Denis Smith discovered a bizarre fact about Trump: he tears up documents that are supposed to be archived for future generations. The White House archivists empty his wastebasket and painstakingly tape together letters that were ripped apart or shredded.
Smith predicts that the Trump Presidential Library will be housed in a very small building.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I still believe that Nixon should have burned the tapes.
Way to go, Charles! You are a glib devil!
And way to stay on point, too! Like Nixon, Trump sees himself as an imperial figure, above the law, “beyond good and evil,” as Hitler described himself, perverting Nietzsche’s phrase.
You are truly a philosopher! Would you like to be king?
That comment was made partially in jest. (People think that I am grumpy, when in fact, I have a terrific sense of humor). The point that I was trying to make, is that even a president, has some control over his “paper trail”.
I do not see many parallels between Pres Trump, and Richard Nixon. Trump was born to wealth, and Nixon had to scratch and claw. Trump never served in the military. Nixon at least put on a navy uniform, then spent WW2 playing poker, and hustling hamburgers to the sailors, at “Nick’s hamburger stand”.
Also, I believe that Nixon was more honest than Pres Trump (again, a jest).
I agree that Nixon was more honest than Trump. Nixon had a religion. Trump has none. Nixon had a sense of shame. Trump has none. Nixon did not get richer as President. Trump uses the presidency for self-enrichment. Trump trumps Nixon on every bad personal characteristic. Also, Nixon knew quite a lot about history and diplomacy. Trump is ignorant of both and relies on his feelings.
The T***p Pestilential Library will probably be housed in a Twitter account.
Bill Rosenthal: Now THAT’s funny. CBK
Love the bleeping. Lol. How appropriate. And yes this man is a pestilence
Sigh . . . .We KNOW Trump doesn’t understand much of anything else; why would we expect him to understand the POTUS’s place in history?
For a man who is so stuck on himself, you would think he would be saving every piece of paper he touched.
From what I’ve read about this alien creature called Donald Trump from the fourth, sixth, eighth, and ninth circles of Dante’s Inferno, he doesn’t read books or much of anything in print. The only thing printed he values, is money (dirty preferably), and checks he can cash through one of his foreign shell companies.
His library will indeed be a very small building, but he’ll not notice the contrast. He’s never been in a library. He’ll also claim that his small library is the largest and most beautiful ever.
Recognizing so many lives lived within a sixty-mile radius, Trump speaks directly to many voters who have no larger social ideas, no global understandings, very little geographic truth
Here is a more ample discussion of the issues, origin and history of the act, including the fate of revised Presidential Tweets.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-02-19/donald-trumps-tweets-are-now-presidential-records
LOL! Dump is illiterate.
This guy does not want to leave a paper trail that may provide incriminating evidence.
That is a very big 10-4!!! Dumb Trump is afraid of everything that may send him and his family to prison — where they all belong btw.
Apparently the people doing the taping aren’t a bit happy with that job. One fellow said it was on the level of emptying trash cans. I’m sure our Great Leader will want a much bigger place to house his wonderful work than what Obama is putting up in Chicago. People in the future will be surprised at just how incompetent he is.
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Trump ‘repeatedly tears up official documents’ that should be preserved, leaving staff to tape them back together | The Independent
…Solomon Lartey, a government official of more than 30 years’ standing, says he was one of the staffers charged with repairing shredded papers, describing the task as “like a jigsaw puzzle”.
“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” Mr Lartey told Politico.
“You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.”
Mr Lartey, 54, said while some papers had merely been torn in half by the president, some were shredded into hundreds of minute pieces.
He revealed he had repaired a wide variety of documents, from newspaper cuttings Mr Trump had written on to letters from politicians, including senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
“I had a letter from Schumer – he tore it up,” he added. “It was the craziest thing ever. He ripped papers into tiny pieces.”
One of his colleagues, Reginald Young Jr, a senior records management analyst, said he had never been given a similar task in two decades working for the government.
“We had to endure this under the Trump administration,” Mr Young, 48, told Politico.
“I’m looking at my director, and saying, ‘Are you guys serious?’ We’re making more than $60,000 a year, we need to be doing far more important things than this.
“It felt like the lowest form of work you can take on without having to empty the trash cans.”..
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-official-documents-destroy-white-house-staff-repair-presidential-records-national-archives-a8392856.html
It will be big, glittery and empty, but the ugliness of it’s creator will shine through.
As it does so clearly in all his works
In other words a “whited sepulcher.”
This is slightly off topic but shows just what goes through Trump’s mind. Trump is alienating our allies while putting adoring praise on dictators such as Duterte and Kim Jong Un. He praises these people because they have what he wants…total control to decide what is done. He doesn’t have the smarts to do a decent job but that never enters his mind. After all, he is the most intelligent president since George Washington and he has done more for America than all the other presidents combined.
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@IanBremmer describes exchange between Chancellor Merkel and Pres. Trump at #G7 summit: “He stood up, he put his hand in his pocket… and he took two Starbursts candies out, threw them on the table and said to Merkel, ‘Here, Angela. Don’t say I never give you anything.'” pic.twitter.com/LfTWerxsNK 9:02 AM – Jun 20, 2018
carol: While your usual comments are outstanding, you have surpassed even those, today! Great post at 10:51 AM! & the one, above, at 1:22 PM isn’t at all off-topic; your analysis is spot-on.
Finally, the Ian Bremmer Tweet says it all. Unbelievable.
&, right, there won’t be a presidential library (in his case, an oxymoron), or even a “place” (they can display a few Starburst pieces to represent the 2018 G-7 Summit); it will, indeed, be a pAlace.
Did you hear/see his speech in MN yesterday (or the day before)?
Briefly: “I’m richer…I’m smarter…I’m the one who was elected President!”
& what’s up with all those cheering bobbleheads in the background?
It’s as if the “Applause” sign were held up…looked something like a game show.
Oh, that’s right…it IS a show…for him. But–WHAT is the matter with those people in his audience?
A Trump Presidential Library. Now, there’s a thought. Almost an oxymoron (up there with “Congressional ethics.”
But I suppose that such a library could house the Powerpoint picture books that staffers have prepared in a desperate attempt to educate their non-reader boss about elementary-school civics and geography. And it might also house the shreds of the Constitution, of rule of law, of human rights, and common decency left after the depredations of his administration–if, indeed, any are left.
Holding in one’s mind as any kind of simultaneous whole the notions “Trump” and “library” requires a Herculean effort of Keatsian negative compatibility.
Imagine what would be required in order to translate the thoughts, speech; and actions of Donald Trump into anything as coherent as a book. Perhaps such work might take this simple form: Don’t be like that guy. Doubtless, that’s the judgment that history will make. He can serve as a model for future generations of what not to be like.
One wonders what the Great Dissembler would make of this lovely sentence.
Oops. I meant negative capability
It is obvious that Trump has been destroying evidence that might get him convicted for so long that it has become automated and he does it without thought — wait, does he think?
Hopefully it will be a prison library.
Touché.
Yes.
Here is another great move by the Orange Menace. Screw the working class and the poor. Are we happy yet? Destroying immigrant families isn’t enough.
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Trump’s proposal to reorganize government places target on social-welfare system
Originally published June 21, 2018 at 8:43 pm
President Donald Trump’s plan would adjust social-welfare programs so they are easier to cut, scale back or restructure, among them a food subsistence benefit that provides aid to 42 million people.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, spurred on by conservatives who want him to slash safety-net programs, on Thursday unveiled a plan to overhaul the federal government that could have a profound effect on millions of poor and working-class Americans…
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trumps-proposal-to-reorganize-government-places-target-on-social-welfare-system/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_left_1.1
The word is that President Trump is not only functionally illiterate, but may indeed be illiterate illiterate. So this comes as no suprise.
Just sayin’.
&, mark, add to that literally dysfunctional (AND functionally illiterate).
So added! And thanks, retired!
You’re welcome!
And all of this brings to mind the movie “Animal House,” with the opening depocting a statue of the college founder, & the plate stating, “Knowledge is good.”
To paraphrase what Bob Shepherd says above, statue plate would state,
“Don’t be like this guy.”
The truth doesn’t matter to Fox or any of their viewers.
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Daily Kos:
…Laura Ingraham, the nighttime Fox News host of The Igraham Angle and longtime Republican advocate. After images and stories of thousands of immigrant children being taken from their parents along the Southern border, some as young as 8 months old, Fox News hosts were working overtime to try and change the mounting public relations nightmare for the Trump administration…. Laura Ingraham cheerily brushed off these detention centers, where toddlers and young children are reportedly left to fend for themselves with little care, crying endlessly and learning to change one another’s diapers as nothing more than ‘summer camps or boarding schools’.
The nightmare never ends. There is one scandal after another.
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The White House Tried to Suppress a Bombshell Study Because They Were Afraid of the PR…Mother Jones
This story was originally published by The New Republic and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Trump administration feared it would be a “public relations nightmare”: a major federal study that concluded contaminated groundwater across the country, especially near military bases, was more toxic than the government realized…
…That time and money is wasted when those studies are delayed unnecessarily, Benesch said. “It was ready six months ago,” she said. “Six months that the government agency responsible for setting these levels, for doing the toxicology, was not able to provide us with their findings.” Providing the study earlier would have forced the EPA to consider changing its regulations sooner, Benesch said. Had parents and pregnant women on military bases known about the study, perhaps more of them would have avoided the tap water.
What, then, did the study’s temporary suppression achieve for Trump and Pruitt? It bought some time for the chemical manufacturers that support them, so they can prepare for the inevitable onslaught of personal injury lawsuits related to PFAS contamination. It also delayed public pressure to increase government spending on environmental cleanups at military bases and on updating rural water infrastructure. But the study’s delay may not have achieved what Trump and Pruitt most wanted it to. Let the public relations nightmare begin…
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/06/the-white-house-tried-to-suppress-a-bombshell-study-because-they-were-afraid-of-the-pr/