Tag: Trump narcissism

How Kristi Noem, Mount Rushmore and Trump Fueled Speculation About Pence’s Job

WASHINGTON — Since the first days after she was elected governor of South Dakota in 2018, Kristi Noem had been working to ensure that President Donald Trump would come to Mount Rushmore for a fireworks-filled July Fourth extravaganza.

After all, the president had told her in the Oval Office that he aspired to have his image etched on the monument. And last year, a White House aide reached out to the governor’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore?

So last month, when the president arrived in the Black Hills for the star-spangled spectacle he had pined for, Noem made the most of it. Continue reading.

Trump walks off in a huff after reporter confronts him over lie he’s told more than 150 times

AlterNet logoI don’t know why this hasn’t been happening for five years now, but thank you, thank you, thank you Paula Reid.

I’m sure you’ve heard the one about Donald Trump passing the Veterans Choice Act, which no other president could do for 50 years except, it turns out, Barack Obama, who actually signed it in 2014. And not only that, the law — which gives veterans the option of seeking care outside the VA system — was championed by Trump’s two favorite people, Crazy Bernie Sanders and Loser John McCain.

Well, a tough, intelligent woman reporter — the kind Donald Trump likes the mostest! — just called him out on this fairy tale, which, as CNN notes, Trump has told some version of more than 150 times. And, as usual, he acted like a diaper rash with a baby attached to it. Continue reading.

White House ‘concocted a positive feedback loop’ to mislead Trump into thinking he’s doing an excellent job on coronavirus

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s chaotic White House resulted in “a lost summer” in the battle against coronavirus, according to a new in-depth report by The Washington Post.

The newspaper interviewed “41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts” for the story, with multiple former officials offering anonymous quotes.

The report explains the skepticism of science and experts by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Continue reading.

Lacking rallies, Trump takes White House work on the road

The Hill logoPresident Trump has long blurred the lines between campaigning and governing, but he is taking that fusion to new levels as the coronavirus pandemic precludes his signature large-scale rallies.

Trump has used official White House travel to visit swing states in recent weeks and give de facto campaign speeches in front of friendly audiences. He spoke from behind the presidential seal at airports in Florida and Ohio to supporters who gathered on the tarmac to greet him, and an event at a Whirlpool factory on Thursday ostensibly meant to highlight the nation’s economic recovery during the pandemic veered sharply into reelection territory.

Political scientists and advisers to the president argue he has little choice but to try and get on the road in some form to generate enthusiasm and boost his reelection changes. Continue reading.

Like Father, Like Son: President Trump Lets Others Mourn

New York Times logoWhether he is dealing with the loss of a family member or the deaths of nearly 150,000 Americans in a surging pandemic, President Trump almost never displays empathy in public. He learned it from his father.

WASHINGTON — The Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was packed with developers, politicians and New York celebrities, more than 600 in all, for the funeral of Fred C. Trump, the builder whose no-frills brick rental towers transformed Brooklyn and Queens.

Three of his four living children, who had grown up listening to the sermons of the church’s most famous minister, Norman Vincent Peale, offered loving eulogies to their father. Then it was Donald Trump’s turn.

He began by talking about himself. Continue reading.

Trump has time to golf as states report more than 1,000 COVID-19 deaths for fifth day straight

AlterNet logoThe United States’ coronavirus death toll exceeded 1,000 for five days straight last week, but who could possibly expect President Donald Trump to sacrifice a day of golfing because of a deadly pandemic? No one who’s been paying attention to the commander-in-chief’s priorities, which seem to align with bashing liberal state leaders, tweeting about his competitor in the 2020 election, and the heavy-hitter, getting re-elected.

Fittingly, Trump spent his Saturday at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. with NFL Hall-of-Famer Brett Favre. “Brett LOVES Wisconsin, Mississippi and Minnesota. A good golfer – hits it LONG!” the president tweeted Sunday of the former quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, and New York Jets.

Brian Morgenstern, White House deputy press secretary, told WTMJ-TV Favre and Trump “discussed the importance of sports as a critical unifying and uplifting part of the safe reopening of America.” The NFL Players Association announced an agreement with players on Friday to move on with training camp, giving “high-risk candidates” an option to opt-out and instead receive a $350,000 stipend. The decision fails to follow the advice of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci told CNN in June. Continue reading.

Conservative writer details how Trump’s ‘cult of personality’ is revealing its ‘grotesque selfishness’

AlterNet logoConservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin has been consistently critical of President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis. This week in her column, the Never Trumper asserts that Trump and his loyalists in the Republican Party will gladly encourage others to put themselves at risk during the pandemic but won’t take such risks themselves.

“This is the natural consequence of a cult of personality in which the leader’s ego and survival are paramount,” she writes in her column titled: “The party of grotesque selfishness.”

“Both ‘Fox & Friends’ host Brian Kilmeade and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos say life is full of risks; so, send your kids back to school no matter what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say,” Rubin observes. “President Trump has been jetting around, greeting visitors and talking to his supporters — albeit fewer than planned — without wearing a mask in public until Saturday. His cult naturally adopted his contempt for this basic health measure. It was only when the pandemic socked red states that many Republican officials became terribly dismayed that ‘some people’ had politicized masks.” Continue reading.

Trump the victim: President complains in private about the pandemic hurting him

Washington Post logoCallers on President Trump in recent weeks have come to expect what several allies and advisers describe as a “woe-is-me” preamble.

The president rants about the deadly coronavirus destroying “the greatest economy,” one he claims to have personally built. He laments the unfair “fake news” media, which he vents never gives him any credit. And he bemoans the “sick, twisted” police officers in Minneapolis, whose killing of an unarmed black man in their custody provoked the nationwide racial justice protests that have confounded the president.

Gone, say these advisers and confidants, many speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations, are the usual pleasantries and greetings. Continue reading.

How the Republican Convention Created Money Woes in Two Cities

New York Times logoDonors are wondering why they gave to a Charlotte event that has mostly been scrapped. And Jacksonville fund-raisers find money is on hold because of concerns about the surge in virus cases.

WASHINGTON — The abrupt uprooting of the Republican National Convention from Charlotte to Jacksonville has created a tangled financial predicament for party officials as they effectively try to pay for two big events instead of one.

Tens of millions of dollars have already been spent in a city that will now host little more than a G.O.P. business meeting, and donors are wary of opening their wallets again to bankroll a Jacksonville gathering thrown into uncertainty by a surge in coronavirus cases.

Organizers are trying to assuage vexed Republicans who collectively gave millions of dollars for a Charlotte event that has mostly been scrapped. The host committee there has spent virtually all of the $38 million it raised before the convention was moved, leaving almost nothing to return to donors, or to pass on to the new host city. Continue reading.