A highly-informed friend called me early Saturday afternoon and told me how impressed he was with Donald Trump's knowledge, temperament, and poise at the Saturday morning's press conference held just before the President was to leave for Singapore.
Over at MSNBC, the guests on Saturday's AM Joy show certainly didn't view Trump's performance similarly. They relentlessly attacked Trump's mental health, physical health, and intelligence with a level of viciousness justifying questions about their mental health, physical health, and intelligence.
Here is the segment involving the CNN reporter (full press conference is here):
Transcript:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Okay, yes sir. Go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: As you were heading into these G-7 talks, there was a sense that America's closest allies are frustrated with you and angry with you, and that you are angry with them, and that you were leaving here early to go meet for more friendlier talks with Kim Jong Un in Singapore. And I'm wondering if you view it the same way, and do you view the U.S. alliance system shifting under your presidency away from —
TRUMP: Who are you with, out of curiosity?
REPORTER: CNN.
TRUMP: I figured. Thank you, CNN.
It works. But, y'know, I could tell by the question, I had no idea who you were with CNN. After the question, I was just curious as to who you're with. You're with CNN.
Trump saw through the reporter's slanted, presumptive question, based only on a "sense" that relations with U.S. allies are fractured and an implicit assumption that Trump would rather talk to communist dictators than other leaders in the relatively free world. Trump figured the question was coming from a congenitally hostile news outlet, and it indeed was.
But remember, the left and much of the establishment press continues to insist that he's a complete idiot. Over at MSNBC, John Harwood, Malcolm Nance and other panelists not seen in the video snip below — and this is being charitable — went into cloud cuckooland as they went down this tired path:
Transcript:
JOHN HARWOOD: I don't think the upshot of this press conference was about tariffs.
I'll be honest as a citizen. I'm concerned about the president's state of mind. He did not look well to me in that press conference. He was not speaking logically or rationally. Its sounded as if he was making stuff up, saying, "Oh China told me nobody's ever talked to us," or saying, "Oh, you know I talked to Justin Trudeau, and he can't believe he was getting away with so much trade stuff."
I don't think those things are true, and there was something about his affect which was oddly kind of languid from him. I don't know what it means, but he did not look well to me.
JOY REID: Yeah, and you know, Malcolm, you have Donald Trump saying North Korea will be a tremendous place in a very short period of time. That's an odd thing to say about North Korea, which is a completely closed dictatorship. He seems very eager to go and talk to Kim Jong-un. To John Harwood's point, very little of what he was saying made a lot of sense.
MALCOLM NANCE: Well, John has hit the nail on the head.
And you know, I think Steve Schmidt said this the other day, that Donald Trump comes off like a moron. Well you know, I don't think that does justice to the Skinner-Benet test. I think he came off like an idiot today.
I was almost shocked at the way that he spoke with utter contempt of every president that preceded him. He does not fundamentally appear to believe in the processes and systems that put him in the office. He doesn't appear to believe in the alliances that bind us together, that make us stronger as a nation. It is all about his narcissism.
And the view from a national security perspective, this man wouldn't qualify for the nuclear weapons control system, to allow him to be anywhere near the nuclear control -- the nuclear control keys, or even guarding them.
I mean, I'm really shocked at the way that he speaks because it is all Donald Trump centric. He came off like Mad King Donald not President of the United States.
Commenting on the bolded items:
- I don't know that John Harwood betrayed a particularly healthy "state of mind." As a tweeter cited at Twitchy.com noted in recalling a Harwood statement in May which was covered at the time by Scott Whitlock at NewsBusters: "Odd, I’ve been worried about John’s state of mind ever since he insisted we can’t refer to rapists and murderers as 'animals.'"
- So the name-calling escalation continues, with no end in sight.
- There is no evidence that Trump "does not fundamentally appear to believe in the processes and systems that put him in the office." That accusation is better directed towards the so-called "Resistance," which hasn't accepted the results of the 2016 presidential election.
- If Trump didn't "believe in the alliances that bind us together," he wouldn't be wasting time with meetings like the G-7, would he?
- Macolm Nance is right — but only because Trump is older than 62. He has no other basis for claiming that Trump "wouldn't qualify for the nuclear weapons control system."
- As to alleged "narcissism," Malcolm Nance seems to forget how many times Trump's predecessor so frequently used the word "I" in so many of his public statements and speeches that it became a running national joke.
One reaction to the exhibition of blind fury seen above is that those still subscribing to using the 25th Amendment as a way to remove Trump from office — which even the far-left Think Progress acknowledges is a "fantasy" — were in apparent need of their periodic feeding.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
