For those who think that Donald Trump is thinking about issues, think again. From his utterances [let’s not dignify them by calling them “statements”] and early-morning bedside tweets, one can only conclude that no thought goes into his “pronouncements.” He merely stumbles from one shiny-object issue to the next, cribbing his remarks from whatever Trump TV has said, and garbling even that. Clearly, he does not actually understand what he is talking about, and we see that most vividly in his rambling, incoherent attempts to Trump-splain his latest policy lurch.

With that as an introduction, here is the complete [mercifully short] transcript of Trump’s attempt at an answer about US policy regarding Syria, from his  joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, on April 24, 2018. It seems as though he and Macron did have a discussion about Syria, from which Trump may have picked up a few phrases to sprinkle in as a way of trying to sound knowledgeable. [What, by the way, is “open season to the Mediterranean?”]  But I have no idea what he is trying to say. Do you? Does he?

As far as Syria is concerned, I would love to get out. I would love to bring our incredible warriors back home. They’ve done a great job; we’ve essentially just absolutely obliterated ISIS in Iraq, and in Syria. And we’ve done a big favor to neighboring countries, frankly, but we’ve also done a favor for our country.

With that being said, Emmanuel and myself have discussed the fact that we don’t want to give Iran open season to the Mediterranean, especially since we really control it to a large extent. We really have controlled it, and we’ve set control on it.

So we’ll see what happens. But we’re going to be coming home relatively soon. We finished, at least almost, our work with respect to ISIS in Syria, ISIS in Iraq. And we have done a job that nobody has been able to do. With that being said, I do want to come home, but I want to come home also with having accomplished what we have to accomplish.

The post Trump transcripts: Latest “thinking” on Syria appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Here’s a transcript of a bootleg tape obtained by the Washington Post, of Donald Trump’s typically rambling and incoherent “speech” at a fundraiser in Missouri on March 14. It should be noted that he was purportedly speaking in support of Josh Hawley, a Republican who hopes to defeat Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in the November 2018 election. It should be further noted that he only sporadically mentions Hawley, preferring to pump and congratulate himself instead. And it should be even further noted that almost nothing he says makes any sense at all.

The Washington Post has arbitrarily broken the remarks up into paragraphs, most likely as a way to make them more readable. But these are not paragraphs. They are lines of gibberish. I’ve highlighted some of the wackiest pronouncements—such as the nonsensical bowling-ball story—to enable skimming for readers who can’t stomach the totality, and the inescapable reality of Trump’s March madness. The worst thing about trying to highlight the most egregious remarks is that I had to read the thing through again. Also, selecting the most incoherent is an impossible task when everything is so unintelligible. Either the audience wasn’t listening, or they didn’t care, or—worst of all—they are as devoid of logical thinking as Trump is, and they accept his complete ignorance as new, acceptable norm.
This is our president.

President Trump: What a, what a family and your sister, where is your sister? Your sister was in uniform before, where is she? See? We’re very proud of you. [Applause]

So, you know we have a lot of friends in this area, and I just stopped at a little place called Boeing. [Unintelligible.] Dennis is doing a good job. But we were just looking at some of the new planes without pilots, now. I mean, you know, look at them. I’m saying, “What about that one?” It has no cockpit.
Dennis, tell me, what’s going on?

He said, “Well, this plane doesn’t have a pilot.” This is where we’re going, I guess. But, what a job they’re doing. I want to thank a great friend of mine Congressman Jason Smith. He’s here someplace, where is Jason?

First off we have a situation so important here. That’s why I’m here. I’m here for this [unintelligible] big success, from what I understand. A [unintelligible] success. That’s a big success, isn’t it? [Applause.]
Really. It’s a testament to a wonderful guy who’s running who knows what it’s all about. He’s somebody that can win. He’s leading the polls, just about every poll I’ve seen. But there was one that was a little bit down. And that’s the one you have to run on because you always have to run a little bit scared, right, a little bit scared. But then I saw fortunately the following week it kicked back up, I got a little nervous. [Laughter.] But you’re doing good, and I tell ya, every one of them. And, you’re the one that can do it. And the whole the whole world is watching, really, we have to change things.

And we need, we need those votes. We need the votes. You’ll work on the filibuster once you get in there, right? I know that. Does anybody know what that means? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had 51 instead of 60? Wouldn’t that be nice?
Some day somebody’s going to explain that do me. What’s going on here?

But that’s it. Some of the senators have been there, really, for a long time are just dead set on that. But we’re gonna get — we have a chance to win a number of seats. And I think we have a really good chance to win a large number of seats, so we’ll see what happens. Mr. Ashcroft, where is Mr. Ashcroft? I didn’t see him. I met your son, by the way. [Unintelligible.] [Applause.] I met John’s son.
I said, “Hey, where’s your father?” He said, “He’s up speaking,” I said, “Oh, okay. So, maybe I’ll see him outside.” You’re a terrific man, terrific family.

But we have a chance to do something that’s going to be very important and it starts right here, it starts right here. And you know, last night, I don’t know I guess the final results aren’t quite in, we had an interesting time because we lifted seven points up that’s a lot. And I was up 22 points, and we lifted seven and seven normally would be enough, but we’ll see. We’ll see how it all comes out. It’s like virtually a tie.

Where’s our great Ronna, is she here?
Ronna McDaniel, who ran Michigan for me. And we won the state of Michigan, first time since Reagan. [Unintelligible.] [Applause] Two hundred and some odd thousand votes and it was a difference of four hundred and something, right? Four hundred and something votes. And I don’t know what’s going to happen but I know he came up a lot in the last few days. We went there, we read his speech, the place was packed, and we’ll see what happens. It’s actually interesting because it’s only a congressman for about five months. I don’t know about that one, Josh, it’s a lot of work for five months. They changed the district, they’re redistricting.

But we’ll see what happens. But I told Josh just a little while ago, I’m coming back here just before the race and we’ll get, get a bigger [unintelligible] and get a big something, and we’ll do a job. [Unintelligible.] [Applause.]

The country is watching. This is one of the most important races because this is one that we can win because of Josh, we had to get Josh to do it. Once that was it just we haven’t ingested. Once that was [unintelligible], that was a big thing. Because you do need the right candidate, and we have a few of them, we have a few pretty good ones. You know about what’s happening. A couple of other guys joined and they are going to have great success. So we look forward to — One of the things that we, that Josh actually mentioned that I think is probably underscored understated but very important is judges.
We are going to be appointing 145, came in 140 — you know, my whole life I’ve helped a few people become a federal judge. Not gotten it for them, but I helped and they never forget. It’s a big deal. A federal judge.

So I come and there’s this whole pile of papers on my desk — these are federal judges, these are applications. I said, “How many do we appoint?” “145.” “145!” Because for two years, two and a half years, almost none were appointed by President Obama. So I say thank you, President Obama. [Applause]
Well, we have 17 court of appeals judges. We had one Supreme Court judge who’s done a fantastic job, Justice Gorsuch. And we’ll see what happens on that score, but we have 145 judges and 17 court of appeals judges and we’ve appointed — I guess we’ve had almost 30 approved already. And what difference that’s making. That’ll be almost half of the judiciary will be appointed by us. [Unintelligible.] [Applause.]

I mentioned before, we have to run on the tax cuts because that has become the most popular thing. Everybody’s happy, the companies kicked in like crazy you know. The companies — we didn’t expect, when we did the tax cuts and you know they called it tax reform. I said, “Do me a favor, don’t call it tax reform, hasn’t worked in 45 years, right?” Tax reform! People saying, “Are you going to raise my taxes? They’re reforming taxes!” I said that means taxes to go up, and they said well, no, but it’s always called tax reform, I said, let’s call it tax cuts. In fact, I said, they said what would you like to call it? Call it the tax cut cut cut plan. [Applause.] They thought it sounded a little hokey, so we called it the tax cut and jobs plan.
I liked the first one better.

We had no Democrat votes. Claire McCaskill was against it because she’s party line. It’s not that she’s was against it. She’s party line. She’s going to go with the party line. It’s like the young man last night that ran, he said, oh, I’m like Trump. He said, I, I, you know, Second Amendment, all, everything. I love the tax cuts. Everything. You wouldn’t have known. It’s a pretty smart race, actually. But he ran and he ran on that basis. But the bottom line is when he votes, he’s going to vote with Nancy Pelosi. He’s going to vote with Pelosi, he’s going to vote with Schumer, and that’s what’s going to happen. And there’s nothing he can do about it, he’s not going to vote with the Republicans. So it doesn’t matter, what he feels doesn’t matter. Claire McCaskill has voted against everything that we want. Voted against everything that you stand for, and voted against these massive tax cuts that are bringing wealth back into families and bringing wealth into the state of Missouri and every other state. And she voted against, because this wasn’t principle. This was the fact that she was told to vote that way, and she has to vote that way. And if she didn’t vote that way, the party would drop her very easily and wouldn’t be around and wouldn’t be spending lots of money on her and that’s the way it is. So she voted against tax cuts and I believe that anybody that voted against that bill, I think it would be very hard to win an election.

So I think when you campaign when you’re out there Josh, you should just keep bringing it up, she voted against. And I read an article and I thought it was very nice, actually. She said she said she’s not going to say bad things about President Trump, I said, boy, I must be very popular in that state.

And last night, the young man also, he ran on a campaign, he said very nice things about me. I kept saying, is he a Republican? He sounded like a Republican to me. But I guess when you’re popular in a certain area, that’s probably a good tactic. But we’re not going to get her vote. So you have to defeat her. You have to defeat her. And if you don’t, it’s just going to be Trump. I mean, they could actually take away the tax cuts, they could take away your Second Amendment. Very importantly, judges, they’ll start putting the judges that we’ve been having poured onto the court over the last eight years. You can’t take it. I mean you just can’t have it. You see some of the decisions. How about the Ninth Circuit? Anytime you go. They always file in the Ninth Circuit, which says something — look that’s not right. No matter where they’re sued, they file in the Ninth Circuit. And they win, win, win and then they lose, usually the Supreme Court, hopefully they will. But it’s you know it’s a very unfair thing, it shows you how important it is to have fair people put on the bench.

So the judges are so important, I mean just so important. We’re doing a lot of things. Companies are moving back into our country. Chrysler that’s coming back from Mexico, you [unintelligible] hear that one? It’s always they’re leaving from Mexico, someone’s leaving from Mexico, they’re always leaving for Mexico. And now, you have many, many companies coming back in, you have steel mills opening up, which hasn’t happened in 30 years. And the tariffs are just a form of, like, you just can’t keep doing this to the outside world. And some of our worst abusers in terms of what they do on trade our so-called friends. You look in some of these countries that are our friends and you look at the trade deficits we have and it’s, it’s staggering. So that’s just Phase One, but that’s a little phase, but we have to get back the respect. You know we built ourselves as a great power, a great manufacturing power. And then you look how so many jobs was taken. I mean NAFTA has been a disaster for this country. And I know it affected your [unintelligible], but you go up to New England, and they’re still paying the price of losing all of those jobs. And those are real jobs. Those are real, incredible, powerful, important jobs — even for defense. We have to be able to make steel. We have to be able to have aluminum. We were at a point where we were going to lose all our steel factories, our steel mills, our plants, and we can’t let that happen. People said you know it’s sort of — oh, we’ll get our steel from China. Oh good. Let’s see if we can, we have a national emergency. We’re gonna get our steel from China. It’s incredible.

I’ve been using the expression, if you don’t have steel you don’t have a country. There’s a lot to it. This is like we’re making pencils. This is big stuff.

So since I announced this we’ve had numerous openings of plants and you have some that are going to open up or expand right here, and we’ve had a lot of, I mean, people are [unintelligible] to see a little bit differently. But we have to do what’s called reciprocal tax, because we have countries that charge us 25 percent to get a car and they don’t take the car anyway. Just so you know

.
They have nondollar barriers. okay, they’re nondollar. You know what the barrier says? You can’t sell in our country. That’s worse than heavy taxes. So we have countries and groups of countries, which is even worse.
European Union is very tough. You know, we had the European Union — a lot of you came from Europe, right? Guess what. They’re pretty smart. And they formed a group, and they make it very difficult, they’re very difficult traders. They have these barriers where you can’t get your product in. No matter what you do, if you do get your product in, you pay dearly. China would be the biggest abuser. There’s no question about it.
So last year with China, we lost 500 billion dollars, would you say that? Not million, 500 million, that’s a lot.
500 billion dollars. And it’s been that way for years, from 200 to 504 billion dollars, every year. We rebuilt China, we actually did. You take that money away from China.
I mean we rebuilt it, and it all started with the World Trade Organization. If you look at China, it’s like this for many, many centuries.
World trade, it’s like a rocket ship, and much of it came right out of this country, got to stop it. And I’m very friendly with the president, he’s a great guy. We have a great chemistry, a great relationship. But he’s for China and I’m for the good old USA. [Applause.]
As an example, they send a car to us, we charge them a 2 percent tax. We send a car to them, and they charge us a 25 percent tax.
Somehow that doesn’t work too well.
That’s not a great formula. But not only is it 25, 25, but most of the time you can’t even get the car. Even Japan. Look, the prime minister’s a great guy, Abe. He’s a warrior. Tough, strong, smart. But I said trade isn’t so good with Japan. It’s so one-sided. They don’t take our product and we take their cars, I mean the cars and 90 percent of the cars, they just come. They need Mario Andretti to drive those cars off the boats. They come off the boats like 60 miles an hour. We send a car to Japan, they analyze it for four weeks before they decide to send it back because it’s not environmentally friendly. [Unintelligible.] They actually, one of the car companies actually had a car made and it was the most environmentally perfect car, cost them a fortune. They spent a fortune. And they had everything, the highest quality that you can have. Everything was far better than any car they ever sent to us. They spent three or four hundred thousand dollars for a car that would sell for like 35,000, right? Not a good deal. But they wanted to see if they could get it in. And it, they were going crazy. Four days went by. Then five days. And they were ready to approve it and they said, no no, we have to do one more test. It’s called the bowling ball test, do you know what that is? That’s where they take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and they drop it on the hood of the car. And if the hood dents, then the car doesn’t qualify. Well, guess what, the roof dented a little bit, and they said, nope, this car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible, the way we’re treated. It’s horrible.
And then you hear about the free traders, because I’m a free trader, but I’m like, I want to be a smart trader, I want to be a fair trader. It’s so unfair what’s happened to our country, and I don’t know, the politicians have lost their way. In some cases like South Korea you know they’re making a fortune. Well we backed them many years ago.

But we never trade — you know when they became rich we never changed the deal. So we were backing, backing, backing. And no politician ever changed the deal.
Now we have a very big trade deficit with them, and we protect them. So we lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military. We have right now 32,000 soldiers on the border between North and South Korea.
Let’s see what happens. Think I’ve done a good job with that one. That’s sort of interesting.

People are saying, “oh, his rhetoric is terrible. He’s going to go” — well, the rhetoric from last 30 years hasn’t been so good. It was called appeasement.

Please don’t do anything. Obama, let’s not talk about that. In the meantime, he’s making nuclear weapons. He had a test, they had a test of a nuclear weapon about a year ago, and it registered as an 8.6. Now, you heard of that, on the Richter scale, right? So they said, “man, there was an earthquake.” Eight point six someplace in Asia. Where was it? Oh it was in North Korea. It wasn’t — it was a nuclear test, and it shifted a mountain — it was a real mountain. This isn’t like a little, you know, 10-foot deal. It’s not a hill. And it actually shifted. That’s the power. So they’re all saying, his rhetoric is terrible and so tough. Little Rocket Man, you know all this stuff. It’s so terrible. He’s going to get us into a war. Well, you know what’s going to get us into a war is weakness. [Applause.] [Unintelligible.] Massive sanctions on North Korea.
Massive, like nobody’s ever been sanctioned. And in all fairness, China has really helped at the border. They could help more, but they’ve done more for us than they’ve done for any president, that I can tell you.
So here’s a funny subject — everybody’s saying, oh, he’s going to get us in trouble, in trouble. Then three weeks ago, you hear, we’d love to go to the Olympics and participate.
Everybody’s like, what? Where did that come from? So they participate in the Olympics, that’s nice. Then the delegation comes over from South Korea and they just left North Korea, and they said Mr. President, Kim Jong Un would love to meet with you. And he will not do any testing and he will not do missile launches and he would love to meet with you. I said really? Well. That’s good. I said how did that happen. And he said well, you’re having an impact. They go out to the press, and the press is there, they were — you never saw so many reporters. Because they heard there was a big announcement on North Korea. So the worst, like CNN, you know, fake news?
Erin Burnett said this could make him a great president. [Applause.] Right? She said it. She’ll probably lose her job.

But she actually said that — this could make him a great president. Even the worst — for two hours, three hours they couldn’t believe. They said, did you hear what ha — they’re looking at each other. Can you believe? Where did this come from, after 25, 30 years, where did this come from?
You believe what just come from after 25, 30 years from. And then it happened. A day later, “Obama could have done that, too.” Obama could not have done it. [“No way,” crowd replies.]

It’s really, you know, it’s really sad. Now, it was almost, you had to smile, because it’s so out of control. But what I heard — and I woke up the next morning and said, finally I’m getting some great stuff — because got things, the taxes, the this, they were — a lot of stuff.
Our military’s stronger now, and we just got 700 billion dollars. We have to build it because it’s totally depleted. We don’t have our military, we’re not going to be here. We’ll be walking into the doors. [Unintelligible.] [Applause.] It’s jobs.

We make the greatest equipment in the world right down the street with Boeing and other places. And it’s jobs. But we have no choice. But when I heard that, I said, I wake up and I just heard the greatest statements from MSNBC, from CNN, from all the haters. I hear these — they couldn’t believe it.
Reporters. Professionals. The ones you see hating all the time. I say, this is the most incredible thing, we’ve never seen anything like it.

But by the time you woke up the next morning, they had a new line: Anybody could’ve done it. Obama could have met. Bush could have met. I don’t know how many Bush fans are in here. But Bush could have — [Laughter.] But they couldn’t have met. Because nobody would’ve done what I did to set the table.

And this suffering, I don’t want them to suffer. But they’re suffering. Lack of food, lack of everything. Nobody would’ve done that.
So you see the narrative change, because now they’re saying it will take at least two months to be able to negotiate. And so these are the people who say you will take two months to be able to negotiate. He shouldn’t go there. And the greatest line is, President Trump has agreed to meet — these are people who say I can’t believe it. Unbelievable. This is great news. This is the biggest thing that’s happened in 40 years. The next day: President Trump has conceded a meeting with Kim Jong Un. Because he has met, he has already given them a victory because he’s agreed to meet. I mean [unintelligible] media, right? [Applause.] The greatest is when, you know, you’re watching them, and these are the people who were so afraid it was going to be — and then they say, and they say it was incredible and then they get back and their bosses tell them what to say. But they say maybe he’s not the one to negotiate.
He’s got, he’s got very little knowledge of the Korean Peninsula, and maybe he’s not the one. Maybe we should send in the people that have been playing games and didn’t know what the hell they’ve been doing for 25 years. [Applause.] [Unintelligible.] What we’re finding there, and I don’t know if you are now, is, it’s a beautiful young, beautiful couple that everybody thinks is a star, and he is a star, and I don’t know how the press treats you. [Unintelligible.] [Laughter.] Enjoy it while you can.

The better you do, the worse they’ll [unintelligible.] And I tell this Korea story because it was, it was somewhat of a miracle. It’s actually far ahead of schedule. And you know, you hear that we’re making a major concession by agreeing to the meeting, you know, it’s the craziest thing. But go back a couple of weeks earlier and listen to what — they were petrified. [Unintelligible.] They were afraid of being blown up. Then all of a sudden they say let’s not meet.

So we are always a little bit of a disadvantage because of the media, and you have it here, I know you have it here too. But the advantage we have is the people are really smart. When I did the tariffs — and basically what I’m really saying, it’s not so much tariffs, it’s really saying we can’t be taking advantage of anymore by these people that come in and dump everything into our country and destroy our mills and destroy our workers and destroy everything. So when I did the tariffs, most people understand what I’m doing is fighting for them, I’m fighting for these companies that are being abandoned and the jobs that are being abandoned.
And that’s why we have a lot of companies moving back in.
I mean seriously, when you see what’s happening you look — we’re renegotiating NAFTA right now. I don’t know that we can make it good.

I tell people openly, because the best deal is to terminate it and then make a new deal. But I don’t know that we can make a deal because Mexico is so spoiled with this horrible deal that they’ve lived with, from our standpoint horrible.
So think of it, Mexico makes more than a hundred billion dollars a year on the United States. Now, how stupid is this.
But sometimes something is so good that you can’t — how do you? The best way? Terminate, let’s start all over again. Let’s start all over again. But some of the politicians are afraid to terminate, oh, we don’t want to terminate NAFTA. Take a look at these empty mills all over the place, that they turn into nursing homes, you know. Nice solid walls on the outside. But, it’s — it just can’t be.

I really think we’re making the point a lot of people are digging it. I will tell you, the people that really count, which is you, the workers, everybody, they’re really understanding what’s going on. Nobody’s done what I’m doing. I mean it’s sort of really virgin territory.
It’s absolutely virgin territory. It’s territory that our country for 50 or 60 or 70 years has not wanted to go there. They just haven’t for whatever reason.
And our wealth has been taken, our jobs have been taken, our companies have moved, and now they’re starting to move back. So it’s, it’s a formula that is, it’s just absolute — there’s disruption, there’s anger. And just remember, our friends that everybody says — our allies, our allies are wonderful — I love our allies. Our allies care about themselves, they don’t care about us. You look at our trade deficit with these countries are our allies. It’s unbelievable. And they understand it. I don’t blame them.
I told Japan — so we lose 100 billion dollars a year with Japan — 100 billion. So why aren’t we taxing their cars when they come in. Then we’d lose nothing. We might even make something. And you know what they’re going to do, they’re going to say we don’t want to pay that tax, so let’s build plants in the United States. They already have some. But they’ll expand them and they’ll build new plants. Because they don’t want to pay the tax — I want them to build new plants in the United States. Let them make United States here — like China makes them do, we have a company, they want to build planes over there, hate to say it, Boeing is being forced to build plants. I don’t like that, I don’t like it, so I’m not saying China’s wrong. I was with President Xi, I was with a big group of people, and I was saying how China is ripping off the United States. And he’s like “woo, this is uncomfortable.” [Laughter.] 700 press. I’m saying China is ripping off our — but I don’t blame you. I say, it’s great that you were able to do it for yourselves. I blame the people that represented our country, because they were not doing their job — they were delinquent in allowing this to happen to us. So we owe 21 trillion dollars. We lose 800 billion a year.
Josh will say, I don’t think I’m going to ruin [unintelligible.] Think of it, Josh. We lose 800 billion a year on trade. Who made these deals? Who made these deals?

Then you have certain people that think it’s okay to lose 800. You know, these worldly people. You know why they’re worldly people, because they have stuff on the other side. [Laughter.] That’s what it is. Can’t be any other reason. But we lose 800 billion dollars a year on trade. We lose our jobs, we lose everything.

And it’s not happening anymore, because it’s starting to come back. But over the next few months, you’re going to find it even more interesting. Because things are really — you know, we have, statutorily you have to do this, this, this, wait 90 days, wait six months, you can’t do it, you’re not allowed to legally. We have agreements that are so bad.

We have one agreement with a trade. I said when does that agreement terminate, it’s terrible. Sir, there is no termination. I said, what do you mean? We don’t have the right to term — I said, well, okay, after 10 years, 20 years. No sir, there is no right of term — I said what the hell kind of — So you know what I did, I just terminated. [Applause.]
Which would mean that’s, we’ll call it unconstitutional. There’s no end date. There’s no nothing. I’ll give you another example, Mexico, so they have this great deal. The day it was signed, it was a bad deal, because they have a 16 percent VAT tax, and we don’t. So they were already up 16 percent before the deal. And nobody saw that. And by the time they realized it, the deal was gone. But instead of adjusting the deal — what was that, 30 years ago when it was first signed — instead of adjusting the deal, we lived with it. What the hell difference does it make?

So they had a 16 percent step up advantage on us, and they have for many years. And Mexico and Canada — and, by the way, Canada, they negotiate tougher than Mexico. Trudeau came to see me, he’s a good guy, Justin. He said, no, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please. Nice guy, good-looking, comes in — Donald, we have no trade deficit — he was very proud, because everybody else you know were getting killed with our, so he’s [unintelligible]. I said wrong, Justin, you do. I didn’t even know. Josh, I had no idea. I just said, you’re wrong. You know why? Because we’re so stupid. [Unintelligible, laughter] And I thought they were smart.
I said you’re wrong, Justin. He said, Nope, we have no trade deficit. I said, Well, in that case, I feel differently, I said, but I don’t believe it. I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, Check, because I can’t believe it.

Well sir you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber. But when you do we lose 17 billion dollars a year. It’s incredible. So you’re in good hands. And I need Josh to help [unintelligible]. [Applause.]
Claire McCaskill is a guaranteed negative vote on every single thing that you people stand for, and frankly that a vast majority of the people of Missouri stand for. It is a negative vote for our country. And you have to defeat Claire McCaskill. Last time she get very lucky. She got lucky — she was going to lose. That was a done deal. And then, something happened. I was watching, I said, oh! What happened. That was big! The next day I said, oh yeah, I was right, I watched that.
So you got to get her out. Bad for Missouri, bad for the country. And this is going to be a great United States senator. Thank you very much. [Applause.]

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In his latest interview with the New York Times [July 19, 2017], Donald Trump did what he always does: He rambled, flitted from topic to topic—sometimes in mid-sentence– garbled his words, talked about things for which he has limited knowledge, bragged, lied, got the facts wrong, strayed far afield from the topic at hand–and generally spewed strings of words that followed no logical sequence. Reading through the transcript of the interview, I tried to imagine what the New York Times reporters were thinking as they listened. My conclusion is that they had to tune in very closely to extrapolate what Trump was attempting to say.

So, when I watched MSNBC last night and saw New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt discussing the interview, I was surprised at how coherent he made Trump’s comments sound. Clearly, Schmidt was interpreting what Trump said, not quoting him directly. I fear that reporters have become so accustomed to mentally editing Trump’s word salads that they don’t even know they are doing it. To his credit, Schmidt does say, “It is difficult sometimes with the President because he speaks very quickly and says a lot of things and the conversation can meander.” But most of the of his report makes it sound as though Trump actually expressed coherent opinions.

It is always misguided to normalize Trump. His actual words are important—they reveal his way of “thinking,” and that is a scary thing to observe. Reporters who describe his “ideas” and “thoughts” as though they have been clearly expressed are doing Trump too much of a favor.

As with all the other transcripts that I have shared here, I highly recommend that you read the whole thing [although what the New York Times has released is an edited, excerpted version.]

If you don’t want to do that, here’s some of what Michael Schmidt said on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” on July 19, 2017, coupled with Trump’s actual words.

What Schmidt said:

He is clearly disappointed in Sessions…

What Trump actually said, and the tone in which he said it, says a lot more than he was “disappointed:”

Well, Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.

Q: He gave you no heads up at all, in any sense?

Trump: Zero. So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. Then I have—which frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, “Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.” It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself,. I then end up with a second man, who’s a deputy.

…Yeah, what Jeff Sessions did was he recused himself right after, right after he became attorney general. And I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I would have –then I said, “who’s your deputy?” So he deputy he hardly kew, and that’s Rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein, who is from Baltimore. There are very few Republicans in Baltimore, if any. So, he’s from Baltimore.”

How Schmidt characterized Trump’s thoughts on special counsel Robert Mueller:

Trump is clearly upset about the fact that Mueller has been appointed and that he is looking at these different issues and that Mueller has the ability to take his investigation where he may.

…He wouldn’t commit to firing Mueller, but he did say there is a red line. He didn’t define what he meant as a violation. But he clearly sees Muller’s purview as looking into Russia…

What Trump actually said:

Q: If Muller was looking at your finances and your family finances unrelated to Russia—is that a red line?

Trump:

I would say yeah. I would say yes. By the way, I would say, I don’t—I don’t—I mean, it’s possible that there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows? I don’t make money from Russia. In fact, I put out a letter saying that I don’t make—from one of the most highly respected law firms, accounting firms. I don’t have buildings in Russia They said I own buildings in Russia. I don’t. They said I made money from Russia. I don’t. It’s not my thing. I don’t. I don’t do that…

…Look, this is about Russia. So I think if he wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company. Ad actually, when I do my filings, people say, “Man.” People have no idea how successful this is. It’s a great company. But I don’t even think about the company any more. I think about this. ‘Cause one thing, when you do this, companies seem very trivial, OK? I really mean that. They seem very trivial. But I have no income from Russia. I don’t do business with Russia. The gentleman that you mentioned, with his son two nice people. But basically, they brought the Miss Universe pageant to Russia to open up, you know, one of their jobs. Perhaps the convention center where it was held. It was a nice evening, and I left. I left, you know, I left Moscow. It wasn’t Moscow, it was outside of Moscow.

Q: Would you fire Mueller if we went outside of certain parameters of what his charge is?

Trump: I can’t. I can’t answer that question because I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Like all reporters, Schmidt was looking for the nugget, the money quote, a good lead for a story. So the New York Times led with the Sessions quotes. When you read, or listen to the transcript, there’s a lot more: Much unsolicited ado about Hillary, a lengthy riff on the wonderful Bastille Day celebration, something about Andrew McCabe’s wife getting money, Nixon, and more.

Here’s a section in which Trump tries to explain away the infamous meeting his son had at Trump Tower in June 2016. One reporter asked him what he thought about the email that triggered the meeting:

Well, I thought originally it might have something to do with the payment by Russia of the DNC, or the Democrats. Somewhere I heard that. Like, it was an illegal act done by the DNC or the Democrats. That’s what I had heard. Now, I don’t know where I heard it, but I had heard that it had to do something with illegal acts with respect to the DNC Now, you, know, when you look at the kind of stuff that came out, that, was, that was some pretty horrific things came out of that. But that’s what I had heard. But I don’t know what it means. All I know is this: When somebody calls up and they says, “We have infor—“ Look, what they did to me with Russia, and it was totally phony stuff.”

Unfortunately, we are all becoming inured to Trump’s stream of semi-consciousness, fill-the-vacuum uninformed incoherence. But his inability to make sense when he speaks is a story in itself, and we must not let Trump-scandal fatigue allow this to go un-noted, or characterized as business as usual. We ignore it, normalize it, and accept it as “that’s just Trump”  at our own peril.

The post Latest NY Times Trump transcript: Why do reporters clean it up for TV? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I watched Trump’s insane press conference today. According to some reporting, it came as a surprise even to his top staff. Apparently, he just wanted to get out there and vent — and also distract attention from the “what did he know and when did he know it” question — and put out some red meat for the base. Note that, on Saturday, Feb. 18, he will be holding a campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida–a rally paid for by the Trump re-election campaign [he filed for re-election on Inauguration Day]–not a White House event. But I digress. It’s contagious.

I didn’t take notes as I watched the press melee. It was too painful. But here’s what I came away with–not necessarily in chronological order, and not verbatim. [You can check the accuracy of my impressions by watching the whole sorry affair on YouTube or DVR or by reading the transcript. My heart goes out to the unlucky person charged with creating the transcription as he/she tried to keep up with the digressions, zigzags, flights of fancy, lies, accusations, complaints, circular and non-linear word streams, and evasions].

Here’s what I heard — when I wasn’t yelling at the tv:

I’m doing this today because the dishonest press won’t report the truth. CNN is full of hatred. My administration is working like a well-tuned machine. I won because of the many press conferences I gave — just about every day, or whenever I gave a speech. I have no contacts, no deals, no debt in Russia. Hillary got debate questions in advance and no one reported on it. We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban, but we had a bad court. The leaks are real–the news is fake. DACA is one of the toughest issues for me to deal with because I love kids–I have them–but some DACA kids are in gangs.

The inner cities are hell, worse than Afghanistan or anyplace where we are fighting. I want friendly questions. BBC — there’s another beauty. Fake news.  Tomorrow’s headlines will say “Trump ranted and raved.” I’m not ranting and raving. I’m not going to tell you what I will do about Russian ships near Connecticut or Russian airplanes buzzing our ships, and I’m not going to tell you what I’m going to do about Mosul.

Does anybody in this room really believe that HIllary Clinton would be tougher on Russia than me? I won the election by the largest Electoral margin ever. We should get along with Russia. I might make a deal with Russia, but maybe I won’t. Hillary Clinton gave Russia 20 percent of United States’ uranium. Do you know what uranium is? It’s nuclear weapons.

I am the least anti-Semitic person you’ll ever meet. If Mike Flynn hadn’t been speaking with the Russian ambassador, I would have told him to do that, because that’s his job. If he did it, I would have approved. I know of no one in my campaign who consulted with Russia during the campaign. Everybody already knew that Paul Manafort was a consultant — but not for Russia, for Ukraine or some people there.

Thank you for asking me a question about Melania. That’s a nice question. I like nice questions. She is fantastic.

We’re going to issue an executive order that follows the court ruling on the travel ban. Next week. I’m not going to tell you what today’s executive order is going to be about. We’re putting the finishing touches on Obamacare replacement plan. It’ll be ready in early March. Mid-March.

I appointed a new guy to be Secretary of Labor. He’s a genius. I’m having fun out here today.

The post Highlights of Trump’s stark-raving-mad press conference, 2-16-17 appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Newseek reporter Kurt Eichenwald has unleashed a long Tweet storm explaining why intelligence professionals are so outraged about Donald Trump’s performance at the CIA on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. [Full transcript here.] A few hours after the initial release, Eichenwald transcribed the whole storm and posted it on Daily Kos, encouraging others to repost on social media. Given Eichenwald’s public encouragement, I am posting the full transcript here. Definitely worth a read:

I am going to try to explain why there is so much outrage in the intelligence agencies about what Trump did on Saturday in his CIA speech. Imagine having a campaign rally at the National Cemetery. Or a cocktail fundraiser amid the grave markers of US soldiers in Normandy. This “event” Trump held, purportedly to greet CIA employees, was in the Memorial Wall room, where 117 CIA employees who died in service to our country are honored. Many more have died, and it takes special approval to receive a star on the wall or be listed in the book, called the Book of Honor. Many of the names of the fallen will never be known, because their identities have to be kept secret even in death.

Rarely is that room used for anything, but when it is, solemn nature of it is recognized. GW Bush was, I believe the first president to hold an event there in 2001, but it was exceedingly respectful and in keeping with the meaning of the room. The second major event was an appearance by Obama after the killing of Bin Laden, when he went to the CIA to thank the ppl there for their often anonymous sacrifices that led to that success in the fight against terrorism. Again, solemn and fitting with the meaning of the room. Both Bush and Obama paid deep homage to those honored in the book and by the stars. CIA employees listened respectfully, but did not turn the events into rallies.

Then, Trump. He has the audacity to bring people from his team to cheer for him and sit in the front rows.  I can’t imagine CIA employees cheering and whooping it up at Memorial Wall. It would be like screaming “BOO-yah!” at a funeral. Trump made a single, over-the-shoulder mention of the stars. But he spent most of his time griping about the media, bragging about the number of times he had been on the cover of Time Magazine, and complaining that everyone was lying about numbers at his inauguration and all the while, his professional cheerleaders who couldn’t find their way to the CIA bathroom are sitting there, cheering for the many who apparently needs applause everywhere he goes.

It was an abomination, perhaps the most disrespectful thing I have ever seen done by any president in that kind of place. I felt sure we would hear from former director Brennan pretty fast. Why? Because one of those stars on the wall belongs to a close friend of his who died in service of this country.  And he knows who all the others are as well. For him, I’m sure, it was like watching someone having a picnic on the graves in the National Cemetery.

And then the same Trump staff that was too lazy or stupid to do the advance work on the CIA trip, so that they knew the meaning of the wall, go on TV to attack Brennan as a partisan hack for wanting a room of such enormous meaning to be treated with the solemnity it deserves. And that is an important element here.

I actually don’t blame Trump for this horror show on Saturday. Few people outside of govnt know the meaning of the wall. That was his staff’s job, and they clearly had no idea what they were sending Trump to do. No sane person would agree to send a cheering squad. They are incompetent. Worse, they are arrogant, and respond to others pointing out their undeniable errors by attacking and whining.

No, anger at the dishonoring of patriots who died is not partisan. U don’t want criticism? Do your jobs better and when u screw up, like u did by turning most solemn place in intel world as a rah-rah location, just admit it, apologize, and move on.

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Trump’s inaugural speech was a speech for the ages: The Dark Ages. If you couldn’t bear to watch it, you can gag your way through the full transcript here.  I watched and took notes. And what struck me was his repeated use of the language of demagoguery.

It was an angry, sabre-rattling, self-congratulatory and alarmingly nationalistic speech that offered a very dark view of America today. It was a speech that could have been delivered in 1933 Germany, when that country was in terrible shape after the devastation of World War I and at the onset of a worldwide economic Depression. That view, quite simply, does not jibe with the America of 2017, where unemployment is down, and the economy and the stock market are up. But Trump always plays to anger and resentment, via the false populism of a rich guy pretending to be the voice of the people.

He offered no positive vision or hope, no acknowledgment of previous presidents’ accomplishments, and no awareness that this was his inauguration, not another campaign rally. If you closed your eyes and listened, you could envision this speech being delivered in Moscow’s Red Square, simply by substituting “Russia” for “America.” It was a sickening display that portends troubling days ahead.

The speech’s only positive attribute was that it was short, as Inaugural speeches go. But that’s because Trump himself is short on ideas.

Here are excerpts from my notes, emphasizing the words and phrases that his speechwriter [who should be ashamed of himself for passing this off as an inaugural speech] copied out of the Demagogue’s Dictionary, or cribbed from speeches of previous authoritarians. The all-caps emphasis is mine:

“We are transferring POWER to you, THE PEOPLE.”

“That all changes now. This moment is your moment. The POWER now belongs to you.”

“Today, the people became the RULERS of this nation.”

“You are part of a historic MOVEMENT the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

“One heart, one home. We share one GLORIOUS DESTINY.”

“Today, we are issuing a new DECREE…”

‘It’s going to be AMERICA FIRST.”

“We will ERADICATE radical Islamic terrorism FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH”

“LOYALTY”

“When you open your heart to PATRIOTISM, there is no room for prejudice.”

“When America is united, America is TOTALLY UNSTOPPABLE.”

“We will be protected by GOD”

“A new NATIONAL PRIDE”

“We all bleed the same RED BLOOD OF PATRIOTISM.”

“Our GLORIOUS FREEDOMS”

‘The same ALMIGHTY CREATOR.”

This is what authoritarians, dictators and demagogues sound like. We have now been warned, officially, and in no uncertain terms.

The post Trump’s inauguration transcript: A demagogue’s dictionary appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In an attempt to sound like he knows something about foreign policy, Donald Trump sat for an interview with Michael Gove, of the Times of London, and Kai Diekmann, former editor of Germany’s Bild newspaper, on Jan. 15, 2017.

Spoiler alert: He failed.

You can read the full transcript here, and I urge you to do so, because the Times’ own cleaned-up summary of the interview does not reflect his terrifying incoherence or his pathetic, superficial way of discussing international issues.

In its news report, The Times highlighted several areas of foreign policy touched upon [not deeply explored] during the interview [the ones of most interest to British and European readers]. Here are some excerpts that show how the Times condensed and scrubbed Trump’s answers in the lead paragraphs of their news report. Trying to find where the Times got the information for these keyword summaries of Trump’s positions is not easy: Clearly, the Times had to comb back through the transcript several times to cut and paste these points together. And that’s not easy, when the answers are as rambling and as shallow as Trump’s.

And yes, I know that cleaning up politicians’ quotes has been standard journalistic practice forever. But, in the case of Trump, it’s not just about removing a few ers and ums to help the speaker sound more articulate. Gleaning “ideas” from Trump’s “sentences” and “paragraphs” is like sifting through a toxic waste dump, trying to find an unused tissue. I think that it’s dishonest of the Times to make a person as incompetent and superficially informed as Trump sound like a normal politician who has thought things out. Maybe I missed something, but I didn’t notice that the Times included any characterization of Trump’s answers as “rambling.” Using the term “wide-ranging” as a euphemism for unfocused is not enough.

What the Times of London wrote:

[Trump] will agree a nuclear weapons reduction deal with President Putin of Russia in return for lifting US sanctions.

What Trump actually said:

Q: Do you support European sanctions against Russia?

A: Well, I think you know — people have to get together and people have to do what they have to do in terms of being fair. OK? They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. But you do have sanctions and Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.

What the Times wrote:

He was highly critical of Russia’s intervention in Syria, however, describing it as “a very bad thing” that had led to a “terrible humanitarian situation”.

What Trump actually said:

Q: Do you think that what’s happened in Syria now with Putin intervening is a good thing or a bad thing?

A: Nah, I think it’s a very rough thing. It’s a very bad thing, we had a chance to do something when we had the line in the sand and it wasn’t — nothing happened. That was the only time — and now, it’s sort of very late. It’s too late. Now everything is over — at some point it will come to an end — but Aleppo was nasty. I mean when you see them shooting old ladies walking out of town — they can’t even walk and they’re shooting ’em — it almost looks like they’re shooting ’em for sport — ah no, that’s a terrible — that’s been a terrible situation. Aleppo has been such a terrible humanitarian situation.

What the Times wrote:

Orders will be signed next Monday to strengthen America’s borders, which could include travel restrictions on Europeans coming to the US as well as “extreme vetting” for those entering America from parts of the world known for Islamist terrorism.

What Trump actually said:

People don’t want to have other people coming in and destroying their country and you know in this country we’re gonna go very strong borders from the day I get in. One of the first orders I’m gonna sign – day one – which I will consider to be Monday as opposed to Friday or Saturday. Right? I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration, but one of the first orders we’re gonna be signing is gonna be strong borders.

We don’t want people coming in from Syria who we don’t know who they are. You know there’s no way of vetting these people. I don’t want to do what Germany did.

[In another section of the transcript]  Q: You said during the campaign that you’d like to stop Muslims coming to the US. Is that still your plan?

A: Well, from various parts of the world that have lots of terrorism problems.

There will be extreme vetting, it’s not gonna be like it is now, they don’t even, we don’t even have real vetting. The vetting into this country is essentially non-existent as it is, as it was at least, with your country.

[From another section of the transcript] Q: Are there any travel restrictions that could be imposed on Europeans coming to the US?

Well, it could happen, I mean we’re gonna have to see. I mean, we’re looking at parts of Europe; parts of the world and parts of Europe, where we have problems where they come in and they’re gonna be causing problems. I don’t wanna have those problems. Look, I won the election because of strong borders and trade. And military, we’re gonna have strong military.

What the Times wrote:

He believes that Angela Merkel made a “catastrophic mistake” when she let more than a million migrants into Germany, adding that the EU had become “a vehicle for Germany”

What Trump actually said:

Q: When Obama came for his last visit to Berlin, he said that if he could vote in the upcoming election he would vote for Angela Merkel. Would you?

A: Well, I don’t know who she’s running against, number one, I’m just saying, I don’t know her, I’ve never met her. As I said, I’ve had great respect for her. I felt she was a great, great leader. I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know taking all of the people from wherever they come from. And nobody even knows where they come from. You’ll find out, you got a big dose of it a week ago. So I think she made a catastrophic mistake, very bad mistake. Now, with that being said, I respect her, I like her, but I don’t know her. So I can’t talk about who I’m gonna be backing — if anyone.

[From another section of the transcript] Q: In your campaign you said Angela Merkel’s policy on Syrian refugees was insane. Do you still think so?

A: I think it’s not good. I think it was a big mistake for Germany. And Germany of all countries, ’cause Germany was one of the toughest in the world for having anybody go in, and, uh, no I think it was a mistake. And I’ll see her and I’ll meet her and I respect her. And I like her but I think it was a mistake. And people make mistakes but I think it was a very big mistake. I think we should have built safe zones in Syria. Would have been a lot less expensive. Uh, get the Gulf states to pay for ’em who aren’t coming through, I mean they’ve got money that nobody has.

Would have been a lot less expensive than the trauma that Germany’s going through now — but I would have said — you build safe zones in Syria. Look, this whole thing should have never happened. Iraq should not have been attacked in the first place, all right? It was one of the worst decisions, possibly the worst decision ever made in the history of our country. We’ve unleashed — it’s like throwing rocks into a beehive. It’s one of the great messes of all time. I looked at something, uh, I’m not allowed to show you because it’s classified – but, I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban – and you take a look at every, every year its more, more, more, you know they have the different colours – and you say, you know – what’s going on?

To its credit, the Times did include some of Trump’s more egregious statements. But the Times still made Trump seem far too close to normal by reporting his statements as if they were those of a person who had actually considered the issues.

But how does any of this pass for foreign policy thinking? Of course, the main problem is that Trump has never thought about any of this—unless it had a tangential effect on his businesses’ bottom lines. You can tell that he’s been briefed recently—but not a lot of it appears to be sinking in, and what has sunk in reflects—as we have learned—what the last person he talked with said. He throws around the facts that he can remember and blusters and bullshits his way through the rest of it. His inarticulateness is, once again, on full display.

But another part of the problem is that, as you can see in the full transcript, the interviewers served up a lot of very soft questions. [“Is there anything else you take from having a Scottish mother? Is there anything typically German about you?”] And when they did ask serious questions, they did not follow up when Trump gave an incoherent or off-the-subject answer.

Isn’t anyone in the press going to stand up to Trump, call him out to his face on lies and inaccuracies, and remind him to actually answer the question? Is this let-him-ramble-unchecked interview model the way things are going to be? Both this interview and his previous sit-down with the New York Times reflect a willingness by the press to be bullied in advance as a way of avoiding getting on Trump’s shit list. Put it all together—the press’s obsequious and cowering attitude, the increasing normalization by the press of Trump’s abnormality, the incoming administration’s threats against the press, plus Trump’s obvious incompetence: Where are we going?

The post Trump’s London Times transcript: What he said vs. what they reported appeared first on Occasional Planet.

What did Donald Trump really say during his Person-of-the-Year interview with Time magazine? We will never know, because Time has published only edited excerpts of that interview. At the end of the “transcript,” Time includes this disclaimer: “This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.”

I strongly suspect that the disclaimer is an understatement. If the verbatim transcript of Trump’s earlier interview with the New York Times is an indicator, Time’s editors must have done a lot of editing, condensing and clarifying. The New York Times transcript included many shocking passages that were rambling and incoherent. With that as a yardstick, it’s hard to imagine—as Time magazine’s edited transcript would have us believe—that Trump was as cogent and paragraph-based as he seems in the Time magazine interview.

I will acknowledge that Time’s edited excerpts still manage to reveal a wandering thought process, a tendency to brag, and Trump’s trademark narcissism. Here’s an example:

HOW TRUMP WILL MEASURE SUCCESS

I think we’re going to have a lot of jobs brought back. I think we’re going to have a lot fewer companies leaving our country. I believe we will be successful with defeating ISIS or bringing them down to a level where it’s almost the same thing. And I hope I’m judged from the time of the election, as opposed to from January 20th, because the stock market has had a tremendous bounce. And people are seeing very good things for business in this country. So I think we’re going to have a lot of victories.

HOW TRUMP CONNECTS WITH AMERICANS

I’m sitting in an apartment the likes of which nobody’s ever seen. And yet I represent the workers of the world. And they love me and I love them. But when I was in Brooklyn I worked for my father on construction sites where he built houses or what he built, a building in Brooklyn. And I got to understand the construction workers and the police. These are great people. These are the people that built the country.

Others try to hide their wealth. I mean I could tell you other candidates that have money, they’ll go around and they’ll get into a bad car just before they get to a rally. I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in that. Because I think aspiration’s a very important word. I think people aspire to do things. And they aspire to watch people. I don’t think they want to see the president carrying his luggage out of Air Force One. And that’s pretty much the way it is.

Having read the word-for-word transcript of the New York Times interview, and comparing it to the more succinct portrayal we get here from Time Magazine, I don’t believe that Trump’s speaking style could have changed this much in the past two weeks. For example, I really doubt that Trump’s answer to a question about prescription drug prices was this brief:

DRUG COMPANIES

I’m going to bring down drug prices. I don’t like what’s happened with drug prices.

So, I would very much like to see the un-condensed, unedited and unclear parts that Time’s editors left out. I know that it’s standard journalistic practice to use only the most quotable parts of interviews in the body of their reports. But a transcript should be a transcript–especially when it’s documenting a person known to be as temperamentally unfit and as unqualified for the job as is Donald Trump. As Trump assumes the most powerful office in the world, bringing with him a very vague and unfocused way of approaching issues, it seems important to avoid cleaning up his language and syntax—making him sound more reasoned than he is–and instead to pull back the curtain, so we can see what we really have.

Fair use prevents me from copying and pasting the entire, condensed transcript as published in Time. But you can read it here.

The post Time’s edited transcript of Trump’s Person-of-the-Year interview: What’s missing? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I urge everyone to take the time to read the entire transcript of Donald Trump’s Nov. 23, 2016 on-the-record interview with the New York Times. It will make you cringe, grimace and maybe even cry. Some of it has already been quoted many times: We’ve seen excerpts about his not wanting to “hurt” the Clintons, about not seeing The Wall as a top priority, and especially that cringe-inducing, Nixonian assertion that “the law is on my side, the President cannot have a conflict of interest.” Understandably, the mainstream media have focused on statements pertaining to policy [a term that, when applied to Trump, is very generous].

But there is a lot more in the transcript that is not getting the attention it deserves. It’s not as quote-worthy—because it’s not succinct or pithy, or headline-ready. But it’s important to read it, because the parts of the interview that are not being highlighted offer significant insight into Trump’s thinking [again, using that term loosely] and his way of communicating.  And it’s not pretty.

My tenth-grade English Composition teacher always said that “writing is thinking.” A corollary to that truism is that speaking is also reflective of one’s thought process. If that’s the case with Trump, we are in serious trouble.

The New York Times transcript offers a look inside Trump’s brain, via his answers to the questions posed by reporters and editors. This is Trump completely unscripted: not reading from a teleprompter; not campaigning at a rally; not being coached by his handlers [although Kelly Anne Conway and Reince Preibus were sitting next to him]; not Tweeting at 5 am; not calling in to Hannity or Scarborough. This is Trump at the New York Times—a newspaper that he has railed against, but also a media power that he wants to convert to his side. This is Trump attempting to say the things that he thinks a President should be saying to make the New York Times love him.

When you read it, you see that he is doing what he always does: spitballing, winging it, rambling to fill the silence, changing the subject when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, bragging, exaggerating, talking about all of the people who love him, making shit up on the fly, and—above all—trying to say something that will impress the New York Times. And rambling—lots of incoherent, inarticulate rambling. Imagine this loose-lipped man, who has clearly not thought through any of the issues–except the ones that affect his bottom line–in private talks with world leaders who actually know stuff.

Here’s an example that we probably won’t see quoted on mainstream media, or anywhere else, for that matter. This statement came in response to a question about Trump’s recent meeting with Nigel Farage. The Times reporter wanted to know if Trump had sought help in preventing the development of a wind farm near his golf course in Scotland: [This is the formatting as published by the New York Times.]

TRUMP: Oh, I see. I might have brought it up. But not having to do with me, just I mean, the wind is a very deceiving thing. First of all, we don’t make the windmills in the United States. They’re made in Germany and Japan. They’re made out of massive amounts of steel, which goes into the atmosphere, whether it’s in our country or not, it goes into the atmosphere. The windmills kill birds and the windmills need massive subsidies. In other words, we’re subsidizing wind mills all over this country. I mean, for the most part they don’t work. I don’t think they work at all without subsidy, and that bothers me, and they kill all the birds. You go to a windmill, you know in California they have the, what is it? The golden eagle? And they’re like, if you shoot a golden eagle, they go to jail for five years and yet they kill them by, they actually have to get permits that they’re only allowed to kill 30 or something in one year. The windmills are devastating to the bird population, O.K. With that being said, there’s a place for them. But they do need subsidy. So, if I talk negatively. I’ve been saying the same thing for years about you know, the wind industry. I wouldn’t want to subsidize it. Some environmentalists agree with me very much because of all of the things I just said, including the birds, and some don’t. But it’s hard to explain. I don’t care about anything having to do with anything having to do with anything other than the country.

If you were standing on 5^th Avenue in New York, and some guy came up to you and said what Trump said about windmills and birds, you’d probably walk away as quickly as possible. And if you were a mental-health professional, and a guy came into your office rambling like that, might you possibly put a note in his chart about incoherent thinking, and maybe wonder if he needed medication or hospitalization?

Here’s another excerpt.This one is in response to a question about mixing his personal business with his role as President, and whether business partners in other countries will try to curry favor with Trump. Part of this has already made the news cycle–the part about “the law is on my side.” But here’s the rest of it. [Buckle up.]

TRUMP: O.K. First of all, on countries. I think that countries will not do that to us. I don’t think if they’re run by a person that understands leadership and negotiation they’re in no position to do that to us, no matter what I do. They’re in no position to do that to us, and that won’t happen, but I’m going to take a look at it. A very serious look. I want to also see how much this is costing, you know, what’s the cost to it, and I’ll be talking to you folks in the not-too-distant future about it, having to do with what just took place.

As far as the, you know, potential conflict of interests, though, I mean I know that from the standpoint, the law is totally on my side, meaning, the president can’t have a conflict of interest. That’s been reported very widely. Despite that, I don’t want there to be a conflict of interest anyway. And the laws, the president can’t. And I understand why the president can’t have a conflict of interest now because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest, but I have, I’ve built a very great company and it’s a big company and it’s all over the world. People are starting to see, when they look at all these different jobs, like in India and other things, number one, a job like that builds great relationships with the people of India, so it’s all good. But I have to say, the partners come in, they’re very, very successful people. They come in, they’d say, they said, ‘Would it be possible to have a picture?’ Actually, my children are working on that job. So I can say to them, Arthur, ‘I don’t want to have a picture,’ or, I can take a picture. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to take a picture. I’m fine with a picture. But if it were up to some people, I would never, ever see my daughter Ivanka again. That would be like you never seeing your son again. That wouldn’t be good. That wouldn’t be good. But I’d never, ever see my daughter Ivanka.

There’s more. Much more. To me, a lot of it sounds like Trump is desperately babbling in an effort to find something—anything—that will sound presidential, will make him sound reasonable to the New York Times, and give them an answer that they want to hear.

Read it for yourself. This is the unfocused, inarticulate, inchoate thinking of the person who is about to be our 45^th President. Shockingly, after the interview, after hearing Trump’s tsunami of bullshit, the Times editorial board praised Trump for being “flexible” on certain issues.

I’m not a person who prays, but if you are, please do what you can.

[UPDATE: Read additional excerpts here, with my commentary.]

[Also, see Trump’s edited Person-of-the-Year interview with Time magazine.]

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