https://www.yahoo.com/news/cnn-doctor-trolls-trump-over-045944368.html CNN Doctor Trolls Trump Over 'Dementia' Boast With 1 Simple Sentence Ed Mazza Mon, January 29, 2024 at 5:59 AM GMT+1·1 min read CNN’s Dr. Jonathan Reiner isn’t buying Donald Trump’s repeated claims about acing a cognitive test. The former president has insisted that the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) ― aka the infamous “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” test he took in 2020, when he was president ― was “difficult.” Reiner stepped in with a fact-check on Sunday. “If you think a dementia screening test is very difficult, you may have early dementia,” Trump has repeatedly insisted that the test is very hard, and earlier this month claimed it contains advanced math such as “multiply 3,293 times 4, divide by 3.” It does not, as can be seen on a sample test here. The test was created to help doctors detect the warning signs of the cognitive impairments that can lead to dementia. “It is supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment,” Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, who developed the test, told MarketWatch in 2020. Yet Trump has constantly claimed otherwise. “It’s not easy!” he told supporters on Saturday, saying only 2 percent of his followers could pass it. Reiner also shared a clip of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley ― Trump’s rival for the Republican nomination ― saying the former president is in “decline.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-white-house-hopped-air-103004229.html The Trump White House was hopped up on Air Force "go pills" because of course it was Rae Hodge Mon, January 29, 2024 at 11:30 AM GMT+1·5 min read I bet the best part of working in the Trump White House was the drugs. We’re talking about the headquarters of the most powerful man on earth, here — the political wildlife preserve that operates with near-perfect impunity and has its own in-house unlicensed pharmacy. And we’re not talking about the Carter administration, either. The joint was under the rule of a geriatric, not-quite-strongman with a spray tan, who peaked in the ‘80s like some kind of John Hughes movie villain and appeared in live presidential debates with what looked like a classic snow-drip sniffle. So you gotta think: Who’s going stop you from getting ungodly high, on whatever you want, whenever you want, in a place like that? D.C.’s second ward has always been a speed-fueled judicial Twilight Zone where badge-flashing gentry slither through legal-immunity loopholes from K Street to Federal Triangle while simultaneously inventing new reasons weed can’t be legal. So I’m sure those in the Beltway are wondering why any American would be shocked about the Defense Department Inspector General’s latest report. Sure, it documents how the White House Medical Unit’s pill mill was slinging premium-grade uppers, pro bono, to random staff with the festive abandon of a Cancun DJ firing a “Spring Break 2018” t-shirt cannon at a bunch of topless undergrads. But, come on. The Beltway crowd are also probably wondering the same thing you and I are: What did people think was going on in there when they saw random midnight tweets from POTUS that looked like bad English translations of Ambientoxicated nightmare scripts? How did people think a staff of about 370 kept the executive branch’s lights on 24 hours a day, while still cleaning up the constant FEMA-level aftermath created by Blunder-cane Don? Besides, even those who didn’t already know about D.C. dealers got an earful in 2018 when a bunch of staffers grew sick of White House physician Ronny Jackson being called “candy man” just because he was slinging unprescribed Pez packets like everyone else. The inspector general’s new investigation confirms that earlier report, and tracks the pill trail through White House records from 2017 through 2019. And they didn’t go for the cheap stuff, either. “We concluded that, over a three‑year period, the White House Medical Unit spent an estimated $46,500 for brand name Ambien, which is 174 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Over the same period, the White House Medical Unit also spent an estimated $98,000 for brand name Provigil, which is 55 times more expensive than the generic equivalent,” the report said. Trump’s White House staff would not be the first to burn the midnight oil by getting lit on the mother-of-all-uppers, that premium twitch fuel called modafinil — or its brand-name version, Provigil. God knows those West Wing walk-and-talks don’t happen without a little methylphenidate magic, but the Air Force “go pill” moda’ (as its called) is the cleanest, most surreal upper you can get if you’re looking for something that stays conveniently stocked. (There’s a reason it’s prescribed for narcolepsy.) This stuff was tested on Black Hawk helicopter and F-117 fighter pilots, and hits harder than a Shawshank prison guard. It probably didn’t help matters that, as far as the historical list of prominent names is concerned, a lot of Trump’s appointees didn’t exactly have to be Obama-grade Brain Trust material or have Air Force ASVAB scores to get a gig shuffling Don’s paperwork — so long as they kept the donors coming and the Boogaloo Boys hard. “Dr. [redacted] asked if I could hook up this person with some Provigil as a parting gift for leaving the White House,” said one of the 70 witnesses interviewed for the report. “I’m not sure if it was okay as far as, like, what’s medically allowed. But in the unit, it was authorized for us to do that kind of stuff.” You’re pulling an all-nighter drafting policy notes for Small Hand Nuke ahead of his 3 a.m. phoner with Moscow? Modafinil’s got you. You’re stuck in your sweat-stained Brooks Brothers button-down for 18 hours while juggling three cell phones and getting crop-dusted by the football team who just ate a cold banquet of McDonald’s in the Oval? Modafinil for that, too. You’re spinning the latest military fiasco into publicity gold before the press gets wind of it, while schlepping a dozen boxes of classified intelligence documents into a tacky Florida condo and hoping your face isn’t recorded by the FBI? Praise the Lord, and pass the Provigil. “We would normally make these packets of Ambien and Provigil, and a lot of times they’d be in like five tablets in a zip‑lock bag. And so traditionally, too, we would hand these out. ... But a lot of times the senior staff would come by or their staff representatives... would come by the residence clinic to pick it up. And it was very much a, 'hey, I’m here to pick this up for Ms. X.' And the expectation was we just go ahead and pass it out," said another witness. A witness? Or an angel? You decide. As far as I’m concerned, a handful of team-no-sleep interns and bureaucratic nerds are probably the only reason this country stayed running some nights. And if they hadn’t had the blessing of a tidy little Ziploc baggie and a blind-eye kindly turned, those noble few would have no doubt had to take more desperate measures. How else could anyone of conscience survive the Pennsylvania Avenue fish bowl during a four-year demolition derby of the country, which then climaxed with a literal attempted coup? Those desperate measures would have undoubtedly been even more expensive and manic. And, sweet merciful maker, you can bet your baggies that White House cocaine hits harder than a Honduran hanger-brick hits the California coastline. But don’t take my word for it — just ask Oliver North.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/him-crazy-george-conway-reveals-051228767.html 'Make Him Crazy': George Conway Reveals How To Get Under Trump's Skin Ed Mazza Tue, January 30, 2024 at 6:12 AM GMT+1·3 min read Conservative attorney George Conway has some blunt advice on dealing with Donald Trump. “Make him crazy,” he told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki on Monday. Conway said the former president is already unstable but added that there’s a way to get even deeper under his skin: through his insecurities. “The reason why he is the way he is, the reason why he is this pathological narcissist, is because he’s deeply insecure,” Conway said. “He knows that he’s a fraud. He knows he’s not as smart as he says he is, he knows he’s not as good as he says he is, he knows he’s a rapist, he knows he’s a liar.” Conway said that when Trump is confronted with this reality, “he melts.” Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation last year, with the jury awarding writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages. Last week he was ordered to pay an additional $83.3 million to Carroll for continuing to defame her. Conway noted that Trump appeared in court Thursday and “put up this strong man act” while the jury watched. But Conway pointed out that Trump “didn’t actually show up for the first trial, the one where he could’ve been cross-examined about what happened in that department store, because he’s scared.” Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store in 1996. Although the jury found him liable for sexual abuse, the judge later clarified that Trump ”‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” Conway made a similar argument about Trump’s Achilles’ heel earlier in the day during an appearance on “Morning Joe” as he urged GOP presidential rival Nikki Haley and President Joe Biden to “call out the crazy” when it comes to Trump. “He’s had three years of basically being off the stage, and people have forgotten how absolutely, positively mentally disordered this man is,” Conway said. “And the more you talk about that in particular, the crazier it makes him.” He said Trump’s relatives may want to bring him to a neurologist over his cognitive health, but he added “that’s not really the problem” when it comes to his bid to return to the White House. “What makes him dangerous is he’s a narcissistic sociopath, a narcissistic psychopath, a malignant narcissist, and has always been that,” he said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-latest-attack-082258685.html Donald Trump Jr.’s Latest Attack On Joe Biden Prompts Awkward Reminder Lee Moran Thu, February 1, 2024 at 9:22 AM GMT+1·3 min read Donald Trump Jr. was on Wednesday accused of hypocrisy after he attacked President Joe Biden’s work ethic on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Donald Trump’s eldest son claimed the Biden White House had only announced the president was going to visit the site of the fiery February 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, around its one-year anniversary because it is an election year. “Americans aren’t falling for this anymore,” wrote the Trump scion. “Joe Biden has spent 40% of his presidency on vacation & often calls a lid on his day before noon,” he added. “He’s had plenty of time to go, but couldn’t be bothered till an election. People aren’t giving him 4 more years to keep destroying America!” Biden has spent around that amount of his presidency away from the White House, but often it is working from home in his home state of Delaware. “It is 2022, not 1922. If the rest of the country can work from home, so can the president of the United States,” said Michael LaRosa, a former press secretary to first lady Jill Biden, defending the president’s time away to CNN in 2022. Critics of Trump Jr.’s spin pointed to his father’s own record in response. When president, the current GOP front-runner Trump reportedly paid 285 visits to golf courses at a cost of $142 million to the taxpayer. In 2019, Axios reported the four-times-indicted ex-POTUS spent around 60% of his working hours in so-called unstructured “executive time” ― which involved watching TV and making calls to friends and advisers. Following his 2020 election defeat to Biden, Trump’s daily schedule in the final weeks of his presidency said he “will work from early in the morning until late in the evening.” “He will make many calls and have many meetings,” it added.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...es-data-protection-claim-rejected-by-uk-court Donald Trump’s ‘sex and bribes’ data protection case rejected by UK court Ex-US president took action over allegations he took part in ‘perverted acts’ and bribed Russian officials Donald Trump’s data protection claim for damages over allegations in the “Steele dossier” that he took part in “perverted” sex acts and gave bribes to Russian officials has been dismissed by a high court judge in London. Judge Steyn agreed with Orbis Business Intelligence, the company founded by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled the contentious material, that the case should not go to trial. The ruling issued on Thursday said the court did not “consider or determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of the memoranda” but found that Trump’s claim for damages had been made outside the six-year period of “limitations”. The court ruled that Trump “has no reasonable grounds for bringing a claim for compensation or damages, and no real prospect of successfully obtaining such a remedy”. It added that the “only other remedy claimed was for a compliance order erasing or restricting processing of the memoranda” but that this would be “pointless, and unnecessary, in circumstances where the dossier was freely available on the internet, and the defendant had in any event undertaken to delete the copies it held”. The former US president, who is the frontrunner in the race to be the Republican candidate in this year’s election, had indicated he was willing to give evidence at the high court in the case alleging breach of data protection rights by Orbis Business Intelligence over the 2016 “Steele dossier”. The report, investigating Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential campaign, was compiled by Steele, who previously ran MI6’s Russia desk, and then published by BuzzFeed in 2017. The document included allegations that Trump had hired sex workers to urinate on each other in the presidential suite of a hotel in Moscow, and took part in sex parties in St Petersburg. He denies the claims. Trump’s lawyer, Hugh Tomlinson KC, had told the court his client knew he had the legal responsibility to prove the allegations were false and that he intended “to discharge his burden by giving evidence in this court”. Orbis was successful in arguing that the claim had been brought too late.
First he thought he was smart. Then he thought he was good looking. But quite apart from his misguided self-involvement, how can anyone take such a candidate seriously?