whaduyathink: Blather

I am accidentally more coherent than POTUS is with assistance. What was the purpose of these speeches? Even I can comprehend that the purpose of international travel for a head of state is to promote mutual cooperation, not to market. The United States of America is a country, not a corporation. The existence of a nation state actually requires some statesmanship. If you want to claim the title of world leader you must speak to the world, not just your clique. Excerpts from the speeches are in black text, comments are in red.

Remarks by President Trump at the Three Seas Initiative Summit | July 6, 2017

Royal Castle

Warsaw, Poland

The Three Seas Initiative is a joint Polish-Croatian project, launched in 2016, with the aim of strengthening trade, infrastructure, energy and political co-operation among countries bordering the Adriatic, the Baltic and the Black Sea.

- The following 12 countries are part of the initiative:

Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria.

- Most of the 12 countries were in the Soviet sphere of influence after World War Two until 1989 and more than half of those joined the European Union in 2004. Nearly all are heavily reliant on Russian gas and oil imports.

New energy infrastructure is essential to this rebuilding effort. We hope that the Three Seas nations will advance the same goals we are working on to achieve for our people in America. We’re doing tremendously well. Our stock market just hit an all-time high. As it continues just like the past 9 years. We have, I think, 16 years -- in 16 years it’s the lowest unemployment rate. Our military is getting stronger and stronger. We’re rebuilding it, adding billions and billions of dollars of new equipment. The best equipment in the world. We make the best equipment in the world by far. We’re adding many billions of dollars of brand-new equipment.

“This is why some people don’t want peace: they make more money from war, although wars make money but lose lives, health, education. The devil enters through our wallets.” Pope Francis

And the United States is doing very well -- very strong. We’ve taken off restrictions and people are really moving hard. So when I say that the stock market is at an all-time high, we’ve picked up in market value almost $4 trillion since November 8th, which was the election. $4 trillion -- it's a lot of money. Personally, I picked up nothing, but that’s all right. This might be true had you divested yourself of commercial property using a blind trust. That is not the case. Everyone else is getting rich. That's awesome, therefore everyone will have access to and be able to afford adequate health care. That’s okay. I’m very happy.

I congratulate your nations for already beginning the critical projects that open us up to greater access, and you’ll be totally open and have access to energy markets and remove barriers to energy trade, such as floating LNG terminal on the Croatian island of Krk. Did you ever hear of that? Right? Huh? You know all about that. I bet you know all about it. You are addressing a conference of industrialists. Why do you speak to people as if they are 8th graders? And the Greece-Bulgaria Interconnector.

These projects and many others are crucial to ensuring that your nations continue to diversify your energy sources, suppliers, and routes. I also applaud Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Austria for pursuing a pipeline from the Black Sea. We just approved a big pipeline also -- the Keystone Pipeline. It was under consideration for many, many years, and it was dead and I approved it in my first day of office. Actually, it was approved in March 2017, but let's not muddy the waters with facts. And it’s now under construction. And another pipeline besides that -- big ones -- Dakota Access.

America will be a faithful and dependable partner in the export and sale of our high-quality and low-cost energy resources and technologies. We make the best technology and we make the best, best technology for fighter jets and ships and equipment, military weapons. There’s nobody even close, and that’s acknowledged. There is no disputing this and it's a good thing. Not only do we offer the best war making machines in the world but we have the largest economy. We spend more on our military than the next 10 largest spending countries combined. This may explain why the U.S. ranks anywhere from 7th-25th in education and 27th-37th in health care, world wide, depending on the rating system you prefer. All over the world they talk about the greatness of our military equipment. Nobody comes close. So when you buy and as you buy military equipment, hopefully you’ll be thinking only of the United States.

This summit ushers in the next great energy frontier. This is largely about energy because we are that great exporter. We’ve just become -- what’s going on in our country is incredible, and I hope you take advantage of it by using these resources. Oh, right, this was a conference about energy infrastructure. I was distracted by the references to U.S. capital creation and war making capabilities.

July 06, 2017

Remarks by President Trump to the People of Poland | July 6, 2017

Krasiński Square

Warsaw, Poland

We've come to your nation to deliver a very important message: America loves Poland, and America loves the Polish people. (Applause.) Thank you.

We are also pleased that former President Leck Walesa, so famous for leading the Solidarity Movement, has joined us today, also. Well done, recognizing a trade union organizer and human rights activist.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Such a great honor. This is a nation more than one thousand years old. Your borders were erased for more than a century and only restored just one century ago.

In 1920, in the Miracle of Vistula, Poland stopped the Soviet army bent on European conquest. (Applause.) Then, 19 years later in 1939, you were invaded yet again, this time by Nazi Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. That’s trouble. That’s tough. Poignant.

Under a double occupation the Polish people endured evils beyond description: the Katyn forest massacre, the occupations, the Holocaust, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the destruction of this beautiful capital city, and the deaths of nearly one in five Polish people. A vibrant Jewish population -- the largest in Europe -- was reduced to almost nothing after the Nazis systematically murdered millions of Poland’s Jewish citizens, along with countless others, during that brutal occupation. No doubt the Poles attending need this history lesson.

But just as our adversaries and enemies of the past learned here in Poland, we know that these forces, too, are doomed to fail if we want them to fail.

Our adversaries, however, are doomed because we will never forget who we are. And if we don’t forget who are, we just can't be beaten. Americans will never forget. The nations of Europe will never forget. We are the fastest and the greatest community. There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations. Of whom is this community comprised? Are you proposing the countries which do not constitute the "western" world will be beaten and fail? Does the possession of different customs and values make one an enemy or adversary merely by existing? See @realDonaldTrump tweet at bottom.

We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success.

He insulted Brande Roderick, a contestant on The Apprentice. "It must be a pretty picture," he said to her. "You dropping to your knees."

He fat-shamed former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.

he has called "Miss Piggy," "Miss Housekeeping," and an "eating machine."

"I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came ... to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year's Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!"

He called opposing counsel in a deposition “disgusting” for wanting to break to pump milk for her 3-month-old daughter.

“You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. No doubt that is why POTUS has been married 3 times. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.

And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. As exemplified by insuring every citizen has access to quality health care.

Americans know that a strong alliance of free, sovereign and independent nations is the best defense for our freedoms and for our interests. That is why my administration has demanded that all members of NATO finally meet their full and fair financial obligation.

As a result of this insistence, billions of dollars more have begun to pour into NATO. In fact, people are shocked. But billions and billions of dollars more are coming in from countries that, in my opinion, would not have been paying so quickly. POTUS has made this claim repeatedly with a lack of regard for the facts.

NATO was established in the aftermath of World War II, originally with 12 members and the intention of binding together Western Europe in a defense alliance with the United States and Canada to counter the Soviet Union and its satellite countries in Eastern Europe (known as the Warsaw Pact). After the Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact unraveled, NATO expanded to include many Eastern European nations and even former parts of the Soviet Union. There are now 28 member countries in NATO.

There are two types of funding for NATO: direct funding and indirect funding. Direct funding, for military-related operations, maintenance and headquarters activity, is based on gross national income — the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country — and adjusted regularly. With the largest economy in NATO, the United States pays the largest share — about 22 percent. Germany is second, with about 15 percent. A significant portion of the U.S. share is operating the Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) fleet operations, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The U.S. share of the actual military budget is negotiated each year, but largely based on the cost-sharing formula, and amounts to less than $500 million a year, according to Defense Department documents.

That’s a rounding error in a $600 billion defense budget.

But Trump is really talking about indirect funding. Since 2006, each NATO member has had a guideline of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense spending. At a 2014 summit, responding to Russian aggression in Ukraine, NATO members pledged to meet that guideline by 2024.

At the moment, only five of the 28 members exceed the guideline — with the United States leading the way at 3.6 percent. The other members that exceed the guideline are Greece, Estonia, Britain and Poland, but the perceived threat from Russia has prompted other nations to bolster their defense spending. In 2016, median spending by NATO members on defense was 1.21 percent of GDP, but it’s still eight years away from the deadline. The guideline is not legally binding.

Moreover, as defense experts Richard Sokolsy and Gordon Adams have noted, the 2 percent guideline is rather arbitrary. Greece met it, even though it has slashed defense spending, because its economy collapsed. “Measuring what the allies spend on defense as a share of their economies tells us nothing about the capabilities they are buying,” they wrote for the War on the Rocks website.

Yet Trump continues to misleadingly frame the failure to meet the guideline as money owed to the United States: “This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States. And many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years,” he said at NATO, as cameras recorded puzzled or skeptical expressions on the faces of other leaders.

But this is simply money that each country would spend on its own military — or on missions that do not include NATO, such as peacekeeping in Africa. Trump noted that if all NATO members met the 2 percent guideline, then another $119 billion would be spent on defense. But this would still leave the rest of NATO far behind the United States alone — $608 billion for the United States, $400 billion for the other 27 members. (Trump, in fact, proposes to boost U.S. military spending even more.)

“We have to remember that fair burden-sharing was something we addressed at our summit in 2014,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters after Trump’s speech. “And several NATO allies also expressed that we have to invest in defense not just to please the United States but we have to invest in European defense because it is in our own interest to do so.”

While Stoltenberg said Trump has been “very clear, blunt and plain” at the NATO meetings, he reminded reporters that NATO had already taken action before Trump arrived on the scene: “After years of decline in defense spending across Europe and Canada we turned the corner in 2015, we stopped the cuts, and in 2016 we had significant increase.”

Why does the United States spend so much more on its defense? The United States is a world power with global responsibilities, including in Asia. Iceland, which spends the smallest percent of its GDP on defense, does not even have a standing army, though it has a coast guard.

Experts say it’s impossible to figure out how much of U.S. military spending is devoted just to NATO but for decades, U.S. presidents have concluded that the U.S. commitment to the defense of NATO members was an essential part of overall U.S. security. U.S. bases in Germany, for instance, are frequently an important part of American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. (The United States spends about $7 billion a year on bases in Germany, South Korea and Japan, about half of which is paid back.)

That is why we applaud Poland for its decision to move forward this week on acquiring from the United States the battle-tested Patriot air and missile defense system -- the best anywhere in the world. (Applause.) That is also why we salute the Polish people for being one of the NATO countries that has actually achieved the benchmark for investment in our common defense. Good job on making the sale. However, Russia invading Poland is a far cry from Iraq firing missiles at Israel where the Patriot air and missile defense system was used in combat. Even then, and you can look this up, the results were less than stellar.

Donald J. Trump‏

Verified account

@realDonaldTrump