Al Jazeera - Khashoggi disappearance: Trump asks Turkey for recordings

US president has dismissed allegations against Saudi Arabia as another case of 'guilty until proven innocent'.

US President Trump will receive a report on the Khashoggi case within hours; he has asked Turkish authorities to hand over any audio or video recordings they have.

 

Trump has so far refused to condemn Riyadh over the case but he's facing growing pressure from politicians to reveal his business ties with Riyadh and take action against the Saudis.

 

MSNBC - Why is Trump covering for the Saudis?

There is reason to believe he might be playing down a brutal murder to protect his own financial interests.

American justice department has filed charges against a Russian troll farm.

Here goes the arms race again. Trump's handlers must be pleased, not to mention his arms industry paymasters. Maybe we just don't deserve to survive. Just a pity we have to take the elephants and rhinos and dolphins and every other goddamned creature in existence with us.

Why Trump supporters will believe any lies he tells.

 

Robert O. Paxton, in his classic work The Anatomy of Fascism, defines a cult of leadership as one in which the followers believe the leader’s instincts are better than the logic used by elites. The followers are willing to give up their individuality and freedom in exchange for the leader’s “protection.” And what is Trump protecting his followers from? Scholars Karen Stenner and Jonathan Haidt offer an explanation. In their essay “Authoritarianism Is Not a Momentary Madness but an Eternal Dynamic Within Liberal Democracies,” Stenner and Haidt describe the psychology behind the fervor of the embrace of authoritarians. A certain percentage of the population has “bias against different others” including racial and other minority out-groups. The authoritarian leader stokes their fears, creating a normative threat. These people then turn to the leader as something of a savior. The leader embraces the mythic destiny of the nation. He doesn’t follow laws. He is the law.

 

When Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s lies by arguing that his false statements actually point to something true, she offered an explanation for why Trump supporters embrace transparent lies. “President Obama was born in Africa,” for example, is a provable lie, but it points toward what to Trump’s supporters see as a deeper truth: President Obama is black, and therefore, isn’t really a real American.

 

Sanders’ argument is psychologically sound. Scholars Oliver Hahl, Minjae Kim, and Ezra W. Zickerman Sivan, in “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue,” explain that those who want to destroy the “political establishment” willingly embrace a liar because they understand that the lies themselves serve a destructive purpose. The people who want to destroy the political establishment today are those who are threatened by growing diversity. Trump’s lies work toward that end.

 

In a totalitarian regime, state-controlled media normalizes the leader’s constantly changing stories, which serves to further obliterate any notion of a shared truth. Trump’s favorite news outlets similarly normalize his changing stories, thereby undermining factuality. When people can no longer sort out what is factual and what was invented, they conclude that the truth is unknowable. It’s the ultimate in relativism and skepticism. Without facts and a shared reality, jury verdicts have no meaning, and the results of law enforcement investigations are easily manipulated or even dismissed.

 

Look at what happened when Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court was nearly derailed by credible accusations of sexual assault. While the confirmation was in doubt, Trump protested that Kavanaugh was “innocent until proven guilty.” He then ordered an extremely limited investigation of the charges that interviewed a small number of witnesses and didn’t even speak with the accuser or the alleged culprit. Ultimately, he falsely declared that Kavanaugh had been “proven innocent” by the whole charade. This false fact—Kavanaugh was exonerated—now becomes reality to all of his followers.

 

I think this moron actually could drag the world into nuclear war. American fanatics need to be confined for the sake of the rest of us.

Not that I am a Trump supporter, exactly, but this isn't really a Trump policy thing - I can easily see a rational president doing the same. There is history here. The INF Treaty forbade ground launched missiles but for some reason did not cover ship launched missiles, which loophole the US exploited. The Russians responded by essentially ignoring it and building missiles in violation of it ... and here we are. It's a dangerous precedent and it could well - probably will - start another arms race, albeit of a more limited nature. But it wasn't started by Trump.

I'm not blaming him for starting it. I'm blaming him for exacerbating a trend that he doesn't have the impulse control to contain.

Rikkitik

I'm not blaming him for starting it. I'm blaming him for exacerbating a trend that he doesn't have the impulse control to contain.

 

Agreed.

From my (pre-election) post of 09 November 2016:

Sideface:

 

... If Trump wins - Nuclear Winter (Trump will randomly insult one person too many).

 

Trump has ramped up his blatant fabrications for the midterms. Here's how newspapers are handling it.

 

Los Angeles Times: "Trump tries to spur Republicans to vote with false claims and dystopian warnings of Democratic 'mob' rule"

 

The Washington Post: "'In the service of whim': Officials scramble to make Trump's false assertions real"

 

The Associated Press: "'Boogeyman' Trump stokes fears in election closing arguments"

 

The Daily Beast: "Trump's own team knows his caravan claims are bulls--t"

 

The New York Times: "Trump and GOP candidates escalate race and fear as election ploys"

 

Politico: "Trump's mystery tax cut puzzles Washington"

 

The Wall Street Journal: "GOP latches onto vague Trump tax statement as campaign nears end"

 

We all knew Donald Trump is a Nazi.

freitasm:

 

We all knew Donald Trump is a Nazi.

 

It's not plausible that even for the doofus Trump may be - he was unaware of exactly what he was signalling.