Mediaboss Marketing

Photo: Mark Wilson (Getty Images)

You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump.

Even if you know a baboon with a head injury or have an uncle who dropped out of school in the first semester of kindergarten to pursue a career in the lucrative glue-eating sector, I can guarantee that they are not as rockheadedly dumb as Americas barren-brained embarrassment of a president.

On Wednesday, supplemental visual and written evidence of Donald Trumps addle-minded stupidity came in the form of photographs taken as the president stopped to deliver a nonsensical rant before boarding Air Force One and heading wherever stupid people go to do stupid things. Probably Narnia. Or Mississippi.

Oh, wait. It was an Apple factory, according to NBC:

President Donald Trump, departing the White House on his way to Texas to visit an Apple factory, stopped in front of reporters to defend himself amid U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondlands testimony Wednesday by reading from hand-written notes insisting he did not want a quid pro quo.

Trump began reading notes of what he says he spoke about during an early September phone call with Sondland, who was trying to figure out whether the roughly $400 million in military aid was being linked to whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would publicly announce investigations into the Bidens and a debunked conspiracy involving Democrats and the 2016 election.

At least some of Trumps talking points were captured by a Reuters photographer outside the White House.

Yes, this dumb motherfucker lies so much that he needs crib notes! Lets examine them for a minute because 5 things really stand out.

Here is the full text of Trumps notes:

Ambassador Sondland says: What do you want from Ukraine? I keep hearing all these different ideas and theories. What do you want? It was a very short abrupt conversation. He was not in a good mood. He just said: I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zillinsky (sp) to do the right thing. This is the final word from the president of the United States.

Also, The Root was able to get this actual footage of Trump preparing his talking points.

Originally posted here:
Here Is the Full Text of Donald Trump's Sharpie Lies for the Press - The Root

President Donald Trump regularly struggles to "remember what he's said or been told," an anonymous senior government official behind a new expos on the inner workings of the White House has claimed.

Much of the nearly 260 pages of the anonymous official's tome, A Warning, which hit bookshelves on Tuesday, has been dedicated to sounding the alarm about Trump's alarming behavior.

While the anonymous author, who is described only as a "senior official in the Trump administration" admits they are not "qualified to diagnose the president's mental acuity," they can say that "normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness."

"He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity," the official warns.

Often, they say, "the president also can't remember what he's said or been told."

"Americans are used to him denying words that have come out of his mouth," the senior official writes. "Sometimes this is to avoid responsibility."

However, they say it often "appears Trump genuinely doesn't remember important facts."

One clear example of that, the official recalls, is when the president claimed he was not sure if he had "ever even heard of a Category 5" hurricane, despite having been briefed on at least four other Category 5 hurricanes during his time in office.

"Was he forgetting these briefings?" the author questions. "Or more problematic, was he not paying attention at all? These are events that affect millions of Americans, yet they don't seem to stick in his brain."

The official writes that while Trump has often claimed to be highly intelligent, they say they have "seen the president fall flat on his face when trying to speak intelligently" on a number of topics on which he claims to be an expert.

"You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an 'idiot' and a 'moron' with the understanding of a 'fifth or sixth grader,'" the unnamed senior official says.

In addition to questioning Trump's ability to recall basic terms that he has said or heard, the anonymous author also accuses the president of an "astounding" level of "intellectual laziness."

Asserting that Trump barely reads and has required that briefings be shorter and include fewer words and more pictures, the senior official says they are "bewildered how anyone could have run a private company on the empty mental tank President Trump relies upon every day to run the government."

"On television, a CEO-turned-showman can sit around a desk and bark orders at subordinates and then go to commercial," they write. "In real life, a successful CEO has to absorb a lot of information, about the economic climate, about his or her competitors, about product and consumer trends."

"How can you manage a sprawling organization if you won't read anything?" the author questions. "Not very well, it turns out.

While the anonymous official says some Trump defenders might be tempted to write their warnings off "as the musings of Never-Trumpers," they say, "that is not the case."

Anyone who has spent time with Trump and "would claim otherwise" of their account, the official says, is "lying to themselves or to the country."

Read the original here:
Trump Regularly 'Can't Remember What He's Said or Been Told,' White House Insider Says - Newsweek

For a while now, Mike Pompeo has been rumored to be weighing a 2020 Senate runsomething that would require him to leave his post at the State department in the spring. But with an impeachment inquiry swirling around Donald Trump, Pompeo may be looking for a way out sooner. Three prominent Republicans told Time that the Secretary of State is searching for a graceful way to leave the Trump administration before he suffers permanent political damageand before his relationship with the president, which has been strained in recent weeks, goes south. If Pompeo was thinking he would cruise across the finish line on Trumps coattails, one Republican told the outlet, he might want to rethink that assumption.

The State Department denied that Pompeo has been discussing his resignation, telling Axios that the story is completely false. Pompeo is 100% focused on being President Trumps Secretary of State, a spokesperson for the department said. But the rumor mill has been churning about Pompeos status in the administration since at least January, when it was reported that Mitch McConnell was working to recruit him to run for Senate in Kansas. Politico reported at the time that he had yet to make up his mind, but even then it was suggested that it may be in his best interest to extricate himself from the chaos of the Trump administration.

That seems even more true now, as witness testimony draws Pompeo into the Ukraine scandal that has engulfed Trump. In an appearance before the House Intelligence Committee last week, former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch told lawmakers that Pompeo and the State department eventually abandoned her as Rudy Giuliani and others conducted a smear campaign that paved the way for her ouster. In a highly-anticipated testimony Wednesday, European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland is expected to tell representatives that he kept Pompeo apprised of his pressure campaign in Ukrainetestimony that will draw the Secretary of State deeper into the mess.

Meanwhile, testimony by diplomats has reportedly made Pompeo a target of Trumps displeasure, with the president blaming him for hiring officials who have become thorns in his side. It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats, Trump tweeted in October. Nothing good will ever come from them! He dropped the veil in comments to reporters soon after, criticizing Pompeo by name for making a mistake in hiring Bill Taylor, the current top diplomat in Ukraine. Trump just felt like, rein your people in, a senior White House staffer told NBC News on Monday. All this can be read as an ominous sign. Pompeo was first in his class at West Point, one Republican source told Time. He knows that with Trump, loyalty only flows upstream.

If Trump is frustrated with Pompeo, however, it goes both ways. As he seeks to please the president and maintain control of a large department dissatisfied with his leadership, the Secretary of State is reportedly feeling stretched thin. Pompeo feels under siege, an official told NBC. If the past is any indication, such frustrations in Trumpworld can turn quickly to bitternessand personnel changes.

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

The strangely familiar nightmare of impeaching Trump Clues to the identity of Anonymous, who wrote the explosive White House op-ed Former Fox News staffers demand to be released from their NDAs Why crypto-crooks have their sights set on Iceland A sustained booing reveals Trumps true face From the archive: A portrait of Kim Jong Un, part man, part myth

Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.

See the rest here:
Mike Pompeo Could Be Getting Ready to Bail on Trump - Vanity Fair

Two of Mr. Buttigiegs rivals pushed back more or less gently, channeling in a tentative way the frustration across the Democratic field with the rise of a 37-year-old mayor with no experience in national government. Mr. Booker, a onetime wunderkind mayor of Newark, described himself as the other Rhodes scholar mayor on this stage perhaps his most pointed expression of feeling overlooked in the race.

But it was Ms. Klobuchar who most effectively pivoted from her past criticism of Mr. Buttigieg, whom she has described as benefiting in the race from being male, into a forceful plea to the country to elect a female president.

Women are held to a higher standard, otherwise we could play a game called name your favorite woman president, Ms. Klobuchar said, brandishing one of her favorite lines from the campaign trail: If you think a woman cant beat Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi does it every single day.

The Democrats met just hours after the administrations ambassador to the European Union, Gordon D. Sondland, offered perhaps the most damaging testimony against Mr. Trump yet in the House impeachment proceeding. The inquiry, centering on whether Mr. Trump linked American financial and political support for Ukraine to a promise to investigate Mr. Biden, has worried some Democrats about the former vice presidents viability in a general election.

Yet that is only one factor that is making an already volatile race more fluid than ever.

Since the debate last month, former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has entered the primary contest, and former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York has taken steps to do the same. They have been lured into the campaign in part over their concerns about the leftward drift in the party, and also because there is still no clear front-runner with just over two months until the Iowa caucuses. It remains far from certain that they will be able to catch on so late in the race, but both have made clear that they are trying to win over more moderate voters.

If there is an opening for them, it is because Mr. Biden has not been able to consolidate support from center-left Democrats. Voters and donors from this wing of the party are uneasy with him mainly because of his lackluster fund-raising and campaign performances, and less because of Mr. Trumps false claims that he acted improperly with Ukraine when his son Hunter was on the payroll of an energy company there.

More broadly, though, the race remains unsettled because Democratic voters are splintered across racial, ideological and generational lines. Mr. Buttigieg surged in Iowa and New Hampshire in recent weeks, taking the lead in a new Des Moines Register-CNN survey of Iowa caucusgoers. But he has not made similar gains beyond the two heavily white states that kick off the nominating process.

Excerpt from:
Democratic Debate Has Early Focus on Trumps Conduct and Impeachment - The New York Times

WASHINGTON During her two years serving in the Trump administration, Nikki R. Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, managed to toe a tougher line on Russia than her boss, while also never straying from his good graces.

We dont trust Russia. We dont trust Putin, Ms. Haley said in an interview in July 2018, days after Mr. Trump met with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, in Helsinki, Finland. Theyre never going to be our friend.

By the time Ms. Haley left the administration nearly a year ago, she seemed to have perfected an almost impossible dance: distancing herself from some of the presidents most criticized positions while staying publicly loyal. She managed to leave both on her terms and on good terms with the president.

It was a balancing act that did not go without notice, and Ms. Haley, a woman of color and a former governor of South Carolina, was widely seen as preserving her options for a return to politics, perhaps as a post-Trump presidential candidate.

Last summer, she challenged the president once more after he had trumpeted the fact that the Baltimore home of Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a critic of Mr. Trump, had been broken into.

This is so unnecessary, Ms. Haley wrote on Twitter in August, infuriating the president, according to aides.

But now, Ms. Haley appears to have made the political calculation to go all in supporting the president, rather than defining herself in contrast to him.

In a media blitz timed to the release of her new book, With All Due Respect: Defending America With Grit and Grace, Ms. Haley has consistently echoed White House talking points about how there is no case for impeachment and unequivocally defended Mr. Trumps character.

In every instance I dealt with him, he was truthful, he listened and he was great to work with, Ms. Haley told NBCs Savannah Guthrie.

In her book, Ms. Haley does not criticize the president, but does take on two targets who have fallen out of favor with him, and with whom she clashed repeatedly: John F. Kelly, the former chief of staff, and Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state.

She praises the president as a leader who always treated her with respect and describes an honest relationship in which he would sometimes change course based on her counsel.

In describing the announcement of her resignation in October 2018, when Mr. Trump praised her for her service, she writes that the president was the man Id seen many times, the man he too often doesnt let the country see.

She even tries to explain his continuing flattery of Mr. Putin, describing a conversation with him after the Helsinki meeting.

To his credit, she writes, the president soon issued additional remarks, saying he had misspoken. She adds: I was glad he made that clarification, and I understood what he had been trying to do. He was trying to keep communication open with Putin.

She also credits Mr. Trump with learning from the experience of Charlottesville, and handling synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and near San Diego with great sensitivity and appropriateness.

Ms. Haleys loyalty to Mr. Trumps view of the world has been rewarded with a presidential endorsement. Make sure you order your copy today, or stop by one of her book tour stops to get a copy and say hello. Good luck Nikki! Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

For Ms. Haley, an Indian-American Tea Party activist who became a two-term governor of South Carolina known better as a voice of moderation on racial issues in the South, the reaction to her tweet about Mr. Cummings was a rude reminder of how she risks losing the Trump base when she puts distance between herself and the president.

Mr. Trump, aides said, wanted to respond to her himself, but was talked out of doing it. Instead, Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser who is close with Vice President Mike Pence, shot back at Ms. Haley in a tweet that was sanctioned from the top. THIS is so unnecessary Trump-PENCE2020, Ms. Conway wrote, an allusion to the rumors that Ms. Haley had been positioning herself to replace Mr. Pence on the ticket in 2020.

Ms. Haley remains close with the presidents daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, and they warned her to be more careful talking about Mr. Trump, according to two people familiar with the conversation. A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley said she never received such a warning.

Her subsequent pivot can be seen as a recognition of the reality confronting anyone contemplating a future in todays Republican Party there is little future after distancing yourself from Mr. Trump.

It is Trumps party today and, more likely than not, it will be Trumps party 10 years from now, said Kevin Madden, a political strategist and former adviser to Mitt Romneys presidential campaign. Trump will cast a long shadow over the partys profile and will be a litmus test for the partys most active base voters for years to come.

For Republicans like Ms. Haley, Mr. Madden said the relationship with Trumpism would continue to be a balancing act.

Stray too far and you run the risk of inviting scorn from his biggest defenders, he said. Go lock step with him and, as weve seen with the 2018 midterm test and the 2019 contests in key states like Virginia, the potential is there to alienate voters in suburbs who are making and breaking elections right now.

Ms. Haley has been relatively removed from public life in the year since she left the administration. She joined the board of Boeing and is reportedly getting paid $200,000 a speech on the speaking tour.

But her forays into politics show someone who is tacking toward Mr. Trump, while leaving herself room for daylight between them in the future.

She has held a fund-raiser for the president and plans to do more, according to an aide. Ms. Haley, who still lives in New York City but plans to return to South Carolina after her son graduates from high school, has also started a nonprofit organization called Stand for America.

The groups website describes Americas prosperity being threatened by socialist schemes of higher taxes, regulations and unsecure borders, echoing the language and themes of Mr. Trumps own re-election campaign. She has campaigned for Republicans like Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa and Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado.

But she also appears to be stirring the pot on Twitter in a way that is intended to grab Mr. Trumps attention and stay in the news.

On Monday, she targeted George T. Conway III, the outspoken, Trump-hating husband of Ms. Conway, who has drawn the presidents own ire.

George Conway is the last person that can call someone trash. #Pathetic, Ms. Haley wrote on Twitter, criticizing Mr. Conway for an attack on Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, who emerged during the first week of televised impeachment hearings as a moderate turned Trump defender.

Youll say anything to get the vice-presidential nomination, wont you? Mr. Conway fired back.

Ms. Haley, who declined to comment for this article, has in the past denied that she is seeking to replace Mr. Pence.

But White House advisers loyal to Mr. Pence have long faulted Ms. Haley for stoking the rumors that she could potentially replace Mr. Pence on the 2020 ticket something they see as beneficial to an out-of-office politician who needs a way to stay relevant until the next presidential race.

Some have noted with frustration that it was Mr. Pence who first advocated Ms. Haley joining the administration, even though she had been tacitly critical of Mr. Trump during her 2016 response to President Barack Obamas final State of the Union address and had supported Senator Marco Rubio of Florida during the 2016 Republican primary.

For now, friends said, with plenty of time for another pivot down the line, supporting Mr. Trump makes sense.

Having that tweet from Donald Trump is going to be very, very important, promoting the book, said Bakari Sellers, the former South Carolina state legislator who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor and is now a CNN commentator. She got what she wanted.

Mr. Sellers, a Democrat who said he considered Ms. Haley a friend, said that in her balancing act he saw someone who had plenty of time to recalibrate. Ms. Haley, he predicted, would have a longer political story to tell.

Donald Trump is going to be a footnote in her political career, Mr. Sellers predicted. It wont be defining.

Read the rest here:
After Keeping a Careful Distance From Trump, Nikki Haley Is All In - The New York Times