Donald Trump, in a White House meeting, asked that a military parade exclude wounded veterans, because "nobody wants to see" amputees. My story here:
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New, from : Trump skipped a visit to an American military cemetery in France after calling the dead "losers" for getting killed: Full story here:
Noting that Putin is demanding the "denazification" of a country led by an elected Jewish president.
In his first interview, Alex Vindman tells me that Trump is Putin's "useful idiot."
"In the Army, we call this ‘free chicken,’ something you don’t have to work for—it just comes to you. This is what the Russians have in Trump: free chicken.”
Story:
.: "I did not believe how easily the Republican establishment, people who had been in Washington for a long time and had professed a belief in certain institutional values and norms, would just cave.'
Full interview comes tomorrow .
This story by @CillizzaCNN fails to note, among other things, that Fox News and the Associated Press both corroborated the reporting in my piece for :
At this point, it would be newsworthy to find a gruntled ex-White House employee.
To underscore: When given a chance, the president of the United States refused to condemn white supremacy.
Donald Trump calls The Atlantic a "second-rate" magazine, a "third-rate" magazine, and a "failing" magazine. I call it America's best magazine. Who is right? Subscribe now and find out:
Axl Rose and Steven Mnuchin are apparently fighting on Twitter. I don't think anyone saw that one coming.
"If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn't work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis."
- to , posting Monday.
Fact check: is doing quite well. If you're interested in reading the excellent work of our journalists, here's a way to do so: accounts.theatlantic.com/products/
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The Atlantic Magazine is dying, like most magazines, so they make up a fake story in order to gain some relevance. Story already refuted, but this is what we are up against. Just like the Fake Dossier. You fight and and fight, and then people realize it was a total fraud!
I can't get this bit of analysis, from Donald Trump, off my mind:
"You can call it a germ. You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You know, you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."
"Don't ever use the word smart with me" is an inadvertently great line.
"Unlike immigrants, natural-born citizens such as Carlson are neither screened nor forced to pass a citizenship test nor made to swear an oath. And when they stray from the American way, no one thinks to tell them that they’re failing to assimilate."
A Trump transition staffer (and law professor) says enough is enough, and calls for impeachment (via ):
"6MWE" -- a slogan on T-shirts seen at the Capitol yesterday. It stands for, "Six Million Wasn't Enough."
Nice friends you have there, Jared.
"She has accused reporters of 'purposefully misleading the American people.' She has deflected; she has belittled; she has eye-rolled; she has condescended; she has obfuscated; she has misled; she has lied." -- Read on Sarah Sanders:
Your periodic reminder that Donald Trump called President George H.W. Bush a "loser" for getting shot down by the Japanese in World War II:
"We Stand Behind the President" -- a short film from , is worth watching. Three minutes of your time. It captures a core truth of the Trump presidency:
"The president can put quotation marks around lieutenant colonel, as he did in today’s tweets, in an effort to demean Vindman’s service, but there is nothing to demean about his service, which has been in all respects honorable." -- .
Thank you to everyone who cared enough to praise or condemn me this week for leaving Fox. It was an easy decision, in large part because it was made by a completely different Goldberg.
cc:
"Roughly 92 percent of conservatives said they would be friends with a liberal, and just 3 percent said that they would not have a liberal friend. Among liberals, however, almost a quarter said they would not have a conservative friend." -- :
Not to mention President John Kerry's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina:
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Joe Biden can’t run from his disastrous record responding to the coronavirus.
The truth hurts, Joe!
twitter.com/RNCResearch/st
Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis denounces President Trump, accusing him of making a mockery of the Constitution and pitting Americans against each other. Read all about it at :
"We can be the party of Eisenhower, or the party of the conspiracist Alex Jones. We can applaud Officer Goodman or side with the mob he outwitted. We cannot do both."
-- :
.'s audience has never been bigger. Please join our hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and tens of millions of readers. Subscribe here: accounts.theatlantic.com/products/
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Great News: The boring but very nasty magazine, The Atlantic, is rapidly failing, going down the tubes, and has just been forced to announce it is laying off at least 20% of its staff in order to limp into the future. This is a tough time to be in the Fake News Business!
Quick fact check: Donald Trump did not make peace in the Middle East.
"Good news, America. Russia helped install your president. But although he owes his job in large part to that help, the president did not conspire or collude with his helpers." -- :
"It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks." --
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh, February 24:
Just wondering if one version of reality is more real than the other? But who can say, really?
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AP: Trump and Biden are presenting "dizzyingly different versions of reality" apnews.com/780b2edfd25af1
Statements like this one from the President of the United States endanger the lives of reporters:
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The Lamestream Media is doing everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy. As long as everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!
The New York Times employs 1600 journalists who do indispensable work across the globe. The paper publishes millions and millions of words each year. Sometimes it makes mistakes. Also, President Trump would like you to cancel your subscriptions.
It's appropriate that accounts expressing the desire to see harm come to Trump are being suspended, but I wish that Twitter had taken more seriously the countless thousands of death threats received by journalists of the ((())) persuasion on this website over the years.
The former defense secretary, James Mattis, condemns President Trump in an extraordinary statement. He describes him as a threat to American unity. Read more :
Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump's leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent."
"Why do working-class white men—the most reliable component of Donald Trump’s base—support someone who is, by their own standards, the least masculine man ever to hold the modern presidency?"
Here's the answer, from :
James Mattis, in his first interview since leaving office: "There is a period in which I owe my silence. It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.”
"If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn't work. We are entering into an epistemological crisis." -- :
Future historians will simply not be able to explain the behavior witnessed in the White House today:
"In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got...."
Donald Trump has been credibly accused of rape, sexual assault, and harassment many times. asked one of the women who accused him of rape, the writer , to examine the charges. This the first installment in our ongoing series:
.: "Unlike his three immediate predecessors in the Oval Office, all of whom also came to see the futility of the Afghan operation, Biden alone had the political courage to fully end America’s involvement."
"(I)t’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump."
-- :
Read the whole piece; it's important:
"Trump’s exceptional narcissism defines him, and it’s what makes him wholly unfit for his job. 'The fundamental life goal' of an extreme narcissist, as one psychologist has put it, 'is to promote the greatness of the self, for all to see.'"
:
Ouch.
"No other developed, democratic country—and perhaps no other country in the world—would entrust any part of its foreign policy to someone like Gordon Sondland."
Trump is the best president for windows since Abraham Lincoln.
Also the way Maggie and I greet each other.
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Potus pronounces Yosemite as "yo-Semites" at White House event.
"Trump’s tweeting in the past two days was so frenzied and the sources quoted were so bizarre.... as to renew doubts about the president’s mental stability."
-- :
Fox News: Biden is doing very poorly among Trump supporters.
To support the crummy Atlantic's great journalists, please subscribe: accounts.theatlantic.com/products/
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For years Fake stories and investigations, then the phony Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, next Ukraine and the failed Impeachment, now the crummy Atlantic Magazine’s MADE UP STORY, and lastly, the political hit job by rapidly fading Bob Woodward and his boring book. It never ends!
"I suppose a magazine aimed at teens and preteens would strain to acknowledge what every adult knows, which is that the entire point of being a teenager is to make and correct the most mortifying errors of your life.
-- :
The children who were stolen from their parents are kept in very clean facilities -- this is the president's argument.
Everyone on this platform should consider migrating to deeply reported, carefully written magazine feature stories, printed on paper.
"The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: 'You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?'”
'Which generals?' Kelly asked.
'The German generals in World War II,' Trump responded."
From this holy-shit excerpt:
“We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral," Trump said, referring to John McCain. Full story here:
theatlantic.com/politics/archi
This piece is amazing. Starting with the headline.
"I think you'll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal and the hope is that by July the country's really rocking again." -- Jared Kushner, April, 2020.
At this point, Chris Wallace should call a time-out and ask Trump to take five minutes to collect himself.
"Americans have waited four decades for Iranians to reject the regime’s propaganda and stop seeing them as the enemy. This is a historic opportunity for the two nations to forge a new bond...."
-- :
.: "The only decent, sensible, and conservative position is to vote against this Republican Party at every level, and bring the sad final days of a once-great political institution to an end."
Read the whole piece here:
This is an astonishing piece by a very brave Uyghur writer:
This is the article that probably triggered Trump:
"They call me a RINO, but I haven’t changed. The Republican Party has changed into an authoritarian Trump organization. They’re the RINOs. Trump is a RINO.”
-- , from this interview:
I was with pro-Trump protesters all morning near the White House. This was the plan. Trump whipped them up, and then they marched on the Capitol to subvert the democratic process.
Just when you think it can't get worse:
cnn.com/2020/09/19/med
.: "I did not believe how easily the Republican establishment, people who had been in Washington for a long time and had professed a belief in certain institutional values and norms, would just cave."
From this story:
Someone should win a Pulitzer for this headline:
"This is sedition... No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat."
New and noteworthy:
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NEW, @JenGriffinFNC confirms former Trump admin official confirms details in The Atlantic story, including quotes about veterans. When the President spoke about the Vietnam War he said, “It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker.”
"Will you shut up, man" might be Biden's Gettysburg Address.
"I worked at the State Department.... as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. I have watched as Pompeo and his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, have weaponized the institution for the Trump administration’s domestic political objectives."
So many people read this story when we published it, but not enough paid heed. And now here we are.
"I wanted to share my experience transitioning from Trump team member to pragmatist about Trump to advocate for his impeachment, because I think many other Republicans are starting a similar transition." Via :
Something overlooked in the coverage of Jim Mattis's statement denouncing Trump: He specifically endorsed the anti-police violence protests:
Glenn Beck has compared Twitter suspension to the forced ghettoization of Jews by the Germans. Here is some information from Yad Vashem about conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto:
"A man is what he thinks about all day long." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
This is an example of good ad-making:
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Our country has a rich history of presidents who respected the power, decorum, and influence of their office.
Unfortunately, that rich history ended the day Trump became president.
Mueller deputy Weissmann to George Packer: 'There’s no question I was frustrated at the time. There was more that could be done that we didn’t do."
Read the whole story here:
I am morally and contractually required to note that 's great came up with the defining phrase of the Trump era: The cruelty is the point.
5:35 a.m., flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. Guy next to me just ordered a Scotch on the rocks. As the saying goes, it’s 7 a.m. somewhere.
In which a commentator attacks a woman for refusing to endorse a man who viciously insulted her late husband:
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Congratulations Cindy McCain. You helped cost us Arizona.
"Lost entirely is the fact that the elderly are individual human beings, each with a distinctive face and voice, each with hopes and dreams, memories and regrets, friendships and marriages, loves lost and loves sustained."
"The Trump White House... is the most dysfunctional in history. Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in history. Yet that White House and that president head the government of this unfortunate country." -- :
Not to go on about this forever, but I just reread 's "The Cruelty is the Point" -- the article that introduced this entire concept -- and I think it will turn out to be one of the most important pieces of this whole era:
"Even in the midst of the carnage we are witnessing, we must endeavor to see American cities and towns as our homes and our neighborhoods. They are not “battle spaces” to be dominated, and must never become so." -- Adm. Mike Mullen, via :
Noting that Trump, given a chance to condemn white supremacist ideology, did not.
The cognitive dissonance here is profound:
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Enough of the fake news - my book is the real story of the most consequential presidency and election of our lifetimes. Get your copy now at SpeakingForMyself.com
.'s recent tweets suggest, once again, that he reads , or has it read to him. This is the piece, by Gen. David Petraeus, that has him so exercised:
So this seems like a next-level sort of issue:
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Trump told Bob Woodward he built a secret nuclear weapons system 
washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-w
washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-w
"These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable." -- :
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi