slate - This is Who He Is
CNN's front page is just pure Trump normalization effort. The article below - and what TPM is doing - is how this SHOULD be done. These are extraordinary times and it will take extraordinary effort to defeat this monster.
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A morally empty man gave a morally empty speech to cap off a morally empty campaign.
By William Saletan
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/trump_s_inaugural_week_of_caring_about_nothing_but_himself.html
Kellyanne Conway promised Donald Trump’s inaugural address would be self-effacing. “He actually will convey today, I predict, that this is not about him,” she said Friday morning on Fox and Friends. “And that’s a very non-Trumpian thing,” she blurted, inadvertently telling the truth. Hours later, Trump read the whole speech from the teleprompter. Deprived of adlibs, he used the word “I” only three times.
Offstage, however, Trump couldn’t restrain himself. The night before the inauguration, he spoke at a dinner for Republican donors. “We have a speech that I wrote, and worked on with Stephen Miller,” he told his guests, referring to the aide who was assigned last month to write the speech. On Twitter, Trump posted a photo of himself with a pad and pen. “Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago,” the tweet said. In the photo, preposterously, Trump fixed a steely gaze on the camera while holding the pen as though writing.
A normal president doesn’t do this. He doesn’t assert authorship of speeches and fake a picture of himself writing them. At what ought to be the apex of his popularity and grace, Trump is still groping for praise, even for a speech that was supposed to be about other people.
Compare Trump to the last Republican president, George W. Bush. Like Trump, Bush came into office after losing the popular vote. Unlike Trump, Bush used his transition to reach out to Americans who hadn’t supported him. At a rally in Texas three days before his inauguration, Bush spoke of humility, diversity, bipartisanship, and the nobility of politics. “I’ve never been a cynic about public service,” he said. “My dad taught me in the way he lived that life is more than personal gain.”
Bush praised Democratic politicians by name. He called for “putting aside all the partisan bickering and name-calling and anger.” In Texas, he explained, “The respect among elected officials is an extension of the values and diversity of our state. When you talk about Texas today, you’re talking about people from so many different backgrounds, different cultures, and different languages. Any conflicts that once divided us now belong to history. We’re all Texans, and we’re all Americans.”
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= new reply since forum marked as read
MSNBC is giving them a run for their money though. 
I never thought I could. But now I do.
