Trump's Townhall

Donald Trump appeared on CNN last night. Frank Bruni writes that, if people are worried about Joe Biden's mental acuity, they should consider Donald Trump's mental health:

Given all the attention to President Biden’s cognitive fitness for a second presidential term, it seems fair, even mandatory, to assess Donald Trump’s performance at a televised town hall in Manchester, N.H., on Wednesday night through the same lens:

How clear was his thinking? How sturdy his tether to reality? How appropriate his demeanor?

On a scale of 1 to Marjorie Taylor Greene, I’d give him an 11.

He was asked to respond to a Manhattan jury’s verdict the previous day that he had sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll.

He said that Carroll once had a cat named Vagina.

He was asked about his failure to deliver on his signature promise to voters in 2016 — that he’d build a wall stretching across the southwestern border of the United States.

“I did finish the wall,” he said, just a few beats before adding that Biden could have easily and quickly completed the stretch that still hasn’t been built if he’d cared to. The statements contradicted each other. They made no sense. They were his entire performance in a nutshell.

He was asked about his role in the Jan. 6 violence and whether he had regrets.

He reminisced mistily about addressing the rally before the riot — “It was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken to,” he boasted — and about how they were there “with love in their hearts.” The problem, he said, was “Crazy Nancy,” meaning Pelosi, whose fault all of this really was.

It's painfully clear. Trump is certifiable.

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Bats In His Belfry

Donald Trump has gone completely off the rails. Marc Thiessen writes:

After the Supreme Court two weeks ago unanimously rejected his request to stop a congressional committee from obtaining his tax returns, Trump blasted the court, using the language of the left-wing critics who question the legitimacy of his judicial appointments. “The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, & has become nothing more than a political body, with our Country paying the price. … Shame on them!” Trump declared on his Truth Social account — oblivious to the fact that these words could just as easily have been uttered by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) or outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). If anything, the court’s actions in this case — and the refusal of any Trump judges or justices to embrace his election denial conspiracy theories — prove precisely the opposite: He appointed jurists whose only loyalty is to our laws and our Constitution.

But apparently, loyalty to our laws and our Constitution is not the standard Trump seeks to uphold. Quite the opposite. In a rant without precedent in the annals of presidential rhetoric, Trump called this weekend for the “termination” of the Constitution. “A massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he thundered, adding, “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Trump has been telling Americans who he is for decades. But, if they can't get the message now, they are just monumentally stupid:

With his latest missive, Trump has embraced a form of secular sedevacantism — the erroneous belief held by some extreme traditionalist Catholics that there is currently no valid pope — arguing that Joe Biden is an illegitimate “anti-president” and that he, Trump, should either be reinstalled in office or a new election should be called. (How this would be accomplished, he does not say.) I’m sorry, but this is bat-guano crazy. It should be rejected and repudiated by every self-respecting conservative.

There have always been bats in Trump's belfry. Now they're the only things that live there.

Image: Rise Structures

Burning The House Down

Donald Trump has been mentally ill for a long time. But, Jennifer Rubin writes, he's getting loonier:

One does not need a medical degree or a therapist’s license to conclude that defeated former president Donald Trump’s nutty rant insisting that he be made president immediately or the 2020 election be rerun is the sign of an unhinged personality. Under pressure from the increasingly potent espionage investigation, he might be losing his grip. For a change, you don’t hear Republicans rushing forth to support his latest insane demand.

Trump’s posting of QAnon messages and implicit threats (in increasingly unintelligible syntax) suggests that he is losing the ability or desire to control his impulsive outbursts. This is the guy whom millions of Republicans want to nominate for president.

But Republicans have run out of defenses for Trump:

Since the redacted affidavit was released last week, the only two defenses from Republicans are no defenses at all. The first, courtesy of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), amounts to extortion: Prosecute Trump and there’ll be blood in the streets. The second is the laughable inquiry: Is that all? It’s not “all,” because the affidavit was heavily redacted. Moreover, the notion that we are talking “just” about documents ignores that most espionage cases are about documents (or equivalent material). That’s where the secrets are.

Trump defenders ignore at their own risk ample indications in the affidavit and news reports that documents were withheld even after a Trump lawyer represented that all confidential material had been returned, that the documents were in an unlocked storage area and that documents were moved. Any rational adult should be aware that evidence might show that Trump violated statutes the Justice Department cited in the affidavit (concerning obstruction and concealment/mutilation/removal). If so, aggravating crimes in addition to violation of the Espionage Act may be at issue.

Still, there is little to no sign that Republicans are ready to distance themselves from someone who risks an indictment in state and federal court and resorts regularly to incoherent rants that not even right-wing media dare repeat (lest they scare their viewers and listeners). Instead, they mutely march along, taking his advice on nominees and reiterating their support for another presidential run.

Their refusal to confront Trump’s current mental and legal status takes procrastination to a whole new level. Are they hoping that he’ll be indicted well in advance of 2024? Well, if past is prologue, then we shouldn’t discount the possibility that they would still nominate him. (Martyr! Deep state!). Hoping that another candidate comes along to point out that Trump is unelectable is peculiar given their own insistence, amplified by the right-wing media, that he’s the only one to lead the party.

If they are counting on the good sense of GOP primary voters to dump him, they might take a look at the MAGA loonies voters picked in primaries ahead of the midterms (e.g., Jan. 6 attendee and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano; MAGA provocateur and election-denier Kari Lake in Arizona).

Just how they expect to rid themselves of someone like Trump is unclear. They have delegitimized law enforcement, the media and the few sane Republicans (e.g., Rep. Liz Cheney). So, figuring out who exactly is supposed to now convince the base that Trump is, after all this, too toxic and deranged to be the nominee may be a challenge.

When insanity goes viral, the whole house burns down.

Image: Change.org

The Government Must Protect Her

 The testimony in Washington yesterday was explosive. Ruth Marcus writes:

An out-of-control president lunging for the wheel of his limousine to have it take him to the Capitol on Jan. 6, insisting that he did not care whether his armed supporters were subjected to security screening because “they’re not here to hurt me.” An ineffectual, overwhelmed White House chief of staff who understood that “things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6” — and did nothing to prevent it. An alarmed White House counsel who warned of the president’s inaction, “Something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood’s going to be on [his] f---ing hands.”

Never in American history has there been a portrayal of a president so unfit for office or so willing to betray his oath in a desperate bid to retain power. Never have so many people in such positions of immense authority stayed so shamefully silent for so long about the horrifying behavior they witnessed, on Jan. 6, 2021, and before.

And never has the nation witnessed the drama of a staffer so young, composed and resolute describe witnessing a constitutional disaster that she was unable to prevent — “a bad car accident that was about to happen, where you can’t stop it but you want to do something.”

Donald Trump suffers from more than a personality disorder. He's mentally ill. Yet there are so many who are willing to kiss his ring. Cassidy Hutchinson isn't one of them:

In an administration of enablers, in a crowd of sycophants unwilling even now to stand up to Donald Trump and speak publicly about his unhinged conduct, 25-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, a former assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, emerged from obscurity Tuesday, an unlikely — and lonely — truth-teller.

Hutchinson was the perfect witness to testify to the dereliction of duty she observed in the final days of the Trump White House, a Trump believer turned reluctant informant. Her GOP bona fides, including internships for House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), could not have been more impeccable, nor her demeanor — calm and sorrowful — more convincing. She was John Dean in a white blazer and diamond necklace, reciting a similarly damning cavalcade of facts.

She had literally cleaned up after the president — helping the White House valet scrub ketchup off the wall after he threw a plate in fury over his attorney general’s conclusion that voter fraud had not caused his election loss. But her breaking point arrived on Jan. 6 — and in the end, she was willing to abandon the code of complicit silence that still prevails among too many of her former colleagues.

The MAGA mob will threaten her safety. The government must protect her -- twenty-four hours a day.

Image: AP News

Trump's Screwballs

Another day of hearings in Washington and the story keeps getting darker. Dana Milbank writes:

Two weeks of hearings by the select committee have made clear that the insurrection itself was but a manifestation of a much larger plot by Trump to overturn the election by any means necessary: violence, martial law, seizing voting machines, fake electors, intimidating state officials, harassing election workers, drafting meritless lawsuits — and a contemplated putsch at the Justice Department.

It's quite clear now that Trump himself is certifiable. And he surrounded himself with people who were as crazy as he is:

Though many in the Trump administration admirably (if not quite heroically) resisted his illegality, Trump was aided in his depredations by a seemingly limitless supply of crackpots willing to do his bidding. There were Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani (‘nuff said), Sidney (“The Kracken”) Powell (Trump wanted her to be appointed as an independent counsel investigating election fraud) and John Eastman, who knew his cockamamie scheme to overturn the election was illegal.

The hearing yesterday focused on one of the crazies -- Jeff Clark -- whose house was raided yesterday by the FBI, while he stood outside in his pajamas. But there were all kinds of other crazies:

Screwballs enabled Trump in Congress, as well. There was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), whose chief of staff tried to deliver a slate of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence. And there was Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who championed Clark for the attorney general job. According to testimony released by the committee Thursday, Perry was among those seeking presidential pardons for their actions, along with Reps. Mo Brooks (Ala.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Louie Gohmert (R-Tex), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and possibly Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Trump apparently considered blanket pardons for lawmakers and staff involved in the insurrection. At one point, Trump, frustrated that DOJ officials weren’t backing up his lies, urged them: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

However, the loonie who directed it all was Trump:

At the center of it all was the crackpot-in-chief, whom Attorney General Bill Barr belatedly realized was “detached from reality.” He manipulated the government to back his election lies in ways that had been unimaginable. Donoghue testified Thursday about how Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows repeatedly insisted that DOJ investigate a YouTube-driven conspiracy theory claiming the CIA and MI6 worked with an Italian satellite company to erase Trump votes. Donoghue called it was “pure insanity,” “patently absurd” and “debunked.” Not satisfied with that answer, Trump’s White House secured the help of Pentagon official Kash Patel and acting defense secretary Christopher Miller, who reached out to an official in Italy to probe the bogus claim.

With so many screwballs running around, it's amazing the whole place didn't blow up. In truth, it almost did.

Image: Rolling Stone

Next Stop -- The Asylum

I told my wife earlier this week that, when the votes were all counted, Donald Trump's head would blow up. The votes have not all been counted. But, last night, Trump's head exploded. David Smith writes:

The US president on Thursday returned to the White House briefing room, scene of past triumphs such as that time he proposed bleach as a cure for coronavirus and that other time he condemned QAnon with the words “They like me”.

Trump offered a downright dangerous and dishonest take on this week’s election that current vote counting trends suggest he will lose. It was possibly an attempt to intimidate and deter TV networks from declaring a winner in the next few hours.

The lies kept coming:

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” he said with a straight face. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late – we’re looking at them very strongly, a lot of votes came in late.”

“Media polling was election interference, in the truest sense of that word by powerful special interests,” he said. “These really phony polls ... were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr Biden and diminish Republicans’ ability to raise funds. They were what’s called suppression polls.”

Senator Chris Murphy -- from Connecticut -- characterized the situation quite accurately:

“This is just extraordinary. It’s a lie every 5 second. Not small lies either. Just nuclear grade whoppers.”

But Trump wasn't finished:

The president went on to throw in some racism for good measure, targeting Philadelphia and Detroit, both African American majority cities in the battlegrounds Pennsylvania and Michigan respectively.

“They’re trying to rig an election, and we can’t let that happen,” he said. “Detroit and Philadelphia – known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country.”

The man who, during his property developing career, perfected the dark art of “truthful hyperbole” sounded a wholly unrealistic note. “We think we will win the election very easily."

Trump has always lived in his own universe. Clearly, it's a universe that needs special care -- in an asylum.

Image: cnbc.com

He's Insane

We're told that Donald Trump is beating the bushes trying to find out who "Anonymous" is. Tom Friedman writes that he, she or them are hiding in plain sight. In fact, Friedman writes, it may be "them:"

More and more, I wonder if the disgruntled senior Trump administration official who wrote the anonymous Op-Ed in The Times was actually representing a group — like a “Murder on the Orient Express” plotline where every senior Trump adviser was in on it. Why? Because the article so perfectly captured the devil’s bargain they’ve all struck with this president: Donald Trump is amoral, dishonest and disturbed, a man totally unfit to be president, but, as the anonymous author self-servingly wrote, “There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.”

But ,whether it's he, she or them, they are not heroes. While striking an heroic pose, Anonymous pledges fealty to most of Trump's agenda. And it's Trump's agenda that is the real problem:

What if Trump’s tax cuts, deregulation, scrapping of Obamacare without any alternative and military spending surge were actually ill-thought-through, short-term-focused initiatives that all ignored expert opinion — because they mostly emerged from off-the-cuff remarks at Trump pep rallies — and collectively amount to a sugar high that not only will be unsustainable but will leave our economy far more vulnerable in the long term?

When Trump simultaneously cuts corporate taxes and withdraws America from the Paris climate accord, tries to revive the coal industry by lowering pollution standards and weakens fuel economy standards for U.S.-made cars and trucks, he is vastly adding to the financial debts and carbon debts that will burden our children.

And he is doing this despite many economists warning that increasing the deficit when your economy is already growing nicely is really, really reckless — because you may need that money to stimulate your way out of the next recession.

In June, The Associated Press reported on the latest International Monetary Fund survey of the U.S. economy, which concluded that as a result of Trump’s “tax cuts and expected increases in defense and domestic programs, the federal budget deficit as a percentage of the total economy will exceed 4.5 percent of G.D.P. by next year — nearly double what it was just three years ago.” Such a “big boost … has not been seen in the United States since President Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s boosted spending on the Vietnam War at the same time it was adopting Johnson’s Great Society programs.”

Faced with so much debt, which the country will not be able to grow out of, The A.P. story continued, paraphrasing the I.M.F. report, the U.S. “may need to take politically painful steps,” such as cutting Social Security benefits and imposing higher taxes on consumers. (We’ll probably also have to limit spending on new roads, bridges and research.)

You might want to let your kids know that.

It's not about the kids. It's about ME. Trump has always been in it for himself -- always. Those who support him claim that selfishness is a virtue. It's obviously not.

The people who believe that are insane. And that's what Trump is -- insane.

Image: Issues Under Fire