[Closed] Donald! Trump!

a) He decided that this is what he was going to say beforehand - "yep, I'm definitively going to bring up Hitler"
b) He went in completely unprepared, and made something up on the spot

I'm inclined to think it was B.....

Yep it's got to be a ploy to keep information locked away, which would have worked if it wasn't for those pesky kids with their internet and the people actually leaking the facts behind his back.

My favorite tweet so far....

pepsi: "Oh this is bad"
united airlines: "don't worry we got this"
sean spicer: "f*** you guys watch this"

At least with the Ken Livingstone thing - there is some genuine debate to be had about exactly what he was saying/what his intention was.

He's also not the press secretary for the President of the USA. With Spicer.... well..... he just said something extraordinarily stupid, the tendency to do which apparently needn't prevent you from holding the most important communications post on the planet.

The fact that he called concentration camps "holocaust centers" FFS - I think he's just plain dumb.

How did someone so dumb get such an important job?

Oh, wait... 😆

I see that Spicer has at least apologised, rather than try to justify his remarks. I wonder if any one else will

I think we can all agree to never reply to any comment from the above poster on this thread again.

Quite! In some ways unfortunate as it would be of value to have someone argue the alternative view on Trump. But of the few regular posters on this thread that could provide that view, one is completely incoherent and unintelligible, the other puts way more effort into trolling than actually offering a different viewpoint.

Even Alex Jones has come out and criticised Spicer, surely he must go now. Anyway hows that Russia thing coming along, almost got distracted by all these other things.....

Sarin itself is the perfect example of benevolent pesticide research in action in Nazi Germany. Sadly, although they had finished weaponising it by the end of WWII, they hadn't finished the mass-production facility. So Mattis is technically correct, and poor old Spicey is doubly wrong.

Alternativly role would suit internet troll who is happy to try their luck in the public space.

Sounds like a job for ninfan.

Who, I agree, really has hit a new low......which I did not think was possible after his comment on the Westminster thread, but then life is full of surprises!

Go on then Junky - bet you a tenner to charity that you can't resist the temptation to post about me or respond to one of my posts for the next month.

Well, he lasted an hour.

How did someone so dumb get such an important job?

Which one are you referring to?

@martinhutch - the problem is that in highly militarised societies there is little if any separation between civilian and military research. In many cases there are are laws (or at least orders) whereby anything developed for civilian use that might be useful for the military or the regime must be handed over.

When originally developed Zyklon (A) was chemically so close to an existing banned WW1 chemical weapon that it was itself immediately banned. Continuing its development under an authoritarian regime, especially one with an interest in mass murder is unlikely to have been for purely civilian/agricultural purposes.

Agreed. My use of the word 'benevolent' was purely for sarcastic purposes.

How did someone so dumb get such an important job?

At least for press secretary there is a good excuse. Can you imagine anyone intelligent deciding to be trumps press secretary?

Moral relativism is a funny old thing:

If Assad is literally 'more despicable than Hitler' then why is slightly damaging an airfield the correct response?

Also the whole "No, no, see, I just meant to contrast against the whole tactic of using planes to drop chemical bombs on innocent civilian population centres" is still an odd contrast to make... hey remember that time you dropped two atomic bombs on major civilian population centres?

"If Assad is literally 'more despicable than Hitler' then why is slightly damaging an airfield the correct response?"

Because they think the people who will take over if Assad's regeme goes will be worse than Assad's worse than Hitler regeme. (Assuming they really think Assad is worse than Hitler)

We need regeme change. 🙂

I think we've reached peak ninfan

Some [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39575680 ]good news[/url] for the Trumptons.

Bit of a 'who to hate most' problem for us there.

If Assad is literally 'more despicable than Hitler' then why is slightly damaging an airfield the correct response?

So what were these "Holocaust Centres" Spicer was referring to?

I assume he meant concentration camps but i cannot fathom why he used that phrase. Is it ignorance or ineptitude?

martinhutch - Member
Bit of a 'who to hate most' problem for us there.

I doubt she married for love but it's nice to see someone taking a lump out of Paul Dacre.

"i cannot fathom why he used that phrase."

Listen to it. He was tailing off. I don't think he especially chose the phrase, he was just embarrassed and conceding the point.

perhaps nothing excites her more than bigotry , comb overs and tiny hands?

Possibly he was tailing off- not seen it but have read it FWIW

At his first press conference for Trump he failed to read something out adequately and the more he does the more i think he is deeply inept- originally I thought he was just struggling as he was not on team trump and was doing it for the party. The more he goes on the more i think he is poor

However its going to be hard for anyone to be his press secretary given his views jump around all over the place.

"Possibly he was tailing off- not seen it but have read it FWIW"

Worth a listen. He sounds quite reasonable to me, he clearly understands his mistake and totally concedes the point.

Crap spokesman, but not denying the holocaust.

Having just watched it he seems to make a reasonable point* terribly badly

Basically he is saying hitler never used chemical weapons in cities and in the war effort whilst accepting he did in "holocaust camps"

I move to inept now as even his clarification is crap but he was not intentionally meaning to downplay the holocaust simply state that even a man as mad as him never did what assad has done- its still a ****ing terrible point. Does he get lesson from Ken on this sort of thing ?

* well as close to reasonable as he can get.

he clearly understands his mistake and totally concedes the point.

I find it genuinely astonishing that he's employed to be the spokesperson to the press for a world super-power and he cannot speak coherently about Syria without plunging into ill-advised comparisons with Hitler. Regardless of how apologetic he is post the event, he appears to be an idiot.

I assume he meant concentration camps but i cannot fathom why he used that phrase. Is it ignorance or ineptitude?

[quote=Junkyard ]I move to inept now as even his clarification is crap but he was not intentionally meaning to downplay the holocaust simply state that even a man as mad as him never did what assad has done- its still a **** terrible point.

He is indeed being slated for a point he clearly had no intention of making* (though as pointed out, unlike Ken he's employed as a spokesman so you'd think he should avoid problems like that). However the point he was trying to make was a worse one even than most people have pointed out - because the failure of Hitler to use chemical weapons on his own people clearly wasn't because of his superior morals.

*Sean Spicer's positive attributes:
1) he's not a holocaust denier
2) he's prepared to apologise (and apologise gracefully) when he screws up
3) ?

the failure of Hitler to use chemical weapons on his own people clearly wasn't because of his superior morals

3) he has a lot of practice at 2) 😉

However the point he was trying to make was a worse one even than most people have pointed out - because the failure of Hitler to use chemical weapons on his own people clearly wasn't because of his superior morals.

I suppose his failure to use chemical weapons by dropping them from a plane on his own people was due to the greater convenience of using a gas chamber, and the failure to use them on us lot was due to a calculation that we'd retaliate in kind?

the failure of Hitler to use chemical weapons on his own people clearly wasn't because of his superior morals.

Isn't Hitler's choice not to use Chemical Weapons usually attributed to his experiences in WW1? If not what are you saying it was? Or are you saying that's not a moral reason?

I really don't have a problem with Spicer's words. It's pretty clear what he meant.

I *do* have a serious problem with these words:

Referring to Mr Assad, he added: "truly an evil person... if Russia didn't go in and back this animal, you wouldn't have a problem right now."

If Assad had lost the Civil war Militant Islam would be running Syria now and we'd have the kind of ethnic cleansing we've seen elsewhere in the Middle East. It's doubly mental since two weeks ago the USA wisely decided to end their previous policy aim of removing Assad, which surely acknowledges that Assad's Islamist opponents are far worse than Assad himself.

[quote=outofbreath ]If not what are you saying it was? Or are you saying that's not a moral reason?

I'm saying it doesn't show anything about the superiority of Hitler's morals, which was the comparison SS was trying to make. It's pretty clear what I meant.

It's pretty clear what I meant.

Wasn't to me.

I genuinely thought you were suggesting Hitler had a different motive to the usually quoted one.

If you had I'd have a fair bit of sympathy. Seems to me a more likely reason Chemical Weapons weren't used was a) They have serious drawbacks as a weapon b) The allies would have used them back. Seems weird that Hitler wouldn't use CW purely because it was unpleasant, given that he was prepared to starve people by the Million. ICW.

given that he was prepared to starve people by the Million. ICW.

Interesting sideline there actually, the scaled and drawn rations for forced labourers was actually quite close to that of the German soldiers, research has shown that much of the difference, resulting in starvation rations, was down to widespread corruption, often unpunished, but there are recorded examples of Germans supply officers being reprimanded and punished over it.

[quote=outofbreath ]

It's pretty clear what I meant.

Just like SS and everybody else then 😉

Seems weird that Hitler wouldn't use CW purely because it was unpleasant, given that he was prepared to starve people by the Million. ICW.

yeah, just as I wrote, it wasn't for moral reasons 😕

clearly I'm even worse at communicating than SS 😥

"Interesting sideline there actually, the scaled and drawn rations for forced labourers was actually quite close to that of the German soldiers, research has shown that much of the difference, resulting in starvation rations, was down to widespread corruption, often unpunished, but there are recorded examples of Germans supply officers being reprimanded and punished over it."

I was referring to the "hunger plan".

He was quite willing to deliberately starve 30m people and *did* starve millions.

He was only starving the untermensch to preserve the aryan race,perhaps ninfan doesn't consider that to be a problem?

Using Sean Spicers initials in a discussion where he is talking about Hitler is just another layer of fail on the whole thing.
"holocaust camps" sounds like he was trying to use his grown up words for something but he had wandered so far down the wrong bit of conversation he was completely lost.
At this point he is now the story, something his role should never be.

As much as PMQ's has flaws at least it gives people the chance to ask questions of the leader of the country. The US doesn't have this and is worse for it. The only thing I can think of that would be worse than Sean is letting Trump do the Q&A - yes that would be worse than any Yes Minister, thick of it or VEEP episode.

and as if to illustrate that point

Donald Trump informed the Chinese president that he had launched missile strikes on Syria as the pair ate “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you have ever seen”, the US president has claimed.

In an interview with Fox Business, Trump offered his first account of how he had broken the news to Xi Jinping as they dined at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida at the start of a two-day bridge-building summit last Thursday.

‘It had a big impact on me’ – story behind Trump’s whirlwind missile response
Read more
“I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner. We are now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you have ever seen. And President Xi was enjoying it,” Trump said.

“And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded. What do you do? And we made a determination to do it. So the missiles were on the way.

“And I said: ‘Mr President, let me explain something to you … we’ve just launched 59 missiles, heading to Iraq [sic] … heading toward Syria and I want you to know that.’

“I didn’t want him to go home … and then they say: ‘You know the guy you just had dinner with just attacked [Syria].’”

It's difficult to know where to start with that sort of thing..... it's just awful on so many levels

I think what so disturbing is that (as per my previous post), he's either deciding to say this sh*t in advance, in which case his judgement is truly terrible.....
or he's just making this stuff up on the spot, in which case he's somebody [u]who thinks it's ok[/u] to just decide what to say about really very very serious stuff on a whim, AND his on-the-spot judgement is really terrible.

Now, apparently, NATO is good: [url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/12/trump-nato-meeting-russia-syria-missile-attack ]link[/url]

“I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete,”

I think that's a close as we are going to get to Trump admitting he was wrong (when he said something that anyone with half-a-brain knew was wrong anyway)

I just heard him issue this description: "...our country and NATO".

Thick as two short planks.

Wikipedia to the rescue:

"Stanley P. Lovell, Deputy Director for Research and Development of the Office of Strategic Services, reports in his book Of Spies and Stratagems that the Allies knew the Germans had quantities of Gas Blau available for use in the defense of the Atlantic Wall. The use of nerve gas on the Normandy beachhead would have seriously impeded the Allies and possibly caused the invasion to fail altogether. He submitted the question "Why was nerve gas not used in Normandy?" to be asked of Hermann Göring during his interrogation. Göring answered that the reason gas was not used had to do with horses. The Wehrmacht was dependent upon horse-drawn transport to move supplies to their combat units, and had never been able to devise a gas mask horses could tolerate; the versions they developed would not pass enough pure air to allow the horses to pull a cart. Thus, gas was of no use to the German Army under most conditions.[34]
One reported incident indicates the German army eventually used poison gas on survivors of the Battle of Kerch on the Eastern Crimean peninsula. The gas warfare was conducted by the Waehrmacht's Chemical Forces and organized by a special detail of SS troops with the help of a field engineer battalion. Chemical Forces General Ochsner reported to German command in June 1942 that a chemical unit had taken part in the battle.[35] After the battle in mid-May 1942, roughly 3,000 soldiers and civilians not evacuated by sea were besieged in a series of caves and tunnels in the nearby Adzhimuskai quarry. After holding out for approximately three months, "poison gas was released into the tunnels, killing all but a few score of the Soviet defenders."[36] Thousands of those killed around Adzhimushk were documented to have been killed by asphyxiation from gas."