Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Military Strong Man Edition (AKA Trump's Big CON: He is Really is a Moron)

UPDATE III:  It's not verified until The Donald calls it "FAKE NEWS!" and threatens the media.

Read the Washington Post, Trump attacks NBC News over report he wanted massive increase in nuclear arsenal.

UPDATE II:  The Donald loves to look pretty.

And nothing says pretty to his supporters than lots of new military equipment, especially nuclear weapons.

Read the Washington Post, Trump sees power as military strength — and nukes as the apex of that power, which notes:

"Trump came to the job from the private sector, from spending decades as the sole authority over his own company. He revealed his sense of what the job of president entailed when he said during the Republican convention last year that 'I alone can fix' the problems the country faces. He never had a distinct strategy for building consensus on Capitol Hill and has, instead, pushed the boundaries of unilateral executive orders to enact his will. The president isn’t a CEO, but there are ways in which the president can act like a CEO, and Trump has embraced those tools.

Nowhere is that power more immediate than in the president’s role as civilian commander of the armed forces. As president, Trump calls the shots for the nation’s soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. He can’t launch a war without congressional authority but, as recent presidents have shown, he has a lot of leeway to take military action without a formal declaration of war. This is the closest Trump will get to CEO power in the White House — and it’s a power for which he has an ingrained respect.

Trump never served himself, avoiding the Vietnam War draft by deferment while he was in college and later for bone spurs in his heels, a reason that has been met with scrutiny. He instead suggested that his time at the New York Military Academy — a boarding school north of New York City — offered him an equivalent experience. . .

[T]here’s no military more raw or more powerful than a nuclear weapon. The country’s reduced-but-still-significant nuclear weapons could obliterate any number of countries in a near-instant, including, as Trump threatened from the lectern at the United Nations, North Korea.

That’s a tangible expression of power, and it’s not subject to veto. Trump can launch a nuclear strike without any intervention, likely becoming a global pariah but, certainly, demonstrating the power of the United States and its president.

So we get to Trump in that meeting asking why the arsenal can’t be substantially larger instead of being winnowed into nothing. Reducing the number of nuclear weapons is, when extrapolated outward, a reduction of the central source of power Trump seems to understand.

This was the meeting after which Tillerson reportedly referred to Trump as a 'f—-ing moron.'"

My Mr. President, what big crowds you have!

P.S. This would be funny if it wasn't so scary!!

UPDATE:  Silly pundits, a showman doesn't need a plan, he has the show.

Read the Washington Post, The real problem with Trump’s foreign policy plans? He may not have any., which notes "Trump’s slurs and insults may be distracting us from a more basic foreign policy problem: On some key issues, when it comes to actual policy plans, the cupboard is bare."

Remember: it's all 'bout the show, 'bout the show, stupid people!!! (Repeat til you get it).

The Donald is a showman and he knows that there is nothing like some military arms for a good show.

Remember how badly he wanted the military to parade down Pennsylvania Avenue for his inauguration.

Of course, after the parade is over, nothing like spending money on the military and nuclear arms to show your supporters you are a 'Great Military Leader'.

Read the NBC News, Trump Wanted Tenfold Increase in Nuclear Arsenal, Surprising Military, which reports:

"President Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.

Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve.

According to the officials present, Trump’s advisers, among them the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, were surprised. Officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to a nuclear buildup and how the current military posture is stronger than it was at the height of the build-up. In interviews, they told NBC News that no such expansion is planned.

The July 20 meeting was described as a lengthy and sometimes tense review of worldwide U.S. forces and operations. It was soon after the meeting broke up that officials who remained behind heard Tillerson say that Trump is a 'moron.' . .

[Trump's] comments raised questions about his familiarity with the nuclear posture and other issues, officials said.

Two officials present said that at multiple points in the discussion, the president expressed a desire not just for more nuclear weapons, but for additional U.S. troops and military equipment.

Any increase in America’s nuclear arsenal would not only break with decades of U.S. nuclear doctrine but also violate international disarmament treaties signed by every president since Ronald Reagan. Nonproliferation experts warned that such a move could set off a global arms race.

'If he were to increase the numbers, the Russians would match him, and the Chinese' would ramp up their nuclear ambitions, Joe Cirincione, a nuclear expert and MSNBC contributor, said, referring to the president.

'There hasn’t been a military mission that’s required a nuclear weapon in 71 years,' Cirincione said.

Details of the July 20 meeting, which have not been previously reported, shed additional light on tensions among the commander-in-chief, members of his Cabinet and the uniformed leadership of the Pentagon stemming from vastly different world views, experiences and knowledge bases. . .

That meeting followed one held a day earlier in the White House Situation Room focused on Afghanistan in which the president stunned some of his national security team. At that July 19 meeting, according to senior administration officials, Trump asked military leaders to fire the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and compared their advice to that of a New York restaurant consultant whose poor judgment cost a business valuable time and money.

Two people familiar with the discussion said the Situation Room meeting, in which the president’s advisers anticipated he would sign off on a new Afghanistan strategy, was so unproductive that the advisers decided to continue the discussion at the Pentagon the next day in a smaller setting where the president could perhaps be more focused. 'It wasn’t just the number of people. It was the idea of focus,' according to one person familiar with the discussion. The thinking was: 'Maybe we need to slow down a little and explain the whole world' from a big-picture perspective, this person said.

The Pentagon meeting was also attended by Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford, Vice Chairman Gen. Paul Selva, Undersecretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, Stephen Bannon, who served then as Trump’s chief strategist, Jared Kushner who is a senior adviser to the president and Reince Preibus who was then chief of staff. Sean Spicer who was then White House spokesman, and Keith Schiller who was Director of Oval Office Operations at the time, also accompanied Trump to the Pentagon that day. . .

It’s unclear which portion of the Pentagon briefing prompted Tillerson to call the president a 'moron' after the meeting broke up and some advisers were gathered around. Officials who attended the two-hour session said it included a number of tense exchanges.

At one point, Trump responded to a presentation on the U.S. military presence in South Korea by asking why South Koreans aren’t more appreciative and welcoming of American defense aid. The comment prompted intervention from a senior military official in the room to explain the overall relationship and why such help is ultimately beneficial to U.S. national security interests. . .

The president left the Pentagon on July 20, telling reporters the meeting was 'absolutely great.'" [Emphasis added.]

Note all the people needed to 'babysit' the president.

And now we know why The Donald was called a moron.