General politics thread

The President's helicopter - an  SH-3 whose normal job is submarine hunting - can't fly in light rain?

If true: I feel like we need to spend some money and upgrade.

WHY ARE YOUR DEFENDING NAZIS???!!!

Is that news? Didn't Starman post that the night of the election.

I'm happy to believe that Trump decided not to go, even though Marine 1 was capable of delivering him.

What I'd like to see to confirm this is some reporting, as opposed to internet snark, especially when those engaging in the snark are reporters. 

I haven't seen any reporter traveling with the president in France call the decision into question, have you? 

So, let's look at the reporting. Firstly, the AP published a story without even understanding the decision making process. Great work guys:

In a story Nov. 10 about President Donald Trump canceling a planned visit to a cemetery for Americans killed in World War I, The Associated Press reported that the Secret Service determines when it's safe to fly Marine One, the president's helicopter. The story should have made clear that the Marine Corps and White House Military Office make the determination to ground the president's helicopter due to bad weather. The military office then presents the recommendation to the White House in collaboration with the Secret Service.

abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/trump-visit-us-cemetery-france-canceled-due-rain-59110258'

Then I see a Politico story that reports on the internet outrage over the decision, but doesn't do any reporting to clarify if the outrage is justified. 



Why don't we get a, "John Kerry claimed, without any evidence," headline on this one. 

And, surely, if Trump disrespected our war dead, our great reporters traveling with him, who have been developing sources for years, would be able to find someone who would talk to them about the decision. The military would not allow Trump to put the blame on them, would they? 

Now, if you want to say that the advance team failed, and needed to have a backup plan in case of inclement weather, that's an argument I'm much more willing to entertain. But, without such a plan, the Secret Service isn't going to just put him in an SUV and start driving. 

These are the times when I hesitate to challenge you, because you typically come roaring back with a fervor and a moral and ideological clarity that I can't always summon enough piss and vinegar to match, but this position, from a working journalist, is one I'm pretty uncomfortable with. 

To the extent you mean that every action or utterance of possible consequence that the President engages in should be checked and cross-checked, then I agree with you. But to the extent that you mean the Twitter snark machine gets a pass to start lobbing salvos without evidence, or that working journalists are granted some sort of exception from reporting out the story as the standards of the practice urge, I can't sign onto that.

And now I shall brace myself.

P.S. You are the anti-snark guy. But you often do things like shorten words to "fav," which is also ... snark. It's just snark in service of the "right" side. 

Probably right.


It's probably not that our petulant child silver-spooner President didn't want to go. It was probably that the richest country in the world has a Presidential helicopter which can't fly in the rain, and that the Secret Service never considered the possibility, "Hey what if we have to drive somewhere?" It's safe to assume Donald Trump was pacing around, raising holy hell that he was sitting in the hotel while our crappy Presidential protection unit struggled to figure out how to transport the President. It was almost certainly that.


I just hope we never have to enact our continuity of government plan when a light rain is falling, because our Secret Service clearly isn't prepared.