I won’t belabor the stupidity of the U.S. tacitly allowing Turkey to start killing Kurds—once our allies against ISIS. What we’ve done is allow Turkey to invade Syria under the misguided notion that they’ll do our dirty work for us. But the misconceptions are that our standing aside won’t damage the Kurds much as well as the fact that our real “dirty work” would be not only to destroy the remnants of ISIS, but also to isolate Bashar al-Assad, a demon leader if ever there was one.
Regardless, even the GOP is calling out Trump on this one, and he’s trying to deflect attention from that by tweeting out that the US has taken into custody (in some non-US location) several ISIS militants from Kurdish-run prison camps, including two British ISIS fighters known as “the Beatles”—presumably because they have Liverpudlian accents. In the meantime, we’re bombing Kurdish civilians, causing many to flee for their lives. As I said earlier today, I wish Hitchens were around to excoriate Trump for turning on our former allies. Hitchens was, of course, a big fan of the Kurds.
And here’s the deflection. Doesn’t Trump know that the spelling of the music group, and of the band of militants, was “the Beatles”?
In case the Kurds or Turkey lose control, the United States has already taken the 2 ISIS militants tied to beheadings in Syria, known as the Beetles, out of that country and into a secure location controlled by the U.S. They are the worst of the worst!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2019
How can you grow up in America and not know the spelling of the world’s greatest rock group? If I were Trump, and mired as deep in the doo-doo as he is now, I’d hire somebody to vet what I put out on social media. And, of course, I wouldn’t have pulled that boneheaded move with Turkey and Syria.
h/t: Simon
Why help the Kurds? They weren’t there for us on the beaches of Normandy!
Trump says he saw thousands of New Jersey Kurds cheering the Germans.
Indeed! They did NOTHING to help the USA in that important Kurdistan theater during WWII! Ungrateful slobs!
Yeah, only Canada and the U.K. were there with us. Screw everyone else! Screw those who were not on the beaches fighting fascism!
And New Zealand and Australia.
D’you really want to recall that in this context?
Right at the moment, the less we have to do with the US the better, I would have thought.
To elaborate on Mark’s statement, as the Kurds have just involuntarily demonstrated, being an ally of the US is no guaranteed that you won’t be randomly shat on on a whim by the Orange Menace-in-Chief. The safest position to be at the moment** is not standing with the US but standing as far away as possible, preferably on a different planet.
cr
** That is, until they get a Prez with a modicum of rationality.
(By the way, I’m serious. Do not assist the US in any way. You’ll just get shat on. Do not negotiate anything with the US. You’ll just get shat on. Do not give them any concessions. You’ll just get shat on. Do not make any agreements. They’ll just break them and shit on you anyway.
Just wait until they have a President who is not tRump.)
cr
Well, Jacinda has made it pretty clear what she thinks of Trump, and Key is still great mates with Obama. Besides. he’s unlikely to attack Jacinda without direct provocation because she’s physically attractive, and that’s, after all, what woman are made for: to give men something to enjoy looking at, and use when it suits them. It’s a bit problematic that she’s intelligent, but as long as she doesn’t show him up publicly, that’s okay.
“Jacinda has made it pretty clear what she thinks of Trump”
As in, diplomatically NOT saying? Jacinda is an intelligent woman and a very diplomatic one. So I think we can all safely guess what she thinks of him, but the constraints of her position and diplomatic conventions dictate that she not show Trump up publicly, difficult as that may be. 😉
cr
Yeah. You have to read between the lines. It’s clear in diplomat-speak, but I doubt it’s clear to him as that sort of thing is beyond his ken.
Damn shame that Twitter has no spell checker. Oh, well. Trump would not know how to use it. But hey, if these guys were not at Normandy, who cares.
The ironic fact of your comment is that if Twttr did have spell check, it would have underlined Beatles and the correction would have been Beetles. LOL!
I can see how Trump made the mistake though, as I don’t think he understands what a pun is, let alone humor or subtlety of any kind.
Dan Scavino runs Trump’s twitter account. I guess he puts out only the official tweets from the White House.
Scavino is a former caddie at one of Trump’s shithole golf courses. Only the “best people.”
Not that I’ve got anything against caddies; hell, I was one myself as a teenager. But I never saw it as a career path to the West Wing, just a way to pick up a few bucks shining up to and lugging around the bags of rich duffers. That, and learning to play craps and mumblety-peg in the caddie shack during slack hours.
I get these Trump people mixed up. Dan Scavino…isn’t there someone called Dan Bongino* too?
And then there’s William Barr, who I always get mixed up with this guy: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=penfold&sxsrf=ACYBGNRy4g_qNB8Q4Y3ZBuPsj1wLq6Tkpw:1570720775299&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAkOnu_pHlAhXJNcAKHSJkAV0Q_AUIEigB&biw=1366&bih=625
*Spanish for ‘baby bongo’ apparently
I’ll get hold of the guys from The Simpsons, see if they can work this stuff into a plotline for you. 🙂
Instead of working anything into a plotline could you just ask them to…stop making the show? It’s so awful now it’s ruining my childhood/teenage memories of it.
At least this new blunder by tRump has flushed some Republican poultry out of the underbrush. What will it take to get him out of office? Maybe if he abandoned South Korea.
Ah, but maybe ISIS do spell it “Beetles”, as a homage to “Beatles” itself being a deliberate misspelling?
ISIS are after all famous for their appreciation of linguistic irony.
Yeah, for that and for their love of Merseybeat music, I’m sure.
Trump probably doesn’t know about The Beatles because during their peak, was fighting in Vietna…. oh wait, no
How can we criticize Trump? He has great and unmatched wisdom. Like Yoda, only biglier.
I’ll agree on the unmatched part.
Trump admin: “He was avoiding copyright infringement by spelling it ‘Beetles'”
No matter how high you go, there’s always a higher power. (Ok, that’s not true either.)
Trump is right on this one: why would he care about them now? There were no spellcheckers built into Twitter during WWII.
Turkey assembled forces for the invasion of NE Syria, and American forces in Syria stood aside, right after a telephone conversation between Presidents Trump and Erdogan. We can safely assume that Turkey will very soon announce an investigation into the corrupt activities of Joe Biden and Elisabeth Warren, their children, and their grandchildren.
Probably a fresh coat of gold-leaf paint for those conjoined Trump Towers in Istanbul, too.
Yes, the poor Kurds. Given that their claimed homeland crosses the borders of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Armenia their situation isn’t exactly hopeful. We Brits can’t feel too holier than thou about the current bombings – our RAF was bombarding them in the 1930s on behalf of the puppet regime we created in the aftermath of WWI when we carved up the Middle East with the French.
Not the link I was looking for, but this one will have to do: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/19/iraq.arts
Trump has already defended his grammar, this from a July 3 tweet:
“After having written many best selling books, and somewhat priding myself on my ability to write, it should be noted that the Fake News constantly likes to pore over my tweets looking for a mistake. I capitalize certain words only for emphasis, not b/c they should be capitalized!”
I just found an interesting twitter feed CC
This tweet of October 4th https://twitter.com/trumpdictionary/status/1180369607040782336 makes the wry observation that the tool-using pigs that were recently observed are “a bit more advanced than our president.” The news quoted states that “These observations could signal a new cognitive skill previously unknown among swine, which are well known for their intelligence.” He may be porky, but I’l stick with the real sus scrofa.
This is an interesting article on his pencant for using caps https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-capitalization-tweets-spelling-2018-4. However, I’ve read that using a lot of capitalized words can be a sign of schizophrenia.
The thought that Trump might have no knowledge of the Beatles makes me feel a bit better. He is not worthy of their music.
It seems absolutely consonant with everything I know about him that he wouldn’t like the Beatles, or even know how to spell their name.
I have a suspicion that he’s one of those freaks of nature who you occasionally meet who just don’t like music, full stop. I’ve only met a couple of them but they tend to be just like Trump; no understanding about or interest in anything creative whatsoever.
Yes, that’s my take also. I’m guessing he sees such things as stuff he can’t control or bully and, therefore, outside his domain. It has no use to him.
Unless the Beatles bought some Trump property he would not know them or care. If you do not think Trump did enough yesterday to make everyone sick, he also gave ED MEESE the metal of freedom. One crook to another.
Was that metal of freedom bronze, brass, or titanium? Steel? 🙂
I don’t know. How could you misspell Tool.
Toole…Tule…Tewel…I can do it man!
While the Kurds did not help us on the beaches of Normandy, they were instrumental to the capture of British airfields during the Revolutionary War.
🤣
I doubt Trump knows squat about the Kinques, the Stoanes, or the Hoo, either.
I think he’d misspell MC5.
Unbelievably, a school here in the UK recently misspelled “GCSE” on a large plastic banner commissioned to boast about their GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exam results: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-49440229
🙂 that made me laugh out loud
Yes, definitely one to file under “you couldn’t make it up”.
The Donald has no interest in any number that’s not attached to a dollar sign.
Sometimes I get the impression that some of Trump’s tweets are ghostwritten, because they seem more literate (modestly). Anyone else get that impression?
Jeannie Hess @ comment #3 above points out that Dan Scavino also sends tweets for Trump on the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. Trump will also dictate Tweets in real time for his lackeys to type in & send on of his NSA-issued iPhones [he has two & a third one that is a standard insecure iPhone].
There’s things that AgentOrange45 doesn’t know how to do such as threading for long tweets, but Scarvino has learned to copy that ineptitude [according to The Verge]. Trump also doesn’t know how to embed video or images so they only turn up in re-Tweets or when someone else is managing his ‘phone/account.
From what I read, I gather he doesn’t have a PC in the oval office & wouldn’t know how to use one. His email inbox is printed out for him to read hardcopy paper style [in large letters I assume, with the important shit culled so he doesn’t see it would be my guess!].
Any tweets before office hours after Fox morning news starts are likely genuinely his as are any tweets post 1900 hrs in his current time zone [his current time zone is 97% of the time NYC-WashingtonDC-Florida, luckily for him his whole life is in the ET zone or his head would explode with the stupids.]
“his whole life is in the ET zone” – And where does that put us? What’s that tweet up ahead? It’s the TWILIGHT ZONE. Do di da da, do di da da…
LOL. Very nice. Have a couple of savage power chords as appreciation [straight out of the oven today]:
https://youtu.be/UDfAdHBtK_Q
Nice quiet power. Subtle even.
rickflick – my ear hears Do di do da, do di do da…. 🙂
Careful, it will ear-worm it’s way in a stay.
Definitely. A month or so ago one of his tweets included the word ‘naivete’.
There’s no way he knows that word, or would ever use it in a Tweet.
What an idiot is, an idiot Tweets.
There’s a 21st century adage for ya.
1. Yes, the Kurds didn’t give us much help in Normandy in WW2. That’s because they were giving us a lot of help in Iraq. Where many of them live.
2. The four British ISIS terrorists were nicknamed The Beatles because they all spoke English and, umm, there were four of them. Now there are only two. Oh dear.
The USG’s previous position was that all foreign ISIS members should be dealt with by their own Governments. I must say I have a lot of sympathy with this view, even though Trump also said it. If we don’t deal with them now, we might have to deal with them, in a very different way, in a few years’ time.
Misspelling the Beatles doesn’t even rank in the top 100,000 worst things Trump has done.
For the record, my personal favorite Beatles album is Rubber Soul.
As far as Trump’s decision to step aside and let Turkey invade Syria, well it stinks.
I’ll let the experts explain why this is a terrible move, vis-a-vis American National Security.
My concern is that Trump hasn’t released his tax returns. Trump hasn’t divested interest in his properties, including a Trump Tower in Turkey.
It’s not my job to prove that these things aren’t a factor in his decision making. These norms were in place for a reason. He broke these norms, so I say his private commercial interests do effect his decision making.
Disgusting. Vile. He sold out American allies for the benefit of his personal properties. What is the alternative explanation?
American allies die because Turkey threatened his property with a health code violation, as far as I know.
As disgusting and vile as this is, it can be argued that his decision was merely a policy decision. Policy decisions aren’t impeachable.
Fine, bad policy can be remedied by elections. I’m not convinced, though. I don’t trust Trump.
Campaign finance law is a different story. Big news today on that front, today. The experts I follow on Twitter were, shall we say, animated.
Removal is possible.
I think your description is close to what all of us are thinking.