UKC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44852812

Brainwashing isn't confined to little people.

What about people with 'little' hands ?

Putin must be absolutely pissing himself. 

I'm guessing that Trump will ask if he can watch !

Ha!

When reason eventually reoccupies the presidency, there are going to be a whole lot of 'WTF?!' moments.

I hope that when is the correct word; not if.

T.

Trump doesn't have the diplomatic skill usually possessed by most world leaders to answer the questions asked of him without offending Putin.

Something he wasn't going to do when stood right next to him and after declaring their meeting a success.

?????????

Edit: Oh, no Unicode?

kukol'nyy

Putin has the expression of a man who has been the recent recipient of a blow-job.   Which, in many ways, he indeed was.  Surprised it took 2 hours though.

I don't think there will be any problem for Trump with this statement. He will, as he has done so often, simply issue a contradictory statement exonerating the FBI and refuse to believe he ever said such a thing to Putin.

I was reading an article in The Atlantic ( https://www.theatlantic.com/world/ ) a couple of days ago about this meeting. This is the first paragraph -

"What happens when The Art of the Deal meets the Kremlin playbook? Given that, as one depressed NSC staffer put it to me, “our job is to build a bridge between the real world and the president’s,” the real risk is not that Donald Trump actually gives away the farm to Vladimir Putin when they meet in Helsinki next week—it’s what happens in Washington if he tries."

Dave

It looks like this is playing very, very badly for Trump back home. Could be the turning point?*

*How many times have we thought that now?

Just what has Putin got on Trump and how long is it, after Trump leaves the room, before Putin falls about laughing? 

It's not going down well but I think "very, very badly" might be an overstatement. Democrats are appalled, obviously, but that's not new or significant. This time, some Republicans have actually criticised him, but the strongest Republican criticisms have come from people who have often criticised him in the past too. Those criticisms have sometimes been quite strongly-worded but they've never done anything about it and I don't think they will this time either. Not until the party's supporters abandon Trump in a big way, which I can't see any sign of, depressingly. They've got midterm elections coming up and at this point, pretty much the whole Republican party is hooked up to Trump's wagon. In addition, nobody in the Republican party will do anything to jeopardise the chance of appointing another supreme court judge.

Paul Ryan has come out and directly contradicted Trump on his statement about the election probe. Even Fox News are being critical about it, and once they've turned things look a lot more difficult for Trump. Trump basically debased himself and his country before Putin in such a way that only the most ignorant or hardcore of Republican support should be 100% immune to doubt.

At some point, some Republican representatives are going to start to worry about the history books more than the midterms.

I'll believe in this being a serious domestic problem for Trump when it happens, until then I'm not holding my breath. Hopefully it will create enough unrest in the US to keep them out of other countries' affairs for a long time, especially ours at the moment. 

True. But Ryan only ever embraced Trump reluctantly and he's been freed up by his retirement. It's not the first time he's publicly broken with Trump.

Yes, Fox News' criticism is new in scale and significant, I'll give you that one. It will be very interesting to see what response it gets. Fox took a while to get on board the Trump train back in the primaries and were basically forced to get enthusiastic by being afraid of losing viewers. If they're testing the water for a more confrontational approach, that could be huge. They'll only stick with it if the viewers accept it though.

The trouble is, "ignorant and hardcore" is exactly the following that Trump has cultivated. There's a terrifyingly large swathe of Republicans who appear to be cult-like in their acceptance of anything Trump does.

I'll believe it when I see it. It was obvious all along that history wouldn't judge Trump as a wise president but they cheerfully went along with it once it became clear that was the way their voter base was leaning. They'll go along with whatever their donors tell them and the donor money will keep flowing as long as they can stay in power to deregulate and lower taxes.

Looks like Trump has done what I thought a few posts ago -

As I said today and many times before, “I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.” However, I also recognize that in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past – as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along! #HELSINKI2018

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2018

 - not that I'm claiming any great talent. It is what he does every time he is caught out saying something that is demonstrably untrue or, like this one, acutely embarrassing.  

Dave

Donald Trump, the great negotiator, has seemingly never read beyond page one.  Page one says that your opening gambit must be outrageous, so as to destabilise the other party such that they immediately moderate their demands.  Anything that you then offer that is less outrageous seems to be reasonable and capable of acceptance as a good deal.

Hence little hands says he believes Putin, and will later say that the FBI is a successful organisation, good people, good Americans, doing great work.

Little rocket man, my button bigger than his.  Great leader of his people, great progress made in achieving 4/5 of f all

The one great opportunity that was missed was when Trump was revealed to have grabbed women by the p.... an dwas in a TV interview.   THE Question was, "Mr Trump, when you boasted that you just grabbed women by the p... and they did anything you wanted, were you lying?"  That question could have changed the world.

If you look closely at the photograph. observe Putin's lips, I'm sure he is mouthing "Banker" or something that sounds very like it.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44864739

You couldn't make it up!  The emotional intelligence of a five year old and the intelligence of.......er...a five year old ;-(

Makes a lot of sense really . In fact, now I think about it many of his most controversial utterances can be explained away as simple misstatements:

Not "they let you grab them by the pussy" but "they let you greet them with a warm handshake".

Not "very fine people in both sides" but "white supremacists and neo Nazis are all vile, evil rascists".

Not "very stable genius" but "psychopathic, moronic, narcissist" .

All it takes is to make a minor syntactic or grammatical mistake and those with an agenda pounce.  Sad.

I wonder if he thought up the, "I said the word 'would' instead of 'wouldn't," line by himself. or did he pee off the White House staff so much that they gave him a ridiculous line. Though given he made such a mess of this part of his meeting with Putin, there wasn't an easy way out of it.

Wonder if he will learn that taking advice and briefing from his staff who, collectively, have many years of experience of government and diplomacy might be a good idea - probably not because is the best person in the world.

Dave

Quite liked this one - youtube.com/watch?v=k-LTRwZb35A&

A pretty good summation of the leader of the free world !

As one commentator put it.   In issuing this reversal (wouldn't instead of would) he just set his voters a simple intelligence test,  and a great many still failed it.

His interview with chief sycophant Sean Hannity after returning from the meeting is just cringe worthy also, was he trying to be funny when he talked about nuclear warming?

It's scary how cult like some people have become over someone so vile, repugnant and untrustworthy.

Nooo !!!  I am bigly sure that I said "Don't launch the nuclear missiles not "launch the nuclear missiles" !

No need to worry ....

I want to know what was said at the 2 hour appraisal that him and his boss had where there was nobody present but translators.

I wonder how many times he misspoke during that.

I can't imagine him holding a train of thought for more than a few minutes.

I accidentally caught a few minutes of the interview on Air Force One between my two favourite people in the world, shooting the breeze while they held up everyone at waiting at Stansted or stacked in Western European airspace.  

This monstrous egotism aside, I was disturbed by how relaxed, articulate and, well, normal Trump appeared to be.  Of course, there were no really difficult questions and they are old friends, but it was a revelation.

This makes him even more dangerous - all it means is that he's also capable of casual and convincing lying as well as the blatant, barely comprehensible nonsense he constantly spouts publicly.

Back around the time he was elected I heard someone who knows him well explaining that Trump wasn't like a politician who was friendly and likeable in public while being a asshole in private.  With Trump it's the other way round.