Why is no-one commenting on JDT's mental capacity to be president? He is far more incompetent than Joe Biden who had excellent people behind him. We are in a very dangerous time!!
If you listen to interviews of him from the 80s and 90s, he was pretty obviously no genius, but he could complete a sentence. Now, he flat out confabulates - spews nonsense because he loses the thought. It is a major marker for dementia. All of this was visible during the campaign.Twice now we could have chosen to be lead by a smart and highly competent woman and twice the voters balked. Alas!
The Contrarian has been addressing that issue quite a bit recently, as have other indy news outlets like The Jim Acosta Show and the Meidas Touch Network. But I agree it deserves MUCH more widespread attention. Just don't expect to see it in the mainstream media whose owners have bent the knee to the administration in advance and are now under its thumb.
Do we know if international media is covering it like Britain or Germany? That's where it needs to come from - constantly - so that the US controlled media finally has to start covering it.
My friend in Australia who despises Trump, sends me editorials, podcasts, all kinds of media there - they just can't understand how America could have been played by a two-bit con.
Me too I have friends (and some relatives somewhat removed) in all three places. I love hearing their reactions. And I love the fact that for the most part, they sympathize with the American people and are rooting for our resistance movement! They are affected by what Trump & Co are doing too, but have far more choices than we do in restructuring their import/export relationships and markets.
It's gratifying to hear that people like your friends aren't blaming the majority of Americans who didn't vote for this horror show. I've been glad to see that Canada and Australia were able to look at what happened here and not make the same mistake by putting their right-wing factions in power. I wish them all the best in forming defense and trade alliances that bypass us for now. I hope someday we can rejoin our one-time allies, but the truth is we'll have to earn our way back after this fiasco.
Agree 💯 with this. If we ever find our way back to the side of the good guys, we will not be in a leadership position within the alliance. It will be other nations, like Canada, France, and Germany, who will be setting the agenda. We will have to eat that humble pie and show through good behavior to be a good partner and ally once again. Trust is easy to squander, hard to earn.
You are so right that we'll have to carefully earn our way back before we'll be trusted enough to re-enter those alliances- and our standing will never be the same anywhere in the world.
An American friend of mine who had lived in Australia for some time was visiting friends there just after Trump began his tariff countdown. Unfortunately he experienced some negative stuff from some people (the same kind of folks who do the same thing here). It was uncomfortable enough he started wearing his old Aussie football jersey to "blend in" a bit. But he said that eased up, and as the Aussies grew to understand that the nation that stood to be most hurt by the tariffs was us, they expressed compassion. Their country was already working out alternative trade agreements while our economy was starting to fray.
I had planned a trip to visit AU friends as well this fall (their spring), but have postponed it. I have a long history as an activist, and right now there is enough uncertainty about ICE and Trump's border policies that I'm leery of being blocked at re-entry. My plans had included the same kind of itinerary that got the Australian turned away. The reasoning on that was really weird- it's not that unusual to travel from AU to the US via southern Asia and Europe if one's destination is the east coast. (It's usually cheaper too.) I'm bummed. I'd hoped to see if I could find the children or grandkids of some cousins my mother used to write to.
Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Der Spiegel in Germany and The Guardian in the UK do, indeed, cover it. Even if Vance cannot imagine, we do have an independent press and no censorship in Europe.
The people who need to be roused by comments about the DJT mental deterioration don’t read. Low-information voting is how DJT got elected in the first place. In a sense, the Bulwark, Contrarian, and many excellent journalists on substack are singing the choir. Redhats will rise only when their personal world is turned inside out by Trump. As it will be…hopefully sooner rather than later,
I ran into a Rumper yesterday who was also waiting for his car to be inspected. I'd just gotten the news about the absurd flag day/Birthday parade - that it was what, 90 million? - and said something about how many starving children that could feed if he didn't cut them off.
This guy's answer? "Biden cut Social Security."
I fear the problem goes really deep. This guy HAD to notice the rising prices in the supermarkets, but he was still delusional. Maybe many of them are just that: delusional. Cultish. Limited. We just never had to deal with them and have our own lives so affected by them before... ?
We put too much time and energy into trying to pin folks into categories. The people who supported Trump did so for a wide variety of reasons, and one of them was that, like a lot of other people, they took what they had for granted. Some already have buyers remorse. More will. Some won't. Regardless, when they come around, welcome them without judgement. Please remember how very hard it is to take that kind of step.
My town's indivisible group made it clear from the beginning that anyone, regardless of political affiliation (or lack of) is welcome to our gatherings and meetings. And we have some of just about everyone, and they all agree on one thing: Trump is a danger to democracy and civil society. We work together with that as our core premise.
The deep magas live in a different reality than we do. Best thing to do is just leave them be. I see them as more frightened than anything else, especially as the world they expected starts eroding. If and when any of them decide they chose wrong, they'll be welcome too.
Are they constantly bringing up his mental capacity as they did so constantly about President Biden? If he had done any one of the countless things being done now, his own party would be calling to remove him. The Republicans are not doing their job in Congress. A few speak out, but most just support anything he wants. Unfortunately the mainstream media is giving in. Our democracy is fast disappearing. It is frightening
The message needs to go viral on social media! Like a meme of Rump saying “I don’t know” to everything from the constitution to dolls w/ crazy eyes to his favorite food (hamburger?). It’s obvious to us, but…..!!!!!
Sorry, my dog hit send before I finished my thought! trump’s feeble brain - stuck on the words “I don’t know,” is otherwise stuck on numbers. I’ve been aghast at some of his recent interviews (when I can stand to watch them), where he just makes up numbers of millions, billions, trillions in answer to almost every question. Either we were losing millions, billions, trillions under Biden or we’re forcing other countries to pay us back the millions, billions, trillions they were milking the US out of under Biden, or DOGE is finding millions, billions, trillions of dollars”waste, fraud, and abuse.” He just makes s#!t up as he goes, because he has no sense of reality.
Darn right there is an issue about Trump's mental incapacity. I am baffled by your assumption that " no-one [is] commenting on [DJT'S] mental capacity to be president". Holy cow, this has been a topic for years, with many observations and deep analyses, from folks all over substack, people in MSM as well as a number of magazines and other publications, tv, radio. This goes back to before Mary Trump's book about her uncle (she is a psychologist with the insights of a family member). Numerous calls for action via the 25th Amendment because of the clear sense of Trump' incapacity- and this was during T1.
Those arguments haven't gone away, and they have escalated as Trump's peculiarities have increased. Just not acted on, because Republican's have successfully stalled (bought, blackmailed, threatened) the members of their ranks who might have supported using Amendment 25, just as they refused to find Trump guilty after impeachment, in spite of the evidence. Now it is beyond reach because it has to be initiated by the Cabinet, who are all beholden to Trump and owned by the extreme right.
Our founders never envisioned (as who could have) that we would face this kind of constitutional crisis. But they did worry about people like Trump and the people around him who might seek power for power's sake, and that is why the government is structured the way it is- to prevent that kind of breakdown. The crisis isn't because the Constitution failed, flawed though it may be. The Constitution is still holding, with the Courts still holding it at the center of their decisions. It is still holding because all over the country, people are standing up in protest. It is still holding because there are still elected officials and representatives who take their oath of office seriously and refuse to give in.
And in all of this, Trump's mental incapacity is front and center. We are still holding, and he is still deteriorating, and the people around him are frantically trying to hold together their own fantasies while fractures are running throughout.
It looks pretty ugly right now, and it is. But the tide is turning. There are dozens of national organizations, thousands of local organizations, and millions of people who are resisting. Businesses, educational institutions, towns, cities, communities in both blue and purple places resisting. And again and again, Trump backing down. Eventually he'll break down
It's not going to be fast nor easy. But it is happening. And we can start building the foundation for the big repair job we've coming right now, in how we go about building that resistance and reclaiming the Constitution while we are at it. All of us, together.
I can only hope you're right, but from my careful reading of two mainstream newspapers, The Boston Globe (which regurgitates a lot of articles from the NYT) and the WaPo, I see no discussion of drumpf's mental decline, whereas I'm still treated to the most biased reporting about President Biden. Read the report of his interview with BBC in today's Globe, courtesy of the other corporate paper, NYT.
Anca, Jennifer Rubin left WaPo to found the Contrarian. You obviously missed the big takedown of NYT and WaPo over exactly the issues you raise, during which thousands of subscribers cancelled their subs. It is why so many of us are here: we bailed out of those two rags months ago (some of us years ago). Writers from those two newspapers supplied many of the contributors to The Contrarian, and many other Substacks and news outlets.
What makes you think that I missed the big takedown? I'm a paid subscriber to both the Contrarian and Paul Krugman. But do teach me more since you know more than I do.
Anca, it was not my intent to insult you- my apologies. I was going by what you wrote, and you spoke only about WaPo and NYT and seemed unaware of how rapidly they lost not only readership, but credibility.
Are you actually expecting real news from the WaPo? Apisteftos!!!! Both our Jen and the multiple Pulitzer Prize winning-cartoonist Ann Telnaes have long turned their backs on Bezos's butt-kissing of Rump, along with many thousands of others who cancelled their subscriptions (myself included),
If you want straight-up news and analysis, try The Guardian, from England, who - as their merch says - {is} OWNED BY NOBODY.
The fact is, mainstream newspapers no longer exist -- what's now called legacy media are so afraid of government retaliation that they are too timid to tell the truth. The Contrarian can lead you to all kinds of non-AI-generated videos and podcasts and crusaders.
You will not get it at the WaPo, or old standbys NBC, CBS, and ABC, which caved when they got sued for something naughty Stephanopoulos said.
BTW, after many years, I also gave up the NYT. No longer trust them, either.
I'm sure my hundred postcards were directly responsible for Muskrat losing in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, despite all the money he flung around. :-)
No, really. Annie, you are so right about the tide turning, and the fact that there is something each one of us can do beyond wringing out hands. I may be too old to march, but at least I can still hold a pen!!!! lol
Perhaps many people feel so overwhelmed by the blitzkreig that they feel helpless, and that their individual contribution - holding a sign, calling a Republican, writing a postcard - can't possibly make any difference in the gigantic mess out there.
Annie, I tend to agree with you. But the citizens need to continue the fight, and keep the pressure on. It is exhausting, to be sure, but our voices, our actions, will be the pin-prick that (hopefully) will move some of the Republicans to step up and obey their oath. A unified Democratic party would help as well - far too many are still wringing their hands and hoping it will just go away. We cannot count on 'mainstream' media any longer - they have no spine. The right-wing media yells loudly and frequently - why there is no counter on the major networks or print is beyond me. Thank goodness for Substack and a few others who are providing a place for facts to be stated. We're all in this together!
I absolutely agree with you. I have been an activist for years, and helped start an indivisible group in the town I live in. It's what I can do now, at my age, with some health issues, but it all adds up.
I get tired of the hand-wringers too, but recognize that a lot of that comes from feeling overwhelmed and uncertain. Best cure for that is to help them find a simple way to be active, often by connecting them with Chop Wood, Carry Water or one of the other action groups that focus on the small things that make a difference. There are some that are trolls trying to create a sense of hopelessness, and generally the way to deal with them when they keep it up is ignore them. They eventually get frustrated and reveal themselves.
The very best thing we can do to get through to Republicans is keep doing what we're doing: the stand-ins, the protests, the letters, and simply talking to people with respect. When we promote our protests, we make clear that *anyone* concerned about the policies of the current administration is welcome, no matter their political affiliation (or lack thereof). We emphasize respect and dignity that is the core of our approach, and we don't judge. People come when they are ready. It is working. We are, indeed, in this together.
My Congresspeople are all prog or dem, and outspoken, and very accessible, so they are role-models. I am in awe of the people, both dems and repubs, who are holding town halls to express their displeasure with absentee non-responsive magas reps- with empty chairs where the reps should have been!
I agree with you say about how long it's been evident that Trump is demented and that he clearly continues to lose cognitive abilities. However, I don't think that the people around him are "trying to hold it together", but that they have placed him as a figurehead to sign Executive Orders that they, the creators of Project 2025, place before him. Yes Trump is also creating his own form of chaos, but the puppet masters have no problem with that as they'll be the ones to benefit by the destruction of the government.
Yes, Renee. Trump is following the plan that Kevin Roberts and his Project 2025 co-creators laid out for him: attack the universities, especially the Ivies; attack NIH and Centers for Disease Control (e.g. the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases). Even before Trump was inaugurated, Trump and Musk opposed and sank bills that could have reauthorized funding for pediatric cancer research. House Speaker Mike Johnson later unveiled a stripped-down version that did not include pediatric cancer research funding. [NEWSWEEK "Pediatric Cancer Community 'Devastated' as Funds Removed from Spending Bill" Dec. 20, 2024. by Andrew Stanton]
It is important to note that JD Vance is a longtime proponent of Project 2025 and its creators. He has been keynote speaker at meetings of groups like Claremont Institute and Heritage Foundation. He has written blurbs praising books by far right adherents. He wrote the introduction to Kevin Roberts's "Dawn's Early Light." Vance may turn out to be worse than Trump.
BBC interviewed Joe Biden the other day in Wilmington on the upcoming 80th anniversary of V-E Day. There was nothing incompetent about him, or the interview. Yes, he does like to talk about his dad and Scranton excessively, but that's "reminiscence" not dementia. And yes, many excellent people stood behind him. More importantly, he listened to them. He should have announced his retirement far earlier, but I'm not going to participate in a glib recasting of history where people who didn't take enough interest in what his administration actually accomplished trying now to portray him as some kind of a less senile version of Trump. It's neither correct, nor fair.
Every time I go out, I need to make detours to get where I'm going and to get home again. I always see improvements being made to roads, bridges, and even side streets. More important, I see hundreds of men and women working, earning money to support themselves and their families, and to pay taxes. So, every time I go out, I say a prayer of thankfulness for President Biden and the Infrastructure bill.
The so-called mainstream media is guilty of largely ignoring this, leaving it to the Contrarian, the New Republic, and others to highlight his mental unfitness. He's a colossal ignoramus, incurious, driven by malignant narcissism and myriad grievances, who is declining day by day into senility. He is manifestly unfit to be POTUS.
And Biden had excellent relevant experience. Much of the observations characterizing his condition as dementia was uninformed, even biased against his age and lack of physical prowess and speech impediment. His character in contrast to Trump was stellar. Perhaps lousy media was also a consequence of Citizens United....
JD was never a reality-TV star. He's not married to a woman constantly groomed by the media as a "hot babe." He doesn't own a gold toilet. These are the hypnotic attributes that enthrall so many MAGAs, containing within them the promise that they, too, will have these "goods" if they stick with the pussy-grabbing "star." If he comes to power, he'll be more easily repelled because the cult will have been broken. Not that I expect relief from a regime under the person whose mere presence sped the death of a good man, Pope Francis.
JD can't play the con game that DJT has always played. JD also frequently uses complete sentences that spell out the disastrous policies that even MAGAts understand and don't like. And while both men have married immigrant women, JD's wife and kids are brown.... JD has learned how to bow and scrape but not how to lead.
Exactly! The press was constantly belittling Biden on everything, physically, mentally: “Ooh, he tripped! Omigod! Old fogey alert! Uh-oh! He stuttered. Must be losing it. Not fit to be prez!”
Why have they not done that with Trump? About half the time what he says is either beyond bizarre or doesn’t even make sense. The other half he’s voicing his inner Marie Antoinette who either is clueless of the reality for the rest of humanity or he just doesn’t give a rat’s ass. Thirty dolls? I’m sorry. I still find it beyond belief that anyone in their right mind voted for this sorry excuse for a human being.
To us Trump is a madman. To his MAGA followers he must make sense. They are just as fervent in their admiration as we are repulsed. For change to happen we have to reach THEM. We’re wasting too much time being smug that we’re right (left?). I don’t have the answer to how we do that. But our preaching to each other, while they’re across town singing hallelujah, obviously doesn’t cut it. We need to start brainstorming how we can reach the people who don’t agree with us. I know that I dig in deeper when someone tries to shame me or tells me how stupid I am. Especially if it’s too late for me to fix the situation. We need a new approach. Maybe someone who deals with the mental attractiveness of cults could weigh in.
I agree! Shame doesn’t change minds. Nor does ridicule or arrogance. I am fine with people speaking out about the regime. These are wealthy, powerful people who know what they’re doing and deliberately wreak havoc. But I cringe when people insult his supporters. That is unfair and short-sighted and just further polarizes us. Some may be attracted to his cruelty, but I believe many had reasons for supporting him that made sense to them. If we don’t find a way to understand that, they are lost to us.
In a similar vein, Reagan was already showing signs of mental decline during his first term. Biden was clearly slowing down. The difference? They surrounded themselves with competent people and actually listened to them. We are on a sinking ship.
I cannot comprehend for the life of me this obsession with Trump's traits - what good does it do? How can it help salvage democracy and the rule of law? This is for his psychiatrist - our task is to face the political role he plays, not his personality. Especially, since the problem is infinitely deeper than just Trump - any student of politics and history knows that. In sane times, fascists like Trump are at the margin of society - it takes a profound crisis, political, social, economical to have such people grasp power.
This is true, and it is true of all politicians and all of us - our personalities decide our actions, our policies. But understanding a personality is serious job, which requires profound knowledge of a person. What is being done here is opposite from that - we look at his actions, his speeches and then try to guess his personality. The point is that this is futile, one must face the political process, which you will notice is shared by people of completely different personalities. You have now people around him even more extreme - just think of Musk's nazi upbringing and his basically nazi views and stand. I grant you that in 2016 this maybe made sense, but by now the whole GOP has turned fascist, or at least its echelons. We are far beyond the point of the threat being just Trump - this naiveté creates a serious problem for defending democracy.
I have watched the GOP head toward fascism for well over 40 years. It has not "turned" fascist. It has courted the kind of racism, misogyny and ignorance that existed in the south for generations. The Dixiecrats left the Democratic party and took their Confederate flags and white hoods with them to the Republican party after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights bill. We wouldn't have Donald Trump if it wasn't for the Republican party. They thought that they could control him, but they are scared out of their minds by MAGA (Hitler saluting, KKK, ignorance embracing, Bible thumping mob). Trump is the GOP's Frankenstein monster
I would add only this to your excellent comment. For most time, in spite of its far right policies, the GOP has still been accepting the rule of law - Nixon eg had to step down because of breaking the law. That has changed, and this is why I use the word fascist now - they now openly reject the rule law. The insurrections-in-chief is the president, and the government now breaks the law on daily basis.
Either they are truly in Trump's camp or they are scared to death of MAGA. I say this because I live in Texas and my Senators are Cruz and Cornyn. I used to think that Cornyn was a fairly typical conservative Republican. The guy has gone totally MAGA-TRUMP. It kind of reminds me of "Alien" when the creature bursts from John Hurt's chest. Was the MAGA Alien living in Cornyn all of this time or is he just a sniveling, spineless, toady. Or, perhaps that's what Alien was really about? Perhaps one of these days we will witness a bunch of critters bursting from the chests of Republicans in Congress (I think that MGT is actually the alien wearing a dress and lipstick).
Since Trump rode down the escalator and those people started supporting him, all I could described them as were "zombies." Their minds were infected ... of course, by daily doses of Fox News.
I totally agree Liz V. We have been watching this develop from the days of Barry Goldwater--and even he rejected the nonsense he was seeing in the post-Newt Gingrich Ghastly Oligarchs Party. I would also say that most of the elected members of that party have never had a particular interest in governing. It's the power and the financial benefits they seek. And many of them probably revel in the cruelty as well. To claim that they're afraid of being primaried, or of receiving threats from the black-masked Black Shirts being utilized by this administration just shows how little they care about the real damage and violence they are abetting. If 1% of party members in elected positions have an ounce of ethical standards, I would be surprised. It sure isn't the case here in Missouri.
You are absolutely right, thanks for correcting/completing my point. Believing that his going away would change matters, has become the central problem in the fight for democracy and justice. It is interesting that we speak so little here about social, racial and economical justice - as if democracy was just the rule of law.
In psychology it is common to note that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. For trump that is easy to see. Who cares whether he cares or not? His Behavior consistently shows us that it’s going to be chaos.
I entirely agree with you. I cannot care less about drumpf's mental deterioration, EXCEPT in the context of him being manipulated by the Nazis around him and by foreign enemies like Putin. I also think that you're spot on about a major part of the U.S. having embraced a fascist ideology, whether they know the meaning of either "fascist" or "ideology."
Nice to hear this Anca. And you are right, the notion of fascism is very remote in the US - the fear of communism and decades long propaganda made Americans be aware of those dangers, but rather ignorant of what fascism is and how it can happen to all of us. Krugman has started to use the term, and I see that Democracy Now! (best news channel I could find on YouTube) also does it. I just wish people on this and similar platforms would grasp the depth of the problem - and how it is all correlated.
The political press has written about the president personally rather than the office of the president to the detriment of our democracy. This really began with President Kennedy and the Camelot narrative. I remember as a child standing in the checkout at the grocery store staring at all the magazine covers with stories about the glamorous Jackie. Jack Kennedy was also valorized like a movie idol.
It is my personal opinion the press has been trying to regain the days of Camelot ever since. Although they have not had a president and first lady that hold up to the superficial fairy tale of Camelot, the press has still fixated on the personal lives and a soap opera script of "what will the president do next?" rather than the governing aspects of the executive branch and its interplay with the other two branches. (Although it did use the other branches as foils in the soap opera).
Enter Trump, the reality show star. He saw clearly how the press reacted to soap opera-like news tidbits. He undertook to give that to him. CNN especially loved the spectacle and the sheer noise that Trump created. Now, Americans are suffering through the part of the story where the monster destroys the town.
However, I don't think Rubin is particularly focused on Trump's subjective state. I think her column today is pointing out one more way in which the press narrative about Trump has hurt real people. Trump is not better for the economy. Nor is he good for business despite what his business donors convinced themselves of.
That was fictional. The press is supposed to be based on facts. If they yearn for Camelot, go to the movies. I want less fiction from the press, please.
"Now, Americans are suffering through the part of the story where the monster destroys the town." Exactly! This is a nightmare. I often feel like I am in an alternate reality and I want to wake up from this insane nightmare.
Trump's 'traits' as you call them are what drives his decisions, such as they are. That makes covering his personality, his mental health, and his deteriorating cognitive state newsworthy. It's not hard to figure out.
While it's true that the MAGA cancer has metastasized into republican body politic, the root cause is Trump. The cult of personality which is MAGA is centered on him. None of the bit players around him have the legions of adoring red hats, something we've seen when other pols have tried to imitate him and failed at the ballot box.
It's not possible to separate Trump from the malignant narcissism that drives him, nor the dementia that's becoming more visible. We know, for example, that his latest '100% tariff on foreign-made movies' was the result of talking to fellow crackpot, actor Jon Voight, in a late-night phone call. If you try to pretend the 'traits' are separate from the man, you might as well just read legacy media where you'll get all the sane-washing you'd like.
The root is not Trump - how in the world in a sane democracy an individual could almost completely destroy its functioning? This way of looking at things is ignoring history, politics, economy, social problems, cultural and educational level etc etc. Look, Paul Krugman has been predicting the emergence of Trump like leader for years and years, just by studying social and economical conditions. The GOP started moving towards fascism, slowly but surely, already in 1980 by electing Reagan who started a war on facts, social programs, science, education, democracy in general. The US started falling behind in every measure of the quality of life and even Democrats would preach austerity when banks took over, which created possibly the greatest social differences ever - one person possesses half of the wealth of the entire country! I could go on and on, write about the devastating impact that the invasion of Iraq had on American economy. besides basically destroying Iraq, with almost 900000 victims. All of this conspired to create the conditions for fascism, just as it happened in Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler, Yugoslavia under ... True, the leaders are not the same, but it is frightening to see how much similarity emerges in similar political and social conditions. This must be understood and faced, one must go to the root of the problem - discussing Trump's traits, I repeat, will not serve us anything. If there was no cancer of fascism, he would be in prison - after all, he organised the insurrection, openly, in front of the whole world. The rule of law has broken down - people get detained and deported illegally.
We could talk all day about the republican party's rightward march going back as far as Goldwater. But no one, not even Ronald Reagan, held sway over the republican masses as Trump does. Was this a by-product of the republicans' embrace of right-wing evangelicalism? Likely a contributor. But republican voters have always been prone to look for daddy figures in their political leadership. I'm old enough to remember GHW Bush needing a PR campaign to convince republican voters he wasn't 'a wimp.' The whole god and John Wayne model has been brilliantly laid out in a book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez called 'Jesus and John Wayne' which details the rise of christian nationalism that's accompanied the rise authoritarianism introduced by Trump. And, yes, Trump IS the root of our current problem. He's the culmination of years of right-wing media capture of the American public, starting with Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk radio.
There have been many contributing factors which led us to where we are today, but the epicenter, the catalyst that's allowed the cancer to accelerate and metastasize has been and remains Trump. And that's why Trump's abhorrent character and alarming mental health issues are not only newsworthy but vital for understanding the chaos he's unleashed, starting in his 1st term, but why so many Americans remain blindly loyal and devoted to him even as he makes their lives unnecessarily harder - and doesn't give a damn about it.
The line of despicable republican characters that have led to Trump, from Goldwater to Nixon to Cheney, etc., set the table for someone like Trump. Useful to know, ultimately irrelevant in understanding what drives someone even those characters would have found too outlandish. At end of the day, the problem is Trump. Root and branch.
I have tried to respond to others that criticised me, and I believe that I have addressed most of the issues - but still, let me elaborate a bit more. I beg to disagree. If you were right, how could have some of us been able to predict the emergence of such cult like personality? How could Krugman predict, years ago, that this would happen? His arguments were simple - similar to any student's of history like me - but defended with deep knowledge of economy - unsustainable social differences generically lead to breakdowns of democracy and the emergence of fascist leaders. And mind you. most of the time, these leaders are insane like Trump, and their follies of course shape the dramas that follow. However, they are not the root, they are the syndrome of deep crisis. This is why you will find similarities across different cultures, backgrounds, levels of development - the GOP's and Trump's attack on the rule of law and democracy are not original at all, and they even sound like the fascists I unfortunately had to live with, as in my country of Yugoslavia that they managed to destroy. Even then, most people around me wanted to focus on leaders' personalities, refusing to see the conditions that led inevitably to them. I wrote this in another comment, but let me repeat it: Bernie Sanders and AOC have been arguing this for quite some time, that the social and political conditions in the US are deeply troubling. In 2003 the US economy was sevenfold of China's, but in 2011 they were equal (Iraq invasion). Such a downfall creates tremendous instability - and the US has now fallen behind developed countries in almost any aspect of the quality of life. Some 50 years ago when I landed there to learn my craft, the US was leading the world in my field of his energy physics - now my American colleagues do their experiments at CERN. Switzerland. I could speak of education too - my students, who in the past all wanted to pursue PhD in the States, now opt for Europe or Japan, Korea and China. Moreover, the US has one the highest incarceration rates in the world - it has more prisoners that China (not a great example of democracy) that has 4 times larger population. It still suffers from deep racial inequalities, to this day lacks free health care, and It has created oligarchs that not only possess almost all the wealth, but now even control information (Musk and Bezos). To me it is evident that the US finds itself in a profound social and economical crisis - I am amazed that we disagree so much on this. I am deeply worried that this is not understood enough - as I was scared in 2016 that Trump would be elected, but all my American colleagues and friends reassuring me how an insane fascist like that could never win there. I must be honest - it is this that scares me more than Trump and/or Musk and their cronies, and I am mortified of them.
Others here have addressed your contention that Trump’s mental state doesn’t matter (it does matter), so I will leave that for now. To take your other point, there was no “profound crisis” that led to Trump getting elected this second time. There was no 9-11 attack (as in 2001), no Great Recession (as in 2008), no pandemic (as in 2020). Trump ranted constantly on the campaign trail, ginning up imaginary crises (with the help of Fox News), with his lies about crime, trade and immigration. But crime was low, the economy was strong, and immigration was manageable. Trump created an alternate universe where crises abounded, and his low-information voters bought it. Now Trump is creating crises - crashing the economy, destroying alliances and running roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law. Trump is the profound crisis.
A country where a single individual possesses half of the wealth, and 1% possess 90 % of wealth is in deep crisis. Krugman has been arguing that such social differences are not sustainable and that they lead to instability per se. He predicted the emergence of fascism, as can any good student of history and economy. He has been arguing that such social differences were only seen before the WW2 which arguably helped the rise of nazism. Meanwhile, the US has been supporting, in all possible ways, the genocide in Gaza, which has become the major threat to American democracy. Even before Trump, supporting the right of Palestine to self determination could cause one of a job - think of the president of Harvard, a brilliant black woman who was forced out. Notice that Trump and his cronies are using precisely the weaponisation of anti semitism (themselves being anti semites) to persecute free speech. All of this is connected, and the crisis was and is there, independent of Trump. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been consistently arguing this for quite some time - I speak of mainstream senior politicians, not radical crackpots. I for one believe deeply that they have been and are right.
Btw, I have never said that his mental state does not matter - only that we should not dwell so much on it. We must fight the conditions that led us here, the economical, racial and social injustice that plagues the US. We must fight the GOP fascist movement, and their frontal attack on all aspects of democracy. Focusing mostly on Trump amounts to losing a more complete vision.
Of course it does - as it does for all of us. But we are not studying his mental state since we cannot do it - all we see are his actions and hear his words. And it does us no good to dwell on them, we just go in circles talking about them. There is even something morbid in spending so much time on him - and the only reason one does it is the media obsession with him. The reason the media does it is their superficiality, lack of professionalism, lack of education, of knowledge of history, of politics, of economics. Serious people focus on issues that matter, the very issues that produce Trumps of this world.
A good description of a man that is unqualified to manage “ a two car funeral”. He’s has executed the executive branch.
I still can’t help but think this is Russia Russia Russia behind all this. When you think of it , what could be more effective of bringing down a countries economy than imposing sanctions on trade and causing a breakup of former track g partners and allies. It’s a Dual purpose wrecking ball , a clean vehicle to destroy American economic and military prowess simultaneously . It’s someone thinking with diabolical intent. And it’s not trump. Let’s see who would gain by his failure. Let me think.
Yes. I know but we needn’t know who we are actually starting with. It’s a cloak and dagger mystery so far. Why the congress is too scared to do anything. Donbas like Russia. When trump had crazy wreck ball ideas, sounds like Russia. When he meets behind closed doors with Russian ambassadors and excludes everyone, it sounds like Russia. When the press is too scared to print , it sounds like Russia.
When it sounds like Russia it is Russia. But it would be great to track who is the worm in the Whitehouse. It might be melania , Vance. Miller. All very likely.
what wife would put up with trumps infidelity. We know Russia have trump had four years to work out the details. It’s obvious who is behind all this but how expose it. That’s the question. There are plenty of turncoats in the system now.
Think about this , Germans captured a Russian agent. The agent has Pete Hegseth personal number in the agents phone. Abd that didn’t bother people? Man this is so bloody obvious.
Senator Linda murkoski says she’s being bullied by agents and threatened. Sounds like Russia. We can go on. Trumps an agent!
Imagine if instead of providing care and curbing a dementia patient's wildly swinging impulses, that patient was the president, surrounded by yes-men and women who cavalierly pretended the chaos created by the patient's changing whims wasn't creating havoc in the American economy and any suggestion otherwise was nothing but a political hit or in their parlance, 'fake news.'
But here we are. Donald Trump has never been a smart man. His comprehension of economics, world and US history have always been minimal, and his concern for anyone not named Trump nonexistent. During his first administration he at least got some pushback from qualified people around him. Not so, this time. His cabinet meetings are worthy of North Korea, as is his press secretary. Our now-former allies were quick to realize that this country, under Trump, is no longer a reliable partner and they're forming economic and defense alliances that exclude us. The US public doesn't trust this administration either, as they watch their 401k's tank, prices on consumer goods and interest rates rise.
I've said for a while now that since Trump took office he's done nothing but troll the people who voted for him. He never cared about grocery prices or the well-being of average Americans. And now he doesn't care if they finally see that. His cabinet is a billionaire boys club, he's letting a billionaire nazi take a chainsaw to the federal workforce, veterans' benefits, and entitlement programs - all while accessing and exporting massive amounts of our private data from federal databases [a scandal that deserves A LOT more attention than it's getting].
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. If Trump is acting like he doesn't care about how his whims have destroyed the economy, it's because he doesn't. After all, it doesn't affect him - and that's HIS bottom line.
Trump is best described as an aging, ignorant, corrupt, mean spirited, sociopathic narcissist. And no matter how he was elected, it feels wrong to use the term President. I cannot use a term associated with Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and Eisenhower. Trump is Occupant of the White House, in my reference.
As a therapist, I can no longer listen to, or look at this man. He is consumed by his rage stemming from his pain, which he has never processed. His inner child died many years ago.
I am grateful for your direct quotes. This is where I begin to rally see the man. When he explained the tariff debacle with China, he says “they” can have 3 dolls, “they” can have 5 pencils, who are the “they?” “They” can only be children, maybe female children.
He sees his sons as narcissistic extensions of himself. His daughter is only an object. He has no interest in his grandchildren.
Trump has no interest in future generations, not even his own progeny.
Trump could easily push the nuclear button if he were told he was dying. Trump cannot imagine a world without him as Emperor of the planet Earth.
My husband predicted Trump’s scattered brain would collapse long before now, but on it goes. Who doesn’t have a favorite theory of the disease that plagues him? At this point, the problem lies around him in those who tolerate, encourage, cover up, excuse, enable, take advantage and profit from his scattered brain. We have a remedy for scattered brains in our constitution, don’t we? But no one talks of it, like it isn’t there. Trump is horrible and unfit to be president. Too bad a judge can’t find him unconstitutional.
My favorite theory of his disease comes from and old and dear friend (now dead) who was a psychiatrist. When T was running for his first term, he said "Trump is a malignant narcissist." I knew what a narcissist was but had never heard of a malignant one. I Googled it (of course...). A perfect diagnosis.
My husband’s theory is Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which he bases on Trump’s rambling speech patterns. Also affects temperament and gait/balance. People will wear lifts in their shoes to prevent falling backward. Probably different than most favorite theories.
I totally agree that he is enabled by the enablers. History shows again and again and again that no one person, no dictator, no self professed messiah, could make even a dent without the followers. I think that is the tragedy: that enough enablers voted for him and enough enablers are currently in government.
Like so many tyrants of the past the tool that rattle brain Trump brings to bear is his mouth connected to a mind filled with malus, grievance, and greed. Never one to pick up a hammer, help others in need, or support the common good, life for this pathetic individual is a zero sum game. As we watch this tired human waste of a person continue his deterioration, the king he becomes is Henry VIII at the end of his blighted rein of paranoia, tyranny, and chaos. I hold out hope that our protests, blogs, and refusal to knuckle under (unlike the oligarchs, tech bros, businesses, and high status law firms) will help carry us successfully through the mid terms. There are ‘rights’ like unlimited spending by corporations and the rich in politics as well as the claim the President has basically unlimited power that must be eliminated.
BTW: Should we not be paying attention to the possibility of yet another heinous apparition appearing on the horizon: JD Vance loosed upon us? What should we do about that?
The ONLY "advantage" to a President Vance would be that no one - NO ONE - likes him. He doesn't have the cult following of El Presidente; it would fairly easy to sideline him.
Impeach him before we all suffer. He’s an incompetent narcissist, thinking himself brilliant. He lurched from position to position, creating chaos. He knows nothing about history or economics or leadership,
Think about it. His previous businesses ALL failed. He lies consistently.
We need a stable, informed president to guide the country with the problems here and around the world. This GOP will ruin all our progress if they and we don’t stand against this proud no nothing character who poorly plays at being president -for his own gratificación.
Increasingly, I am frustrated that the still existing mass media outlets are not focusing upon first, the incompetence of the MAGA administration, second, its outright bribery and self-enrichment by and of government officials ,and third, the ongoing coup of MAGA Republicans all the way to the corrupt bias of six SCOTUS justices. These three important issues are not continually examined and focused up everyday except by isolated essayists on SubStack and other more obscure online outposts.
Why is no-one commenting on JDT's mental capacity to be president? He is far more incompetent than Joe Biden who had excellent people behind him. We are in a very dangerous time!!
If you listen to interviews of him from the 80s and 90s, he was pretty obviously no genius, but he could complete a sentence. Now, he flat out confabulates - spews nonsense because he loses the thought. It is a major marker for dementia. All of this was visible during the campaign.Twice now we could have chosen to be lead by a smart and highly competent woman and twice the voters balked. Alas!
As Maureen Dowd wrote a few months ago in one of her columns:
"Trump is like a blender going at full speed with the top off, goop splattering everywhere."
Or like ketchup hitting a wall ;-)
I'd say more like shit hitting the wall. :-}
That too CM!
I'm not a Dowd fan, but that was a great analogy.
I have been saying this for years. Glad someone else noticed.
I'd wager they weren't hot enough. Clearly he has a penchant for shapely blondes (ie Spokesperson, Attorney General, porn star)!
The Contrarian has been addressing that issue quite a bit recently, as have other indy news outlets like The Jim Acosta Show and the Meidas Touch Network. But I agree it deserves MUCH more widespread attention. Just don't expect to see it in the mainstream media whose owners have bent the knee to the administration in advance and are now under its thumb.
Do we know if international media is covering it like Britain or Germany? That's where it needs to come from - constantly - so that the US controlled media finally has to start covering it.
I've read coverage from Canada, GB, and Australia where pols have called Trump everything from insane to barking mad.
My friend in Australia who despises Trump, sends me editorials, podcasts, all kinds of media there - they just can't understand how America could have been played by a two-bit con.
Oooo! Share them with the rest of us if you get a chance, Phyllis! I'm sure people around here would appreciate it.
Enjoy my friends -
https://youtu.be/46iiT6miWNY?si=PUMS2Yh5bnQgzmZP
Thank you, Jane.
Me too I have friends (and some relatives somewhat removed) in all three places. I love hearing their reactions. And I love the fact that for the most part, they sympathize with the American people and are rooting for our resistance movement! They are affected by what Trump & Co are doing too, but have far more choices than we do in restructuring their import/export relationships and markets.
It's gratifying to hear that people like your friends aren't blaming the majority of Americans who didn't vote for this horror show. I've been glad to see that Canada and Australia were able to look at what happened here and not make the same mistake by putting their right-wing factions in power. I wish them all the best in forming defense and trade alliances that bypass us for now. I hope someday we can rejoin our one-time allies, but the truth is we'll have to earn our way back after this fiasco.
Agree 💯 with this. If we ever find our way back to the side of the good guys, we will not be in a leadership position within the alliance. It will be other nations, like Canada, France, and Germany, who will be setting the agenda. We will have to eat that humble pie and show through good behavior to be a good partner and ally once again. Trust is easy to squander, hard to earn.
You are so right that we'll have to carefully earn our way back before we'll be trusted enough to re-enter those alliances- and our standing will never be the same anywhere in the world.
An American friend of mine who had lived in Australia for some time was visiting friends there just after Trump began his tariff countdown. Unfortunately he experienced some negative stuff from some people (the same kind of folks who do the same thing here). It was uncomfortable enough he started wearing his old Aussie football jersey to "blend in" a bit. But he said that eased up, and as the Aussies grew to understand that the nation that stood to be most hurt by the tariffs was us, they expressed compassion. Their country was already working out alternative trade agreements while our economy was starting to fray.
I had planned a trip to visit AU friends as well this fall (their spring), but have postponed it. I have a long history as an activist, and right now there is enough uncertainty about ICE and Trump's border policies that I'm leery of being blocked at re-entry. My plans had included the same kind of itinerary that got the Australian turned away. The reasoning on that was really weird- it's not that unusual to travel from AU to the US via southern Asia and Europe if one's destination is the east coast. (It's usually cheaper too.) I'm bummed. I'd hoped to see if I could find the children or grandkids of some cousins my mother used to write to.
Yes, the international media is covering him very well. They don't hold back, either.
TY Robot.
Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Der Spiegel in Germany and The Guardian in the UK do, indeed, cover it. Even if Vance cannot imagine, we do have an independent press and no censorship in Europe.
What a surprise it would be to hear the big news outlets, CNN, NBC etc. actually use the word dementia with Donnie2Dolls.
Or even 'cognitive decline' as they so often used against Biden.
An elderly sociopath with unfettered power has a ring to it.
DJT? And who do you mean by "no one?" It's all over Substack, the Contrarian, the Bulwark, LIncoln Project.
The people who need to be roused by comments about the DJT mental deterioration don’t read. Low-information voting is how DJT got elected in the first place. In a sense, the Bulwark, Contrarian, and many excellent journalists on substack are singing the choir. Redhats will rise only when their personal world is turned inside out by Trump. As it will be…hopefully sooner rather than later,
We hope. I’m not sure even if he ruins their lives they’ll turn away from him.
They (and we) may well find out.
I ran into a Rumper yesterday who was also waiting for his car to be inspected. I'd just gotten the news about the absurd flag day/Birthday parade - that it was what, 90 million? - and said something about how many starving children that could feed if he didn't cut them off.
This guy's answer? "Biden cut Social Security."
I fear the problem goes really deep. This guy HAD to notice the rising prices in the supermarkets, but he was still delusional. Maybe many of them are just that: delusional. Cultish. Limited. We just never had to deal with them and have our own lives so affected by them before... ?
We put too much time and energy into trying to pin folks into categories. The people who supported Trump did so for a wide variety of reasons, and one of them was that, like a lot of other people, they took what they had for granted. Some already have buyers remorse. More will. Some won't. Regardless, when they come around, welcome them without judgement. Please remember how very hard it is to take that kind of step.
My town's indivisible group made it clear from the beginning that anyone, regardless of political affiliation (or lack of) is welcome to our gatherings and meetings. And we have some of just about everyone, and they all agree on one thing: Trump is a danger to democracy and civil society. We work together with that as our core premise.
The deep magas live in a different reality than we do. Best thing to do is just leave them be. I see them as more frightened than anything else, especially as the world they expected starts eroding. If and when any of them decide they chose wrong, they'll be welcome too.
Are they constantly bringing up his mental capacity as they did so constantly about President Biden? If he had done any one of the countless things being done now, his own party would be calling to remove him. The Republicans are not doing their job in Congress. A few speak out, but most just support anything he wants. Unfortunately the mainstream media is giving in. Our democracy is fast disappearing. It is frightening
.
The GOP is basically a Trump personality cult at this point.
The message needs to go viral on social media! Like a meme of Rump saying “I don’t know” to everything from the constitution to dolls w/ crazy eyes to his favorite food (hamburger?). It’s obvious to us, but…..!!!!!
...and late night comedy and The Guardian and The Atlantic and The New Yorker -- and even in some of the regularly rightwing media recently....
So true. The Biden Administration was a very qualified and competent team executing sensible policies. The Trump circus is an absolute schemozzle.
Literally night and day. Biden''s administration was good to excellent governance--Trump 2.0 is pure chaos.
Sorry, my dog hit send before I finished my thought! trump’s feeble brain - stuck on the words “I don’t know,” is otherwise stuck on numbers. I’ve been aghast at some of his recent interviews (when I can stand to watch them), where he just makes up numbers of millions, billions, trillions in answer to almost every question. Either we were losing millions, billions, trillions under Biden or we’re forcing other countries to pay us back the millions, billions, trillions they were milking the US out of under Biden, or DOGE is finding millions, billions, trillions of dollars”waste, fraud, and abuse.” He just makes s#!t up as he goes, because he has no sense of reality.
I can't watch him anymore. I just read summaries and quotes, mostly here and on the international media.
Darn right there is an issue about Trump's mental incapacity. I am baffled by your assumption that " no-one [is] commenting on [DJT'S] mental capacity to be president". Holy cow, this has been a topic for years, with many observations and deep analyses, from folks all over substack, people in MSM as well as a number of magazines and other publications, tv, radio. This goes back to before Mary Trump's book about her uncle (she is a psychologist with the insights of a family member). Numerous calls for action via the 25th Amendment because of the clear sense of Trump' incapacity- and this was during T1.
Those arguments haven't gone away, and they have escalated as Trump's peculiarities have increased. Just not acted on, because Republican's have successfully stalled (bought, blackmailed, threatened) the members of their ranks who might have supported using Amendment 25, just as they refused to find Trump guilty after impeachment, in spite of the evidence. Now it is beyond reach because it has to be initiated by the Cabinet, who are all beholden to Trump and owned by the extreme right.
Our founders never envisioned (as who could have) that we would face this kind of constitutional crisis. But they did worry about people like Trump and the people around him who might seek power for power's sake, and that is why the government is structured the way it is- to prevent that kind of breakdown. The crisis isn't because the Constitution failed, flawed though it may be. The Constitution is still holding, with the Courts still holding it at the center of their decisions. It is still holding because all over the country, people are standing up in protest. It is still holding because there are still elected officials and representatives who take their oath of office seriously and refuse to give in.
And in all of this, Trump's mental incapacity is front and center. We are still holding, and he is still deteriorating, and the people around him are frantically trying to hold together their own fantasies while fractures are running throughout.
It looks pretty ugly right now, and it is. But the tide is turning. There are dozens of national organizations, thousands of local organizations, and millions of people who are resisting. Businesses, educational institutions, towns, cities, communities in both blue and purple places resisting. And again and again, Trump backing down. Eventually he'll break down
It's not going to be fast nor easy. But it is happening. And we can start building the foundation for the big repair job we've coming right now, in how we go about building that resistance and reclaiming the Constitution while we are at it. All of us, together.
I can only hope you're right, but from my careful reading of two mainstream newspapers, The Boston Globe (which regurgitates a lot of articles from the NYT) and the WaPo, I see no discussion of drumpf's mental decline, whereas I'm still treated to the most biased reporting about President Biden. Read the report of his interview with BBC in today's Globe, courtesy of the other corporate paper, NYT.
Anca, Jennifer Rubin left WaPo to found the Contrarian. You obviously missed the big takedown of NYT and WaPo over exactly the issues you raise, during which thousands of subscribers cancelled their subs. It is why so many of us are here: we bailed out of those two rags months ago (some of us years ago). Writers from those two newspapers supplied many of the contributors to The Contrarian, and many other Substacks and news outlets.
What makes you think that I missed the big takedown? I'm a paid subscriber to both the Contrarian and Paul Krugman. But do teach me more since you know more than I do.
Anca, it was not my intent to insult you- my apologies. I was going by what you wrote, and you spoke only about WaPo and NYT and seemed unaware of how rapidly they lost not only readership, but credibility.
Are you actually expecting real news from the WaPo? Apisteftos!!!! Both our Jen and the multiple Pulitzer Prize winning-cartoonist Ann Telnaes have long turned their backs on Bezos's butt-kissing of Rump, along with many thousands of others who cancelled their subscriptions (myself included),
If you want straight-up news and analysis, try The Guardian, from England, who - as their merch says - {is} OWNED BY NOBODY.
The fact is, mainstream newspapers no longer exist -- what's now called legacy media are so afraid of government retaliation that they are too timid to tell the truth. The Contrarian can lead you to all kinds of non-AI-generated videos and podcasts and crusaders.
You will not get it at the WaPo, or old standbys NBC, CBS, and ABC, which caved when they got sued for something naughty Stephanopoulos said.
BTW, after many years, I also gave up the NYT. No longer trust them, either.
I'm sure my hundred postcards were directly responsible for Muskrat losing in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, despite all the money he flung around. :-)
No, really. Annie, you are so right about the tide turning, and the fact that there is something each one of us can do beyond wringing out hands. I may be too old to march, but at least I can still hold a pen!!!! lol
Perhaps many people feel so overwhelmed by the blitzkreig that they feel helpless, and that their individual contribution - holding a sign, calling a Republican, writing a postcard - can't possibly make any difference in the gigantic mess out there.
WRONG!!!!.
I wrote 20 letters, and Vote Forward then ran out of people to receive any more.
I got mine from Blue Wave in Colorado.
Annie, I tend to agree with you. But the citizens need to continue the fight, and keep the pressure on. It is exhausting, to be sure, but our voices, our actions, will be the pin-prick that (hopefully) will move some of the Republicans to step up and obey their oath. A unified Democratic party would help as well - far too many are still wringing their hands and hoping it will just go away. We cannot count on 'mainstream' media any longer - they have no spine. The right-wing media yells loudly and frequently - why there is no counter on the major networks or print is beyond me. Thank goodness for Substack and a few others who are providing a place for facts to be stated. We're all in this together!
I absolutely agree with you. I have been an activist for years, and helped start an indivisible group in the town I live in. It's what I can do now, at my age, with some health issues, but it all adds up.
I get tired of the hand-wringers too, but recognize that a lot of that comes from feeling overwhelmed and uncertain. Best cure for that is to help them find a simple way to be active, often by connecting them with Chop Wood, Carry Water or one of the other action groups that focus on the small things that make a difference. There are some that are trolls trying to create a sense of hopelessness, and generally the way to deal with them when they keep it up is ignore them. They eventually get frustrated and reveal themselves.
The very best thing we can do to get through to Republicans is keep doing what we're doing: the stand-ins, the protests, the letters, and simply talking to people with respect. When we promote our protests, we make clear that *anyone* concerned about the policies of the current administration is welcome, no matter their political affiliation (or lack thereof). We emphasize respect and dignity that is the core of our approach, and we don't judge. People come when they are ready. It is working. We are, indeed, in this together.
My Congresspeople are all prog or dem, and outspoken, and very accessible, so they are role-models. I am in awe of the people, both dems and repubs, who are holding town halls to express their displeasure with absentee non-responsive magas reps- with empty chairs where the reps should have been!
I agree with you say about how long it's been evident that Trump is demented and that he clearly continues to lose cognitive abilities. However, I don't think that the people around him are "trying to hold it together", but that they have placed him as a figurehead to sign Executive Orders that they, the creators of Project 2025, place before him. Yes Trump is also creating his own form of chaos, but the puppet masters have no problem with that as they'll be the ones to benefit by the destruction of the government.
Yes, Renee. Trump is following the plan that Kevin Roberts and his Project 2025 co-creators laid out for him: attack the universities, especially the Ivies; attack NIH and Centers for Disease Control (e.g. the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases). Even before Trump was inaugurated, Trump and Musk opposed and sank bills that could have reauthorized funding for pediatric cancer research. House Speaker Mike Johnson later unveiled a stripped-down version that did not include pediatric cancer research funding. [NEWSWEEK "Pediatric Cancer Community 'Devastated' as Funds Removed from Spending Bill" Dec. 20, 2024. by Andrew Stanton]
It is important to note that JD Vance is a longtime proponent of Project 2025 and its creators. He has been keynote speaker at meetings of groups like Claremont Institute and Heritage Foundation. He has written blurbs praising books by far right adherents. He wrote the introduction to Kevin Roberts's "Dawn's Early Light." Vance may turn out to be worse than Trump.
BBC interviewed Joe Biden the other day in Wilmington on the upcoming 80th anniversary of V-E Day. There was nothing incompetent about him, or the interview. Yes, he does like to talk about his dad and Scranton excessively, but that's "reminiscence" not dementia. And yes, many excellent people stood behind him. More importantly, he listened to them. He should have announced his retirement far earlier, but I'm not going to participate in a glib recasting of history where people who didn't take enough interest in what his administration actually accomplished trying now to portray him as some kind of a less senile version of Trump. It's neither correct, nor fair.
Every time I go out, I need to make detours to get where I'm going and to get home again. I always see improvements being made to roads, bridges, and even side streets. More important, I see hundreds of men and women working, earning money to support themselves and their families, and to pay taxes. So, every time I go out, I say a prayer of thankfulness for President Biden and the Infrastructure bill.
The so-called mainstream media is guilty of largely ignoring this, leaving it to the Contrarian, the New Republic, and others to highlight his mental unfitness. He's a colossal ignoramus, incurious, driven by malignant narcissism and myriad grievances, who is declining day by day into senility. He is manifestly unfit to be POTUS.
Agree— a strong leader is a wise delegator, quietly surrounding him/her self with those more competent.
And Biden had excellent relevant experience. Much of the observations characterizing his condition as dementia was uninformed, even biased against his age and lack of physical prowess and speech impediment. His character in contrast to Trump was stellar. Perhaps lousy media was also a consequence of Citizens United....
JD is the only reason I pray for our presidents health...
If some horrible disease strikes our President, we can only hope that it is highly communicable.
JD was never a reality-TV star. He's not married to a woman constantly groomed by the media as a "hot babe." He doesn't own a gold toilet. These are the hypnotic attributes that enthrall so many MAGAs, containing within them the promise that they, too, will have these "goods" if they stick with the pussy-grabbing "star." If he comes to power, he'll be more easily repelled because the cult will have been broken. Not that I expect relief from a regime under the person whose mere presence sped the death of a good man, Pope Francis.
JD can't play the con game that DJT has always played. JD also frequently uses complete sentences that spell out the disastrous policies that even MAGAts understand and don't like. And while both men have married immigrant women, JD's wife and kids are brown.... JD has learned how to bow and scrape but not how to lead.
Hahaha.
Me too JD will bring 2025 and send us back to the Dark Ages.
Exactly! The press was constantly belittling Biden on everything, physically, mentally: “Ooh, he tripped! Omigod! Old fogey alert! Uh-oh! He stuttered. Must be losing it. Not fit to be prez!”
Why have they not done that with Trump? About half the time what he says is either beyond bizarre or doesn’t even make sense. The other half he’s voicing his inner Marie Antoinette who either is clueless of the reality for the rest of humanity or he just doesn’t give a rat’s ass. Thirty dolls? I’m sorry. I still find it beyond belief that anyone in their right mind voted for this sorry excuse for a human being.
To us Trump is a madman. To his MAGA followers he must make sense. They are just as fervent in their admiration as we are repulsed. For change to happen we have to reach THEM. We’re wasting too much time being smug that we’re right (left?). I don’t have the answer to how we do that. But our preaching to each other, while they’re across town singing hallelujah, obviously doesn’t cut it. We need to start brainstorming how we can reach the people who don’t agree with us. I know that I dig in deeper when someone tries to shame me or tells me how stupid I am. Especially if it’s too late for me to fix the situation. We need a new approach. Maybe someone who deals with the mental attractiveness of cults could weigh in.
Until they are removed from the Fox News teat, there will be no one reaching the MAGAs. It is a culture now.
I agree! Shame doesn’t change minds. Nor does ridicule or arrogance. I am fine with people speaking out about the regime. These are wealthy, powerful people who know what they’re doing and deliberately wreak havoc. But I cringe when people insult his supporters. That is unfair and short-sighted and just further polarizes us. Some may be attracted to his cruelty, but I believe many had reasons for supporting him that made sense to them. If we don’t find a way to understand that, they are lost to us.
In a similar vein, Reagan was already showing signs of mental decline during his first term. Biden was clearly slowing down. The difference? They surrounded themselves with competent people and actually listened to them. We are on a sinking ship.
trump’s feeble brain seems stuck on
I cannot comprehend for the life of me this obsession with Trump's traits - what good does it do? How can it help salvage democracy and the rule of law? This is for his psychiatrist - our task is to face the political role he plays, not his personality. Especially, since the problem is infinitely deeper than just Trump - any student of politics and history knows that. In sane times, fascists like Trump are at the margin of society - it takes a profound crisis, political, social, economical to have such people grasp power.
I think the personality runs the policy.
Exactlly. His personality informs everything he does. It IS the policy
This is true, and it is true of all politicians and all of us - our personalities decide our actions, our policies. But understanding a personality is serious job, which requires profound knowledge of a person. What is being done here is opposite from that - we look at his actions, his speeches and then try to guess his personality. The point is that this is futile, one must face the political process, which you will notice is shared by people of completely different personalities. You have now people around him even more extreme - just think of Musk's nazi upbringing and his basically nazi views and stand. I grant you that in 2016 this maybe made sense, but by now the whole GOP has turned fascist, or at least its echelons. We are far beyond the point of the threat being just Trump - this naiveté creates a serious problem for defending democracy.
I have watched the GOP head toward fascism for well over 40 years. It has not "turned" fascist. It has courted the kind of racism, misogyny and ignorance that existed in the south for generations. The Dixiecrats left the Democratic party and took their Confederate flags and white hoods with them to the Republican party after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights bill. We wouldn't have Donald Trump if it wasn't for the Republican party. They thought that they could control him, but they are scared out of their minds by MAGA (Hitler saluting, KKK, ignorance embracing, Bible thumping mob). Trump is the GOP's Frankenstein monster
I would add only this to your excellent comment. For most time, in spite of its far right policies, the GOP has still been accepting the rule of law - Nixon eg had to step down because of breaking the law. That has changed, and this is why I use the word fascist now - they now openly reject the rule law. The insurrections-in-chief is the president, and the government now breaks the law on daily basis.
Either they are truly in Trump's camp or they are scared to death of MAGA. I say this because I live in Texas and my Senators are Cruz and Cornyn. I used to think that Cornyn was a fairly typical conservative Republican. The guy has gone totally MAGA-TRUMP. It kind of reminds me of "Alien" when the creature bursts from John Hurt's chest. Was the MAGA Alien living in Cornyn all of this time or is he just a sniveling, spineless, toady. Or, perhaps that's what Alien was really about? Perhaps one of these days we will witness a bunch of critters bursting from the chests of Republicans in Congress (I think that MGT is actually the alien wearing a dress and lipstick).
Since Trump rode down the escalator and those people started supporting him, all I could described them as were "zombies." Their minds were infected ... of course, by daily doses of Fox News.
Funny I thought MAGA people where really POD people.
Thanks for this great analogy.
I totally agree Liz V. We have been watching this develop from the days of Barry Goldwater--and even he rejected the nonsense he was seeing in the post-Newt Gingrich Ghastly Oligarchs Party. I would also say that most of the elected members of that party have never had a particular interest in governing. It's the power and the financial benefits they seek. And many of them probably revel in the cruelty as well. To claim that they're afraid of being primaried, or of receiving threats from the black-masked Black Shirts being utilized by this administration just shows how little they care about the real damage and violence they are abetting. If 1% of party members in elected positions have an ounce of ethical standards, I would be surprised. It sure isn't the case here in Missouri.
You are absolutely right, thanks for correcting/completing my point. Believing that his going away would change matters, has become the central problem in the fight for democracy and justice. It is interesting that we speak so little here about social, racial and economical justice - as if democracy was just the rule of law.
In psychology it is common to note that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. For trump that is easy to see. Who cares whether he cares or not? His Behavior consistently shows us that it’s going to be chaos.
I entirely agree with you. I cannot care less about drumpf's mental deterioration, EXCEPT in the context of him being manipulated by the Nazis around him and by foreign enemies like Putin. I also think that you're spot on about a major part of the U.S. having embraced a fascist ideology, whether they know the meaning of either "fascist" or "ideology."
Nice to hear this Anca. And you are right, the notion of fascism is very remote in the US - the fear of communism and decades long propaganda made Americans be aware of those dangers, but rather ignorant of what fascism is and how it can happen to all of us. Krugman has started to use the term, and I see that Democracy Now! (best news channel I could find on YouTube) also does it. I just wish people on this and similar platforms would grasp the depth of the problem - and how it is all correlated.
They're co-dependents.
Government of/by kleptomatic narcissistic demented extrtionista. He thinks he's Don (fictional Mafia godfather) Corleone with a Mulligan.
I think we should stop insulting the MAFIA.......if tr was w/them he would have been sleeping w/the fishes a long time ago...
The political press has written about the president personally rather than the office of the president to the detriment of our democracy. This really began with President Kennedy and the Camelot narrative. I remember as a child standing in the checkout at the grocery store staring at all the magazine covers with stories about the glamorous Jackie. Jack Kennedy was also valorized like a movie idol.
It is my personal opinion the press has been trying to regain the days of Camelot ever since. Although they have not had a president and first lady that hold up to the superficial fairy tale of Camelot, the press has still fixated on the personal lives and a soap opera script of "what will the president do next?" rather than the governing aspects of the executive branch and its interplay with the other two branches. (Although it did use the other branches as foils in the soap opera).
Enter Trump, the reality show star. He saw clearly how the press reacted to soap opera-like news tidbits. He undertook to give that to him. CNN especially loved the spectacle and the sheer noise that Trump created. Now, Americans are suffering through the part of the story where the monster destroys the town.
However, I don't think Rubin is particularly focused on Trump's subjective state. I think her column today is pointing out one more way in which the press narrative about Trump has hurt real people. Trump is not better for the economy. Nor is he good for business despite what his business donors convinced themselves of.
That was fictional. The press is supposed to be based on facts. If they yearn for Camelot, go to the movies. I want less fiction from the press, please.
💯
"Now, Americans are suffering through the part of the story where the monster destroys the town." Exactly! This is a nightmare. I often feel like I am in an alternate reality and I want to wake up from this insane nightmare.
Trump's 'traits' as you call them are what drives his decisions, such as they are. That makes covering his personality, his mental health, and his deteriorating cognitive state newsworthy. It's not hard to figure out.
While it's true that the MAGA cancer has metastasized into republican body politic, the root cause is Trump. The cult of personality which is MAGA is centered on him. None of the bit players around him have the legions of adoring red hats, something we've seen when other pols have tried to imitate him and failed at the ballot box.
It's not possible to separate Trump from the malignant narcissism that drives him, nor the dementia that's becoming more visible. We know, for example, that his latest '100% tariff on foreign-made movies' was the result of talking to fellow crackpot, actor Jon Voight, in a late-night phone call. If you try to pretend the 'traits' are separate from the man, you might as well just read legacy media where you'll get all the sane-washing you'd like.
The root is not Trump - how in the world in a sane democracy an individual could almost completely destroy its functioning? This way of looking at things is ignoring history, politics, economy, social problems, cultural and educational level etc etc. Look, Paul Krugman has been predicting the emergence of Trump like leader for years and years, just by studying social and economical conditions. The GOP started moving towards fascism, slowly but surely, already in 1980 by electing Reagan who started a war on facts, social programs, science, education, democracy in general. The US started falling behind in every measure of the quality of life and even Democrats would preach austerity when banks took over, which created possibly the greatest social differences ever - one person possesses half of the wealth of the entire country! I could go on and on, write about the devastating impact that the invasion of Iraq had on American economy. besides basically destroying Iraq, with almost 900000 victims. All of this conspired to create the conditions for fascism, just as it happened in Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler, Yugoslavia under ... True, the leaders are not the same, but it is frightening to see how much similarity emerges in similar political and social conditions. This must be understood and faced, one must go to the root of the problem - discussing Trump's traits, I repeat, will not serve us anything. If there was no cancer of fascism, he would be in prison - after all, he organised the insurrection, openly, in front of the whole world. The rule of law has broken down - people get detained and deported illegally.
We could talk all day about the republican party's rightward march going back as far as Goldwater. But no one, not even Ronald Reagan, held sway over the republican masses as Trump does. Was this a by-product of the republicans' embrace of right-wing evangelicalism? Likely a contributor. But republican voters have always been prone to look for daddy figures in their political leadership. I'm old enough to remember GHW Bush needing a PR campaign to convince republican voters he wasn't 'a wimp.' The whole god and John Wayne model has been brilliantly laid out in a book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez called 'Jesus and John Wayne' which details the rise of christian nationalism that's accompanied the rise authoritarianism introduced by Trump. And, yes, Trump IS the root of our current problem. He's the culmination of years of right-wing media capture of the American public, starting with Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk radio.
There have been many contributing factors which led us to where we are today, but the epicenter, the catalyst that's allowed the cancer to accelerate and metastasize has been and remains Trump. And that's why Trump's abhorrent character and alarming mental health issues are not only newsworthy but vital for understanding the chaos he's unleashed, starting in his 1st term, but why so many Americans remain blindly loyal and devoted to him even as he makes their lives unnecessarily harder - and doesn't give a damn about it.
The line of despicable republican characters that have led to Trump, from Goldwater to Nixon to Cheney, etc., set the table for someone like Trump. Useful to know, ultimately irrelevant in understanding what drives someone even those characters would have found too outlandish. At end of the day, the problem is Trump. Root and branch.
I have tried to respond to others that criticised me, and I believe that I have addressed most of the issues - but still, let me elaborate a bit more. I beg to disagree. If you were right, how could have some of us been able to predict the emergence of such cult like personality? How could Krugman predict, years ago, that this would happen? His arguments were simple - similar to any student's of history like me - but defended with deep knowledge of economy - unsustainable social differences generically lead to breakdowns of democracy and the emergence of fascist leaders. And mind you. most of the time, these leaders are insane like Trump, and their follies of course shape the dramas that follow. However, they are not the root, they are the syndrome of deep crisis. This is why you will find similarities across different cultures, backgrounds, levels of development - the GOP's and Trump's attack on the rule of law and democracy are not original at all, and they even sound like the fascists I unfortunately had to live with, as in my country of Yugoslavia that they managed to destroy. Even then, most people around me wanted to focus on leaders' personalities, refusing to see the conditions that led inevitably to them. I wrote this in another comment, but let me repeat it: Bernie Sanders and AOC have been arguing this for quite some time, that the social and political conditions in the US are deeply troubling. In 2003 the US economy was sevenfold of China's, but in 2011 they were equal (Iraq invasion). Such a downfall creates tremendous instability - and the US has now fallen behind developed countries in almost any aspect of the quality of life. Some 50 years ago when I landed there to learn my craft, the US was leading the world in my field of his energy physics - now my American colleagues do their experiments at CERN. Switzerland. I could speak of education too - my students, who in the past all wanted to pursue PhD in the States, now opt for Europe or Japan, Korea and China. Moreover, the US has one the highest incarceration rates in the world - it has more prisoners that China (not a great example of democracy) that has 4 times larger population. It still suffers from deep racial inequalities, to this day lacks free health care, and It has created oligarchs that not only possess almost all the wealth, but now even control information (Musk and Bezos). To me it is evident that the US finds itself in a profound social and economical crisis - I am amazed that we disagree so much on this. I am deeply worried that this is not understood enough - as I was scared in 2016 that Trump would be elected, but all my American colleagues and friends reassuring me how an insane fascist like that could never win there. I must be honest - it is this that scares me more than Trump and/or Musk and their cronies, and I am mortified of them.
First, I'm not criticizing YOU. If you can't handle a civil exchange of opinions, there's nothing further to discuss. End of. Have a good day.
wealth inequality is responsible for people being lured by trump .throw in religious bull and it's over folks.
And what makes you think that we are not in a profound political, social, economic crisis right now...all caused by Trump, Musk, and the Republicans?
Others here have addressed your contention that Trump’s mental state doesn’t matter (it does matter), so I will leave that for now. To take your other point, there was no “profound crisis” that led to Trump getting elected this second time. There was no 9-11 attack (as in 2001), no Great Recession (as in 2008), no pandemic (as in 2020). Trump ranted constantly on the campaign trail, ginning up imaginary crises (with the help of Fox News), with his lies about crime, trade and immigration. But crime was low, the economy was strong, and immigration was manageable. Trump created an alternate universe where crises abounded, and his low-information voters bought it. Now Trump is creating crises - crashing the economy, destroying alliances and running roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law. Trump is the profound crisis.
A country where a single individual possesses half of the wealth, and 1% possess 90 % of wealth is in deep crisis. Krugman has been arguing that such social differences are not sustainable and that they lead to instability per se. He predicted the emergence of fascism, as can any good student of history and economy. He has been arguing that such social differences were only seen before the WW2 which arguably helped the rise of nazism. Meanwhile, the US has been supporting, in all possible ways, the genocide in Gaza, which has become the major threat to American democracy. Even before Trump, supporting the right of Palestine to self determination could cause one of a job - think of the president of Harvard, a brilliant black woman who was forced out. Notice that Trump and his cronies are using precisely the weaponisation of anti semitism (themselves being anti semites) to persecute free speech. All of this is connected, and the crisis was and is there, independent of Trump. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been consistently arguing this for quite some time - I speak of mainstream senior politicians, not radical crackpots. I for one believe deeply that they have been and are right.
Btw, I have never said that his mental state does not matter - only that we should not dwell so much on it. We must fight the conditions that led us here, the economical, racial and social injustice that plagues the US. We must fight the GOP fascist movement, and their frontal attack on all aspects of democracy. Focusing mostly on Trump amounts to losing a more complete vision.
His mental state absolutely matters. His mental state produces his behavior and decisions.
Of course it does - as it does for all of us. But we are not studying his mental state since we cannot do it - all we see are his actions and hear his words. And it does us no good to dwell on them, we just go in circles talking about them. There is even something morbid in spending so much time on him - and the only reason one does it is the media obsession with him. The reason the media does it is their superficiality, lack of professionalism, lack of education, of knowledge of history, of politics, of economics. Serious people focus on issues that matter, the very issues that produce Trumps of this world.
Or an entitled racist society.
A good description of a man that is unqualified to manage “ a two car funeral”. He’s has executed the executive branch.
I still can’t help but think this is Russia Russia Russia behind all this. When you think of it , what could be more effective of bringing down a countries economy than imposing sanctions on trade and causing a breakup of former track g partners and allies. It’s a Dual purpose wrecking ball , a clean vehicle to destroy American economic and military prowess simultaneously . It’s someone thinking with diabolical intent. And it’s not trump. Let’s see who would gain by his failure. Let me think.
I agree Jay. Russia Russia Russia. We have to peacefully fight back with everything we have, and not lose hope. Russia needs us to lose hope.
Yes. I know but we needn’t know who we are actually starting with. It’s a cloak and dagger mystery so far. Why the congress is too scared to do anything. Donbas like Russia. When trump had crazy wreck ball ideas, sounds like Russia. When he meets behind closed doors with Russian ambassadors and excludes everyone, it sounds like Russia. When the press is too scared to print , it sounds like Russia.
When it sounds like Russia it is Russia. But it would be great to track who is the worm in the Whitehouse. It might be melania , Vance. Miller. All very likely.
what wife would put up with trumps infidelity. We know Russia have trump had four years to work out the details. It’s obvious who is behind all this but how expose it. That’s the question. There are plenty of turncoats in the system now.
Think about this , Germans captured a Russian agent. The agent has Pete Hegseth personal number in the agents phone. Abd that didn’t bother people? Man this is so bloody obvious.
Senator Linda murkoski says she’s being bullied by agents and threatened. Sounds like Russia. We can go on. Trumps an agent!
Imagine if instead of providing care and curbing a dementia patient's wildly swinging impulses, that patient was the president, surrounded by yes-men and women who cavalierly pretended the chaos created by the patient's changing whims wasn't creating havoc in the American economy and any suggestion otherwise was nothing but a political hit or in their parlance, 'fake news.'
But here we are. Donald Trump has never been a smart man. His comprehension of economics, world and US history have always been minimal, and his concern for anyone not named Trump nonexistent. During his first administration he at least got some pushback from qualified people around him. Not so, this time. His cabinet meetings are worthy of North Korea, as is his press secretary. Our now-former allies were quick to realize that this country, under Trump, is no longer a reliable partner and they're forming economic and defense alliances that exclude us. The US public doesn't trust this administration either, as they watch their 401k's tank, prices on consumer goods and interest rates rise.
I've said for a while now that since Trump took office he's done nothing but troll the people who voted for him. He never cared about grocery prices or the well-being of average Americans. And now he doesn't care if they finally see that. His cabinet is a billionaire boys club, he's letting a billionaire nazi take a chainsaw to the federal workforce, veterans' benefits, and entitlement programs - all while accessing and exporting massive amounts of our private data from federal databases [a scandal that deserves A LOT more attention than it's getting].
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. If Trump is acting like he doesn't care about how his whims have destroyed the economy, it's because he doesn't. After all, it doesn't affect him - and that's HIS bottom line.
Trump is best described as an aging, ignorant, corrupt, mean spirited, sociopathic narcissist. And no matter how he was elected, it feels wrong to use the term President. I cannot use a term associated with Washington, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and Eisenhower. Trump is Occupant of the White House, in my reference.
As a therapist, I can no longer listen to, or look at this man. He is consumed by his rage stemming from his pain, which he has never processed. His inner child died many years ago.
I am grateful for your direct quotes. This is where I begin to rally see the man. When he explained the tariff debacle with China, he says “they” can have 3 dolls, “they” can have 5 pencils, who are the “they?” “They” can only be children, maybe female children.
He sees his sons as narcissistic extensions of himself. His daughter is only an object. He has no interest in his grandchildren.
Trump has no interest in future generations, not even his own progeny.
Trump could easily push the nuclear button if he were told he was dying. Trump cannot imagine a world without him as Emperor of the planet Earth.
My husband predicted Trump’s scattered brain would collapse long before now, but on it goes. Who doesn’t have a favorite theory of the disease that plagues him? At this point, the problem lies around him in those who tolerate, encourage, cover up, excuse, enable, take advantage and profit from his scattered brain. We have a remedy for scattered brains in our constitution, don’t we? But no one talks of it, like it isn’t there. Trump is horrible and unfit to be president. Too bad a judge can’t find him unconstitutional.
My favorite theory of his disease comes from and old and dear friend (now dead) who was a psychiatrist. When T was running for his first term, he said "Trump is a malignant narcissist." I knew what a narcissist was but had never heard of a malignant one. I Googled it (of course...). A perfect diagnosis.
My husband’s theory is Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which he bases on Trump’s rambling speech patterns. Also affects temperament and gait/balance. People will wear lifts in their shoes to prevent falling backward. Probably different than most favorite theories.
I totally agree that he is enabled by the enablers. History shows again and again and again that no one person, no dictator, no self professed messiah, could make even a dent without the followers. I think that is the tragedy: that enough enablers voted for him and enough enablers are currently in government.
tRump is an exemplar of what our schools will produce if his antieducation policies are successful.
That is so depressing. But true.
Character Disorders are difficult to manage. His insatiable need fo attention is a detriment to our population.
Nasty, mean, brutish, and short
Like so many tyrants of the past the tool that rattle brain Trump brings to bear is his mouth connected to a mind filled with malus, grievance, and greed. Never one to pick up a hammer, help others in need, or support the common good, life for this pathetic individual is a zero sum game. As we watch this tired human waste of a person continue his deterioration, the king he becomes is Henry VIII at the end of his blighted rein of paranoia, tyranny, and chaos. I hold out hope that our protests, blogs, and refusal to knuckle under (unlike the oligarchs, tech bros, businesses, and high status law firms) will help carry us successfully through the mid terms. There are ‘rights’ like unlimited spending by corporations and the rich in politics as well as the claim the President has basically unlimited power that must be eliminated.
BTW: Should we not be paying attention to the possibility of yet another heinous apparition appearing on the horizon: JD Vance loosed upon us? What should we do about that?
The ONLY "advantage" to a President Vance would be that no one - NO ONE - likes him. He doesn't have the cult following of El Presidente; it would fairly easy to sideline him.
Would "sideline" include running vance over in the parking lot? (just asking) :-)
...or, another possibility, could we maybe "sideline" vance with a baseball bat? Only a suggestion...
Impeach him before we all suffer. He’s an incompetent narcissist, thinking himself brilliant. He lurched from position to position, creating chaos. He knows nothing about history or economics or leadership,
Think about it. His previous businesses ALL failed. He lies consistently.
We need a stable, informed president to guide the country with the problems here and around the world. This GOP will ruin all our progress if they and we don’t stand against this proud no nothing character who poorly plays at being president -for his own gratificación.
Nasty brutish and short.
Increasingly, I am frustrated that the still existing mass media outlets are not focusing upon first, the incompetence of the MAGA administration, second, its outright bribery and self-enrichment by and of government officials ,and third, the ongoing coup of MAGA Republicans all the way to the corrupt bias of six SCOTUS justices. These three important issues are not continually examined and focused up everyday except by isolated essayists on SubStack and other more obscure online outposts.
The “little people” are already starting to realize how much he actually cares about their well-being.