{"id":287655,"date":"2016-12-29T06:23:52","date_gmt":"2016-12-29T05:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-to-think-trump\/"},"modified":"2016-12-29T06:23:52","modified_gmt":"2016-12-29T05:23:52","slug":"how-to-think-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-to-think-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Think Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>NEW YORK\u2014I don\u2019t wanna say Donald Trump has contempt for established rules, but he\u2019s planning his third term.<\/p>\n<p>This is a boon for the media, though, because at least once a day the Trump press corps gets to say, <em>You won\u2019t believe what this guy did now.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The usual progression goes as follows:<\/p>\n<p>(1) Trump does something mundane that would normally not be noticed\u2014like taking a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan.<\/p>\n<p>(2) The Washington bureau chief of <em>The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em> goes, \u201cWait! Was that normal? Is there protocol for that? Won\u2019t that piss off China? I think I\u2019ll go ask my blabbermouth source in the State Department what he thinks about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(3) Stanley P. Macpherson Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary for South Asia, answers his phone and says, \u201cOh yeah, Stu, he\u2019s playing with fire. This is off the record, right? That one phone call could set the country back thirty years in terms of China policy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(4) Headline the next day: TRUMP CLUELESS ABOUT CHINA.<\/p>\n<p>What is <em>not<\/em> stated in the <em>Inquirer<\/em> article is that (a) Stanley Macpherson worked for Hillary Clinton and liked her, (b) Stanley puckers up every time he hears Trump talk about \u201cdraining the swamp,\u201d and (c) Stanley believes that, if there are budget cuts next year, his staff is likely to be on the \u201ctake no prisoners\u201d list.<\/p>\n<p>Probably the worst thing you can say to Donald Trump is \u201cMr. President, you have to do it that way because we\u2019ve done it that way for the past fifty years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s like telling an alcoholic, \u201cDon\u2019t touch this Macallan single malt I\u2019m leaving on your nightstand over the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately I\u2019m here to explain the Trump mind.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with the Environmental Protection Agency:<\/p>\n<p>Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General of Oklahoma, is being appointed by Trump to head the EPA because Trump wants to piss off the environmentalists. \u201cEnvironmental\u201d is in the name of the agency\u2014hence, Trumpian logic applied, you need somebody who is gonna nuke the D.C. attitude. Pruitt has defended ExxonMobil, sued the EPA numerous times over the Clean Power Plan, and is basically in favor of fracking, canceling the Paris climate deal, and packaging mercury, arsenic, and California smog as ingredients in craft beers sold at minor-league ballparks. But those are not even the most annoying things about him. He\u2019s also a deacon at the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow and a trustee of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is located in \u201cThe Ville\u201d\u2014Louisville, Kentucky. People in Kentucky think the EPA was <em>invented<\/em> to destroy their coalfields.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/takimag.com\/article\/how_to_think_trump_joe_bob_briggs\/print#axzz4U9E1R5tz\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Read the Whole Article<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2016\/12\/no_author\/think-trump\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK\u2014I don\u2019t wanna say Donald Trump has contempt for established rules, but he\u2019s planning his third term. This is a boon for the media, though, because at least once a day the Trump press corps gets to say, You won\u2019t believe what this guy did now. The usual progression goes as follows: (1) Trump [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-287655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}