And Now We Know EXACTLY Why Rex Tillerson Called Trump A 'F*cking Moron'
Besides how that's just true.
Happy Friday, it's Book Time! No, we have not read a book , what do you think we are, some kind of Dok who reads books?
(We do read books. Sometimes. SHUT UP, WE READ THE INTERNET ALL FUCKING DAY FOR YOU.)
Anyway, lots of hollerin' and hullabaloo about a new book from the Washington Post 's Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig called Dare You To Write A Book Like This, Maggie Haberman, Haha You Can't. Just fooling, it is called A Very Stable Genius , and it is about how Donald Trump is A Very Stable Genius, or the opposite of that.
In an adapted excerpt published by the Post today, we learn in painstaking detail what really led then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to call Trump a "fucking moron," a cuss truth that started Tillerson on the path to getting fired while he was in Africa cleaning up some Trump mess or another. We've heard a lot of different reporting over the years about the meeting that fateful day in the Pentagon, but none of it was a complete picture like what Leonnig and Rucker report, largely because many of the participants in the meeting vowed never to speak of it, according to the authors.
Y'all, it was baaaad .
It was early in the Trump presidency, and all the general-type people knew they had to do something about this dangerously unhinged know-nothing dipshit James Comey and Russia had Electoral College-d into the White House. They had to each him how Not To Idiot. So they called a big meeting July 20, 2017, in a big fancy room at the Pentagon called "The Tank," where the Joint Chiefs usually meet. It was going well until Trump walked in the door and the meeting started.
Everybody was there. Mike Pence, Rex Tillerson, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, then-Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, Gary Cohn, and also of course Steven Mnuchin and Steve Bannon, because why wouldn't they be. Leonnig and Rucker write that the meeting was called by "the trio" of Tillerson, Mattis and Cohn, and that they decided to use lots of pictures and charts and maybe scratch-n-sniffs and special eggs with prizes inside, " figuring they would help keep him from getting bored."
He got bored. And he got RAGEY.
They tried to teach him about NATO and why the troops were where the troops were, and all that stuff, and Trump just kept getting mad and barking out illiterate bullshit about NATO BAD! and NATO NEEDS PAY ME MONEY! and COUNTRIES SHOULD BUY THE TROOPS FROM ME! and actual quotes like this:
"We are owed money you haven't been collecting!" Trump told them. "You would totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business."
No, Mister President, all the military guys in the room wanted to say, and they probably also wanted to pat Trump on the head, but they just stewed. Mattis tried to teach Trump "NATO, how does THAT work?" but he got nowhere. Steve Bannon reportedly did not help, which is a very big surprise obviously. (We are skipping so much, you just need to read the whole thing.)
Trump whined like a little stupidass fucker about the Iran deal, Tillerson tried to tell him actually the Iran deal is good, but then Trump really made everybody mad when he started bellyaching about Afghanistan, which led him to calling all the military guys in the room a big loser:
"You're all losers," Trump said. "You don't know how to win anymore."
Now, to be quite honest, if Donald Trump was in our living room right now and verbally abusing us, we would be doing everything in our power not to crack the fuck up laughing. But these are military commanders, which means A) they are trained to say "Yes sir" to the commander-in-chief and B) this is pretty personal for them.
And even for Trump, he was a fucking dick:
Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn't taking many breaths.
Pathetic.
All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now.
"I wouldn't go to war with you people," Trump told the assembled brass.
Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, "You're a bunch of dopes and babies."
DOPES AND BABIES!
Think they loved hearing that from President Bone Spurs? Oh, they loved it for sure:
The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. "How does the commander in chief say that?" one thought. "What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?" [...]
Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump's diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, "Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren't you saying something?"
Tillerson was reportedly the only one who finally opened his mouth to put the interloper illegitimate president in his place, and he did it several more times in the coming months, including one time in the Sit Room when he just absolutely lost it because Trump again went on a tirade about needing to "get our money back" in exchange for our troop deployments.
Anyway, one two skip a few, and after the meeting, Rex Tillerson called Trump a "fucking moron," because Trump is a fucking moron.
(WE SKIPPED A LOT . READ THE WHOLE THING!)
Want more reviews of the Leonnig/Rucker book? There are some!
The New York Times has one, which reports that hey, you know how Wonkette called then-acting attorney general Matt Whitaker "Meatball" or "Meatball McPeenerToilet" when we were feeling formal? White House lawyers knew Meatball was stupid too, so they called him Mongo, like the "illiterate galoot" in Blazing Saddles, which is very mean because everybody knows Meatball Whitaker is only pawn in game of life : (
It has Trump just about to jizz himself silly even before the inauguration, demanding to know when he gets to ride the pony we mean meet Putin:
Before Trump had met with NATO allies, he kept glancing at Reince Priebus and pleading in front of others, in fanboy tones, "When can I meet with Putin? Can I meet with him before the inaugural ceremony?"
Actually "ride the pony" was correct.
Oh yeah, and also Trump told the prime minister of India to CHIN UP YOUNG MAN, because "It's not like you've got China on your border" (they do) and told wife-beaty former White House staff secretary Rob Porter that maybe his ex-wife ran into the refrigerator to intentionally fake bruises from him.
Back at the Post , Ashley Parker writes of her colleagues' book, describing the time Trump didn't know what happened at Pearl Harbor ("What's this all about?"), the time Trump became a "Russia Expert" once he finally did get to ride the pony ("'I have had a two-hour meeting with Putin,' Trump told Tillerson. 'That's all I need to know. . . . I've sized it all up. I've got it.'"), and oh yeah, that time in early 2017 when Trump got SO MAD that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it super-hard for all his friends to bribe the foreigns:
"It's just so unfair that American companies aren't allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas," Trump says, according to the book. "We're going to change that."
The president, they go on to explain, was frustrated with the law "ostensibly because it restricted his industry buddies or his own company's executives from paying off foreign governments in faraway lands."
So that's ... well, it's remarkably on brand for the criminal grifter-in-chief who hasn't done an honest day of business in his life as far as we can tell. In fact, he was bitching about that way back in 2012!
Don't worry, the Trump administration is still mad about it and wants to fix it for the American oligarchs:
Kudlow is asked about Trump’s complaints that American companies are not allowed to bribe people overseas, and if t… https: //t.co/U6smQKC9Ug
— Eamon Javers (@Eamon Javers) 1579280442.0
OK that's enough "book."
WONKETTE BOOK RATING FOR BOOK WE HAVE NOT READ BECAUSE IT'S NOT OUT UNTIL TUESDAY AND WILL PROBABLY BUY BUT WILL STILL BE "READING" IT THIS TIME NEXT YEAR: Nine whore diamonds!
[ Washington Post / ibid. / New York Times ]
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And Now We Know EXACTLY Why Rex Tillerson Called Trump A 'F*cking Moron'
so... why are we in afghanistan?
The OP wrote "professorial" = like a professor. /pedant