Summations Only

marc9000's contribution is very informative. There is some meat in there, but for the most part, 9K confirms my worst expectations. Let me cite an example here: What 9K says here is that whatever he decides is distortion, and his criteria is easily revealed to be subjective and leaning towards whatever he already believes, is fake news. I don't know what would be a more substantial confirmation that the concept of fake news is fairly close to anything he believes isn't correct.And how else could it be? How else can people buy into that "would" vs "wouldn't" explanation that Trump gave yesterday. An explanation that covered one sentence out of a speech full of throwing the FBI/CIA under the bus in Helsinki followed by doing exactly the same thing later on Hannity's show? How does one double negative explain all of that? Easy. The other reporting is fake even if we all saw Trump making those statements, it's all fake.

No, this isn't about a Trump meal. It's about Trump's changing position on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election and whether he accepts the findings of his own intelligence organizations. By the time I finish writing this Trump may have yet again flip-flopped, but here's a compilation of Trump's statements over time.This is Trump at his press conference with Putin in Helsinki saying that he doesn't see why any interference would have come from Russia:

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"All I can do is ask the question - my people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin he just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be...
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So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.

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Why wouldn't someone who lies as much as Trump assume that a leader like Putin would also lie? Very strange. Later back at the White House Trump backed off his Helsinki comments, saying he meant to say "wouldn't" instead of "would", though he still waffled at the end:

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"In a key sentence in my remarks I said the word would instead of wouldn’t. The sentence should have been: 'I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia. Sort of a double negative. I think that probably clarifies things pretty good on itself...I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place."
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"Could be other people also. A lot of people out there.

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Then the next day he reversed himself again:

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Q: "Is Russia still targeting the US, Mr. President?"

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A: "Thank you very much. No."

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Then later that day he reversed himself again in an interview with CBS News:

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I let him know we can’t have this. We’re not going to have it, and that’s the way it’s going to be.

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This president doesn't speak truth. He says whatever he feels is expedient at the time, true or not.--Percy

The Washington Post yesterday reported on How Trump’s tariffs on Mexico are taking jobs from U.S. workers:

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When a Mexican company bought Mid Continent Nail Corp. in 2012, workers at the factory here feared it was the beginning of the end. Their jobs, they suspected, would be given to lower-paid workers in Mexico, more casualties of the hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing driven in part by an embrace of global trade.

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Instead, Mid Continent’s factory has doubled in size since Deacero’s purchase. The company, facing fewer restrictions on steel exports after the North American Free Trade Agreement, shipped steel into Missouri, willing to pay skilled workers more to take advantage of cheaper energy costs in the United States and a location that allowed swift delivery to U.S. customers.

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But President Trump has put 25 percent tariffs on steel imports, bumping production costs and prompting Deacero to reconsider this arrangement. With Mid Continent charging more for nails, orders are down 70 percent from this time a year ago despite a booming construction industry. Company officials say that without relief, the Missouri plant could be out of business by Labor Day or that remaining production could move to Mexico or another country.

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Got that? Trump tariffs could put a flourishing US company out of business by fall. He helped the minuscule steel industry and hurt the huge number of companies dependent upon reasonably priced steel. The article describes the situation of a Mid Continent employee who will be in dire straights if he loses his job:

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Philip Bennett, 37, a machine repairman at Mid Continent, appeared close to tears as he talked about his 5-year-old daughter, Aubree, who has a congenital heart condition that has required multiple surgeries. He has health insurance through Mid Continent that covers her.

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There’s a lot of good things that he is doing. But he’s affecting me now, and I don’t appreciate it, Bennett, a Trump supporter, said of the president.

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The article doesn't say whether he's still a Trump supporter, but I bet he is. He doesn't understand that contrary to Trump's claim that trade wars are easy to win, they are not. Trade wars hurt both sides. Fair and open trade is the pathway to world prosperity, not trade wars.Trump has a fundamental misconception about trade deficits. He thinks they're bad. He thinks that if China ships more goods and services to the US than we ship to them, thereby causing us to run a trade deficit with China, that that is a bad thing. He's 180 degrees wrong because the exact opposite is true. A trade deficit means we're purchasing more goods from China than they're purchasing from us because we're richer than they are, because our industries and businesses are more robust and productive and give our citizens more money to spend. Trade deficits reflect economic strength, not weakness.--Percy

I would characterize it as some very tangled and biased confused thinking. Marc seems a typical knee-jerk emotion-driven Trump supporter who refuses to see the worldwide harm Trump is causing. He can't see, for example, the havoc Trmp's wreaking with the NATO alliance and instead thinks the true problem is the negative reports in the news, what he calls fake news, despite every bit of it being true since it consists mostly of quotes of Trump's actual words and the reactions to them.--Percy

But that is exactly how the people like Faith & Marc and the whole Christian Cult of Ignorance approach everything, particularly the Bible and Christianity. When confronted by what is actually written in the Bible they claim "fake news", "liberal interpretation", "misrepresentation" and fall back on the dogma of the Christian Right Wing Fascism.

I can say that most of my Right Wing Christian associates have in fact defended the Helsinki debacle, but I am angry about it and consider it in no way fake news. I agree with most of what McCain and other officials both Democratic and Republican said in condemning Trump. And yet according to you, I am part of this so-called cult of ignorance. My point is that you cannot generalize.Now...A bit of humor: Edited by Phat, : wrong video

I think you can. Generally speaking, Americans are idiots or they wouldn't have elected Trump. There are certainly a lot of Americans who aren't idiots but there are enough to make the generalization kinda valid.

Be fair Ringo. Clinton got more votes than Trump.

What about the people who didn't vote at all? If Clinton get a few more votes than Trump, she still didn't get a majority of the eligible voters.

Most voters did not vote for Trump. But your point is well taken. Quibbling about whether Trump is a mistake by 49 or 51 percent of Americans is not much defense against a pretty damning indictment.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

More importantly, most didn't vote against him. The only thing we have to do for evil to prevail is nothing.

For whatever this is worth, I know lots of fundamentalists, by which I mean folks who have similar Biblical beliefs to those expressed by Faith. Not a single one of those fundamentalists voted for Trump or supports him now.My point here is that this stuff we are hearing is not required by Christianity. Instead what we are seeing is a bunch of Christians who are willing to emphasize those parts of their religious beliefs that align with their politics. marc9000 made a classic statement along these lines when he accused folks of "cherry picking" when they emphasize what Jesus taught rather than the lessons of the Old Testament. I am reminded of Conservapedia's effort to write their own Bible so that it excludes things not favored by conservatives such as the "let him cast the first stone" story.I am of the belief that many folks will find that the Kingdom of God as talked about by Jesus is a bit too socialist for their liking.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Like your hero, you've got things 180 degrees backwards. Trump the Grump spews hate at a phenomenal rate. Let's just examine a few of his recent tweets:

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Attacking the free press, an expression of hate:

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Jul 19, 2018 08:24:58 AM: The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media.

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Lying about the free press, another expression of hate:

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Jul 19, 2018 05:37:57 AM The Fake News Media is going Crazy! They make up stories without any backup, sources or proof. Many of the stories written about me, and the good people surrounding me, are total fiction. Problem is, when you complain you just give them more publicity. But I’ll complain anyway!

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Lying about how good his economic numbers are:

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Jul 18, 2018 06:33:34 AM: 3.4 million jobs created since our great Election Victory - far greater than ever anticipated, and only getting better as new and greatly improved Trade Deals start coming to fruition!

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That's 3.4 million over the prior 19 months, which include several months of the Obama presidency, and actually more since a new president cannot have an instantaneous effect upon taking office. But here's a graph of the number of employees added over the prior 19 months. Light blue is Obama, dark blue is Trump. Note that Trump has consistently underperformed Obama:

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Lying about reaction to his press conference with Putin in Helsinki:

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Jul 18, 2018 04:53:41 AM: So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki. Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!

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Calling Hillary Clinton names (how contrary to the behavior of all past presidents who at least made a sincere effort to appear presidential), and lying about Obama and the Mueller probe:

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Jul 16, 2018 12:37:05 AM: President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he said it couldn’t happen, was no big deal, & did NOTHING about it. When I won it became a big deal and the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by Strzok!

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Obama held a meeting with Mitch McConnell seeking common ground to announce Russian election meddling to the public. McConnell refused. All the intelligence agencies say Russian meddling in the 2016 election and that the investigation into it is defnitely not a witch hunt. Trump was briefed on the evidence by the intelligence agencies before the inauguration, so when he says there is no evidence of Russian meddling he is lying. Trump should not be singling out individual FBI agents who have done nothing wrong except send anti-Trump texts. Strzok led the Russian meddling investigation back in 2016, and the conservative Wall Street Journal (i.e., Trump friend) reviewed all Strzok's texts and concluded they showed no evidence of a conspiracy against Trump.

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Jul 16, 2018 12:23:50 AM Received many calls from leaders of NATO countries thanking me for helping to bring them together and to get them focused on financial obligations, both present & future. We had a truly great Summit that was inaccurately covered by much of the media. NATO is now strong & rich!

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This is an obvious lie. No NATO leaders called to thank Trump for doing his best to sabotage NATO.

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Another attack on the free press, and this time also of the Democrats, another expression of hate:

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Jul 15, 2018 11:18:11 AM ...Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people and all the Dems...

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Yet another attack on the free press for not reporting his bamboozlement by Kim Jung Un in positive ways:

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Jul 15, 2018 11:11:13 AM There hasn’t been a missile or rocket fired in 9 months in North Korea, there have been no nuclear tests and we got back our hostages. Who knows how it will all turn out in the end, but why isn’t the Fake News talking about these wonderful facts? Because it is FAKE NEWS!

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Now here's an attack on Lisa Page calling her a liar and corruptor, another expression of hate:

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Jul 12, 2018 12:55:24 AM As I head out to a very important NATO meeting, I see that FBI Lover/Agent Lisa Page is dodging a Subpoena & is refusing to show up and testify. What can she possibly say about her statements and lies. So much corruption on the other side. Where is the Attorney General? @FoxNews

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That should be plenty, and those are just Trump tweets over a couple days earlier this week. He mostly uses Twitter to lie, attack people, and issue expressions of hate. So you'd like to see more gloating by the president? Just what qualities do you think a president should have? Do you think compassion, inclusiveness, objectivity, honesty and integrity should be among them? Bush and Obama did not engage in boorish, buffoonish, lying, hating behavior the way Trump does You've been sold a bill of goods by Trump and Fox News. Here's the YouTube video you linked to, prepositioned right at 1:23 (not 1:25). Looks like a gratuitous attack on a former president by Donald Trump the hater. Obama looked like his normal calm and deliberative self: Cult of personality is more like it. Everyone will agree with you that Trump isn't stuffy, but neither is he presidential. He's a hate-mongering train wreck. Journalists are merely reporting and reacting to what Trump says. He constantly lies and spreads hate and unprovokedly attacks people and institutions and cozies up to brutal dictators, so that's what journalists report on. If it gets bad enough, such as his performance in Helsinki, then even Fox News reports on it.If Trump would instead demonstrate compassion and an interest in responsible governance (instead of trying to twist the government to serve his personal self interest) then journalists would report on that. You're crazy. There's nothing Christian about Trump. Christians support him because he's a fellow traveler with respect to conservative judgeships and abortion and other Christian causes, not because he in any way resembles a Christian. I would say a fair number of Trump's Christian supporters do not much resemble Christians, either. Faith is a prime example - she's the least loving, compassionate, empathetic person I've ever encountered. How about this Trump tweet:

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Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!

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This after Russia meddled in the 2016 election, annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, shot down a commercial airliner killing all 298 passengers and crew, allied with brutal dictator Asad in Syria, and assassinated former Russian operatives in the UK with a nerve agent.Trump - making Russia great again! We're judging Trump's presidency on two things: What he says and what he does. What he says consists of tweets, occasional responses to reporter questions, occasional interviews, occasional public comments, and what he says at his rallies. It doesn't include press conferences, since there was only the one press conference held shortly after his inauguration a year ago January.What Trump does is a mixed bag. He's been pretty strong on Russia with sanctions, allowing the sending of arms to the Ukraine, and allowing engagement with Russian forces in Syria. He's been incredibly destructive or misguided on other things, such as attacking our democratic institutions, the cruelty of family separations, and the raising of tariffs that are now causing layoffs in the US.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

I'm not really replying so much as using your message as an opportunity to repeat already known information.The electoral college amplifies the votes of rural yokels. (Sorry rural yokels, but that's what you are - we see you at Trump rallies cheering every inane lie. Trump the walking disaster is your guy and you're going to have to own up to responsibility for him.)Wyoming has the lowest state population at .17% of the total US population (for those of you who might miss decimal points, that's .17%, not 17%). Yet Wyoming gets 3 electors in the electoral college of 538 electors, or .56%, which is 3.3 times greater than it's population would suggest it should have.What this means is that small population rural states are way over-represented in the electoral college. While it might seem that elections so close that this matters would be rare, it's happened twice recently. Trump was elected with a minority of the popular vote, so was George W. Bush. The last time it happened before that was 130 years ago.If very close elections are going to be the rule rather than the exception going forward, then a change to the electoral college seems necessary.--Percy

I've been planning on making this point for a while, but it seems that Katrina vanden Heuvel has already written what I planned to do in the latest issue of The Nation.A stopped clock being right twice a day, Trump did have a point. Russia's current aggressive policies are partly the result of the failure of past US administrations' dealing with the former Soviet Union.The column mentions the mistake of expanding NATO right up to Russia's borders, which most people understood would be a provocation. I would also add the expansion of the US wars in the Middle East, especially into Syria, without taking into consideration that other countries, like Russia, also have interests in the region. And I've felt that the current Russia taking advantage of our dimwitted president isn't too different than the way the US took advantage of the dimwitted Yeltsin.Putin and his regime is partly a creation of the short sighted US policies.Nonetheless, it is also true that Putin is in power and he is a threat and that needs to be dealt with. But I hope that when we finally get a sensible President, that administration's response isn't to restart a Cold War, but more of a detente: an acknowledgment that, threat or no, our two nations (and the world) does have an interest in reducing tensions and some common areas of concern we could be working together on.