Tag: Trump narcissism

Trump’s July 4 celebration will cost millions — and it will take a while to know how much

Washington Post logoThe B-2 bomber could cost $700,000. Two F-22s fighters, about $300,000. The Blue Angels demonstration team, close to $320,000. And two F-35 jets, upward of $660,000.

These figures, based on a conservative analysis using Pentagon flight-cost estimates and other military data about the aircraft, highlight something the Trump administration has left murky as it plans its Independence Day celebration in Washington: how much it will cost.

The aerial review portion of President Trump’s expanded July 4 event could cost more than $2 million, as about two dozen aircraft soar by the Mall in a show of military might.

View the complete July 3 article by Dan Lamothe and Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.

Washington Prepares for a July 4 Spectacle, Starring and Produced by President Trump

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — Two Bradley armored vehicles rumbled into place on Wednesday in front of the Lincoln Memorial, to be joined later by two Abrams tanks parked nearby. Cranes were putting into place the scaffolding for Jumbotron screens. And workers raced to finish a red, white and blue stage where President Trump will preside over one of the most unusual Fourth of July celebrations the capital has known.

The audience for Mr. Trump’s speech will include thousands of troops assembled by the White House to create a made-for-television moment in which the nation’s commander in chief is surrounded by the forces that he leads.

Weather permitting, the traditional songs for each branch of the military will be played while their officers stand by the president’s side and a procession of aircraft, including Air Force One and the Blue Angels, roars through the skies overhead. Hundreds of guests, many of them handpicked by the Republican National Committee, will watch from bleachers in a V.I.P. section erected close to the podium.

View the complete July 3 article by Michael D. Shear and Thomas Gibbons-Neff on The New York Times website here.

Of course Trump might reject a 2020 loss. He still rejects the results of a race he won.

Washington Post logoAs the presidential 2016 election wound down, a low rumble formed. Should Donald Trump lose the race, people wondered, would he accept the election results? Or, instead, would the country be ripped apart by a candidate and his fervent base of support refusing to accept what actually happened? In the third and final debate, Trump demurred on a question centered on that issue.

“I will look at it at the time,” he said of accepting the election results. He added that “what I’ve seen is so bad,” what with the media being “dishonest and so corrupt” and with the existence of “millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote.”

This wasn’t a new claim by Trump. He seized upon a 2012 report from the Pew Center on the States that noted that state voter rolls often included people who’d died or moved because registrars were slow to update their records. As we reported at the time that Trump made this claim, there was no evidence that votes were actually cast on behalf of many — or, really, any — of these dead people. (An author of the report made the rounds after Trump’s comments to note that there was no suggestion of fraud in his work.) The report simply served as a comfortable sort of gray area into which Trump could slot suggestions about how the system was stacked against him.

View the complete June 24 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Trump threatened Time reporter with prison — and then griped about never being named Man of the Year

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump threatened a reporter with prison after a photographer tried to snap a photo of his letter from Kim Jong Un.

According to a transcript of his interview with Time‘s Brian Bennett, the president asked to go off the record to show off the letter.

When the magazine’s photographer tried to take a picture of it, Trump became enraged.

“Excuse me — under Section II — well, you can go to prison instead, because, if you use, if you use the photograph you took of the letter that I gave you,” Trump said, according to the transcript.

View the complete June 21 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Goodbye Fourth of July: Our self-aggrandizer-in-chief is hellbent on making the theme of the day Trump’s America

Years ago, I was interviewing the college roommate of a famous politician who told the story of being sent to a shop by the pol to pick up a large impressive trophy. It would be presented at an official school dinner that night. Is this for the university president, the roommate asked? No, the politician replied, without missing a beat, it’s for me.

That kind of 24-karat self-worth came to mind this Memorial Day weekend as I was watching Donald Trump present the first ever US President’s Cup, a four-foot high, 60-pound hunk of metal, at a sumo wrestling championship in Tokyo, part of his state visit. He violated several protocols of the highly formalized sport in the process and I distinctly got the impression that he would have preferred giving the prize to himself.

As The New York Times’ Katie Rogers reported, “a large Trump 2020 sign greeted the president as he approached the arena. And Mr. Trump seemed to make an entrance similar to those at any ‘Make America Great Again’ rally—he clapped, fist-pumped and waved, greeting the attendees as if they had assembled on his behalf.”

View the complete May 28 article by Michael Winship from Common Dreams on the AlterNet website here.

Trump is a lifelong practitioner of twisting rules to his advantage — and 2 political scientists explain how to level the playing field

Donald Trump has been flooding the zone with false claims of “No Collusion” and “Total Exoneration” ever since the Mueller report’s conclusion was announced — and completely misrepresented by Trump’s “Coverup General” William Barr, to borrow the label William Safire affixed to him in 1992. Democrats, typically, have been dithering ever since, trying to be reasonable, and thus falling into a bottomless pit of endless delay — delay, that for 40 years now, has always been Donald Trump’s best friend.

Over the weekend, congressional scholar Norm Ornstein tweeted that Democrats should ditch all that and flood the zone in their own way, with dramatically presented facts:

Memo to House Democrats: start now with a truly aggressive and multifaceted presentation of the findings in the Mueller Report … going with giant placards with the excerpts that show the evidence of obstruction and collusion (collusion is not conspiracy!) … You are trying to show impeachable offenses. Hold aggressive hearings with @benjaminwittes and some of the 900 prosecutors who signed the letter — let them lay out the evidence in stark terms. Then move to formal impeachment inquiry. Lay the right groundwork NOW.

View the complete May 26 article by Paul Rosenberg from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Trump takes over Fourth of July celebration, changing its location and inserting himself into the program

President Trump has effectively taken charge of the nation’s premier Fourth of July celebration in Washington, moving the gargantuan fireworks display from its usual spot on the Mall to be closer to the Potomac River and making tentative plans to address the nation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, according to top administration officials.

 The president’s starring role has the potential to turn what has long been a nonpartisan celebration of the nation’s founding into another version of a Trump campaign rally. Officials said it is unclear how much the changes may cost, but the plans have already raised alarms among city officials and some lawmakers about the potential impact of such major alterations to a time-honored and well-organized summer tradition.

Fireworks on the Mall, which the National Park Service has orchestrated for more than half a century, draw hundreds of thousands of Americans annually and mark one of the highlights of the city’s tourist season. The event has been broadcast live on television since 1947 and since 1981 has been accompanied by a free concert on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol featuring high-profile musicians and a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra.

View the complete May 10 article by Josh Dawsey, Juliet Eilperin and Peter Jamison on The Washington Post website here.

The Smartest Person in the Room

The following article by Kenneth T. Walsh was posted on the U.S News and World Report website October 20, 2017:

President Donald Trump distorts the record to present himself as the best.

Credit: Joshua Roberts/Reuters.

There was a time when presidents wanted to surround themselves with people who were as smart as or smarter than they were, including iconic leaders such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. They thought it was best for the country to recruit the best and the brightest, and they had the humility to acknowledge that they didn’t have all the answers.

No more. President Donald Trump has made clear that he believes – and wants everyone else to accept – that he is always the smartest person in the room. This Trumpian hubris became evident, once again, at his Rose Garden news conference this week. It was, as usual, all about him as he trumpeted how well he is doing as president, how brilliantly he gets along with fellow Republicans in Congress, how his programs for tax reform and health care overhaul are masterstrokes. The problem was that his hyperbole sometimes went over the line into distortion and outright falsehood. Continue reading “The Smartest Person in the Room”