Well, all this is interesting to me, anyway, and that's what matters here. The Internet is a terrible thing for someone like me, who finds almost everything interesting.
Friday, February 17, 2017
President Trump's first solo press conference
Yesterday, Donald Trump's first solo press conference as president was just crazy piled on top of crazy. As others have said, it was unhinged. It was nonstop whining. And it made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
If this didn't scare you about the future of our country, nothing will. And we're not even a month into his presidency yet!
I can't even begin to recount all of the lunacy he displayed here. TPM has posted the 8 Craziest Moments and 5 Overlooked Asides, but even those barely scratch the surface. It was just nuts! SNL will have to devote an entire show to this press conference if they hope to come even close to the insanity of the real thing.
This is one of the best reactions, for its brief length, from Jake Tapper at CNN:
"It was Festivus." Heh, heh. Now, that was funny. But his point was very serious.
"At one point he said that the leaks were real but the news was fake, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever." Tapper is right. If it's fake, it's not a leak.
You can't claim that the intelligence community is leaking classified data while also claiming that news organizations are lying when they report it. Yet that's exactly what Trump has been claiming.
Tapper mentions Peter Alexander at NBC, and the clip below shows that brief segment of the news conference.
Remember, after the election, Donald Trump bragged and bragged about winning one of the biggest electoral college margins in history, while also claiming that he won the popular vote. Neither of those claims was true - not even close!
Recently, he's dialed back the first of those claims, maybe because it was so ludicrously false. But he replaced it with a claim that was just as demonstrably false, that he had the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.
That "304 or 306" stuff is because Trump didn't even get that part right. He's repeatedly claimed that he got 306 electoral votes, when he actually got 304. But that's hardly the main thing here. I mean, at this point, no one is going to expect Donald Trump to get numbers right.
But he claimed, as he has been claiming, that he won the biggest electoral college victory since Reagan. Alexander started to correct him, mentioning one of Barack Obama's wins (both were bigger than Trump's), when Trump interrupted to change that claim to just Republican wins. But even that isn't true, which Alexander noted when he finished his sentence.
"So why should Americans trust you, when you accuse the information they receive as being fake, when you're providing information that's not accurate?" Good question, isn't it?
But like everything else where Donald Trump has been demonstrably wrong, he shrugs it off as just something 'he was given.' "Actually, I've seen that information around." But the point is that it's not true.
We've seen this over and over again, throughout the campaign and right into the presidency. We saw it when he falsely claimed to have seen thousands of American Muslims cheering on 9/11. We saw it when he claimed that he actually won the popular vote, because 3-5 million people voted illegally.
Over and over again, Donald Trump either lies or is just too stupid to separate fantasy from reality. I don't know which it is, but it's scary as hell, either way, given that he's now President of the United States.
PS. Please note that Trump is holding a 2020 campaign rally in Florida tomorrow! Yes, this is an actual campaign rally, paid for by his 2020 presidential campaign, less than one month into his term of office. How crazy is that?
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It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong - Richard Feynman
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. - Sir Francis Bacon
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science. - Hal Clement
No matter how many times a theory meets its tests successfully, there can be no certainty that it will not be overthrown by the next observation. This, then, is a cornerstone of modern natural philosophy. It makes no claim of attaining ultimate truth. In fact, the phrase "ultimate truth" becomes meaningless, because there is no way in which enough observations can be made to make truth certain and, therefore, "ultimate". - Isaac Asimov
The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. - Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams (1797)
I don't doubt the sincerity of dowsers, but even after we've demonstrated that they can't produce results that are any better than chance they'll still go away believing in their abilities... It is like the mother whose son is caught shoplifting on tape. She wonders why someone would want to frame her child by producing a fake video. - James Randi
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church ... imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. - Mark Twain
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. - Bertrand Russell
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. - Friedrich Nietzsche
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. - Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.
This is not about proof. Science does not use proof. We favor evidence, and the work consists largely of the slow accumulation of evidence in support of ideas, not magically potent proofs that establish an idea as unassailable. - PZ Myers
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The formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat. - Shekhar Gupta
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To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. - Michael Servetus, burned at the stake in 1553
Democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy can't take root. - Thomas L. Friedman
We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason. - Thomas Macauley, 1830
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men. - Edward R. Murrow
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. - Thomas Huxley
There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. - Arthur Schopenhauer
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. ... Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. - President Thomas Jefferson
To be elected in America, no matter from what party, the candidates have no choice but to year after year pledge to lower taxes further and further. We have become the nation of Ken and Barbie, looking good but very poor at the math. - Rack Jite
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them. - Steve Eley
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. - President Franklin D. Roosevelt
I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle. - Molly Ivins
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. - H. L. Mencken
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill
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