The Washington Post reports that world leaders laughed at Trump’s usual lies.
President Trump has made more than 5,000 false or misleading claims since being inaugurated. The question journalists often ask themselves is whether he even realizes it. On the rare occasion when he puts himself in a position to answer for his falsehoods, he has declined to defend them and blamed it on something he had heard. Trump’s aides have privately vented that he does not seem to be moored by real-world facts, even when they are explained to him repeatedly.
But on Tuesday, Trump got subtly called out for a whopper he often tells — and by his fellow world leaders, no less. Appearing at the United Nations, Trump recycled a bogus claim he often makes at partisan rallies, in Fox News interviews and in formal settings: that he has accomplished more to this point in his presidency than his predecessors. The problem is this time he said it in front of an audience that might actually question it.
“In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” Trump said.
The assembled world leaders gave a bit of an audible response, and Trump was caught off-guard.
“America’s — so true,” he said with a smile. The buzz at that point became audible laughter. Trump chuckled and said, “Didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s okay.
Then more laughter, accompanied by some applause.
The laughter was not 100 percent at Trump’s expense. Some in the audience seemed to genuinely appreciate his quip about being surprised at the response. But the whole thing clearly started with audibly expressed skepticism about one of Trump’s more hyperbolic and fabulist claims. It was, at its core, about Trump making a ridiculous claim.
Trump’s response was telling, too. Just as he seemed genuinely taken aback when NBC’s Peter Alexander called out his electoral college number-fudging last year, he did not seem to anticipate anybody questioning his claims of nearly unprecedented success as a president. It was as if he never even countenanced it.
“Later in the speech, Trump made another overzealous claim: that Germany is becoming “totally dependent” upon Russian energy — which is similar to claims he made at a NATO summit a few months back. The German delegation’s response: more laughter.”
The story goes on to cite a tweet by Trump saying that Obama made America an international laughing stock.
Haha. Look who is the international laughing stock now. On videotape.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Look who is the international laughing stock now.” Exactly!!!! LOL. Well said.
The poet Randall Jarrell once wrote that we live in a time when parody is becoming impossible because our leaders’ self-parodying exceeds any satirist’s best efforts.
Case in point.
Vlad’s Agent Orange: The finest self-parodist of our age, perhaps of any age.
One has to look to the poems of William McGonagall to find anything approaching DT’s level of skill there.
I put this on one other post but think it fits just fine here. He now can brag about being the only leader in the world who was laughed at by the whole UN. What an accomplishment!! Best in history!!!
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Trump is laughed at by the world…Trump addresses General Assembly of U.N.
Martin Cizmar
Published on Sep 25, 2018
Video: https://youtu.be/5pPM-iOX8iY
What an embarrassment.
Today was the first time I actually watched one of our Dear Leader’s speeches in its entirety. Wow. My respect to those who have trudged through them before. I had a flashback to a David Duke speech in Chalmette, LA in 1990. Any rational being could see through it, his supporters are pre-programmed to love everything that comes out of his mouth.
Very scary. I hope the next Dem candidate uses tape of that laughing for an ad. It echoes what I hear from my friends around the world. They almost pity us. With many you can take the “almost” out of that sentence. Those are the ones who fear they might be dragged down with us.
And how about “the doctrine of patriotism”? Jingoism as policy!
That’s Our Very Stable Genius Leader, GregB
The biggest issue is that while the members of the UN and the rest of the world are laughing at Trump they are also laughing at America and its people. We have become the laughing stock of the world all because of one person — Donald Trump!!!!!
Actually because of 63 million people, eh!
Sadly, yes, Duane. 62,979,636 votes ― 46.1 percent. Makes a person want to weep.
I share your embarrassment, moeone!
I don’t share that embarrassment. The current occupant is a self-centered misogynist plutocrat, nothing more. His antics are abhorrent but I don’t feel embarrassed by them. I’m saddened, disheartened even perhaps a more than a little angry. But I didn’t vote for that SOB. Those that did should be embarrassed.
But he does make us look, on the world stage, like idiots and creeps. And his ardent following has revealed that we haven’t made the progress that most of us thought we had.
Agree!
I think the Orange one forgot what he said on August 9, 2014.
………..
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
We need a President who isn’t a laughing stock to the entire World. We need a truly great leader, a genius at strategy and winning. Respect!
2:30 AM – Aug 9, 2014
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What an inglorious disaster this fake president is. Imagine that the liar-in-chief is removed via the 25th amendment, then look who is salivating to become president. OMG, we have no where to go but to offer perpetual resistance to our oligarchs, our theocrats, our corporate masters.
DT: Comedian.
I wish I could laugh. After reading this story, I can’t.
Aie yie yie, FLERP! Way to spoil a moment. LOL. But yes,
And the takeaway?
Perhaps that the spending on the death and destruction machine-the completely fiscally unaccountable US Military and the various illegal wars of aggression over the years has something major to do with that debt, eh!
The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, in a new report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
In addition to the cost of all wars and defense spending since the end of WWII, there is also the cost of corporate welfare.
Defense spending and those wars have cost about $40 trillion in today’s dollars.
And Corporate welfare costs $100 billion annually. If that number holds all the way back to the end of World War II, that’s another $7.3 trillion.
And to keep that flood of money pouring into the defense industry’s pockets and corporations that rely on corporate welfare, like Trump’s family businesses that also rely on washing money for Russian criminals, the GOP wants to get rid of Social Security (paid for by a tax on labor), Medicare (mostly paid for by a tax on labor), unemployment benefits (paid for by employers and employees), get rid of SNAP and any other social safety net program that combined don’t cost as much as corporate welfare has.
From my reading the cost in lives is probably closer to quadruple that. And the figure I’ve seen for those wars is closer to $7 trillion.
For perspective, a million seconds is 11 and a half days. A trillion is the number of SECONDS is 31,709.79 years. That’s a lot of dough. BTW, US defense spending in 2017 (610 billion) was larger than that of the next five largest spenders combined (578 billion).
Absurd and obscene, eh!
The United States military, to the extent that it can do so, follows the orders of its Commander-in-Chief. As the Wikipedia article on opposition to the Iraq War notes, “On July 28, 2002, less than eight months before the invasion of Iraq, the Washington Post reported that ‘many senior U.S. military officers’ including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed an invasion on the grounds that the policy of containment was working.” I might be wrong about this, but I think that Rumsfeld and others in the Bush Administration pretty much ignored their own Defense and State Department experts and plowed ahead, heedlessly, like a drunk through a crowd of pedestrians, like education reformers through our public school system.
A friend of mine who is a career officer with unquestionable loyalty to his country sent me, a few years ago, an article from the official Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, that basically posed the question, 10 years on, why are we here? The article pointed out that all along, the justifications for that conflict were a mish-mash of barely articulated revisions and revisions of revisions, and I think that most people understand, today, that our intervention there simply sowed seeds of fundamentalist anti-American sentiment throughout that part of the world. Even someone like George Will, the conservative columnist, who supported the war in the past, now views it as a grave mistake.
Read the oath of office that military officers must take. It doesn’t say they have to obey the President. A survey in the Army Times reported that 70 percent of officers do not support Trump and did not vote for him.
Once you know the oath, you realize that blind obedience by the military to the President doesn’t exist. The military does not have to follow all of the President’s orders. Since most of the officers are college educated, they probably know what the US Constitution says and are also critical thinkers and problem solvers.
“I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and … ”
The oath for enlisted men that are not officers says they must obey the president and their officers. Trump has a slight, with an emphasis on slight, edge with support from enlisted men.
“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed …”
What happens if the orders of their officers are the reverse of the orders of the President of the United States? I guess that answer depends on what side the enlisted man is on: Trump or the Constitution.
Correct me if I am wrong about this, Lloyd, but it’s my understanding that anyone in the military can only disobey an order from a superior office if that order is unlawful or if the action ordered would be unlawful. So, the military could only disobey a presidential order if that order was unlawful, because he is the chief officer.
You are correct. The order must be unlawful.
In fact, when I was in Vietnam, I was given an order by a lieutenant that I refused to carry out. He wrote me up. I was called in front of the company commander, a major, who wanted to hear my side of it.
I explained to the major what the lieutenant wanted me, the company’s radio operator, to use my radio to find out what was for dinner in the mess tent so the lieutenant wouldn’t have to walk in the rain to find out.
Technically I had refused to carry out an order by an officer and I explained to the lieutenant why I couldn’t make that call. I even offered to walk through the rain and find out what was on the menu. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. I continued to refuse.
Military law is different than civilian law and there is a section that outlines calls I cannot make on my radio because those calls might allow the enemy to locate my position and bomb it. Calling the mess tent fell under that specific part of the code. The major tore up the lieutenants report and he said he’d talk to that officer and deal with it. A few weeks later, my tour in Vietnam ended and I returned to the states. There was no mention of that incident in my military record.
If an officer or the president issues an order that is considered illegal, it is up to those who were ordered to do whatever, to decide if it is legal. If not, then it is up to them to refuse to carry it out. It isn’t an automatic process. Individual judgement makes the decision based on that code.
https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/the-uniform-code-of-military-justice-ucmj.html
This is what Trump was thinking when he spewed his latest BS.
“In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country to subvert the US Constitution, destroy the United States as a country, and crash the world economy leading to the 2nd dark ages while I rake in loads of illegal cash.”
And how did this happen? Because only 46.1% of American citizens voted? Really? We know there is a lot more to it than that. A lot! Democracy (as we believe it to be) just might be a superstition. You know, “When you believe in something you don’t understand…”. Call Stevie Wonder on that. Thomas Jefferson most likely would agree. Say one thing, do another —- while it’s all going on right in front, and nobody knows how it’s happening!!!!!! Or we’ll just laugh along with George Carlin! Yes, Bob Shepard, call in the clowns (comedians).
“And how did this happen? Because only 46.1% of American citizens voted? Really?”
Slight correction … and something to think about.
The US population in 2016 was 323.4 million but 73 million were under age 18.
137.5 million Americans voted in 2016.
The population 18 and over was 250.4 million.
54.9-percent of eligible Americans voted in 2016. And if it hadn’t been for Russia and the Alt-Right’s conspiracy theory fake media machine, there would have been more voters.
In 1789, only white men who owned property (that were not Jewish) were allowed to vote and those men made up about 10-percent of the population.
Why did the US Founding Fathers limit the vote so drastically? We already know why women didn’t have the vote back then (women were considered the property of their husband or father) but why cut out so many other men?
Were they afraid that if too many Americans voted, mobs would from like the Democratic, Republican, Green, Libertarian parties, et al. Remember, in the first presidential election there were no political parties.
To clarify my earlier comment, 46.1 was the percentage of those who voted who cast their votes for Vlad’s Agent Orange. Sorry, I was not clear on that.
The point you make with this wonderfully apt quotation from Stevie Wonder, stiegem, is spot on. If this all blows up on us, it will be because people weren’t paying attention, or were paying attention only enough to soak in the platitudes being fed them by the leaders of the New Feudal Order via their minions in both parties. The technical term for that soaking up is interpellation–unthinking acquisition, as if by osmosis, of unexamined notions that nonetheless become part of a person’s value-and-belief system.
A couple examples:
It surprises Americans to learn that the Land of the Free has a higher percentage of its citizens in jail, in prison, or on parole than does any other country except the island nation of Seychelles. Think of the most repressive of regimes–we incarcerate our citizens at a much higher rate than they do.
Or it surprises them to learn that the US does not, in fact, have “the greatest healthcare in the world.” Healthcare costs per capita, here, are over TWICE what they are on average in the OECD, and health outcomes, here, on almost any measure you care to name (e.g., longevity, infant mortality, and ALL of the diseases of affluence, such as heart disease and cancer) are the LOWEST among these countries. Yes, wealthy people from elsewhere often come here for our premium healthcare services, but that’s just the point. You have to be wealthy. We’re one of the few of the OECD countries that has many millions of uninsured people, and those that are like us are the poorest. Countries with 100% automatic or compulsory healthcare coverage (or coverage in the high 90s): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
So here is a big question that I’d like to hear people’s answers to:
Why has the Democratic Party done such a poor job (no job at all) of explaining such matters to the people? My thinking: This has to do with what stiegem was hinting at.
Call in the clowns? Like this:
This was posted from the WH. I’d say Trump has a speech writer. Trump never talks like this. There were complete sentences. How did he manage to read? It doesn’t even sound like him. HIs version of ‘peace through strength’ is more money for the military and kill and destroy. We cannot kill our way to peace. How exactly does a country choose freedom over defeat?
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“Sovereign and independent nations are the only vehicle where freedom has ever survived, democracy has ever endured, or peace has ever prospered,” President Trump said. “So together, let us choose a future of patriotism, prosperity, and pride. Let us choose peace and freedom over domination and defeat. And let us come here to this place to stand for our people and their nations.”
President Trump returns to the U.N.—with new evidence for ‘peace through strength’
Bolton or, gag, Miller
No way these are Trump’s words. He speaks like a twelve year old boy.
This is all too much. Wake me up when it’s all over!
Using the word sovereign is a dead giveaway. No way he knows what it means or how to spell it.
What’s totally tragic is the open disrespect. If PRESIDENT Bush (I or II) or PRESIDENT made some gaffe, out of respect the world leaders would have held their smirks in. Sure hope we never need him to “phone a friend.”
Where was Fox News on the Electoral College ballot? The person on the ballot was just an empty vessel game show host.
When Corporations and angry mobs, not “the people,” control the votes, the UN gets a game show host shill at their podium –
Wait – this It’s the United freaking Nations and a shill for the 1% and racists gets prime time with them
The hard left has infiltrated the Democratic Party in almost every state. Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Left Roots and others of the Inside/Outside Project are taking over the Democratic Party. About 57,000 members plus support organizations, churches, civic groups and non profits add. several hundred thousand more to that number. If well organized, they will be a solid take over of your party. Forget about the Republicans you are doing your best to destroy us with their help. The ugly mobs and tragic character assignations are well beyond the point of simple political discord. Lies about eliminating social security, medicare, unemployment benefits, food stamps and social safety nets are ridiculous. Programs need to be changed to keep them in existence for those who need them.
The party of Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama will become the party of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Is that what you want? Blame it on your unwillingness to see the facts as they unfold, because you are blinded by your hatred of one man.
Commies, socialists and unionists OH MY!
Commies, socialists and unionists OH MY!
Commies, socialists and unionists OH MY!
If your so worried about those groups “infiltrating” the Dimocraps, can you explain why the Rethuglicans love the color RED. I always thought good Amurikans thought “Better dead than Red!” What’s up with that? Are you sure the commies and socialists haven’t infiltrated the Rethugs?
April, if what you say is true, this is very alarming indeed. On the other hand, the Republican Party has been taken over by Neo-Nazis, the KKK, racists, fascists, and misogynists. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan is now the party of fascism!
What can we do?
We need a new party. How about the Party of Common Sense (or Cents)?
April, what makes it even worse is that the party taken over by fascism controls every branch of our government. The executive, legislative, and judicial. We could find ourselves in terrible trouble with no checks and balances. The lunatic on the Ehote House could declare martial law, suspend the Constitution, and Congress would agree.
This is scary. What should we do
Where do you get your news? ‘Programs need to be changed to keep them in existence for those who need them?” Is this your idea of ‘good governing? Cut, cut, cut after the wealthy take it all.
This comes from Forbes….not Fox.
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EDITOR’S PICK118,686 viewsDec 3, 2017, 07:00am
Will GOP Cut Social Security And Medicare Before Or After The 2018 Election?
Stan Collender
i…Anyone who follows the budget knows that, for mathematical reasons alone, Social Security and Medicare have to be the GOP’s prime targets. Interest on the national debt will be increasing substantially in the years ahead as the federal deficit reaches $1 trillion or more and interest rates rise. Republicans want to increase military spending and there’s not enough domestic appropriations left to cut that will make much of a difference. That basically leaves Social Security and Medicare (and, to a much lesser extent, Medicaid) as the only real targets when, as is certain as anything can be in Washington politics these days, the deficit reemerges as the GOP’s reason for living.
That changes the question from if the GOP will try to slash Social Security and Medicare to when will the onslaught begin…
Donald Trump and GOP Want to Cut Social Security. We Should Expand It Instead.
By Bernie Sanders, USA TODAY
25 September 18
Donald Trump is shredding the safety net while claiming Democrats want to destroy Social Security. All Americans should be able to retire with dignity.
…Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and I, along with Democratic Reps. John Larson of Connecticut and Debbie Dingell of Michigan, have formed the Expand Social Security Caucus to do exactly that. Nineteen senators and 140 House members have already added their names, making it one of the largest caucuses in Congress.
But our pathological lying President Donald Trump now claims that Democrats “are going to hurt your Social Security so badly, and they are killing you on Medicare.”
Really? That’s funny. It was Trump who proposed a budget this year that our Democratic Budget Committee analysis shows would cut $72 billion from Social Security, $500 billion from Medicare and more than $1 trillion from Medicaid over a 10-year period.
And his party is all in. Following the passage of Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy and large corporations, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said: “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.”
What does “entitlement reform” mean for you? Huge cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Trump is the one stealing from Social Security
If Trump actually cared about saving Social Security, he would support my bill to expand Social Security benefits and extend its solvency for the next 60 years by requiring the wealthiest Americans — those making over $250,000 a year — to pay their fair share of Social Security taxes….
Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2MTipuJ
I don’t see this at all. For many decades now, Republicans have been using this blanket term, “Socialism,” to brand anything that they don’t like. But, as I understand it, that’s a misuse of the term. My understanding is that the term has two possible, and contradictory, meanings:
An utopian economic system in which the means of production are owned by the workers themselves
An economic system in which the state, ostensibly in the name of workers, owns the the means of production (e.g., nationalized industries)
What prominent Democrat in the United States, today, advocates for either of these?
Republicans tend to use the term, these days, in response to any government-run program that they don’t like–universal, single-payer health insurance, or whatever. But that doesn’t make a lot of sense. If the mere fact of being a government-run program was Socialism in the second sense, then the Department of Defense would be one of our largest Socialist undertakings. LOL. But that’s a ridiculous overapplication of the term, isn’t it?
The fact is that the term “Socialist,” as used by Republicans in the U.S. today, has become a completely meaningless term of general invective. It’s contentless, but very, very bad. Like, I don’t know, demons or witchcraft.
For these reasons, it’s time we started calling out the use of this term, which simply confuses and pollutes our political discourse.
And some international news reports noted that after the laughter there was “silent disgust”, “blank stares and headshakes” https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/from-laughter-to-silent-disgust-diplomats-react-to-trump-s-un-speech-1.3641169
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-26/donald-trumps-economic-boasts-draw-laughter-at-un-speech/10304672
I think the international community is as stunned at the turn of events in our nation as most of the readers of this blog are…. Let’s hope that the supposed “blue wave” materializes in November so that the course of our country can be reset…
(I am a former employee of the US State Department, foreign service). The maxim, is that a diplomat is someone who lies for his country. Trump may tell some whoppers, but he is no diplomat.
He tells more than whoppers.
The Wash Post Fact Checker keeps count. About a week ago, he told his 5,000th lie.
The US government is being run by buffoons and scalawags.
YES, INDEED.
As if what happened yesterday wasn’t pathetic enough, today Nikki Haley is claiming that the laughter was a sign of respect because Trump was telling the truth and world leaders appreciated his candor…shaking my head at the absurdity of it all.
Holy cow … THE TWIST.
Yvonne: I read that Fox ‘news’ cut out the bit in which Trump was laughed at. Guess they didn’t want people to make up their minds about whether or not he was being ridiculed.
One could take out the “S” in the last word and still be right.
Priscilla Shannon Gutierrez: Borowitz is a comedian. Sometimes comedy is just like the truth.
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From newyorker.com: Trump Brags That He Got Much Bigger Laughs at U.N. Than Obama
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Calling his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday “an unbelievable success,” Donald J. Trump bragged that he “got much bigger laughs than Obama.”
“When Obama spoke at the U.N. he did not get a single laugh—not one,” Trump told reporters. “I feel sorry for the people who had to sit through his speeches. They weren’t funny at all.”..
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-brags-that-he-got-much-bigger-laughs-at-un-than-obama