He's Hurting My Brain

I have to confess that, in certain matters, I am a snob. I've never been the sort to scorn 'the help', and I have no contempt for people who work up an honest sweat. That being said, I admire a well-crafted turn of phrase, and I cringe when I hear a native speaker who butchers the English language. Listening to Donald Trump's press conference today pretty much hurt my brain. Besides the mendacity and belligerence, the damn thing was redundant, redundant, redundant. Cazzo di merda, just look at this:


The press has become so dishonest that if we don't talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it. We have to find out what's going on because the press, honestly, is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control. I ran for president to represent the citizens of our country. I am here to change the broken system so it serves their families and their communities well. I am talking, and really talking, on this very entrenched power structure and what we're doing is we're talking about the power structure. We're talking about its entrenchment. As a result, the media's going through what they have to go through to oftentimes distort — not all the time — and some of the media's fantastic, I have to say, honest and fantastic — but much of it is not. The distortion, and we'll talk about it, you'll be able to ask me questions about it. We're not going to let it happen because I'm here, again, to take my message straight to the people.


Of course, it wouldn't be a Republican speech without a measure of blame for the Kenyan Usurper:


As you know, our administration inherited many problems across government and across the economy. To be honest, I inherited a mess. A mess. At home, and abroad. A mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country. You see what's going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to Mexico and other places. Low pay, low wages.

Mass instability overseas, no matter where you look. The Middle East, a disaster. North Korea, we'll take care of it, folks. We're going to take care of it all. I just want to let you know. I inherited a mess. Beginning on day one, our administration went to work to tackle these challenges. On foreign affairs, we've begun enormously productive talks with foreign leaders, much of which you've covered, to move forward to security, stability and peace in the most troubled regions of the world, which there are many.


This repetition seems to suggest a paucity of vocabulary, or a bad commercial for a shitty product:


They don't have the right equipment, and their equipment is old. I used it. I talked about it. At every stop. Depleted. It's depleted. It won't be depleted for long. One of the reasons I'm standing here instead of other people is, frankly, I talked about we have to have a strong military. We have to have strong law enforcement also.


Once again, the man cannot let go of the fact that he lost the popular vote by almost three million ballots:


I'm here following through on what I pledged to do. That's all I'm doing. I put it out before the American people, got 306 electoral college votes. I wasn't supposed to get 222. They said there's no way to get 222. 230 is impossible. 270, which you need — that was laughable. We got 306. Because people came out and voted like they have never seen before. So that's how it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan. In other words, the media is trying to attack our administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made, and they are not happy about it for whatever reason.


Let it go, Vulgarmort... seriously, you won the rigged Electoral College vote in a low-turnout election with three alternative candidates, you just aren't that popular.

This particular quote had me laughing: This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine. I bet this machine was well-oiled:





The whole thing veered off into even weirder territory during the Q&A, during which certain responses were simply bizarre:


Well, the leaks are real. You're the one that wrote about them and reported them. I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said. You saw it and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.


His obsession with ratings is unhealthy:


I just see many, many untruthful things. And I'll tell you what else I see. Tone. I see tone. You know the word tone. The tone is such hatred. I'm really not a bad person, by the way. No, but You know, but the tone is such — I do the get good ratings, you have to admit that. But the tone is such hatred.


The guy can't even refrain from undermining his talking points in the space of a single answer:


Russia is a ruse. Yeah, I know you have to get up and ask a question, so important. Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven't made a phone call to Russia in years, don't speak to people in Russia, not that I wouldn't, but I just have nobody to speak to.

I Spoke to Putin twice, called me on the election. I told you this. He called me on the inauguration a few days ago. We had a very good talk. Especially the second one, lasted for a pretty long period of time. I'm sure you probably get it because it was classified, so I'm sure everybody in this room perhaps has it, but we had a very, very good talk. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with, does.


The whole press conference was a disaster, and listening to snippets of it throughout the day was conducive to indigestion and a suppressed rage. Our last president was one of the most articulate, intelligent individuals to occupy the White House, and now we have this self-pitying, bellicose idjit in residence. I can't even snark about this.