being soft on Democrats is another. But now we’re seeing that too. When Trump invited the leaders of both parties to the Oval Office last week to discuss breaking a logjam on funding the government and raising the cap on how much it can borrow, the so-called debt ceiling, he astonished everyone by spurning a plan from top Republican dogs Senator Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, and plumping for a far simpler, and shorter-term solution from their Democrat counterparts, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.
Senator Chuck Schumer beams during the Oval Office meeting where he and Nancy Pelosi struck a budget deal with President Trump (AP)

Thus was born The Chuck and Nancy Show, a possible game-changer. Or rather The Chuck, Trump and Nancy Show. Republicans were ashen, aghast. The president had figured out that if they, even with majorities in both chambers, can’t deliver the changes he is asking for, such as repealing and replacing Obamacare, perhaps he will have better luck by governing with the help of the Democrats. Though that, of course, would mean changes in his agenda. Keeping the Dreamers, fixing but not ending Obamacare. Maybe not building that wall with Mexico after all.

Trump has perhaps realized that even that precious base of his might not mind him nudging the compass if it means things getting done in Washington. Poll after poll suggests that there is nothing that irritates v**ers more than a Congress that doesn’t function. He insists he has accomplished more in a few months than any president since Truman, but even he knows that’s a lie.

This in turn makes you wonder what might have been had Trump taken a more conciliatory path from the start. What if he hadn’t barreled out of the gate demanding the death of Obamacare and creating havoc at airports with his immigration ban and begun instead with something the Democrats could have cooperated with him on, say repairing the country’s infrastructure, which was also central to his campaign, or attempting a broad resolution to its immigration muddle?

What, after all, did Trump owe Republicans who hardly hid their distress when he secured their nomination fourteen months ago? He hijacked the party last year but he was never of the party. In that brief moment between his taking the oath of office in January and his starting that inauguration speech, you could just about imagine him choosing an entirely different course for his presidency, advertising himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but as an independent, ready to govern by bi-partisanship.

Yes, well. That didn’t happen exactly. He took the Bannon tack and the country has been suffering the consequences ever since. And the more his approval ratings sank, the more he thought keeping his base intact was all that mattered. Compromise be damned.

It’s far too soon to declare that one chapter of the Trump presidency is now closed and another one has opened. Trump could revert at any moment. (Wait, let me check his Twitter feed.) Similarly, Chuck and Nancy may quickly find the limits of what their own base will tolerate when it comes to playing ball with the devil. But if it happens that Trump does somehow manage to redeem his presidency, history might say that this was the month it happened.

Big Bass

What proof do you have that he was "unhinged"??

lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

Fortunately for Trump, God rewrote some of his scripts and put in a natural disaster or two. Since no actual policy is necessary for responding to said disasters, no P**********l expertise required, and no agency needing P**********l approval to do their assigned jobs, trump can relax and work on his tan...............and his TV/Twitter image. What can go wrong, when all you have to do is say " we're behind you 1000%" and pretend like you give a s**t?

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

It would be more appropriate for you to ask the author of the article.

Big Bass

I'll settle for either.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Settle for this, then...
Foreign Policy Magazine @ http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/trump-is-becoming-unhinged-at-the-twists-and-turns-of-kremlingate/

By Max Boot, July 24, 2017

Trump Is Becoming Unhinged at the Twists and Turns of Kremlingate

In the depraved reality show that has become this presidency, the Trump administration’s scandals are young and relentless.

If Kremlingate: The Scandal were Kremlingate: The TV Series, it would pack in so many improbable plot twists and surprise developments that any experienced show-runner would tell the writers to slow down because that’s not how real life works. In just the past week, we saw enough news to fill an entire season’s worth of episodes in a series that is equal parts House of Cards, The Americans, and Arrested Development. For those who find it hard to keep up, here’s a recap of last week’s action.

The week’s revelations began on Monday evening, July 17, when Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group disclosed to Bloomberg’s Charlie Rose that at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Donald Trump had a second, undisclosed meeting with Vladimir Putin. Bremmer reported that the one-on-one conversation, with no other Americans present, lasted roughly an hour. The White House suggests it was much shorter — Trump says it “could be 15 minutes” — but it’s clear that the leaders weren’t just exchanging pleasantries.

Trump himself says, “We talked about adoption” — the same lame excuse that Donald Trump Jr. originally gave for his June 2016 meeting with Russian representatives eager to help the Trump campaign. “Adoption” is code for sanctions, because after Congress’s passage in 2012 of the Magnitsky Act, imposing sanctions on major human rights violators in Russia, the Kremlin retaliated by banning adoptions of Russian children by Americans. Simply by saying the conversation was about “adoptions,” rather than about all of the Russian t***sgressions that have prompted sanctions, Trump was adopting Moscow’s narrative.

Further confirmation of how eager Trump is to help out how his friend Vlad comes in Syria. Trump and Putin negotiated a cease-fire in southwestern Syria that has now been denounced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who worries that it will imperil his country’s security by entrenching Russia’s allies, the Iranians, next to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. As if this weren’t enough, on Wednesday, July 19, the Washington Post reported that Trump had decided to end the CIA program to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels fighting against Putin’s ally, Bashar al-Assad. A current U.S. government official told the Post: “This is a momentous decision.… Putin won in Syria.”

The final outcome of the Hamburg summit was Trump’s announcement that the United States and Russia would form an “impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that e******n hacking, [and] many other negative things, will be guarded … and safe.” This proposal was so ridiculous — how could the United States partner with the main perpetrator of cyber-attacks? — that Trump himself seemed to disown it, yet last week Putin’s top cybersecurity expert said, with no denial from the White House, that efforts to establish this farcical task force were still “underway.”

So Trump did not lay down the law at Hamburg over Putin’s meddling in the U.S. e******n — but he did discuss cyber-cooperation with Russia. Little wonder that The Associated Press reported Thursday that National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and other aides are expressing frustration about Trump’s friendliness with Putin.

In a prior episode — all of two weeks ago — we found out that Donald Trump Jr. jumped at the chance (“I love it,” he said) to meet with Russian representatives promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Then we found out that Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who flew all the way from Moscow to meet the Trump high command, had represented the FSB, the successor to the KGB. The other participants included a former Russian counterintelligence officer suspected of involvement in hacking and a Russian financier who specializes in setting up Delaware bank accounts through which his Russian clients can move hundreds of millions of dollars.

Last week, we also found out that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, was, according to the New York Times, “in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million” before joining the Trump campaign in March 2016, which would make him a major security risk. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Manafort is under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. Oh, and ExxonMobil was just fined $2 million for violating sanctions on Russia while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was its CEO.

But, wait, the best is yet to come. The writers of this series, as is their wont, saved their most startling revelations for the end of last week’s episodes.

It was not until Friday evening that we found out that Attorney General Jeff Sessions not only lied about meeting Russian representatives during the campaign but apparently lied about what they discussed. The Washington Post reported that electronic intercepts revealed that Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak had “‘substantive’ discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.” (Sessions’s spokeswoman responded that he hadn’t discussed e******n “interference” but did not deny discussing the campaign per se.)

And how did this top-secret signals intelligence become public knowledge? The widespread suspicion is that it was leaked either by Trump himself or by someone close to him in an attempt to force the attorney general from office so that Trump could appoint a replacement who would fire Mueller. Who but Frank Underwood of House of Cards could possibly pull off something so Machiavellian?

Yet this scenario is perfectly plausible because just two days before the Sessions leak, Trump had gone on the record with the New York Times to trash his own attorney general for daring to recuse himself from the Kremlin-gate probe. Maybe Trump was just blowing off steam — or maybe he is looking to replace Sessions with someone who wouldn’t have to recuse himself and thus could terminate the Mueller investigation on his behalf.

In his Times interview, the president made clear that Mueller would be crossing a “red line” if he dared to probe his finances — something that Bloomberg reports Mueller is already doing. And for good reason: Given that Trump has a long history of financial links to Russia — his sons have boasted in the past of all the money they’ve gotten from wealthy Russians — it is imperative to find out with whom he has done business. Remember what Deep Throat told Bob Woodward in the movie adaption of All the President’s Men: “Follow the money.”

Yet, just as your drama critic predicted, Trump is becoming unhinged at the prospect of Mueller uncovering his deep, dark financial secrets. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the president “was especially disturbed after learning Mueller would be able to access several years of his tax returns,” which suggests that he is hiding something a lot more incriminating than a lower-than-claimed net worth. The Post also reported that Trump is trying to intimidate and smear the special counsel (more obstruction of justice?) while examining the prospect of pardoning his aides, family members — and possibly even himself.

Trump did nothing to dampen such speculation by defiantly proclaiming on Twitter, as part of his weekly Saturday morning meltdown, that the president has the “complete power to pardon.” Actually, many legal scholars argue that a president can’t pardon himself. Even if he does so, he will be admitting guilt and thus strengthening the case for his own impeachment.

What a crazy week. And now we are in for another — and another and another. Indeed, this week began with Jared Kushner trying to explain to congressional committees his meetings with Russian representatives last year and with his father-in-law berating his own “beleaguered” attorney general for not “looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes.”

Get used to it. The Kremlingate show isn’t going away as long as Trump remains in the White House. It’s impossible to know how this story will end, but it’s unlikely to have a happy outcome. More likely, we are going to see a presidency increasingly paralyzed by scandal and a president at war with the whole world — except, of course, for his friend in the Kremlin, whom he treats the way a giddy schoolgirl would Zac Efron.

Trump has already signaled the next plot twist: He will somehow try to fire Mueller before the special counsel can uncover any more damaging information. We’ve seen this movie before. The “Saturday Night Massacre” did not work out well for Richard Nixon, but Trump is so oblivious to history, and so desperate to cover his tracks, that he may well stage a sequel. It will be up to Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, to decide if Trump will get away with such a shocking display of villainy. Sadly, given the failure of Republicans so far to do much to stand up to the miscreant in the Oval Office, this could well be one series where the bad guy gets away with his crimes. Stay tuned at the same Trump time, on the same Trump channel, for another depressing episode.

Big Bass

Oh, come on, now! That is simply a verbose opinion-piece penned by a rabid lefty. If you believe this is factual, you are other-worldly gullible. Hint-hint: don't believe every thing you see in print.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

Or this....

https://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170823&t=2&i=1198186183&r=LYNXNPED7M065&w=1280

Aug 28, 2017 // At Oakland University

Trump Is Becoming More And More Unhinged: When Is Enough, Enough?
Arizona has been under heat recently. Not necessarily from the heat, but from hot air being spewed by this guy
By Travis Knoll

Arizona.

The only place where it is perfectly acceptable to wear beach attire during Christmas.

This state has been under heat recently. Not necessarily from the stifling heat, but from hot air being spewed by this guy:

https://youtu.be/XS-Cj-uQ8J8

President Trump, the greatest oxymoron since jumbo shrimp or nice kitty, held a rally in Arizona with the fire and fury of a cat that got put in a bathtub and not only did he not come out and straight away condemn N**ism, he took it a little further:

https://youtu.be/pRzApbMM-SA?t=1m31s

I beg to differ, Donald. There is only one way you can condemn, in the strongest possible terms, bigotry, hatred, and violence. You can condemn it and the group that perpetrated it in the first place! You know, the alt-right protesters and groups of that ilk! You didn’t say it fast enough because you didn’t come out, and condemn it when you had the chance. Remember, when the “f**e news” media gave you chances to say that r****t, neo-n**i behavior is deplorable? That was your opportunity to come out, and call those groups out! Instead, it took you the same amount of time to denounce the group that it would take for an Amazon Prime package to be delivered to my house! Compared to you, the Tiki Torch Company had their condemnation statement over-nighted on UPS!

His recent speech has reignited that question we’ve had since January 20th of this year: How mentally fit is Trump to hold office? We’ve seen him hang up angrily on the Prime Minister of Australia, impose a hastily thrown together at the last minute travel ban, and more recently, staring up into the solar eclipse in a big “fuck you” to science and common sense. And that’s not even touching the Tweet-storms yet. James Clapper, the former National Director of Intelligence suggests that there is a difference when Trump is off the teleprompter, and when he is not. That’s a bit overstated. Ana Navarro, what say you?

https://youtu.be/rPO4Rtrs3PM

The difference between Trump unscripted and Trump reading off a teleprompter is unparalleled. It’s like your mother being the kind-hearted, gentle soul in front of the family on Christmas dinner, yet turns into Mommy eff-ing Dearest when it’s time to go!

Come to think of it, maybe Donald should stay in the corner during Christmas in Arizona…

Now, this:

Hasn’t America Been Paralyzed Since 1/20?

Big Bass

Ditto my last response. None of these prove a damn' thing. (FYI: Star Wars is also pure fiction.)

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

"Rabid lefty," huh? Read up on Max Boot. BTW, did you finish the entire article, or were there too many unhinged moments exposed for you?

As far as your opinion-piece comment...'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.' Believe as you choose, BigBass. I am and will be ready to accept the findings of Mueller's investigation...whenever and wh**ever they may be. Meanwhile, I am as anxious as anybody for President Trump to do well, for the nation's sake.

Hint-hint: Don't dismiss everything you read that doesn't align with your mindset. Big mistake, BigBass.

FYI, a mini-biography of Max Boot...

Max Boot is a military historian and foreign-policy analyst who has been called one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict” by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Boot is also a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and the Los Angeles Times, a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors, a columnist for Foreign Policy, and a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and other publications.

Boot’s newest book—The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam—is due out from Norton/Liveright in early 2018. He is the author of three widely acclaimed books: the New York Times bestseller Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (W.W. Norton & Co./Liveright, 2013), which The Wall Street Journal said “is destined to be the classic account of what may be the oldest as well as the hardest form of war”; War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (Gotham Books, 2006), which was hailed as a “magisterial survey of technology and war” by the New York Times; and The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books, 2002), which won the 2003 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation as the best nonfiction book pertaining to Marine Corps history and has been placed on Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy professional reading lists.

Boot has served as an adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain’s p**********l campaign in 2007–08, a defense policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2011–12, and the head of the Counter-Terrorism Working Group for Marco Rubio’s campaign in 2015-2016.

Boot is a frequent public speaker and guest on radio and television news programs, both at home and abroad. He has lectured on behalf of the U.S. State Department and at many military institutions, including the Army, Navy, and Air War Colleges, the Australian Defense College, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School, West Point, and the Naval Academy.

In 2004, he was named by the World Affairs Councils of America as one of “the 500 most influential people in the United States in the field of foreign policy.” In 2007, he won the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, given annually to a writer who exhibits “love of country and its democratic institutions” and “bears witness to the evils of totalitarianism.”

Before joining the Council in 2002, Boot spent eight years as a writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal, the last five as op-ed editor. From 1992 to 1994 he was an editor and writer at the Christian Science Monitor.

Boot holds a bachelor’s degree in history, with high honors, from the University of California, Berkeley (1991), and a master’s degree in history from Yale University (1992). He was born in Moscow, grew up in Los Angeles, and now lives in the New York area.

Big Bass

No, I didn't. Now if you look up the meaning of verbose, you might understand why. BTW: Your post above is verbose AND pompous.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

No more comments about the "rabid lefty," Max Boot? I guess it was pompous of me to dismantle your wrongful assessment of Mr. Boot. As Colonel Jessup said in 'A Few Good Men,' "You can't handle the t***h."

There, no verbosity. I kept it short and simple for you.

Big Bass

I can shorten the whole thing down to one word: CRAP. 2 words. Unmitigated crap.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

"Crap" meaning anything that doesn't fit within your limited parameters of thinking. "Unmitigated," apparently, for emphasis.

Big Bass

So, you wish to start the personal insults. OK! You are another of these i***t c*******ts. Your head belongs on your shoulders, not up your ass.