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Quote of the Day: The United States Has a President Who Doesn’t Read and That Should Scare the Hell Out of the Rest of Us

trump reading

By Steve Benen, a reporter for MSNBC

This [lack of reading and attention] is not, evidently, limited to the hapless FBI chief [Patel]. Politico reported:

Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January, he has sat for just 12 presentations from intelligence officials of the President’s Daily Brief. That’s a significant drop compared with Trump’s first term in office, according to a POLITICO analysis of his public schedule. In much of his first term, Trump met with intel officials twice a week for the briefing, which provides the intelligence community’s summary of the most pressing national security challenges facing the nation.

Politico’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that the low number of briefings “is troubling to many in and around the intelligence community, who were already concerned about Trump’s act-first-evaluate-after approach to governing.”

It’s worth emphasizing that different presidents have approached these briefings in different ways. George W. Bush received intelligence briefings on a nearly daily basis. Barack Obama received briefings roughly every other day, but he was known to be a voracious reader of the written President’s Daily Brief (often referred to as the PDB). Joe Biden received an in-person briefing once or twice a week, but like Obama, he was also known to read the PDB briefing book.

Trump, meanwhile, reportedly doesn’t read the PDB, and if the Politico report is accurate, he’s receiving in-person briefings roughly once every 10 days.

Broadly speaking, a couple of angles are worth keeping in mind in response to reporting like this. The first is probably obvious: Trump is dealing with serious national security challenges — war in Ukraine, a crisis in the Middle East, China expanding its global influence, domestic security threats, et al. — and the United States is being led by an incurious former television personality who desperately needs — but apparently isn’t getting — valuable information that would lead to better decision-making.

Less obvious, however, is the pattern: The problem isn’t just that Trump is avoiding intelligence he needs; the problem is made worse by the fact that Trump has always avoided intelligence he needs.

During his transition process in 2016, for example, Trump skipped nearly all of his intelligence briefings. Asked why, the Republican told Fox News in December 2016, “Well, I get it when I need it. … I don’t have to be told — you know, I’m, like, a smart person.”

As his inauguration drew closer, Trump acknowledged that he likes very short intelligence briefings. “I like bullets, or I like as little as possible,” he explained in January 2017. Around the same time, he added, “I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page.”

Things did not improve once he was in power. In early 2017, intelligence professionals went to great lengths to try to accommodate the president’s toddler-like attention span, preparing reports “with lots of graphics and maps.” National Security Council officials eventually learned that Trump was likely to stop reading important materials unless he saw his own name, so they included his name in “as many paragraphs” as possible.

In August 2017, The Washington Post had a piece on then-White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, who struggled to “hold the attention of the president” during briefings on Afghanistan. The article noted, “[E]ven a single page of bullet points on the country seemed to tax the president’s attention span on the subject.”

A Trump confidant said at the time, “I call the president the two-minute man. The president has patience for a half-page.”

In February 2018, the Post reported that Trump “rarely, if ever“ read the PDB prepared for him. Months later, the Post had a separate report noting that the CIA and other agencies devoted enormous “time, energy and resources” to ensuring that Trump received key intelligence, but “his seeming imperviousness to such material often renders ‘all of that a waste.’”

In early 2020, the Post reported that Trump missed the early alarms on the Covid threat, in part because he “routinely skips reading the PDB” and had “little patience” for oral summaries of the intelligence. Exactly five years ago next week, The New York Times had a related report:

The president veers off on tangents and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information. He is unashamed to interrupt intelligence officers and riff based on tips or gossip. … Mr. Trump rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview, the officials said. Briefing him has been so great a challenge compared with his predecessors that the intelligence agencies have hired outside consultants to study how better to present information to him.

It was an extraordinary revelation to consider: A sitting American president, in a time of multiple and dangerous crises, was so resistant to learning about security threats that his own country’s intelligence officials have sought outside help to figure out how to get him to listen and focus.

Or, put another way, Trump’s indifference to intelligence is a problem, but it’s not a new problem.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Trump Dump: Donald Trump Says Everyone is Lying About the Economy Except Him

donald trump dump truck

This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.

The best numbers we’ve ever had.

Just think of that. It’s not even possible.

Inflation’s down. All costs are down. Everything is down other than, as Tristan said, the thing that you carry the babies around in.

But that’s up 3 percent.

Energy is down. Gasoline is down.

Nobody has ever seen anything far ahead of schedule.

So people that were paying a lot for groceries, they’re paying a lot less. And interest rates are even down.

You know, we have a very stubborn Fed. But, I mean, the Fed should lower, but that’s okay. But interest rates are down.

Mortgage rates are down.

Been pretty amazing.

We’ve done, I think, I don’t think there’s ever been a better opening 100 days.

We have a lot of fake polls where they interview Democrats, not Republicans, but, meaning more Democrats.

— President Donald Trump, as reported by Crooks & Liars

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Did Jesus Talk to Himself?

atheist prayer

The Trinity poses interpretive problems for Evangelical Christians. Jesus is the second person of the Godhead — fully God, fully man. There was never a moment when Jesus walked upon the face of the earth that he was not God. This fact leads to contradictions and discrepancies when interpreting the gospel accounts recorded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

In John 10, we find Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. In verse 41-42, Jesus prayed;

Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.

In Luke 23, we have the crucifixion of Jesus. In verses 34,46, Jesus prays:

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. . . Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

In the gospel of John, chapter 17, Jesus prays:

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,  since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.  And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.  Now they know that everything you have given me is from you,  for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them.  And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.  I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.  Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.  As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word,  that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.  Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

If God is a triune being, what are we to make of these prayers? If God, the Father, and God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit, are one, this necessarily means that Jesus is praying to himself. Outside of providing an example for his followers, there’s no possible reason for Jesus to pray. He’s the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He knows what he is going to pray before he prays and he knows what the answer will be before he utters a word. His earthly birth, life, and death were predetermined before the world began.

Of course, a better answer might be to say that Jesus was not God; that he was a son of God, a prophet, or itinerant Jewish preacher. As a human being, Jesus didn’t know what would happen in the future, so he was genuinely praying to discern the will of the Father.

Perhaps the best answer is that Jesus was known as the preacher-who-talks-to-himself. Or maybe people wondered if he was mentally ill or the eccentric son of a carpenter. Regardless, most first century people didn’t buy the notion that he was God incarnate. Jesus spent three years preaching that the kingdom is at hand. For all his preaching and miracles, most people rejected him, including members of his family. For all that Jesus allegedly did, he made very little impact on people during his lifetime.

When you see someone on a street corner or on a bus talking to themselves, what do you think? Should we view Jesus differently? I suspect that if some of us saw Jesus today “praying,” we would try to help him, as we would a drug addict or a homeless person.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce, God is Going to “Get” You for Leading People Astray

youtube comment

Recently, I saw the above comment on a YouTube video. I have read similar comments countless times over the years; that I am leading people astray with my writing and videos and God is going to punish me in the afterlife for leading people, in Pied Piper-like fashion, to Hell.

According to this commenter, I need to understand that If I speak against the Bible and Jesus, I will not only lose my soul, I will also be eternally punished for leading people astray. This is yet another example of God meting out infinite punishment for finite behaviors. All I have ever done is tell my story and critique Evangelical Christianity. With all the things are going on in the world, you would think God would find better things to do than judge and punish people for things they say.

Not that I am worried. God is a myth, so I have no fear of being punished for my words and opinions. If you think otherwise, please share your evidence for the existence of God in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Did You Know Eating Catfish is a Sin?

close up of a person holding a catfish
Photo by juliane Monari on Pexels.com

In the book of Leviticus, we find a dietary code God expects people to obey. Many Christians wrongly think that the law of God found in the Old Testament (Old Covenant) is no longer binding. Calling themselves New Testament Christians or New Covenant believers, these followers of Jesus think the Old Covenant no longer applies to them. Of course, when convenient, Christians will appeal to Old Testament proof texts to justify certain beliefs or moral standards, but most often they ignore or attempt to explain away laws that are, according to Matthew 5, still valid and in force.

Matthew 5: 17-20 states:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.  Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the law or the prophets. Instead he came to fulfill the law. Jesus goes on to say that not one letter or pen stroke of a letter will pass from the law until ALL is accomplished. Has ALL been accomplished? No. As long as Heaven and earth stand, the law of God is still in force. Those who will one day be called great in the kingdom of Heaven keep the law of God and teach others to do the same.

With this in mind, let’s look at God’s dietary code for eating fish:

These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcasses in abomination. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you. (Leviticus 11:9-12)

Based on the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of the triune God, it is a sin to eat fish that don’t have fins or scales. This means that it is a sin to eat fried catfish at the local Cracker Barrel. Polly and I would be bummed out if we were still Christians. We love fried catfish, hushpuppies (or corn bread), and Carolina slaw.

So, I ask readers who claim they are Bible believers — an oxymoron if there ever was one — do you eat fish without scales? Do you eat catfish? Or any of the other prohibited foods? Do you not fear God chastising you for eating all-you-can-eat catfish at the local fish fry? The Bible says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. If you really fear God, I implore you to immediately stop eating catfish lest God choke you to death. 🙂

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Recent Changes to Site Completed

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Not the astute commenters on this site 🤣❤️

Yesterday, I switched this site’s service provider from Hostinger back to my previous provider, Flywheel. It typically takes 24-72 hours for a site to propagate worldwide. As of the writing of this post, a handful of DNS routers are unchanged. Until this site propagates worldwide, you may face intermittent error messages saying the site is inaccessible.

If you see any errors or hiccups, please let me know. You might need to flush your device’s DNS cache and/or restart your device.

Thank you for your support.

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Sacrilegious Humor: Comedian Josh Johnson Takes to Task Rich Evangelical Preachers Such as Kenneth Copeland

This is the latest installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.

Today’s video is a takedown of Evangelical preacher Kenneth Copeland by comedian Josh Johnson.

Video Link

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Trump Dump: Do We Really Need the Separation of Church and State?

donald trump dump truck

This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.

They say separation between church and state … I said, ‘All right, let’s forget about that for one time.

They said, really there’s separation. I don’t know. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m not sure, but whether there’s separation or not, you guys [Evangelical Christians] are in the White House where you should be, and you’re representing our country, and we’re bringing religion back to our country, and it’s a big deal.

— President Donald Trump, as reported by Politico

Recent Evangelical prayer meeting at the White House

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Trump Dump: Stephen “Skeletor” Miller Lies About Public Elementary Schools Turning Boys into Transgender Girls

donald trump dump truck

This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.

Another area of civil rights law that we talk about a lot, of course, is Title IX, sex-based discrimination.

And this administration ended the Biden administration’s policy and the Democrat Party’s policy of allowing men into women’s sports, men into women’s spaces.

We are using every single legal and financial tool we have at President Trump’s direction to make it clear that schools and universities are and will lose federal funds, as you’ve seen in Maine, if you allow men to invade women’s sports and women’s spaces.

And this applies to our whole K-12 system.

The Department of Justice is also coordinating with state and local law enforcement to fight child abuse in our school systems.

It is child abuse to change a child’s gender, particularly if you do not inform the parents.

In other words, if a five-year-old or a six-year-old goes to school, or a seven-year-old goes to school, and the teacher tries to turn the boy into a girl or the girl into a boy, that is child abuse.

And this administration is treating that as child abuse, and it is a gross violation of parental rights.

This also includes the administration’s message to our hospital systems that they cannot and will not be allowed to use taxpayer dollars to perform chemical castrations and sexual mutilations of children.

— Stephen Miller, as reported by Crooks & Liars

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Trump Dump: Howard Lutnick’s Delusional View of American Manufacturing

donald trump dump truck

This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.

It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great [factory] jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here. We let the auto plants go overseas.

These [manufacturing jobs] are really good paying jobs, they start at $70s, $80s, $90,000 [a year]. These are tradecraft. It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model, where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.

We are inventing everything in the world, but we’re letting everyone else build it. We invent the iPhone, which is awesome. Why do we let everyone else build it? Why can’t we build it here? The key is AI and automation have made that in reach. I understand why you need zillions of other people to work on it, but it’s time now, can automation build that plant here? Where we can employ, we don’t need millions of Americans to do it, we need hundreds of thousands of Americans to work in those factories, and I think we’re going to create 5 million great tradecraft jobs in America.

— Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, as reported by 404 Media.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.