Dana Milbank writes a regular opinion column for the Washington Post.
Today, he lacerated Trump for what must be a new low, a speech so disgusting that it is incomprehensible that any sane person would say what Trump proudly said. While the nation is reeling and convulsed by protests because of the murder of George Floyd while in police custody, Trump claimed that the new jobs number made the recently deceased Mr. Floyd happy. This murdered man , Trump imagines, is smiling because Trump is happy.
George Floyd died in police custody nearly two weeks ago, leaving a fatherless 6-year-old girl. The video of an officer’s knee on his neck set off international protests. The nation still convulses with unrest and violence, and unidentified military personnel brutalize peaceful protesters.
But no worries: It’s all good!
“Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying, ‘There’s a great thing that’s happening for our country,’” President Trump said in the Rose Garden Friday, celebrating a May unemployment report that showed “only” 21 million people — 13.3 percent of the workforce — out of work.
“This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody,” Trump continued. “This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”
For about the millionth time in the past four years, America asks: What the hell is he talking about?
Trump has long presumed to speak for the dead and their thoughts as they “look down” at us.
But implying, as Trump appeared to do, that George Floyd is having “a great day” in the afterlife because of the May jobs report? Trump’s effrontery has no end.
His racism and encouragement of strong-arm police tactics contributed heavily to the rage now gripping the nation — but he has the gall to suggest that the slain Floyd would see an unemployment report showing black joblessness rising to a decade-high 16.8 percent as a “tremendous tribute to equality”?
There are no words.
PBS White House reporter Yamiche Alcindor, who is black, asked Trump about his plan to combat racism. He replied that a strong economy is “the greatest thing that can happen for race relations, for the African American community.”
NBC’s Peter Alexander asked: “How would a better economy have protected George Floyd?” Trump didn’t answer.
Alcindor pointed out that black unemployment had increased in May. “How is that a victory?”
Trump waved his hand dismissively. “You are something,” he said.
How could he be so crass, crude, self-aggrandizing, and downright vile?
There are no words.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are no words. I disagree. There is one word in the title of this post that fits. “INSANE!”
Trump is INSANE.
Everyone still working in Trump’s administration is INSANE.
William Barr is INSANE to want an Imperial Presidency.
Mitch McConnel is INSANE to keep enabling Trump and covering for him.
Most of the Republican party is INSANE for supporting or fearing Trump and his deplorable supporters.
Is there anything in the Constitution about washing the President’s mouth out with soap? Asking for a friend …
Jon,
Good one. Clorox might work better than soap.
Is this a rhetorical question?
Yes.
I’m now running out of English words to describe this Insane Clown Possum. This walking dump truck has already several buttons missing and screws removed. I wonder what Department of HHS is planning to do to cure disease of this ‘bokehakujin'(a white arrogant man in senile dementia), if any.
The only cure for the Orange Pestilence is a frontal lobotomy.
Hey! watch it! I like Possums.
It is terrible. Saddening. Sickening. But it’s Trump, so standards of normality don’t count here.
There are clowns, ignoramuses, and hateful people in every country. It shouldn’t be surprising that a country as large as the US of A harbours idiots like Trump.
But he is just one guy, and he should have remained his own idiotic Trumpian self, back on his ranch.
What is really worrying, though, is that so many Americans thought it a great idea to turn the idiot into their President. Into a ‘Leader of the Free World’ and keeper of their nation.
It’s not Trump’s fault that he is the President. Idiots do & want idiotic things.
It’s the fault of the American people. Sorry, there’s is no nicer way to say it.
It is. That is what democracy is about.
One day Trump may be gone, for whatever reason. But that same American people who elected the idiot as their President, still remain. Like they should.
The problem is not Trump. The problem is that a civilized, well-educated, hard-working, good-willing people would even consider him as a proper candidate. Then chose him as their best candidate.
And what will it say about the American people when in November they will re-elect Trump? This time knowing full well who he is, and what he is capable of?
I’m sorry, but you cannot beat Trump by fighting the idiot. He’s just one person, and we know he won’t back down. No, you will have to fight the ideas of the many Americans who love Trump, and who will re-elect him.
My guess is that you cannot win from Trump aficionado’s by calling their hero an idiot, even when he clearly is. That will only make the divide bigger, the hatred deeper, their determination stronger. You are going to have to convince them with great ideas and good arguments, based in irrefutable facts. You will have to appeal to, no share their decency.
if every American Democrat would try to get one reasonable Republican over to their side – rather than distancing him/herself by anti-Trump hate speech – maybe the tipping point will be in their favor, this November.
But don’t let the buffoon distract you, and don’t play his game. He’s better at it. So play your own game: the game of truth, decency, good ideas, and good arguments.
Some years ago, I had the pleasure of sitting and talking with George Lakoff, the great political linguist. I wanted to know how you persuade people to change their views. He gave me a little lecture about the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals think they can win arguments with reason, rational arguments. Wrong. People respond to emotional pitches, not reason. Strong man will protect you. Law and order. Those people over there are ripping you off. Those people are murderers and rapists. I will build a wall to protect you. Drain the swamp. All lies. Tax cuts for the richest. Fill top jobs in government with lobbyists. Rig the system to hurt the people you hoaxed.
I know you’ve written about George Lakoff before, Diane. So, I just used the search function on this site to read a little more about what you’ve said about his ideas in the past: Jan 2, 2017; July 24, 2016; even back to Sept. 24, 2012 -not too long after you started the blog….those dates came up.
Talk about three different points in history.
2012, the end of Obama’s first term.
Summer 2016, the sliding downward into the frightening possibility of a Trump presidency (can THIS really be happening???)
January 2017, It WILL happen and soon! And, just how terrible will it be?
And, now, June 2020 My God, our country, our government unraveling right before our eyes! Plague, financial ruin for so many, the head of the army in uniform amidst troops attacking unarmed protestors in the streets of D.C.!
I think back to where I was on these specific days when you wrote about Lakoff. What I was feeling and what might’ve been done differently if we could go back.
I’m also wondering what you envision for our nation’s future? Like, pick a date, say, September 17, 2022, a beautiful Saturday with a touch of autumn weather in the air. What would be your BEST case scenario for all of us on that future day? And, the WORST?
But I don’t know…I had a hard time just THINKING at all yesterday.
I always have my 12th graders complete volunteer community service projects. We started back at the end of January (it’s a semester class). And, the students just sent me their final reports, which were due Thursday. Dozens of projects, really stories about lives turned upside down. I’ve been wading through them, slowly….and writing responses. The reports span from January 2020 to…now, this crazy June.
The students’ original ideas for projects were things like help at a charity thrift shop (but couldn’t do that, closed for months) or rebuild a local playground (what’s that again? A playground with groups of children running around and laughing?)
And then there are the ideas my students thought up while in quarantine…help a grandmother who is dying; cut firewood for his family, take care of younger kids because mom is an ‘essential worker’ and hasn’t been home. (I told the classes early in the pandemic that the idea of the project had shifted…helping neighbors, your family, even yourself could now be considered ‘community service’. A way to help each other was to stay home, be safe, even be alone. My God, what a diabolical time this Covid-19 has turned into.)
Some of my students have endured very difficult circumstances since March. Others, actually, say they’ve been okay. And, so goes the nation.
One young woman appended this message to her community service project. (I’ll type it in) It brought tears to my eyes -for what’s been lost by our children but also for the promise of a new and better future they inevitably bring to our now very broken world.
“good evening!
i hope your quarantine/new pandemic life has been going well! i miss being in a classroom more than i ever thought i would.
i hope this is an alright way to submit my community service project essay
thank you in advance!”
And, thank you, Diane, for helping to keep our children’s hopes alive. You’ve meant more than you will ever know.
According to FiveThirtyEight, which consolidates various polls and weights them by quality, Trump’s approval rating remains at 41.6 percent. The conclusion is inescapable that four out of every ten adult Americans are profoundly uninformed and irredeemably racist and, in some percentage of cases, quite likely as crazy as he is. I read this number, after all we’ve seen in the past three and a half years, and am bewildered and saddened.
Bob: You must have sensed in your part of Trumpland that the strength of the GOP in this day falls on those who fear something. Talk to a Trump supporter for a little while, and yu will discover someone who is afraid. Either their news sources have helped them fear a person (AOC was the bugbear dujour for a time) or they are afraid of their position in society (think anti-immigration etc).
To defeat Trump, defeat fear in just a few people, strategically located in a few states. This highlights our broken system of choosing a president. If Trump wins in November, it will be because a huge part of his opposition was unable to vote, the electoral college will stack the cards in the GOP favor, and the news will continue to focus on personality, not policy. We have a system that is supposed to govern by majority rule that recognizes minority rights. Right now it is ruled by a minority that behaves legislatively as though it is the majority.
If all of these people who are marching through cities go to their 5 poling places in November, we might get change. At least a little change.
He is so morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt that he does not even begin to recognize how vile, insensitive and callous his comment is. Is this a gem from Stephen Miller or did Trump ad lib this garbage? What universe does he live in? If Americans don’t come out in droves to vote this oaf out of office, then we are even worse off than I thought.
Yes
>
Diane, there are words to describe Trump’s behavior, you are just too classy to use them.
Trump is President troll. Always race-baiting, always antagonizing, always going one step lower than you thought he would, trying to numb you to his mendacity through sheer volume of offense. The only thing more galling than the Putin-puppet are those complicit in his orbit. History will record those that aided and abetted his attempt to replace our fragile Constitutional democracy with fascist dictatorship. I get criticized for saying this but I frankly believe he is indeed treasonous and warrants execution to make clear to other incipient autocrats that the US is not interested…
We’ve come to expect a completely insane response from Trump because he is insane. I do not mean this figuratively. He long ago passed over into the delusional, distorts reality category.
And the number he was crowing about wasn’t even correct.
First, as reporters pointed out, black unemployment actually increased in May. Second, several outlets are reporting that a “misclassification error” made the May general unemployment number look better than it was by 3 percent. The overall number was 16.1 percent, not 13.1 percent. And, as always, the U-3 number that is typically reported, the one that most people mean when they say “unemployment rate,” doesn’t take into account underemployed and discouraged workers (underemployed: part-time workers who want to be full-time; discouraged workers: those who have at least temporarily given up looking). Those taken into account, the unemployment rate is probably more like about 20 percent–one in every five Americans.
And, aggressive testing and tracing put into effect by an active CDC years ago could have avoided the layoffs and economic cats ass trophy we have seen. Active participation in the WHO might have sent scientist to the heart of the outbreak as happened in 1997 in Hong Kong. Good leadership would have made this moment a footnote in the history of disease. Instead, we got inaction, disorganization, and denial. I cannot wait to see how the Trump campaign tries to put all of this on Obama. My guess is that they will also try to blame him for the 1918 flu pandemic.
In a new, unimaginable low, I read this morning that Fox “news” last night posted a graphic showing how the S&P 500 went up after the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Brown, and George Floyd as well as the post-Rodney King trial verdict. Who would even think that way in the first place? Goebbels weeps because he didn’t have Fox, Twitter, and Facebook.
Trump is the total package. He has no self knowledge, no understanding of audience, no humor, no empathy and no moral compass. He is a bottomless void that spews hate and division.
tRump’s reality is ONLY HIS and a virtual one at that. His reality lives in his PEA (or call it his “PEE” brain.
tRump lives a fantasy life filled with mayhem and immorality but filled with noise and glitter to distract from his dastardly deeds upon humankind, except for the other fascist like him.
He needs to be “CANNED.”
Aside from the venting on Trump which I have no problem with. I vent on his supporters all the time. As Diane pointed out reasoning with Trumpanzees is near impossible. The issue that nobody picked up on is that there was a problem with this months data out of BLS . Krugman suggested that the numbers were so far out of expectation that one would question whether they were manipulated by the Trump administration. He quickly back tracked on that to say that it would never happen at BLS. Where have we heard that before?
However in a generally upbeat assessment Dean Backer points to the notes in the BLS report .
From the notes.
“In the household survey, individuals are classified as employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force based on their answers to a series of questions about their activities during the survey reference week (May 10th through May 16th). Workers who indicate they were not working during the entire survey reference week and expect to be recalled to their jobs should be classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. In May, a large number of persons were classified as unemployed on temporary layoff.
However, there was also a large number of workers who were classified as employed but
absent from work. As was the case in March and April, household survey interviewers were instructed to classify employed persons absent from work due to coronavirus-
related business closures as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, it is apparent that not all such workers were so classified. BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking
additional steps to address the issue.
If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had
been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate
would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally
adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household
survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.”
So to translate. They had a problem in March, they had a problem in April and by May they still had not corrected it . In each case the unemployment rate would have been higher . In April it would have been 5% higher in May 3% higher.
We are not talking rocket science here we are talking a follow up question or rewording the survey question . Why that did that not happen after the second month is suspicious.
Who would think that the Trump Administration would ever influence anyone to show a lower number of unemployed.
The public will never know that the real number was 16.3% not 13.3%
During the 2016 campaign, Trump said BLS data were fake. Are they now fake?
I, too, have given up trying to be too civil. One of my standard comebacks these days if people dare to choose to share their love of the Idiot with me is, “C’mon, at least have the guts and honesty to admit you’re a f-in’ bigot and know absolutely nothing about the Constitution or history.” It saves me from ever having to interact with them again.
Writing of honesty, I’m getting my snacks and beverages ready and lined up for this one to become a thing:
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/06/gay-porn-star-threatening-out-homophobic
I have been through the same transition.
I got frustrated and tired of being “politically correct (means you have to be polite and not offend anyone)” and rational with irrationally ignorant, biased, racist, deplorable people that won’t listen to anything that isn’t what they want to hear.
I have been commenting less on Diane’s page because I can be very uncivil elsewhere.
I know what you mean, Lloyd and Joel. The one or two times I have to get together with in-laws now, I just take a couple of books with me and find a quiet place to read.
Make that Dean Baker.
James K. Polk in 1848: “The public have no idea of the constant accumulation of business requiring the President’s attention. No President who performs his duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrust the details and smaller matters to subordinates, constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the Government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.”
Duties.
John Webster,
It is deeply offensive for Trump to say that George Floyd, who is dead, has any views about what Trump has done on any topic. No one expects Trump to be a leader in reforming police tactics. Except for you and the staff of the National Review.
I’ve often criticized Trump’s many untrue statements on this forum and elsewhere. But everyone here is falling victim to confirmation bias, believing what they want to believe rather than digging deeper into what really occurred. Trump said Mr. Floyd was looking down from heaven pleased because of reforms that will made in law enforcement. Trump was NOT referring to Mr. Floyd being pleased about the favorable jobs report. Unfortunately, only a conservative opinion outlet has the integrity to correctly report on what happened. Before everyone here starts hurling ad hominem attacks, notice that some journalists who misreported this matter in tweets have deleted those tweets.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mainstream-reporters-falsely-accuse-trump-of-suggesting-george-floyd-would-be-happy-about-jobs-numbers/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fourth
Yes, he is and very dangerous. Make n mistake about it — he was trying to put the military onthe ground ineverystate, so he could have them there and ready when he declares martial law.!
Donald Trump Needs to Go. And No, We Can’t Wait Until November “Trump needs to be removed now, because after the massacre it will be too late.” https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/06/02/donald-trump-needs-go-and-no-we-cant-wait-until-november?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=AO&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_content=email&utm_source=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
and Who Put This Idiot in Charge?
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-Put-This-Idiot-in-Char-by-Gene-Case-Bible_Chaos_Conspiracy_Corruption-200605-115.html
“What to expect? As President Pennywise continues his inexorable decent into complete and utter madness, the Trump Crime Family, and the billionaire “conservative” psychopaths who bankroll the operation, will unleash every conceivable dirty trick in their considerable arsenal to intervene on Trump’s behalf leading up to and during the 2020 election. If polls close to election day look bad for Trump and Republicans, no one should be surprised if Barr and/or McConnell go full “banana republic” and delay or cancel the election using some contrived unconstitutional justification. Then we’ll find out if there remains enough residue of U.S. democracy to thwart what will be the final act of the slow-moving fascist coup d’e’tat that began in 2016.”
“If the election goes forward, the U.S. electorate may have its final chance to answer the question of our age: “Who put this idiot in charge, and how can I stop the madness?”
If not, that will be the end of it. The U.S. will become one more bankrupt Trump vanity project submerged in corruption, incompetence and the extreme idiocy and malignance of “The Donald”.
“
Yes, he is insane. I didn’t know that was up for debate.
Its interesting in this vid
The guy fails to explain what he explained here
Which basically amounts to the fact that you can literally hold your breath until you’re dead when you’re on dope like fentanyl. You also would never need to announce you couldnt breath let alone in a suspicious emotionless monotone. This floyd thing looks scripted and rehearsed.
And lets not forget what happened next, the death was used by racists to launch a race riot.
There’s two ways for the queen’s honor guard to get paid. One of them is to do stupid sht for the camera for a kickback from newspapers.
Heres what happened. A black guy commits suicide by cop with his buddy he works and shares lines with so his family can get a lawsuit and the cop can get a kickback. The death was used by enemy subversives to incite race riots and radicalise leftist sympathizers who deal them both the cheap drugs they both use.
https://deplorablefeed.com/u-s-soldiers-punished-under-obama-admin-for-blowing-whistle-on-afghan-muslim-pedophiles/
Btw, i tracked this deplorablefeed group to bulgaria. But pretty sure it’s all legit.