October 1999: ‘Sort of wacko‘
January 2000: ‘Very bad people’
September 2015, Trump called Kim a “maniac”
Feb 2016: “I mean this guy’s a bad dude
Aug 8, 2017: “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,”
In April he called Kim a “smart cookie.”
He doubled down on the “fire and fury” comment. “If anything, maybe that statement wasn’t tough enough,” he said.
“Kim Jong Un of North Korea made a very wise and well reasoned decision,” Trump tweeted. “The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable!”
I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night. Asked him how Rocket Man is doing.
“Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself,” he said.
Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!
.. Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me “old,” when I would NEVER call him “short and fat?” Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend – and maybe someday that will happen
The Chinese Envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man. Hard to believe his people, and the military, put up with living in such horrible conditions. Russia and China condemned the launch.
Trump Campaign Files Complaint Saying Ex-Staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman Breached Secrecy Pact
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign filed a complaint against former White House official and campaign aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, alleging she violated a confidentiality agreement signed during his 2016 presidential bid.
A Trump campaign official said in a brief statement Tuesday that the claim was filed with the American Arbitration Association of New York City. The statement doesn’t specify how Ms. Manigault Newman might have violated the agreement.
.. . On Twitter on Tuesday, he called Ms. Manigault Newman a “dog” while denying her contention that he used a racial slur.
.. Ms. Manigault Newman has said during her book promotions that she has heard a recording of Mr. Trump using the N-word racial slur. On Monday night, the president wrote on Twitter that Mark Burnett, the television executive who created Mr. Trump’s “Apprentice” franchise, had told him no tapes exist from the production of the show in which he used “such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa.”
“I don’t have that word in my vocabulary,” he wrote.
.. Mr. Kelly called Ms. Manigault Newman into the Situation Room last December and fired her, a meeting she recorded despite protocols barring staff from bringing electronic devices into the secure space in the White House basement.
Mr. Trump tweeted on Monday that Mr. Kelly had wanted to fire her immediately after becoming chief of staff last summer, but held off because the president believed she had said “only GREAT things about me.”
.. The last recording was aired Tuesday on CBS News. In it, Ms. Manigault Newman said, she and other campaign aides are heard discussing the possible existence of a tape in which Mr. Trump uses the N-word. One aide said she had talked to then-candidate Trump about the matter. The aide said she asked him, “Can you think of any time this might have happened, and he said, ‘No.’ ”
Ms. Manigault Newman is then heard saying, “Well, that’s not true.”
The first aide later said that Mr. Trump had told her, “Why don’t you just go ahead and put it to bed.”
President Dumb and Dumber
Donald Trump has a penchant for labeling particular people. It might strike some as just another insult for a petulant urchin of a man who insults everyone with whom he takes issue. But I believe that the nature of his insults to specific kinds of people says something more about the character and nature of the man, something of which he may or may not be aware.
I believe that the fact that he so often attacks the intellectual capacity of women and minorities exposes a racial and gender bias, one that has a long history and a wide acceptance.
.. Hover over the irony here: The man trying to help at-risk children by opening doors for them was being attacked by the man who has put children at risk by locking them in cages.
.. Trump repeated the sobriquet he has assigned to California Representative Maxine Waters, calling her, “Very low I.Q. low. Low I.Q.”
.. review of the many insults Trump has spouted since he declared his candidacy finds that although he has called many people dumb, or dummies or low I.Q., the targeting of that particular insult at women, including minority women, occurs with curious frequency and is often a singular line of attack against them, rather than one of many.
He has called MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski “dumb as a rock,” “low I.Q.,” and “crazy and very dumb.”
He has called HLN anchor S.E. Cupp and political commentator Ana Navarro “two of the dumbest people in politics,” and has called Cupp “one of the dumber pundits on TV.”
He has called Republican consultant Cheri Jacobus “really dumb” and “a real dummy.”
He has called Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin “one of the dumber bloggers.”
He has said of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that she “has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me.”
He has said of the journalist Mary Katharine Ham that she “isn’t smart enough to know what’s going on at the border.”
He has called the Forbes writer Clare O’Connor a “dummy” multiple times.
He has said that Maria Cardona made Morning Edition contributor Cokie Roberts look “even dumber” than he believed she was on a news show.
He has called Arianna Huffington, founder of HuffPost, a “dummy.”
.. I read in these comments an overt misogyny that has long existed in this country and the world, one that seeks to undercut the seriousness and cerebral capacity of women, to render them as emotionally unsuitable for deep deliberative analysis.
.. This is the very same argument that people have used to deny women’s suffrage and prevent access to full political participation.
.. Most people, male and female alike, believed that women were biologically unfit for politics. According to one orator at a mass meeting in Albany, New York, ‘A woman’s brain involves emotion rather than intellect, [which] painfully disqualifies her for the sterner duties to be performed by the intellectual faculties.’
.. ‘Housewives!’ announced a Massachusetts journal, ‘You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink spout.’ ”
And yet, 170 years on, we have a president of the United States questioning women’s intelligence.
.. “Women have scored higher than men in intelligence testing for the first time since records began.”
Trump Urges NATO to Double Military Spending Target to 4% of GDP
President Donald Trump pressured allies at the NATO summit Wednesday to double the military spending target to 4% of gross domestic product, while bashing Germany for its military spending and support for a major gas deal with Russia.
.. Mr. Trump began his visit by accusing Germany of being “captive to Russia” because of its support for Nord Stream 2, an offshore pipeline that would bring gas directly from Russia via the Baltic Sea.
Speaking in a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Mr. Trump called Germany’s support for the project “very sad,” and said, “We’re supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.”
.. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said, “President Trump’s brazen insults and denigration of one of America’s most steadfast allies, Germany, is an embarrassment.”
.. He has met frequent criticism in Washington for appearing overly friendly toward Mr. Putin, including when he congratulated the Russian leader on his election victory earlier this year despite being advised by national security officials not to do so.
.. Germany is the biggest importer of natural gas from Russia in the EU, accounting for more than 20% of the purchases in 2017 by the 28-member bloc, according to the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat. Russian imports made up about 40% of Germany’s annual gas purchases for the past two years.