Joy Reid: 'A President's Day Without a President'

[bigtree]

Joy Reid @JoyAnnReid 2h2 hours ago
Apparently @foxandfriends did not enjoy my latest @thedailybeast column, but I hope you will. It's titled: A President's Day Without a President.


Monday is President’s Day. It will be the second consecutive such holiday without an American president. Sure, Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office, when he’s not golfing. He lives in the White House, at least in theory with his family. But he is not the president of the United States.

When Trump addressed the nation in the wake of the Parkland massacre, my team and I looked at the TV but the words coming from his mouth had no effect. They neither resonated nor moved a single person in the room. It truly didn’t matter what he said, particularly after he tweeted out blame for the carnage at the neighbors and classmates of the killer. Trump is as hollow a vessel as there has ever been in the White House. His rule lacks even a shred of moral authority...

Trump is Russia’s creature, not ours. He serves their interests, genuflects before their president, and has remained steadfast in leaving the door wide open for them to interfere in our election on behalf of himself and his desiccated political party again.

The influence operation aimed at Trump is at least years, and perhaps decades old. Trump’s affinity for Russia dates back at least to the late 1980s, during the time of the Soviet Union, and it intensified after his financial empire collapsed. Rescue came in the form of Russian money likely laundered through Trump’s otherwise failing real estate empire, during the time Vladimir Putin was still with the KGB. Now, Trump shares with Putin and his oligarchic kleptocracy a hatred of non-white immigrants, the cultivation of Christian extremists to the detriment of Muslims and gays, a sneering disregard for NATO and global trade, a fetish for the bloody NRA, a disdain for non-sycophant media and an affinity for dictatorial regimes. He is leading a political party that today is more Putinite than American; more like the party of Marine Le Pen than of Abraham Lincoln.

We have entered an age of unreason; an American dark age. A major political party has fallen into decay, seized full on by extremists and overrun by racism, tribalism, greed, xenophobia and demographic panic. It is no longer a question of whether their president can ever be our president, and speak to the nation with moral authority. He can’t. His legitimacy is too much in doubt and his character too absent. The only question is whether the majority can hang onto its collective outrage long enough to drive the neo-Nazis, anti-modernists, haters and fear-mongers who have organized under the Trump banner back into the shadows...


read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-presidents-day-without-a-real-president?ref=home

Link to tweet

[BigmanPigman]

1. This year, like last, he is celebrating

Fake President's Day (a specific holiday just for him). The rest of us will remember the real presidents who loved this country and would do anything to protect it. Maybe after he goes to prison we will have National Traitor Day, a special, new day to remember what we have endured and it will be a reminder of how we should never allow our citizens to be duped again (not we DUers who were never duped).

[brush]

2. Go, Joy. You speak the truth. Pls continue.

[erlewyne]

5. My borrowing from Joy

This person is literally stripping every shred of dignity off of the GOP (presidency) of the Untied States
and reducing the Republican party (office) to ashes.

Ryan and McConnell and their children better get off their dead-asses and represent
this country instead of the NRA. They will share the association with Putin Trump's .
if they continue working in the closet.

[Fritz Walter]

13. THIS is why the Russians are laughing their asses off, NOT the investigation

Thank you, bigtree, for sharing this with us.

Oh, and Fuck Faux&Friends!

[2naSalit]

3. K&R

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. shredding Executive branch

TrumPutin and his cohort of crooks are not stopping at shredding the Presidency, they're going after the entire branch -- climate, education, diplomacy, DoJ, et. al.

[bigtree]

6. more

...they're aiming at altering our American culture, as well.

Plus, they're aiming at the heart of our democracy by refusing to protect our system of elections from outside interference, coupled with their enabling of state voter suppression efforts.

[thegoose]

17. Dump and his Puke party

Are burning it all to the ground. And loving it.

[Botany]

7. Joy Reid, "Trump is Russias creature, not ours."

Last edited Sun Feb 18, 2018, 01:02 PM - Edit history (1)

'nuff said.

BTW Joy

[Owl]

8. K&R

[Butterflylady]

9. "American dark age" I couldn't have said it better.

That's what we are living now.

[panfluteman]

10. Very Well Put, Joy!!!

One of the smartest and brightest stars on MSNBC. Her and Rachel Maddow, the undisputed expert on the Russia connection, are my two heroines in the media.

Joy also echoes the observations made by Robert Reich, who served in President Clinton's cabinet, which were made in a recent video entitled "A Year Without a President". He said plainly that we have had a whole year without a president. Everyone else in the government has had to step into the great leadership void and take up the moral slack that our so-called puppet president has left for us.

It also brings home to me the suggestion of my Romanian astrology mentor, who, after a discussion about American politics, directed me to check out the prophecies of the Bulgarian old woman seer, Baba Vanga. She told me that she predicted that Barack Obama would be the last president of the United States. At this point, we have yet to see if Baba Vanga was merely referring to a temporary situation, an interim or period in limbo that we are currently going through, in which there would be no real president of the USA, or if this pseudo-presidency we are going through will be the prelude to the final dissolution of the United States as a political entity.

Will the terrible partisan divide between the Democrats and Republicans be healed, and will the Republican party be reborn into a politically kinder, gentler and more relevant incarnation? Will the Republican party finally die, and something else, some new opposition party, take its place - in other words, will the Republicans go the way of the Whigs? Or will our current bitterly partisan political divide, which is not being helped by Trump, a master of the blame game, simply dissolve into total political chaos, with something totally new, like the mythical Phoenix being reborn from the ashes of our current system? Only time will tell.

[bigtree]

12. Baba Vanga!

...take heed.

[Riverman100]

11. Saw this online:

If tRump walks out of the white house on monday and sees his shadow, we get 6 more months of bullshit

[SunSeeker]

14. Well said. Wish Joy was President.

Hell, at this point, I'd prefer just some random person on the street over Trump.

[pandr32]

15. "Trump is Russia's creature"

Absolutely. Joy speaks the truth.

[nolabear]

16. Things that need to be said. Again and again.

[Old Enough 2]

18. Will America Survive Trump?

Joy absolutely nails Trump's behavior and values to a tee. ( Values in a relative sense). My concern is can America survive as a viable democracy in the aftermath of Trump.

Trump is the logical conclusion building up in America during the age of Reagan, Fox News and right wing hate radio. I lay blame on our national crisis on very rich libertarian bastards who believe in oligarchical rule. These creatures have financed and spread the divisions that rack American society. Trump is the culmination of their distorted wet dreams.

Question: Will America come to its senses or crash and burn into the dust bin of history?

[Hekate]

19. KnR for Joy Reid. Such a grim picture, and so true. nt

[bigtree]

20. kick

[realFedUp]

21. She and Rachel Maddow are smartest on MSNBC

I don't miss, if I can help it, Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid on TV. They have great production teams, book people who speak the truth and with new information. No rehash, no opposing voices...well, sometimes and they seem even more stupid.