Trump's tenuous ties to truth

Now PlayingMemorable...(CNN)President Donald Trump has a very casual relationship with the truth. To him, facts are fungible. They are things to stretch, pull and sometimes break -- all in service of the story that he tells himself about his life.

In his first 466 days in office, Trump said more than 3,000 things that were either partially or entirely untrue, according to a count kept by the amazing Fact Checker blog at The Washington Post. That's 6.5 a day!

Trump's penchant for prevarication is, at some level, an accepted piece of his presidency at this point. It's a feature, not a glitch. For most people -- both those who support Trump and who vehemently oppose him -- his exaggerations, mistruths and, in many cases, outright lies are baked in.

But there's one place where Trump's lack of candor and honesty is a major liability: in a legal deposition where lying carries criminal penalties.    https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/politics/donald-trump-mueller-special-counsel-russia-sit-down-interview/












T

President Dummkopf gives short shrift to our closest allies and embraces Russia

In a feat of stupidity unrivaled by all previous occupants of the Oval Office "our" president managed to shun all our closest allies and embrace our worst enemy: Russia.

Herr Dump stiff armed our allies by demanding they drop imagined trade barriers, thus upending 70 years of strategic and economic relations and turning towards our main international competitor: again, Russia, thus earning the appelation Dummkopf.

Of all the short sighted, ill considered, and frankly stupid blunders, this has to rank among the worst in at least a hundred years and threatens to start an international trade war and ignite another Great Depression similar to the way US actions precipitated the first Great Depression.

Ain't just me saying that:

Our allies are not stealing anything. It is far from clear what, if anything, would satisfy him. If — and it is a big if — Trump is serious about erecting barriers to U.S. markets, we are looking at a full-blown trade war with our closest allies and trading partners, along with the trade wars with China and Mexico. All this would redound to the benefit of exactly one country, Russia. A worldwide recession would not be hard to imagine. 

Trump becomes irrational and unhinged when contradicted, and given the degree of contradiction permitted within his inner circle (none), it must be unnerving indeed to discover that our allies view him with disdain if not contempt. Arriving late and leaving early from the G-7 gathering, Trump played the petulant child, trying so very hard to say that he didn’t want to be part of their group anyway — so there! Worse still, his disturbing invitation for Russia, the United States’ most worrisome foe, to join the G-7 suggests he really cannot tell who is a friend and who is an enemy.  (emphasis added)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/06/10/after-the-g-7-summit-be-afraid-be-very-afraid/