A Split Screen News Story For the History Books

 

Well, now, there's a hell of a split screen image in this election year! 

Trump goes to the wake of a murdered police officer, and at the same time, nearby, Biden holds the biggest campaign fundraiser of all time ever. To carry that off, he needed Obama to lend his crowd appeal, and even brought in Bill Clinton as a chick magnet. 

Meanwhile, Trump paid off the mortgage on the NYPD widow's home and started an education fund for her one year-old child. 

Even mainstream news media are framing that as a side-by-side contrast. 

Did the political geniuses on Biden's reelection campaign team think that would be a good idea? Biden must have. C'mon Man!©, stop the malarky and ask yourself why your poll numbers are dragging on the ground.

Give That Prime Minister a MAGA Hat

Albanian PM goes MAGA in front of Blinken: “And despite the rhetoric, despite the colorful way to confront adversaries, I don’t see that NATO was weakened … Every country continued to put more money and to put more effort in increasing the NATO budget.” https://t.co/ReBLBWRptP

— TSB (@TweetingTSB) February 23, 2024

I'll bet A. Blinken didn't see that coming. There he was, having a pleasantly innocuous 'press availability' with his host, the Big Guy in Albania, when that guy peeled out of formation and gave a shout out to Donald Trump and his successful effort to make NATO grow a spine.

But one thing I can say, I had the privilege to be prime minister for Albania in NATO when the former president was there. And despite the rhetoric, despite the colorful way to confront adversaries, I don’t see that NATO was weakened. On the contrary, what was decided before continued to be the case. Every country continued to put more money and to put more effort in increasing the NATO budget. So now, elections are elections, Trump is Trump. American politics is American politics. But I think United States is something more than that. And what makes United States one of a kind in the – in our community of countries and of people all around the world is that United States cannot and will never, in my view, shy away from what are the principles and the values to be protected, whatever it takes. And so I’m not afraid of anything, but of stopping or wavering to continue and protect ourselves through protecting the right of Ukrainians to live in their country, to have their own house intact, to have their children grow there, and to have a common future with everyone else, without being threatened to be wiped out from maps based on ninth, thirteenth, fifteenth, whatever century. Because if this Pandora box opens then I can tell you we have a lot of maps in this region, but we have to see the future, and it’s only the future that will unite us.

So no, I don’t think that NATO will be weakened. I don’t think the United States will shy away from their role and from their leadership. I then that when elections will be over, American business is American business.

The PM is distinctly not concerned about our upcoming national election. 

Well, after all, Trump was the first POTUS to give weapons (the Javelin, our most advanced anti-tank rocket) to Ukraine. Obama never did. And he also blocked completion of Russia's Nord Stream II pipeline. So, he kinda does deserve some credit here.

It wouldn't be going too far to expect to see that impromptu endorsement appear on Trump campaign material soon. And if that ad can focus on A. Blinken's face when the PM said all that, it would be extra great.

A Familiar Three-Act Dramatic Structure is Playing Out In Manhattan

Manhattan DA Bragg is playing his part to perfection:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) for the first time on Thursday addressed a claim by former President Trump that he would be arrested in connection to an investigation into a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, calling it the creation of a “false expectation” (here).

You've probably seen it before.

Act 1: "We've got Trump at last! He'll never wiggle his way out of this one!" 

Act 2: Trump effortlessly wiggles his way out of this one. 

Act 3:

 

 This is even better than the old Roadrunner vs Wile E. Coyote cartoons. 

Can Two Such Different Men Share a Foreign Policy Without Driving Each Other Crazy?

Mitt Romney as Trump's SecState? Seems bizarre, but that oddest of political couples is going to meet tomorrow at Trump's New Jersey golf resort, so we shall see.

Some people like the idea:

By contrast [with Trump's choices for National Security Advisor and Attorney General], choosing Mitt Romney as secretary of State would send a signal of reassurance and resolve to our allies abroad, and would be welcomed by many Republicans as well as Democrats in the Senate and House. Romney would be one of the most highly qualified candidates for any seat in the Cabinet of any president, and would be particularly valuable for America during the presidency of Donald Trump because of his knowledge of the world, experience and policy depth.

But Donald Trump and Mitt Romney?!

Weekends in New York With The Donald

New York Magazine frets that President Donald Trump might spend weekends in his NYC home, which would bring White House-levels of security to that stretch of Fifth Avenue. "If President Trump really uses Trump Tower as his regular getaway from the burdens of the Oval Office ... The man in the high castle will have turned a public thoroughfare into a glowering moat."

I think their language is overwrought - militarization?? - however, there is certainly a real adverse impact on public spaces when such a large security footprint is imposed on a congested city.

Trump Tower, Fifth Avenue, and the Militarization of Urban Public Space:

Fifth Avenue in the 50s is almost always clotted with pedestrians and cars, and this time of year it becomes even more congested as department stores turn their windows into Christmas Barneys-, Saks-, and Dior-amas. But Trump’s election has turned his stretch of Fifth into the urban equivalent of the security line at JFK: Aluminum barriers squeeze traffic into a pair of lanes, sidewalks are blocked off, and pedestrians shuffle past a gauntlet of armed officers.

-- snip --

We’ve seen it so often: Jersey barriers and modular fences, automatic weapons slung across Kevlar vests — the whole visible apparatus of control and intimidation in the name of safety.

-- snip --

Ever since 9/11, architects and planners have looked for more genial ways to minimize potential threats: cameras, of course, but also bollards that look like charming street furniture [TSB Note: They really do! Please click the link.] and public structures that are tougher than they appear. Even so, militarizing the streets has become the option of first resort, establishing a presence that’s as frail as it is aggressive. Paris has been bristling with security forces since the Charlie Hebdo attacks — which didn’t prevent the calamity of the Bataclan less than a year later. The 85,000 soldiers who kept Rio de Janeiro quiescent during the Olympics retreated after the crowds went home — and the military soon found itself in a shooting war with resurgent gangs. Blatant security works like a burglar alarm sticker on a front door: It announces to aspiring evildoers that they’ll do better down the block. And shooters tend to take that advice, attacking cafés, movie theaters, offices, elementary schools, and relatively unguarded streets rather than the fortified “targets” identified by consultants like, say, Rudolph Giuliani.

It's enough to make you appreciate Camp David. Maybe Trump will give Fifth Avenue shoppers a break and take up fly-fishing in the Catoctin Mountain streams, like Hoover and Eisenhower did. But, then, I really don't see him as the fly-fishing type.

Donald Trump (if that really is his name), Born in Pakistan?

Traffic Police in #Peshawar say they've had to confiscate number plates from vehicles celebrating Donald Trump. (This country = Surprises) pic.twitter.com/jBvhLQjgxH

— Iftikhar Firdous (@IftikharFirdous) November 16, 2016

Not that I think for one minute that President-Elect Trump was born in Pakistan, as this report from Neo News has it, but then, it might explain the burst of local pride in Peshawar this week.

Maybe Trump's real name was Dawood Ibrahim Khan, orphaned in Waziristan in 1954, taken to London by a kindly British Army officer, and then adopted by the Trump family a year later.

I mean, that could kind of happen, I suppose.

Donald Trump Interprets Robert Frost

Donald Trump's speaking style shows much more literary influence than you might think. First, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania traced the roots of his rhetoric to Gertrude Stein - yes, really - and now, courtesy of The Rotting Post (the finest in literate snark), we have a Trumperian rendition of Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening:

I have a pretty good idea whose woods these are, believe me. And let me tell you something, my people say he’s a complete nobody. This guy lives in the village. So what if he sees me stopping here? I dare him to sue me! I dare him!

And by the way, this snow is pathetic. These are by far, the least downy flakes ever! I hear they had to import them from Canada. I don’t know. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. We’re looking into it.

My horse – he’s the most incredible horse, seriously, I have the greatest, the classiest horses – My horse doesn’t even know what the hell we’re doing here. The horses love me though. They do. They’re always shaking their bells at me, it’s very loving. It’s a beautiful thing.

Let me tell you something, these woods are an embarrassment. They’re not dark. They’re not deep. They’re nothing. They’re for losers. And I cannot wait to sue this guy. I cannot wait to sue this guy.

Austere and very moving.

Yes, It's Going to Be Like This, David

The best part of today's Donald Trump press conference is at the end, around the one hour and 15 minute mark, when Daily Mail reporter David Martosko complains that Trump has set a new bar for being contentious with the press:

Martosko: "You've set a new bar for the press corps, calling us losers to our faces."

Trump: "Not all of you. Just many of you. Not you David, actually"

Martosko: "Is this what it's going to be like if we're covering you as President?"

Trump: "Yes, yes it is ... yes, it's going to be like this, David."

Am I a bad person for loving the prospect of more press conferences just like this?

Trump Gives Sanders the Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

This dubbing idea is brilliant. A Cockney accent fits Trump's rhetoric perfectly. He sounds so good this way, he ought to fund an app for converting all his speeches.


p.s. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a 2007 movie.