I was so sure that, after transcripts of our dear leader’s earlier, shockingly incoherent ramblings were released, we would never again see such a thing. But yesterday, after essentially shutting out the press for days, Trump—perhaps having no TV to watch—impulsively decided to have a chitchat with the press as they all flew together to Paris.  And although what turned out to be a one-hour session was initially billed as off-the-record, today, the White House inexplicably released a full transcript of the conversation.

It’s as bad as ever—revealing Trump’s unfocused, irrational, incomprehensible “thinking,” his inability to get from the beginning to the end of a single sentence, and his complete lack of understanding of any issue. It’s really hard to believe that they released this. But they did, after [Bloomberg News reports] “Trump [incredibly] asked a reporter why she hadn’t reported on what he’d said the night before,” demonstrating that he either doesn’t know what “off-the-record” means, or he doesn’t remember much about the conversation.

You can read the full transcript here. But if you can’t bear it to see every word, here are some excerpts. Buckle up. And remember, this is a transcript released by the Trump White House: It’s probably somewhat cleaned up–and yet, it is still incredibly idiotic.

Q: When were you last in Paris? When were you last in France?

So, I was asked to go by the President, who I get along with very well, despite a lot of fake news.  You know, I actually have a very good relationship with all of the people at the G20.  And he called me, he said, would you come, it’s Bastille Day — 100 years since World War I.  And I said, that’s big deal, 100 years since World War.

Bastille Day? World War I? History emergency…

On the border wall:

This is a doozy. It sounds as if someone asked him about government transparency, and instead he answered with an argument about needing a see-through wall.

One of the things with the wall is you need transparency.  You have to be able to see through it.  In other words, if you can’t see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what’s on the other side of the wall.

And I’ll give you an example.  As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff?  It’s over.  As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall.  But we have some incredible designs

On President Putin and Russia:

Q: Are you mad that Putin lied about the meeting that you had with him, especially about —

Trump:  What meeting?

Q : At the G20, when he said that you didn’t — you know, you accepted that the hacking wasn’t real.

Trump:  He didn’t say that.  No.  He said, I think he accepted it, but you’d have to ask him.  That’s a big difference.  So I said, very simply — and the first 45 minutes, don’t forget, most of the papers said I’d never bring it up.  Had to be the first 20 to 25 minutes.

Remember, no one on the US side was taking notes, so there’s no official record of what transpired during that meeting–except for Rex Tillerson’s spin. It sounds as though Trump doesn’t have a very clear memory of what was discussed.

…And, by the way, I only want to make great deals with Russia. Remember this, I have built up—we’re getting $57 billion more for the military. Hillary was going to cut the military. I’m a tremendous fracker, coal, natural gas, alternate energy, wind—everything, right? But I’m going to produce much much more energy that anyone else who was ever running for office. Ever. We’re going to have clean coal, and Hillary wasn’t. Hillary was going to stop fracking. She was going to stop coal totally. Hey, in West Virginia I beat her by 42 points. Remember, she went and sat with the miners and they said get the hell out of here. So, I was going to—if Hillary got in, your energy prices right now would be double. You’d be doing no fracking. You’d be doing practically no fossil fuels.

He’s a “tremendous fracker.” Interesting way to describe oneself. He is, indeed, a huge motherfracker.

On Russian sanctions:

I saw a report and I read a report that Trump wants to take off the sanctions. I’ve made a lot of money. I’ve made great deals. That’s what I do. Why would I take sanctions off without getting anything?

Several times during the wing-side chat, Trump makes a point of saying that he has “read” reports. Yeah, right. And, of course, it all gets back, always, to Donald Trump the amazing deal-maker.

On allegations of collusion with Russia:

Trump begins with the witch hunt argument, repeats it several times, and then blames it all on Democrats. If you can understand the logic that follows, you’re a better sleuth than I am:

…It’s a witch hunt and [the Democrats} understand that. When they say “treason”—you know what treason is? That’s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving the atomic bomb, okay? But what about all the congressmen, where I see the woman sitting there surrounded by—in Congress. So I think it’s a good thing When Hillary spent her ads—you know, she spent almost 100 percent of her ads on anti-Donald Trump ads. You know that. Every ad was an anti ad.

On Putin’s alleged support for Trump:

So, the next time I’m with Putin, I’m going to ask him: who were you really for? Because I can’t believe that he would have been for me. Me. Strong military, strong borders—but he cares less about the borders—but strong military, tremendous.

The release of the transcript indicates to me that Trump believes that he handled the interview well, and that he is, indeed, the best spokesperson for himself. So much for self-awareness. We need to keep reading these things, as they offer prima facie evidence of Trump’s ineptness, absence of ideas or substance, his giant ego, and his inability to move beyond his win over Hillary Clinton. This is who Trump is. There has never been, and never will be, another more presidential version. Transcripts don’t lie, and that’s why I love them.

The post Trump talks: A new transcript, from Air Force One “wingside chat” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Today, our new president invited 20 or so people to the White House to dutifully celebrate Black History Month [something he’s probably given little previous thought to.]  He did it in his own clumsy, rambling, self-serving way. You can watch the entire video of his remarks here, or below, or you can read the full transcript.

This is another glimpse into how Trump conducts himself in less-visible meetings and casual settings. He’s still in campaign mode, still unable to focus on the task at hand, still angry and lashing out at people who don’t give him proper adulation. Personally, I thought he seemed uncomfortable, but he probably thought his event was a home run and that he charmed the group with his quips and off-the-cuff remarks. [One troubling aspect of the meeting, for me, is how his audience kisses up to him after his brief remarks, tells him they “have his back,” and treats him as though he is doing a great job.] If you watch the video, be sure to stick around after the “formal” remarks to hear what his guests say, and how he responds–that’s not in this transcript. Some of it made me cringe.

The transcript and the video demonstrate, once again, what we are unfortunately becoming accustomed to: A few scripted words about the event itself, but many, many more impromptu, off-topic words about Trump himself, his glorious victory, his great campaign, fake news, the missing-not-missing statue of Martin Luther King in the White House, etc. Every so often, he remembers where he is and that this is a Black History Month event, so he throws in something about the only black people he sorta knows who are in the room with him, including Omarosa–from his favorite tv show, “The Apprentice.” He calls her “my television star over here, and as his attention wanders from the tedious job of acknowledging black history, he reminds us that she is not the meanie portrayed on tv. But she’s black, see, so the comments are appropriate for the occasion, right?

At one point he tries to pay homage to black history luminary Frederick Douglass [whom he probably never heard of before]. Here’s how that went:

“Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I noticed. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.”

Big deal: He can name check Tubman and Parks. Last week, my 7-year-old granddaughter did the same thing.

Trump also blathers–falsely, of course–about how much support he had in the black community during the election.

This is a great group, this is a group that’s been so special to me. You really helped me a lot. If you remember I wasn’t going to do well with the African-American community, and after they heard me speaking and talking about the inner city and lots of other things, we ended up getting—and I won’t go into details—but we ended up getting substantially more than other candidates who had run in the past years

Fact check: Trump got 8 percent of the black vote.

And here’s what he’s going to do for the black community:

We’re gonna need better schools and we need them soon. We need more jobs, we need better wages, a lot better wages. We’re gonna work very hard on the inner city. Ben is gonna be doing that, big league. That’s one of the big things that you’re gonna be looking at. We need safer communities and we’re going to do that with law enforcement. We’re gonna make it safe. We’re gonna make it much better than it is right now. Right now it’s terrible.

It’s more of the same incoherent, zigzagging babble we’ve heard and read in previous transcripts.

But it’s still not normal.

The post Trump’s Black History Month transcript: Not much history included appeared first on Occasional Planet.

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.

Don’t rely on condensed and cleaned-up news reports of Donald Trump’s Jan. 11, 2017 press conference to give the full picture of his incoherent thought process and speaking “style.” You have to read the complete transcript—or at least extended sections of it—to completely comprehend Trump’s inarticulateness and the erratic flow of words that constitute a Trump “thought.”  So, I urge everyone who didn’t see the press conference debacle live, or who tuned it out after a few minutes, or who didn’t see the whose catastrophe on-line, to find a way to get the full experience. NPR has an excellent verbatim transcript, with annotations and fact-checking.

Unlike Trump’s Nov. 2016 behind-the-scenes interview at the New York Times, the press conference offered a full public display of Trump’s wandering, unfocused, sometimes crude and often antagonistic way of interacting with the press and the public. His performance did nothing to instill confidence that he will be more thoughtful or informed when he takes office.

He began the press conference by adopting what I’m sure he thought was a serious, more presidential-sounding tone. But his words belied his demeanor, as his opening remarks wandered into typically Trumpian narcissistic territory. And as the press conference wore on, he became more unglued.

Here’s an excerpt from his opening remarks:

Thank you very much, this is very familiar territory — news conferences — because we used to give them on an almost daily basis. I think we probably maybe won the nomination because of news conferences. And it’s good to be with you.

We stopped giving them because we were getting quite a bit of inaccurate news. But I do have to say that — and I must say that – I want to thank a lot of the news organizations here today because they looked at that nonsense that was released by maybe the intelligence agencies — who knows but maybe the intelligence agencies, which would be at tremendous blot on their record if they in fact did that, a tremendous blot. Because a thing like that should have never been written — it should never have been had, it should certainly have never been released. But I want to thank a lot of the news organizations for — some of whom have not treated me very well over the years.

A couple in particular — and they came out so strongly against that fake news and the fact that it was written about by primarily one group and one television station. So I just want to complement many of the people in the room, I have great respect for the news and great respect for freedom of the press and all of that.

But I will tell you, there were some news organizations with all that was just said that were so professional, so incredibly professional. That — I’ve just gone up a notch as to what I think of you. OK? All right.

Later, in his opening remarks, before having been asked a single question, he flatly stated,

I will be the best job producer God ever created.

Also from his opening remarks—at his first press conference in six months, when he has an opportunity to show us his presidential-ness and his seriousness– we get a rundown on the great bands that will be playing at his inauguration, along with a lot of self-congratulation:

I look very much forward to the inauguration. It’s going to be a beautiful event. We have great talent, tremendous talent. And we have all of the bands — or most of the bands from the different segments of the military. And I’ve heard some of these bands over the years — they’re incredible. We’re going to have a very, very elegant day. The 20th is going to be something that will be very, very special, very beautiful. And I think we’re going to have massive crowds because we have a movement. It’s a movement like the world has never seen before. It’s a movement that a lot of people didn’t expect. And even the polls, although some of them did get it right, but many of them didn’t. And that was a beautiful scene on November 8th as those states started to pour in. And we focused very hard on those states, and they really reciprocated. And those states are going to have a lot of jobs, and they’re going to have a lot of security. They are going to have a lot of good news for their veterans.

Later, asked about recent news reports about possibly embarrassing information for Trump gleaned through Russian eavesdropping, Trump said.

.. Well, let me tell you. Yeah. Let me just tell you what I do. When I leave our country, I’m a very high profile person, would you say? I am extremely careful. I’m surrounded by bodyguards. I’m surrounded by people. And I always tell them, anywhere, but I always tell them, if I’m leaving this country, “Be very careful. Because in your hotel rooms — and no matter where you go, you’re gonna probably have cameras. I’m not referring just to Russia, but I would certainly put them in that category — and number one I hope you’re going to be good anyway. But in those rooms you have cameras in the strangest places. Cameras that are so small with modern technology, you can’t see them and you won’t know. You better be careful or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.” I tell this to people all the time. I was in Russia, years ago, with the Miss Universe contest, which did very well. Moscow, the Moscow area. Did very, very well. And I told many people, “Be careful. Because you don’t wanna see yourself on television.” Cameras all over the place. And again, not just Russia. All over. Does anyone really believe that story? I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way. Believe me.

On the border wall between the U.S and Mexico. [If you understand this, please explain it to the rest of us.]

On the fence, it’s not a fence it’s the wall. You just misreported it. We’re going to build a wall. I could wait about a year and a half until we finish our negotiations with Mexico, which will start immediately after we get to office. But I don’t want to wait. Mike Pence is leading an effort to get final approvals through various agencies and through Congress for the wall to begin. I don’t feel like waiting a year or year and a half. We’re going to start building.

Mexico, in some form, and there many different forms, will reimburse us and they will reimburse us for the cost of the wall.

That will happen. Whether it’s a tax or whether it’s a payment — probably less likely that it’s a payment — but it will happen. So remember this, OK? I would say we are going to build a wall, and people would go crazy.

I would then say — who’s going to pay for the wall? And people would all scream out — twenty five, thirty thousand people, because no one’s ever had crowds like Trump has had. You know that. You don’t like to report that, but that’s OK. OK, now he agrees. Finally, he agrees. But, I say, who’s going to pay for the wall? And they will scream out — Mexico. Now, reports went out last week — oh, Mexico’s not going to pay for the wall because of a reimbursement.

What’s the difference? I want to get the wall started. I don’t want to wait a year and a half until I make my deal with Mexico. And we probably will have a deal sooner than that. And by the way, Mexico has been so nice. So nice.

I respect the government of Mexico. I respect the people of Mexico. I love the people of Mexico. I have many people from Mexico working for me. They are phenomenal people. The government of Mexico is terrific. I don’t blame them for what’s happened. I don’t blame them for taking advantage of the United States. I wish our politicians were so smart. Mexico has taken advantage of the United States. I don’t blame the representatives and various presidents, etc. of Mexico. What I say is we shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.

And if leaving one’s audience with a good impression is a smart tactic, Trump failed there, too: He used his final remarks before leaving the stage as a vehicle to sneak in his signature, reality-tv line:

I want to thank everybody. So this is all — just so you understand, these papers — because I’m not sure that was explained properly. But these papers are all just a piece of the many, many companies that are being put into trust to be run by my two sons that I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, oh, you did a good job. Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I’ll say, “You’re fired.”

Good-bye, everybody. Good-bye.

There’s so much more. As we have seen before, Trump rambles, brags about his great company, congratulates himself, name drops, exaggerates and flat-out lies, re-litigates his election victory, takes gratuitous swipes at Hillary Clinton, cites unsubstantiated statistics and shambles from one unrelated thought to another. The only thing that keeps his answers anywhere near on track is the fact that reporters’ questions bring him back to the topic.

There is nothing presidential about this man—and it is clear from his performance at one of his first official appearances–this press debacle–that he is not about to grow up or change.

The post Trump’s incoherence on full display at press conference appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Why did my recent post–featuring excerpts from the transcript of Donald Trump’s New York Times interview--go viral? I have a theory.

But first, some statistics:  After I published it here on Occasional Planet—the progressive political blog that I co-founded and edit—the post got so many hits that the site crashed several times. We’ve been publishing since February 2010, and nothing even close to this has ever happened. On a typical day, we expect between 500 and 1,000 total clicks on the various stories that we write. The Trump transcript post blew those numbers out of the water: Two days after publishing this post, we had more than 2,600 hits; on the 7^th day after publication, we reached 20,000 hits in a single day. To date, more than 65,000 people have clicked on this single post, and more than 10,000 of them have shared it, via this website, to Facebook.

And those crazy [for us] numbers are only part of what happened. I cross-posted the article on Daily Kos, and it got more than 43,000 additional shares on Facebook. For the week ending December 3, it made the list of High Impact Posts.

How did this happen? Here’s my theory–It’s Access Hollywood

I’m hoping that most readers were seriously and sincerely interested in reading the full account—or at least part of it—just to get a better understanding of what Trump said and how he said it—and because the post offered a convenient way to do so, if they had missed the original story in the New York Times. You could link to the transcript on the Times’ website, but, as far as I know, it was not offered in print.  According to our site’s Stat Counter, more than 8,000 people who came to the post on our site clicked on the outbound link to the full transcript at newyorktimes.com.

There’s also, I think, a segment of readership that read the post, and the full transcript, out of “prurient” interest. And this is where it gets really interesting, I think.

It’s as if the headline had said, “Here’s What Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Read About What He Said at the New York Times.”  That would have been a rather click-bait-y headline—and I avoid those—but I’m speculating that the effect was similar.

I think that some readers viewed the transcript as something like an episode of “Access Hollywood,” or the after-show extras from “The Bachelorette,” or other reality TV shows: Here’s what was left on the cutting-room floor. Here’s what you didn’t see in the press coverage of the latest episode of “Celebrity Apprentice President.”

What I excerpted were, in essence, the outtakes from the interview.

It’s sad that Donald Trump is treating the presidency as a reality TV show; and it’s sad if some people read the interview transcript in that spirit. But I’m just glad that they’re reading it. Not just because a viral post is good for my writer’s ego [I cannot lie: It is], but because of what readers may have learned from it about the mind and thought-processes of the person who is about to [shudder] become our 45^th President.

The post My post on Trump’s NYT interview transcript went viral: Why? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If you don’t have the time or patience [or stomach] to read the entire, word-for-word transcript of Donald Trump’s interview with the New York Times, allow me to help. Here are some additional excerpts [I posted others yesterday], guaranteed to make you scratch your head in wonder at the man’s short-attention-span thinking and his narcissism. The excerpts I’m including have not received much media attention, because they’re not Tweet-ishly succinct. But they’re equally important, because they reveal a lot about this man’s perspective and his wandering focus.

Here’s an excerpt from Trump’s opening remarks.The New York Times gave him about 10 minutes of unstructured time in which to say whatever he wanted to before answering specific questions. In this section, he is talking about his intention to “bring the country together” after a “vicious” election.

TRUMP: What we do want to do is we want to bring the country together, because the country is very, very divided, and that’s one thing I did see, big league. It’s very, very divided, and I’m going to work very hard to bring the country together.

I mean, I’m somebody that really has gotten along with people over the years. It was interesting, my wife, I went to a big event about two years ago. Just after I started thinking about politics.

And we’re walking in and some people were cheering and some people were booing, and she said, you know, ‘People have never booed for you.’

I’ve never had a person boo me, and all of a sudden people are booing me. She said, that’s never happened before. And, it’s politics. You know, all of a sudden they think I’m going to be running for office, and I’m a Republican, let’s say. So it’s something that I had never experienced before and I said, ‘Those people are booing,’ and she said, ‘Yup.’ They’d never booed before. But now they boo. You know, it was a group and another group was going the opposite.

Yeah, it’s all about the booing.

Here’s another excerpt. In it, Trump responds to a question about climate change:

TRUMP: You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.

My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject. It’s a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know. I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind. I will tell you this: Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important.

And you know, you mentioned a lot of the courses. I have some great, great, very successful golf courses. I’ve received so many environmental awards for the way I’ve done, you know. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work where I’ve received tremendous numbers. Sometimes I’ll say I’m actually an environmentalist and people will smile in some cases and other people that know me understand that’s true. Open mind.

So, Trump is an environmentalist because he built some “great, great, very successful golf courses,” and he had an uncle.

Finally, here is Trump’s take on his strategy late in the campaign:

TRUMP: …the numbers are coming out far beyond what anybody’s wildest expectation was. I don’t know if it was us, I mean, we were seeing the kind of crowds and kind of, everything, the kind of enthusiasm we were getting from the people.

As you probably know, I did many, many speeches that last four-week period. I was just telling Arthur that I went around and did speeches in the pretty much 11 different places, that were, the massive crowds we were getting. If we had a stadium that held — and most of you, many of you were there — that held 20,000 people, we’d have 15,000 people outside that couldn’t get in.

So we came up with a good system — we put up the big screens outside with a very good loudspeaker system and very few people left. I would do, during the last month, two or three a day. That’s a lot. Because that’s not easy when you have big crowds. Those speeches, that’s not an easy way of life, doing three a day. Then I said the last two days, I want to do six and seven. And I’m not sure anybody has ever done that. But we did six and we did seven and the last one ended at 1 o’clock in the morning in Michigan.

And we had 31,000 people, 17,000 or 18,000 inside and the rest outside. This massive place in Grand Rapids, I guess. And it was an incredible thing. And I left saying: ‘How do we lose Michigan? I don’t think we can lose Michigan.’

And the reason I did that, it was set up only a little while before — because we heard that day that Hillary was hearing that they’re going to lose Michigan, which hasn’t been lost in 38 years. Or something. But 38 years. And they didn’t want to lose Michigan. So they went out along with President Obama and Michelle, Bill and Hillary, they went to Michigan late that, sort of late afternoon and I said, ‘Let’s go to Michigan.’

It wasn’t on the schedule. So I finished up in New Hampshire and at 10 o’clock I went to Michigan. We got there at 12 o’clock. We started speaking around 12:45, actually, and we had 31,000 people and I said, really, I mean, there are things happening. But we saw it everywhere.

…And I thought we were going to win it. And we won it, we won it, you know, relatively easily, we won it by a number of points. Florida we won by 180,000 — was that the number, 180?

For Trump, it’s not about a message or a plan: It’s all about the crowds, the adulation, and the sound system..This is what he chooses to talk about with the New York Times, in hopes of impressing them.

I wonder if, after seeing this transcript, Trump will ever again agree to a completely on-the-record interview. I hope he does, but I have my doubts. On the other hand, he is so delusional about himself that he probably thinks this interview went extremely well and that he won over [or snowed] the New York Times with his bullshit.

Frightening.

The post More excerpts from Trump’s NYT interview: Incoherence & narcissism 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.]

The post Trump’s NYT transcript: Read it, and weep for our country appeared first on Occasional Planet.