Saturday, December 24th, 2016
Stephan: If you have listened to the news today I am sure you have already heard about the extraordinary tweet from Donald Trump concerning nuclear arms. I have several reactions to this. First, we only have one President at a time, and I can't remember a time when an incoming President has so blatantly disregarded that. We have had some really stupid comments from Presidents during campaigns, interesting that they mostly seem to come from Republicans, Reagan's "joke" that we're about to start bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes comes immediately to mind. But I can't recall anything like this.
Second, Trump's tweet set in motion one of the most obvious normalization campaigns yet. Trump's minions and the media spent the day turning themselves inside out to defuse what I see as a sociopathic amusement -- and I expect this process will be a regular feature of the Trump Presidency.
Third, sociopaths are smart if deranged, and one of the features of this psychological condition is an unsatisfiable craving to always be the center of attention. Trump has clearly figured out how to push the buttons of the media, and the world come to that, so that he is always in the spotlight and unless the media develops a way of dealing with that, the news over the next four years is going to be dominated by outrageous tweets, that bring everything else to a screeching stop.
Fourth, actions such as this obfuscate real news and real things. Have you noticed we have yet to see Trump's Tax returns? Have you noticed that the glaring conflicts of interest no longer get much attention?
Fifth, have you noticed the pusillanimous behavior of the Republican leadership, and their little brown noses?
Buckle up, we're in for a very strange ride.
Credit: Alternet
Donald Trump’s zest for making offhand quips about his intentions on serious policy matters has launched the United States on a grand experiment: What happens when the world doesn’t understand what the American president is trying to say?
In the hours after President-elect Trump tweeted about his desire to expand American nuclear weapons capability — seeming to upend decades of consensus that fewer nukes is better — experts puzzled about what he meant, his own aides seemed to walk his comment back, and Trump himself weighed in to suggest that the most extreme reading of his tweet was the right one.
Trump stunned nuclear experts Thursday by proclaiming in a tweet that “the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
And on Friday, Trump himself weighed in again, saying in a statement to “Morning Joe” host Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
While President Barack Obama has proposed […]