25 April 2017

Surreal

The Associated Press interviewed Donald Trump at length on Friday and released the complete transcript of the session yesterday (link here). At quite a few spots in the recording, Trump was literally unintelligible or rambling, and the AP tried to do their best in preserving that in print.

The postmortem coverage of his babblefest has been brutal. I read at least a dozen stories yesterday in major media outlets that all offered analysis of whatever he was trying to say, and without exception everyone agreed it was a nonsensical swamp of lies, distortions, misquotes, boasts, and utter gibberish.

The transcript is startling for a number of reasons. First and foremost one has to question Trump's very sanity. Is he suffering from dementia or mentally ill -- or both? Or is he such a habitual dissembler that he has no clue that he's repeatedly lying and immediately contradicting some of his own lies within minutes of uttering them.

Rather than a blizzard of click-throughs, I decided to link what I thought was the best wrapup analysis of Trump's sit-down session, and that was at The Toronto Star (link here). They've titled their piece "The 19 strangest things Donald Trump said in his surreal 100-days interview" followed by the deck "Trump’s Associated Press interview is replete with lies, exaggerations, rambles and strange non-sequiturs."

Some highlights:

--Minutes after talking about how he watches CNN, he says he doesn't watch CNN.

--Minutes after saying he doesn't talk to European leaders about the Iran nuclear deal, he says he talks to European leaders about the Iran nuclear deal.

--He tried to blame an unnamed person for his own "Contract With The American Voter" which he repeatedly promoted, signed, and mailed to voters during the campaign.

--He admitted when he repeatedly said during the campaign NATO was obsolete that he actually had no idea what he was talking about.

--After a total flip-flop on his promise to label China a currency manipulator on his very first day in office, he tried to blame the media for his hypocrisy, notwithstanding that he wrote an editorial for The Wall Street Journal in 2015 where he talked at length about his promise.

--He says literally counting the first hundred days of accomplishments is not accurate because "you know I had to get like a little bit of grounding right," when he argued that a longer period than a hundred days should be used for his own hundred-day benchmark.

All this, yet there are still people who insist we should totally believe some vague promise Trump made to be a pro-LGBT President, notwithstanding he has repeatedly contradicted that since being sworn into office by appointing LGBT haters and pursuing anti-LGBT policies.

2 comments:

  1. OMG!
    Always amazing to hear and see that «wind vane» president you're stuck up with for 4 years.

    A VERY unpredictable and unstable one too. That makes him a REAL danger for USA and the entire world too.

    Yesterday, on CNN, they've put in front his «love» for Wikileaks BEFORE he was elected and now, he is telling the contrary.

    His change of opinion on China and NATO are so scary because as a wind vane he can go backward for no reason.

    He seems not to be listening to some of his own advisers and, by the way, those a also such «assholes» why should he be attentive to them?
    `
    USA, with this «clown» your screwed.

    You must «pray» that the Congress and the Senate will stop him to put in place foolish decisions.

    PS. He is the man that had made his «Make America Great Again» caps in China and his own daughter, Evanka, is selling stuff made in Bengladesh, his saying to buy American and wants to give Americans good jobs, he doesn't show a good example.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous21:18

    His father had Alzheimer's disease. Isn't it often hereditary?

    ReplyDelete

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