I know we live in a post-fact word where shit like this doesn’t matter to voters, but damn…

This morning, on the ABC News program “This Week”, George Stephanopoulos asked Donald Trump about a number of subjects, including his ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. And, during the course of the interview, Trump was asked specifically about the fact that members of his campaign staff recently fought to change the GOP platform, removing verbiage about the party’s support of Ukrainian rebels against the forces of Vladimir Putin. I know it’s not likely that it will help dissuade anyone from supporting Trump, as facts don’t seem matter much these days, but the presidential candidate’s response was so alarmingly incorrect that I felt compelled to share it here. Following is a clip from the official ABC News transcript.

trumpukraine

As I suspect some of you know, Putin is already in the Ukraine, despite Trump’s assurances. His forces seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula back in 2014, and they still hold it today.

Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser for Clinton, responded as follows: “What is he talking about?,” he said. “Russia is already in Ukraine. Does he not know that? What else doesn’t he know?

Here’s video of the interview with Trump, followed by a clip from today’s New York Times.

…Not since 1976, when President Gerald Ford committed a major gaffe in one of his debates with Jimmy Carter, declaring that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” has the issue of American support of Eastern European states, both those in NATO and those outside it, emerged as a major presidential campaign issue. It was enormously harmful to Mr. Ford, because his statement seemed to suggest that he did not understand the geopolitics of the region, which his staff denied.

Ukraine became a separate nation in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. It steadily flirted with the West and with NATO, and Russian officials feared it would be pulled out of Moscow’s orbit. But a pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, was democratically elected in 2010 and remained in power until he was ousted in 2014, ultimately taking up exile in Russia.

Mr. Yanukovych had hired a lobbying firm co-founded by Paul Manafort, now Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, to improve his image in the West and avoid punishment for veering toward Russia.

The annexation of Crimea in 2014 was seen as both a power grab and a land grab by Mr. Putin. It was condemned by the United States and its European allies, which all issued sanctions. Since then, Russian troops, often out of uniform, have been seen, and sometimes killed, in Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine where a pro-Russia insurgency has fought the current Ukrainian government…

Given this most recent exchange, I’m inclined to say that anyone who still supports Trump is someone who actively wants to usher in the end times and end life on earth.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

18 Comments

  1. Kat
    Posted August 1, 2016 at 10:51 am | Permalink

    Death Eater

  2. Anonymous
    Posted August 1, 2016 at 11:09 am | Permalink

    The question was unfair. Had they asked him about Atlantic City real estate, he would have kicked ass.

  3. John Galt
    Posted August 1, 2016 at 11:11 am | Permalink

    Typical lamestream media “gotcha” journalism. You don’t have to know anything about world events to make America great again, and that’s all this election is about.

  4. Posted August 1, 2016 at 12:25 pm | Permalink

    Why is this surprising?

    Do Democrats really think that Americans care whether he knows anything about the world or not?

  5. Jcp2
    Posted August 1, 2016 at 4:52 pm | Permalink

    This election is about anger and emotion. Facts are humiliating.

  6. Westside
    Posted August 1, 2016 at 5:22 pm | Permalink

    I’ve been so busy with vacation that I haven’t been following things here. Did you come out with an endorsement of Hillary yet? If not – why?

  7. Bob
    Posted August 1, 2016 at 6:23 pm | Permalink

    Peter, give me a break. Even the most jaded voters among us feel some level of shock at how Trump contunues to up the ante. Even a smug, know-it-all prick like yourself couldn’t see this crap coming.

  8. Posted August 2, 2016 at 12:35 am | Permalink

    I know nothing at at all. I am the least well informed person on this blog.

    But Trump is doing well. So my point was….. why are you shocked?

  9. stupid hick
    Posted August 2, 2016 at 8:36 pm | Permalink

    I’m the smuggest hick in town, and I’m alarmed, but not surprised any more. Trump has been out-assholing himself for a year, and it has never failed to make him ever more popular with the angry white redneck demographic that wins elections for Republicans.

  10. josh
    Posted August 2, 2016 at 10:15 pm | Permalink

    I am not a Trump supporter, quite the opposite, but removing language from the platform that essentially declared war on a nuclear power was the least batshit thing his campaign has done. Stopped clock and all that.

    Why are liberals so intent on starting a second cold war? It’s not like we’re supporting some Ulkrainian freedom fighters. It was a right-wing coup aided by a heavy dose of neo-nazi thuggery.

  11. alan2102
    Posted August 3, 2016 at 12:37 pm | Permalink

    Josh: “I am not a Trump supporter, quite the opposite”

    Ditto.

    Josh: “but removing language from the platform that essentially declared war on a nuclear power was the least batshit thing his campaign has done.”

    Least batshit, for sure. Let’s be charitable and promote it to “most sane”.

    In contrast, HRC and the neoconservative warhawks surrounding her are plainly insane. INSANE. BATSHIT.

    Mark: “anyone who still supports Trump is someone who actively wants to usher in the end times and end life on earth.”

    Change “Trump” to “Hillary” and you have something close to a true statement.

    Mark, you’re an intelligent person. Surely you cannot be so blind. Hillary’s jingoism is plain as day; there is a mountain of documentation. Are we really in such a post-fact world that that mountain of documentation has NO effect on you?

    Trump is an asshole 15 ways from Christmas, no doubt about that. But Hillary is a much more profound threat to civilization, and to all life on earth.

    http://inthesetimes.com/article/18998/neocon-war-hawks-want-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump.-no-surprisetheyve
    March 23, 2016
    Neocon War Hawks Want Hillary Clinton Over Donald Trump. No Surprise—They’ve Always Backed Her
    With Trump’s impending nomination, neocons are reaffirming what they’ve always thought: Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is right up their alley.
    snip
    “It’s not just neocons specifically. War hawks of all stripes have been happy to shower praise on Clinton’s foreign policy…” END QUOTE

    HRC is obviously the candidate of ongoing aggression, hostility and war — up to and including, possibly, catastrophic nuclear war. That does not mean that Trump is the candidate of peace (though he might be; impossible to say), or that Trump is a good guy. It just means what it says: we KNOW that Hillary is a cold-blooded warhawk, surrounded by cold-blooded warhawks, anxious for increasing hostility and confrontation, ending in… who the fuck knows? Possibly something worse than you ever imagined.

  12. alan2102
    Posted August 3, 2016 at 2:45 pm | Permalink

    Josh: “Why are liberals so intent on starting a second cold war?”

    Great question! And here’s a better one: why are “liberals” (?) so intent on starting a second HOT war? Why are they so uncritical about — even embracing — imperialism, global white supremacism, mass murder, violent destruction of whole nations (e.g. Libya, among a number of others), and on and on? Why have they so recklessly embraced right-wing, Russophobic, McCarthyite bullshit? With “progressives” like this, who needs fascists?

    ……………………

    http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/07/31/its-getting-scarier/
    It’s Getting Scarier … every day
    by Justin Raimondo, August 01, 2016
    I’ve finally figured out why so many pundits and journalists are signing on to the new cold war with Russia: they weren’t alive during the last one. They have no memory of the Cuban missile crisis, they didn’t grow up in the era of backyard bomb shelters: for them, Fail Safe and On the Beach are just old movies.
    snip
    The political class, in attacking Trump in this way, is talking to itself. The only people who want to confront Russia and restart the cold war live in Washington, D.C. and make their living thinking up new “threats” with which to scare the American people into spending billions more on “defense.” Except Americans could give two shits about Putin, Ukraine, and the NATO alliance – because they are sick and tired of perpetual war. They wonder why we’re building bridges in Afghanistan while our own are falling to pieces. They don’t care about “saving” Ukraine from a nonexistent Russian “threat” – they just want our government to save them from crime in the streets of our own cities.
    What is happening this presidential election year is frightening: we haven’t seen this kind of a poisonous atmosphere since the 1950s – only this time it’s the Democrats who are seeing a…Putinist under every bed. That Hillary Clinton is willing to risk a serious international incident over the dubious claim that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee’s email server – a contention disputed by numerous cyber-warfare experts – tells us everything we need to know about her dangerously overweening ambition. When even James Clapper, the head of our intelligence services, is telling us to calm down and not jump to conclusions about attributing the hack to the Russians, the Clinton campaign is making reckless accusations – and these people have the nerve to talk about how Trump can’t be trusted with his finger on the nuclear trigger.
    Hillary Clinton and her supporters would start World War III rather than lose this election. And if she does win it, you’d better start digging that bomb shelter.
    Yes, it’s getting scarier every day, to the point where even Donald Trump is apparently less scary than the alternative. And that’s taking scary to a whole new level.

  13. EOS
    Posted August 3, 2016 at 3:00 pm | Permalink

    I don’t blame the liberals exclusively. They have plenty of help from the neo-cons in the Republican party. Bush, McCain, Ryan, and others are in lockstep with Hillary’s gang. Those with a New World Order agenda are in both parties, so that voters can change the seats without changing the agenda. Obviously Trump is not an insider and that scares the hell out of them. He has his own money so he can’t be bought. The next few months we will watch an unprecedented level of attacks against Trump from the media, Universities, and political “leaders” in both parties. Those who vote according to the latest polls may be fooled, but Trump is the first real choice we have had in decades.

  14. stupid hick
    Posted August 3, 2016 at 5:15 pm | Permalink

    EOS, it sounds like you’ve become a Trump convert. I’m so sorry for you.

  15. EOS
    Posted August 3, 2016 at 6:04 pm | Permalink

    No, not a convert. I didn’t say he was a good choice. But I do believe he is an infinitely better choice than Hillary. Still hope to vote for an obscure 3rd party candidate.

  16. Posted August 3, 2016 at 6:51 pm | Permalink

    Did you happen to read the news today about Trump asking one of his foreign policy advisors why we don’t just use nukes to settle our problems?

    “Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them.”

  17. alan2102
    Posted August 3, 2016 at 7:48 pm | Permalink

    Mark: see the snopes.com dissection here:
    http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/03/joe-scarborough-donald-trump-asked-three-times-why-us-cant-use-nukes/

    One guy’s allegation, based on a convo that he did not witness, picked up from an unnamed source, related days later. WEAK. VAGUE. Typical election-year bullshit, jiggered-up on the fly. Be more critical. Just like with your much-premature post about Trump/Putin — based on speculation, conjecture, etc., probably bullshit. The DNC machine is grinding out this crap and you are lapping it up.

    Again, in case there is any doubt: I DO NOT SUPPORT TRUMP. PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A SCARY-AS-FUCK PROSPECT. HE IS UNACCEPTABLE. Problem is, Hillary is even more scary-as-fuck, and similarly or more unacceptable.

  18. alan2102
    Posted August 3, 2016 at 8:03 pm | Permalink

    https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/23/john-pilger-why-hillary-clinton-is-more-dangerous-than-donald-trump/
    Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump
    By John Pilger on March 23, 2016
    snip
    In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make “the world free from nuclear weapons”. People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
    It was all fake. He was lying.
    The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.
    A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, “Going smaller [makes using this nuclear]weapon more thinkable.”
    In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two – led by the United States – is taking place along Russia’s western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.
    Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.
    This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.
    In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world’s second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.
    What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel campaign against China.
    snip
    The United States is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear-armed bombers.
    This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media.
    snip
    In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is being presented as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism.
    Trump’s views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.
    According to one prodigious liberal commentator, Trump is “unleashing the dark forces of violence” in the United States. Unleashing them?
    This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the police wage a murderous war against black Americans. This is the country that has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of millions of people.
    No country can equal this systemic record of violence. Most of America’s wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.
    snip
    Donald Trump…says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn’t want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted “exceptionalism” is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.
    As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about “hope”. And the drool goes on.
    snip
    In the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran with nuclear weapons. As Secretary of State under Obama, she participated in the overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras. Her contribution to the destruction of Libya in 2011 was almost gleeful. When the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was publicly sodomised with a knife – a murder made possible by American logistics – Clinton gloated over his death: “We came, we saw, he died.”
    One of Clinton’s closest allies is Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State, who has attacked young women for not supporting “Hillary”. This is the same Madeleine Albright who infamously celebrated on TV the death of half a million Iraqi children as “worth it”.
    Among Clinton’s biggest backers are the Israel lobby and the arms companies that fuel the violence in the Middle East. She and her husband have received a fortune from Wall Street. And yet, she is about to be ordained the women’s candidate, to see off the evil Trump, the official demon.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Connect

BUY LOCAL... or shop at Amazon through this link Banner Initiative Dave Miller 2