Trump Lacks the Qualities to Lead in a Time of Crisis

Driving home the last few nights I have had the disturbing experience of hearing portions Donald Trump's press conferences on the coronavirus pandemic - press conferences filled lies, untruths and insane boasting by Trump.  After  five minutes or less I find myself changing the channel or hitting "disc" to switch to a CD rather than listen to the batshitery.  The crisis continues to underscore Trump's unfitness to lead the nation in this time of crisis particularly given Trump's mental state and self-absorption.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at how Trump may yet be undone by this crisis which he will find hard to blame on others. If the death toll and number of infected continue to rise, Trump will find it increasingly impossible to shriek "fake news" and blame the media for the objective reality that will be all to stark for Americans to see with their own eyes.   Here are are article highlights: 

For his entire adult life, and for his entire presidency, Donald Trump has created his own alternate reality, complete with his own alternate set of facts. He has shown himself to be erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, vindictive, cruel, mendacious, and devoid of empathy. None of that is new.

But we’re now entering the most dangerous phase of the Trump presidency. The pain and hardship that the United States is only beginning to experience stem from a crisis that the president is utterly unsuited to deal with, either intellectually or temperamentally. When things were going relatively well, the nation could more easily absorb the costs of Trump’s psychological and moral distortions and disfigurements. But those days are behind us. The coronavirus pandemic has created the conditions that can catalyze a destructive set of responses from an individual with Trump’s characterological defects and disordered personality.

We are now in the early phase of a medical and economic tempest unmatched in most of our lifetimes. There’s too much information we don’t have. We don’t know the full severity of the pandemic, or whether a state like New York is a harbinger or an outlier. But we have enough information to know this virus is rapidly transmissible and lethal.

The qualities we most need in a president during this crisis are calmness, wisdom, and reassurance; a command of the facts and the ability to communicate them well; and the capacity to think about the medium and long term while carefully weighing competing options and conflicting needs. We need a leader who can persuade the public to act in ways that are difficult but necessary, who can focus like a laser beam on a problem for a sustained period of time, and who will listen to—and, when necessary, defer to—experts who know far more than he does. We need a president who can draw the nation together rather than drive it apart, who excels at the intricate work of governing, and who works well with elected officials at every level. We need a chief executive whose judgment is not just sound, but exceptional.

There are some 325 million people in America, and it’s hard to think of more than a handful who are more lacking in these qualities than Donald Trump.

But we need to consider something else, which is that the coronavirus pandemic may lead to a rapid and even more worrisome psychological and emotional deterioration in the commander in chief. This is not a certainty, but it’s a possibility we need to be prepared for.

Here’s how this might play out; to some extent, it already has.

Let’s start with what we know. Someone with Trump’s psychological makeup, when faced with facts and events that are unpleasant, that he perceives as a threat to his self-image and public standing, simply denies them. We saw that repeatedly during the early part of the pandemic, when the president was giving false reassurance and spreading false information one day after another.

After a few days in which he was willing to acknowledge the scope and scale of this crisis—he declared himself a “wartime president”—he has now regressed to type, once again becoming a fountain of misinformation. At a press conference yesterday, he declared that he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” which is less than three weeks away, a goal that top epidemiologists and health professionals believe would be catastrophic.

As one person who consults with the Trump White House on the coronavirus response put it to me, “He has chosen to imagine the worst is behind us when the worst is clearly ahead of us.”

After listening to the president’s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday—in which, among other things, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say … ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ … This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with”—a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me, “This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly. We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.” He added, “But now our own president is undoing all that work and preaching recklessness. Rather than lead us in taking on a difficult challenge, he is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Beyond belief.”

YES AND NO. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that don’t serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.

This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. “He finds it intolerable when those things are missing,” a clinical psychologist told me. “Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. There’s no room for that now, and so he’s growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.”

She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout “overwhelm Trump’s capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.”

IT’S USEFUL HERE to recall that Trump’s success as a politician has been built on his ability to impose his will and narrative on others, to use his experience on a reality-television show and his skill as a con man to shape public impressions in his favor, even—or perhaps, especially—if those impressions are at odds with reality. 

But in this instance, Trump isn’t facing a political problem he can easily spin his way out of. He’s facing a lethal virus. It doesn’t give a damn what Donald Trump thinks of it or tweets about it. Spin and lies about COVID-19, including that it will soon magically disappear, as Trump claimed it would, don’t work. In fact, they have the opposite effect. Misinformation will cause the virus to increase its deadly spread.

But what happens to Trump psychologically and emotionally when things don’t turn around in the time period he wants? What happens if the tricks that have allowed him to walk away from scandal after scandal don’t work quite so well, if the doors of escape are bolted shut, and if it dawns on even some of his supporters—people who will watch family members, friends, and neighbors contract the disease, some number of whom will die—that no matter what Trump says, he can’t alter this epidemiological reality?

All of this would likely enrage him, and feed his paranoia.

As the health-care and economic crises worsen, Trump’s hallmarks will be even more fully on display. [Trump] The president will create new scapegoats. He’ll blame governors for whatever bad news befalls their states. He’ll berate reporters who ask questions that portray him in a less-than-favorable light. He’ll demand even more cultlike coverage from outlets such as Fox News. Because he doesn’t tolerate relationships that are characterized by disagreement or absence of obeisance, before long we’ll see key people removed or silenced when they try to counter a Trump-centered narrative. He’ll try to find shiny objects to divert our attention from his failures.

But there’s something distinct about this moment, compared with every other moment in the Trump presidency, that could prove to be utterly disorienting and unsettling for the president. Hush-money payments won’t make COVID-19 go away. He cannot distract people from the global pandemic. He can’t wait it out until the next news cycle, because the next news cycle will also be about the pandemic. He can’t easily create another narrative, because he is often sharing the stage with scientists who will not lie on his behalf.

The president will try to blame someone else—but in this case the “someone else” is a virus, not a Mexican immigrant or a reporter with a disability, not a Muslim or a Clinton, not a dead war hero or a family of a fallen soldier, not a special counsel or an NFL player who kneels for the national anthem. He will try to use this crisis to pit one party against the other—but the virus will kill both Republicans and Democrats. He will try to create an alternate story to distract people from an inconvenient truth—but in this case, the public is too afraid, the story is too big, and the carnage will be too great to be distracted from it.

America will make it to the other side of this crisis, as it has after every other crisis. But the struggle will be a good deal harder, and the human cost a good deal higher, because we elected as president a man who is so damaged and so broken in so many ways.

Mattis Replacement: No Military, Government or Foreign Policy Experience

In what is the norm for many Trump/Pence appointees, the replacement for James Mattis as Secretary of Defense has no military experience, no previous government experience and little experience with foreign policy.  Patrick Shanahan, will become acting defense secretary on January 1, 2019, after Trump's temper tantrum  that is forcing Mattis out two months ahead of schedule. The frightening reality is that we have a madman in charge of the nuclear codes who is just as likely to make decisions based on the needs of his malignant narcissism as on sound advice from rational, senior military advisers. Be very, very afraid.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing unease among the military.  Here are highlights:

An unspoken mantra has guided how senior military officials have navigated the Trump era: “Keep your head down.”

Faced with an impulsive [Trump]  president who has upended bedrock alliances and delivered policy bombshells by tweet, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other Pentagon leaders have responded by confining themselves to executing orders, rebuilding military strength and trying to shelter their institution from the upheaval and drama.

For nearly two years, the approach produced dividends. . . . Last week, much of that came crumbling down, opening a period of uncertainty about how and when Trump will choose to employ force.

Against the advice of his generals, the president ordered an immediate withdrawal from ­Syria.

In the same meeting during which Trump issued his order on Syria, he decided to remove nearly half of the American troops in Afghanistan. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. — chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president’s top military adviser — wasn’t even there, according to people familiar with the situation.

Two days later, Mattis had tendered his resignation, citing irreconcilable differences between Trump’s worldview and his own. Making his resignation letter public, the retired Marine general made clear that his departure was driven by principle — a moment of defiance for an official whose tenure was marked by his studied silence on a growing list of policy disagreements.

The fallout from the resignation continued Sunday. With coverage of Mattis’s departure painting Trump in a bad light, [Trump] the president moved up the Pentagon chief’s departure by two months and tapped his deputy, Patrick Shanahan, to become acting defense secretary on Jan. 1. Most worrisome for some military leaders, however, is the fear that their tradition of partisan neutrality — fundamental to maintaining public support — could be under threat.

“[Trump] The president is rapidly corroding the norms of civil-military relations that create the public respect for our military,” Schake said.

Kori Schake, deputy director general of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and co-editor of a book with Mattis, said research shows that, despite such efforts, public attitudes about the military are growing more politicized.

For his part, Mattis has sought to isolate the Pentagon from the political maelstrom by eschewing the spotlight and rarely appearing on camera. Given his disagreements with Trump on a host of issues, a crucial part of his strategy was to avoid conflict with his boss.

His [Trump’s] selection of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, an outspoken, connected officer, nearly a year before Dunford was scheduled to retire defied the recommendation of Mattis and raised the possibility that Dunford will not serve his entire term.

In addition to Milley, Trump will have the chance to appoint three chiefs of the military branches.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who was head of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, said the current crop of military leaders had successfully steered the Trump administration toward a “middle ground” on key alliances, conflicts and more.

“Next year is where the real adventure starts,” he said. The period ahead “is going to be very challenging for the military at the Pentagon.”

Lindsey Graham: 70% Chance Trump Will Start War with North Korea

As noted in some previous posts, I have not worried as much about the possibility of nuclear war since the 1960's as I do now.  Again, as previously mote, back then we had sane individuals in the White House.  Such is not the case today when we are faced with the daily specter of a petulant, narcissistic, intellectually lazy, ego driven bully in the Oval Office with the nuclear codes.  I fear what madness this madman may unleash on the world.  Now, Senator Lindsey Graham - a sometimes responsible Republican - has noted that he believes there is a 70% chance that Der Trumpenführer may launch a war with North Korea with likely little thought of the extended consequences to allies in the far east or America itself. When will Pence - himself a vile man - and the cabinet move to remove Trump?  All of us are in daily danger from the ill-advised voted of roughly 70,000 individuals in three states. The Atlantic looks at the danger we face.  Here are highlights:  

It’s become a grim ritual in Washington foreign-policy circles to assess the chances that the United States and North Korea stumble into war. But on Wednesday Lindsey Graham did something different: He estimated the odds that the Trump administration deliberately strikes North Korea first, to stop it from acquiring the capability to target the U.S. mainland with a long-range, nuclear-tipped missile. And the senator’s numbers were remarkably high.

“I would say there’s a three in 10 chance we use the military option,” Graham predicted in an interview. If the North Koreans conduct an additional test of a nuclear bomb—their seventh—“I would say 70 percent.”

Graham said that the issue of North Korea came up during a round of golf he played with the president on Sunday. “It comes up all the time,” he said.

“War with North Korea is an all-out war against the regime,” he said. “There is no surgical strike option. Their [nuclear-weapons] program is too redundant, it’s too hardened, and you gotta assume the worst, not the best. So if you ever use the military option, it’s not to just neutralize their nuclear facilities—you gotta be willing to take the regime completely down.”

“We’re not to the tipping point yet,” he noted, but “if they test another [nuclear] weapon, then all bets are off.”

Graham takes the possibility of war seriously enough that, to prevent it, he would support direct talks with the regime “without a whole lot of preconditions.” It was a noteworthy statement coming from one of the foremost North Korea hawks in Congress. He wouldn’t rule out a Kim-Trump summit. “I’m not taking anything off the table to avoid a war. ... When they write the history of the times, I don’t want them to say, ‘Hey, Lindsey Graham wouldn’t even talk to the guy.’”

Graham says Trump “has 100 percent made up his mind that he’s not gonna let Kim Jong Un break out,” which Graham defined as achieving the capacity to “marry up a missile and a nuclear warhead that can hit America effectively.”

Many experts think North Korea has essentially reached this milestone already through its increasingly sophisticated nuclear and missile tests, while others argue that the North is still months or years away from that goal. But Graham bypassed these technical debates to focus on a central tension in the Trump administration’s approach to the issue: The Kim regime is sprinting toward breakout, while the Trump administration’s diplomatic campaign to persuade China and other countries to impose stiffer sanctions and other forms of pressure on North Korea is moving forward, but slowly. It’s a race. And there’s currently a clear frontrunner.

“I don’t know how to say it any more direct: If nothing changes, Trump’s gonna have to use the military option, because time is running out,” Graham said. “I don’t care if North Korea becomes a Chinese protectorate. … I don’t care who [the Chinese] put in charge of North Korea, as long as that person doesn’t want to create a massive nuclear arsenal to threaten America. There are a couple ways for this to end: The Chinese could kill the guy if they wanted to, or they could just stop oil shipments [to North Korea], which would bring [Kim Jong Un’s] economy to [its] knees.” Graham’s scenarios for resolving the crisis short of war, along with his vision for war, notably conclude with regime change in North Korea, which the Trump administration claims to not be pursuing.

Graham walked me through the case he had made for denial—and how he justified the dark calculation it relies on: that it’s worth initiating an actual conflict on the Korean peninsula, placing thousands and maybe even millions of real lives at risk in East Asia, in order to avert the potential deaths of Americans from hypothetical threats. Of the type of “preventive” war Graham has in mind, Dwight Eisenhower once observed, “none has yet explained how war prevents war. Worse than this, no one has been able to explain away the fact that war creates the conditions that beget war.” But Graham has a ready explanation. The veteran lawmaker, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who for years served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves while in Congress, and who once told voters not to support him if they were sick of war, argues that there are times when people’s aversion to conflict creates the conditions that beget war. He seems preoccupied these days with how the history of the present will be written in the future.

North Korea’s outlier behavior in the world, and its history of selling missiles and nuclear-related materials to countries such as Syria and Iran, inform Graham’s belief that more likely than North Korea firing its nuclear weapons at the United States is the North putting them on the black market. The biggest risk to the U.S. homeland and mankind as a whole is weapons of mass destruction making their way to people who wouldn’t hesitate to use them, he argues. And today those people belong to terrorist groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda. “What would be the source of those weapons?” Graham asked. “An unstable regime, cash-starved, controlled by a crazy man, called North Korea. ... I don’t see China selling [terrorist organizations] nuclear weapons. I don’t see Russia selling them nuclear weapons. I think for [terrorists] to build one of their own would be really tough and we’d probably know about it. I think the transfer of technology from North Korea to these groups would be very difficult to monitor.”

He acknowledged that preventive U.S. military action against North Korea could spiral into a conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons—and that any kind of conflict would probably engulf American civilians and U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan. “Fighting the North Korea threat over there protects the homeland,” he said. “That’s what [U.S. soldiers are] paid to do. That’s what they want to do. They sign up for these kind of risks.”

The urgency with which administration officials are imploring China to squeeze its neighbor, and their apparent lowering of the bar for negotiations, reflect a desire “to avoid what would be a catastrophic war for the region and the world.” But paradoxically that urgency also demonstrates that the probability of war is growing, he argued.

It’s certainly possible that this is all calculated bluster—an attempt by Graham to advocate for his preferred policy agenda within the White House, intimidate North Korea, and spook China into doing what it has resisted for decades: Cut its lifeline to the Kim regime. When I asked Graham who he was directing his warnings about time running out to, he responded, “North Korea and Donald Trump.” He said he was “100 percent convinced that China is a rational actor, that they see North Korea as a thorn in our side—a problem for them, but the upside of North Korea is greater than the downside for them. That changes, the day that they believe Donald Trump will blow up the whole place.” . . . . understanding where the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons is headed also requires reckoning with another possibility: that Graham and like-minded U.S. officials are deadly serious.

 I for one do not sleep better at night with our own version of Kim Jong Un in the White House.  The fact that the lives of my grandchildren are daily threatened by Trump's unfitness for office make me seethe.  Be very, very afraid.

After Niger Attack, McCain Calls for War Powers Debate

Questions continue to be raised about U.S. military actions in Niger after the ambush that killed four American soldiers.  Most Americans, including members of the U.S. Senate who should have known such military actions, knew nothing of America's involvement in Niger much less what the Americans who lost their life were doing their.  With an individual in the White House that I personally  deem to be unfit for office and mentally ill, it is critical that Congress reclaim its power to declare war - Section 8, Article I of the U.S. Constitution grants this power to Congress, not the president -  and launch any significant military action. We most certainly do not want the narcissistic liar-in-chief making unilateral war powers decisions that could reap horrific consequences to America and the world.  As Voice of America is reporting, the attack that killed four U.S. service members, it appears that there was a massive intelligence failure in Niger:

A local official and an analyst say residents of the Niger village where four Green Beret soldiers were killed this month may have delayed the soldiers while an ambush was set up and helped to lead the victims into a deadly trap.

"The attackers, the bandits, the terrorists have never lacked accomplices among local populations," said Almou Hassane, mayor of Tongo-Tongo where the attack took place, in what is believed to be his first interview with a Western news organization.

The village chief in Tongo-Tongo, Mounkaila Alassane, has been arrested since the attack, Hassane said, lending credibility to the suspicion of local involvement. He is in government custody according several officials.

While the soldiers were still in the village, a fake terror attack was staged nearby, according to Aksar and local sources. The soldiers rushed to the scene, where about 50 or more assailants with vehicles and motorcycles opened fire with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons.

Four Nigerien soldiers and three Americans were killed on the spot. The body of the fourth American soldier was found 48 hours later, about a mile away from the initial site, CNN reported.

Rhissa Ag Boula, a high-ranking government official and a former Tuareg rebel chief in Niger, told VOA that the fourth soldier, La David Johnson, had remained at the front line while the others retreated under heavy fire.

The attack has raised questions in Niger, especially since the U.S. Army operates drone bases in the country and has significant intelligence resources there.

"That's what really shocked us: how, at their level, with all the resources they have, they could not have strong intelligence to avoid what happened there," said Hassane.

No group has officially taken responsibility for the attack. According to sources in the region, however, it is the work of Abu Adnan al-Saharaoui, who calls himself the Islamic Emir of the Great Sahara, affiliated with the Islamic State group.

Senator John McCain, has rightly called for a renewed debate in Congress to set parameters for the ability of the White House to authorize military actions overseas.  While the Niger incident is the immediate catalyst, fears of what Der Trumpenführer might seek to do in North Korea and Iran are no doubt at the back of McCain's mind and the minds of millions of other Americans. Politico looks at McCain's call for a new debate on limiting the president's powers to authorize military operations.  Here are article highlights:

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Monday seized on the deadly ambush in Niger to call for a new congressional authorization for U.S. military operations overseas.

McCain told reporters Monday that he and the Armed Services panel’s top Democrat, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, are working on a proposal to update the broad war powers Congress gave the commander in chief after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The deaths of four U.S. soldiers in Niger earlier this month have stoked fresh interest in a new war powers vote, which the Trump administration has indicated it would not oppose — although it says it has all the legal authority it needs to conduct anti-terrorism operations under the existing 2001 authorization.

“We’re going to have to have” an updated authorization for the use of military force, said McCain, who has previously called for a new war powers resolution.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had already been scheduled to hold an Oct. 30 hearing on the president’s war powers, which Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) called “excellent” timing Thursday. But he remains unsure about any practical movement on an updated war powers measure. Indeed, lawmakers as well as senior Pentagon officials are still getting up to speed on critical facts regarding the Oct. 4 attack that killed four members of the U.S. Army Special Forces. Armed Services panel members are set for a Thursday briefing on the ambush in Niger, where the Pentagon’s Africa Command has stepped up its efforts against militants affiliated with the Islamic State terrorist group. Senior senators in both parties, including Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said on Sunday that they were unaware of the size of the U.S. military presence in Niger, though the White House formally notified the Hill about troops in Niger in June.

Lawmakers are now pressing to know more about the events of Oct. 4, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford pledged on Monday to provide those details.  “We owe the families as much information as we can find out about what happened,” the four-star Marine general said.

“With regard to Congress and the criticism we’re not providing enough information, … if the Congress doesn’t believe that they’re not getting sufficient information, then I need to double my efforts to provide them with information,” Dunford added.

Defense Secretary James Mattis last week said the type of attack that occurred in Niger was “considered unlikely,” but he nonetheless promised to “rapidly” release the findings of an investigation into the incident.

This year’s previous pitches to update the 2001 war authorization have been attached to other legislation, and have failed to come to fruition. A proposal to repeal the authorization by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) was added to annual House defense spending legislation in June, but removed from the bill by House GOP leadership before it went to the floor.

And an attempt in September by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to add a repeal of the 2001 and 2002 war authorizations to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act was rebuffed by the Senate.  Lee, the only lawmaker to vote against the 2001 war authorization, called moves by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to derail her proposal “undemocratic.”

“People are asking, ‘Why are we in Niger?’ Rightfully so,” Lee said in an interview with Politico. “Well, a debate would provide information and answer a lot of questions and put Congress back in the mix in terms of us doing our job, because certainly we’re not.” 

Congress needs to take back its power and limit the ability of an unfit malignant narcissist to authorize military action based on mere whims and petulant bursts of angry over his fragile ego. 

SOS: Republicans, It’s Time to Panic

As I have made clear numerous times, in my opinion, Donald Trump is seriously mentally ill.  At best, he is a dangerous malignant narcissist.  At worse, he is a sociopath megalomaniac likely to act out of anger and trigger events that may be hard to stop once the dominoes begin falling.   Of course, no one should be surprised by any of this.  Even some other Republicans called out the danger that Trump posed if he ever had access to the nuclear codes.  Republicans like Rand Paul and even Bobby Jindal.  More recently, Senator Bob Corker joined this chorus and speculated that Der Trumpenführer could trigger World War III.  Yet too many Republicans continue to put their political party above the nation - indeed the entire world - and refused to state the obvious: Trump needs to be removed from office by any means necessary. Worse yet, his base of supporters who thrill at his war against gays, his efforts to allow non-white, non-English speaking Puerto Ricans simply die, and his war against black NFL players continue to support him.  Many in this latter group, of course, claim to be "godly Christian" even as their actions and the policies that they support are the antithesis to the Gospel message.   A column in the Washington Post by a former aid to George W. Bush and another column in the New York Times look at the danger that Trump poses to America and the world.  It is time for true patriots to act.  Here are highlights:

In the midst of a governing crisis, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has once again risen to his role as the voice of bland complacency. Concerning the open warfare between President Trump and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Ryan advises “these two gentlemen to sit down and just talk through their issues.”

But what are Corker’s “issues”? He has asserted that Trump requires constant handling to control his volatility: “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” Corker has accused Trump of lacking strategic thinking: “A lot of people think that there is some kind of ‘good cop, bad cop’ act underway, but that’s just not true.” Corker has called out Trump’s routine deceptions: “I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true.” Corker has talked of Trump’s vacuity: He acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”  [T]he real problem has always been Trump’s fundamental unfitness for high office. It is not Trump’s indiscipline and lack of leadership, which make carrying a legislative agenda forward nearly impossible. It is not his vulgarity and smallness, which have been the equivalent of spray-painting graffiti on the Washington Monument. It is not his nearly complete ignorance of policy and history, which condemns him to live in the eternal present of his own immediate desires.

Corker has given public permission to raise the most serious questions: Is Trump psychologically and morally equipped to be president? And could his unfitness cause permanent damage to the country?

It is no longer possible to safely ignore the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims. A main task of the chief of staff seems to be to shield him from dinner guests and telephone calls that might set him off on a foolish or dangerous tangent. Much of the White House senior staff seems bound, not by loyalty to the president, but by a duty to protect the nation from the president. 

The security of our country — and potentially the lives of millions of people abroad — depends on Trump being someone else entirely. It depends on the president being some wise, strategic, restrained leader he has never been.

The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and decision is upon us. The thin line of sane, responsible advisers at the White House — such as Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — could break at any moment. 

Any elected Republican who shares Corker’s concerns has a political and moral duty to state them in public. If Corker is correct, many of his colleagues do have such fears. Their silence is deafening and damning.

Wow!  And this was written by a Republican at the core of the George W. Bush White House. As noted, a column in the Times makes a similar argument from the other side of the aisle.  Here are highlights:

Don’t say that we weren’t warned.

In a September 2015 speech before the National Press Club in Washington, the Louisiana governor and Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal said:

“Donald Trump is dangerous. But not in the way you think. Many people think he’s dangerous. They say, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want somebody like that with such a hot head with his fingers on the nuclear codes.’ And yeah, that’s certainly true. That’s not the real danger. The real danger is that ironically Donald Trump could destroy America’s chance to be great again.”

During the second Republican presidential debate that same month, the CNN anchor Jake Tapper referred to Jindal’s concern about Trump and the nuclear codes, and asked Carly Fiorina, “Would you feel comfortable with Donald Trump’s finger on the nuclear codes?”

Fiorina hemmed and hawed, deflected and redirected, doing anything not to say what everyone knew — that Trump with the nuclear codes was a horrible idea. Jeb Bush also cowered when the question was put to him. But Rand Paul was forthright and forceful, saying:

“I think really there’s a sophomoric quality that is entertaining about Mr. Trump, but I am worried. I’m very concerned about him, having him in charge of the nuclear weapons, because I think his response, his visceral response to attack people on their appearance — short, tall, fat, ugly — my goodness, that happened in junior high. Are we not way above that? Would we not all be worried to have someone like that in charge of the nuclear arsenal?”

Hillary Clinton warned during the campaign, in a foreign policy speech in June 2016, “This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes, because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”

In July 2016, Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter for his best-selling memoir “The Art of the Deal,” revealed to The New Yorker, “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.”

He continued, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes, there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

That same month, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia warned at the Democratic National Convention about “giving the nuclear codes to a man who praises Vladimir Putin and Saddam Hussein.”

Trump continues his war of words and measuring of egos with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. While I still find the threat of a nuclear strike remote, it grows less and less remote with every passing day and every insult.

Kim Jong-un is irrational and unhinged, but so is Trump.

No matter whether I agreed with President Barack Obama’s policies or not, I never once worried that he might ignite a nuclear war. That assurance has now been removed. As my colleague Nicholas Kristof, who recently visited North Korea, said of the possibility of a war between our country and theirs, “War is preventable, but I’m not sure it will be prevented.”

This is what Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, meant when he talked to The New York Times last week. The Times reported that Corker charged that Trump was “treating his office like ‘a reality show,’ with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation ‘on the path to World War III.’ ”

Plenty of people tried to warn us about this moment, but not enough Americans took heed. To them, this was sky-is-falling hyperbole. The use of nuclear weapons was a thing of history and Hollywood.

But it is ever so clear that the threat is urgent and real and that the only thing standing between a nuclear strike and us is a set of short fingers that constantly type out Twitter insults. . . . If all this makes you uneasy, good. It should.

White House Advisers Fear Trump is "Unraveling”

Reports continue to mushroom that there are concerns among White House advisers that Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, is "unraveling."  Perhaps that is a nice way of saying the Trump is mentally unstable.  The take away for American citizens - and actually, the world at large - is that we are perhaps looking at Trump becoming a clear and present danger to America, placing all of us at risk of nuclear war or other unthinkable horrors.  Frighteningly, all that Mike Pence seems focused on is engaging in stunts striving to fan animosity towards black NFL players who have the audacity to draw attention to racial injustice.  On the positive side, Chief of Staff Mike Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis seem to understand the risk at hand and are doing their best to protect the nation and its citizens from Trump's potential insanity.  Yet even these two officials can be fired by the unstable Trump.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the situation that ought to absolutely terrify all but Trump's most loyal supporters (i.e., the religious extremists and racists and homophobes of the GOP base).  Here are article highlights:

At first it sounded like hyperbole, the escalation of a Twitter war. But now it’s clear that Bob Corker’s remarkable New York Times interview—in which the Republican senator described the White House as “adult day care” and warned Trump could start World War III—was an inflection point in the Trump presidency. It brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”

The conversation among some of the president’s longtime confidantes, along with the character of some of the leaks emerging from the White House has shifted. There’s a new level of concern. NBC News published a report that Trump shocked his national security team when he called for a nearly tenfold increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal during a briefing this summer. One Trump adviser confirmed to me it was after this meeting disbanded that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.”

In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods.

According to two sources familiar with the conversation, Trump vented to his longtime security chief, Keith Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House! There are a few exceptions, but I hate them!” (A White House official denies this.) Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision.

One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said. Even Trump’s most loyal backers are sowing public doubts. This morning, The Washington Post quoted longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack saying he has been “shocked” and “stunned” by Trump’s behavior.

While Kelly can’t control Trump’s tweets, he is doing his best to physically sequester the president—much to Trump’s frustration. One major G.O.P. donor told me access to Trump has been cut off, and his outside calls to the White House switchboard aren’t put through to the Oval Office. Earlier this week, I reported on Kelly’s plans to prevent Trump from mingling with guests at Mar-a-Lago later this month. And, according to two sources, Keith Schiller quit last month after Kelly told Schiller he needed permission to speak to the president and wanted written reports of their conversations.

West Wing aides have also worried about Trump’s public appearances, one Trump adviser told me. The adviser said aides were relieved when Trump declined to agree to appear on the season premiere of 60 Minutes last month. “He’s lost a step. They don’t want him doing adversarial TV interviews,” the adviser explained.

Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment—the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment, Trump said, “What’s that?” According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term.

As noted many times before, I have long thought that Trump is not mentally stable.  I can only hope that those who matter are belatedly waking up to this reality.  Hopefully, they will soon act to remove Trump from office.

Corker: Trump’s Recklessness Threatens ‘World War III’

While the core of Donald Trump supporters - Christofascists and racists - continue to applaud the misdeeds, misogyny and general batshitery of the occupant of the White House, more and more sane Republicans are coming to belatedly realize that Der Trumpenführer is a clear and present danger to both America and the world.  The same applies to Mike Pence after his pre-planned walk out from an NFL game seemingly aimed at thrilling the Trump base and further inflaming racial animosity.  The only saving factor for Pence is that were he to replace Trump, the chances of World War III being incited would likely diminish.  Telling, yesterday GOP Senator on Sunday morning news said that the White House has become an "adult day care center" and that he fears Trump will cause World War III.   Of course, anyone who ever seriously scrutinized Trump's personality and history should have known this and refused to support him.  Like other Republicans, Cocker failed to put morality and country ahead of party last year when it truly mattered.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Corker's belated awakening to the danger Trump poses.  Here are article highlights:

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

In an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party, Mr. Corker said he was alarmed about a president who acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”  “He concerns me,” Mr. Corker added. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.”

Mr. Corker’s comments capped a remarkable day of sulfurous insults between the president and the Tennessee senator — a powerful, if lame-duck, lawmaker, whose support will be critical to the president on tax reform and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal.

It began on Sunday morning when Mr. Trump, posting on Twitter, accused Mr. Corker of deciding not to run for re-election because he “didn’t have the guts.” Mr. Corker shot back in his own tweet: “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

The senator views Mr. Trump as given to irresponsible outbursts — a political novice who has failed to make the transition from show business.  Mr. Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts. “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Mr. Corker said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Trump’s feud with Mr. Corker is particularly perilous given that the president has little margin for error as he tries to pass a landmark overhaul of the tax code — his best, and perhaps last, hope of producing a major legislative achievement this year.

If Senate Democrats end up unified in opposition to the promised tax bill, Mr. Trump could lose the support of only two of the Senate’s 52 Republicans to pass it. That is the same challenging math that Mr. Trump and Senate Republican leaders faced in their failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Beyond the Iran deal, Mr. Corker’s committee holds confirmation hearings on Mr. Trump’s ambassadorial appointments. If the president were to oust Rex W. Tillerson as secretary of state, as some expect, Mr. Corker would lead the hearings on Mr. Trump’s nominee for the post.

In a 25-minute conversation, Mr. Corker, speaking carefully and purposefully, seemed to almost find cathartic satisfaction by portraying Mr. Trump in terms that most senior Republicans use only in private.

All but inviting his colleagues to join him in speaking out about the president, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican. “I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true,” he said. “You know he does it, everyone knows he does it, but he does.” After a report last week that Mr. Tillerson had once referred to Mr. Trump as a “moron,” Mr. Corker told reporters that Mr. Tillerson was one of three officials helping to “separate our country from chaos.” Those remarks were repeated on “Fox News Sunday,” which may have prompted Mr. Trump’s outburst.

In August, after Mr. Trump’s equivocal response to the deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Va., Mr. Corker told reporters that the president “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

Mr. Corker would not directly answer when asked whether he thought Mr. Trump was fit for the presidency. But he did say that the commander in chief was not fully aware of the power of his office.

“I don’t think he appreciates that when the president of the United States speaks and says the things that he does, the impact that it has around the world, especially in the region that he’s addressing,” he said. “And so, yeah, it’s concerning to me.” 

I guess Corker finally speaking out is a case of better late than never, but had he and other Republicans who place country ahead of party - admittedly a vanishing species - perhaps America could have avoided the ongoing nightmare that seems to have no end.  

Are "Conservatives" Their Just Comeuppance?

I put the word conservative in the title to this post in quotations because what today's media describes as conservatives are anything but what that term encompassed in the past.  Nowadays, the term conservative is used for Christofascists, white supremacists and avowed racists, and Neo-Nazis.  I suspect that a majority of old time conservatives now see themselves either as moderates or at times liberals simply because so-called conservatism has become so ugly and misogynistic.   Nonetheless, it is delicious to see Der Trumpenführer causing conniption fits among what the media now calls conservatives.   That said, it doesn't mean I have changed my opinion that Trump - and by extension, Mike Pence - is unfit for office  and nothing less than dangerous.  I am merely enjoying watching the angst of those who threw away what little decency and few principles they had to support such a foul and toxic individual.  A column in the New York Times sums up my thoughts on matters at the moment.  Here are highlights:

Uh-oh. I’m starting to enjoy Donald Trump’s presidency.

I enjoy the rage it inspires in Laura Ingraham. On news that the president had struck a tentative deal with Democrats to help the beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in exchange for zero funding for his border wall, the radio host and Trump groupie fumed, “On what planet are you living on?”

I enjoy the whiplash it inflicts on Ann Coulter. Within the space of a year, the right-wing literary giant has gone from writing “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!” to tweeting, as she did Thursday, “At this point, who DOESN’T want Trump impeached?”

I enjoy the paroxysm of Representative Steve King, the Iowa Dixiecrat who warns that if Trump strikes his immigration deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi it will leave the president’s base “blown up, destroyed, irreparable and disillusioned beyond repair.”

I enjoy the self-abasement of Jeff Sessions, who endured private harangues and public humiliation from his boss because the attorney general saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use his office to get tough on illegal immigration.

And then there’s the joy of watching Sean Hannity trying desperately to pin the blame for the president’s border wall betrayal on congressional Republicans.

Who are the “cuckservatives” now?

I use the epithet — “cuck” is short for cuckold — since it’s the one Trump’s most vociferous supporters hurled at mainstream Republicans they accused of caving in to the moral bullying of liberals, especially on the subjects of race and immigration.

But now it’s the president who is doing exactly that, making the case for DACA beneficiaries in terms his base most condemns: as “good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military” and who don’t deserve to be thrown out of the country simply because their parents brought them to the United States as children. It’s the kind of thing Nancy Pelosi — or, worse, John McCain — might say.

Trump’s move toward the Democrats on DACA — just as his earlier move toward them on the debt ceiling — isn’t about pragmatism. It’s not even about the plasticity of his convictions.

It’s about his addiction to betrayal, his contempt for those who bend their knee to him, his disdain for “losers” (especially when they’re on his side) and his desperate need to be admired by those who despise him most simply because they have the wit to see through him. This is a presidency whose defining feature isn’t ideology, much less policy. It’s neurosis.

In other words, there is no “pivot” at work in the presidency, in the mold of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s leftward turn during his governorship of California. There’s a mood swing.

That might comfort the Trump true believers who fear their president is abandoning them. It shouldn’t: He feels about as much loyalty toward them and their convictions as he’s felt toward his several wives.

All of this is fun, since it’s always delightful to see blowhards and bigots get their comeuppance at the hands of their idol. The ideologues of the right are left to make do with their jester and his antics. I hope they have a sense of humor about it.

But there’s also a lesson for conservatives who mistook Trump’s bluster for seriousness. Not least among the conservative “Never Trump” objections to the candidate is that he would be a disaster to the Republican Party — not just because his beliefs, such as they were, were anathema to the party’s best traditions, but because at heart he was a destructive opportunist with no core convictions beyond his own immediate advantage.

The president’s newfound good sense on DACA is good news for the country, provided it lasts. Nobody should count on it whipping any sense into those conservatives who fell for him, also known as cucks. 

Scott Rigell: It’s Clear Russia Influenced 2016 Election

I will be the first to admit that I never have liked GOP Congressman Scott Rigell, but as he has wound down his time in Congress, he seems to have finally gotten his head out of his ass in a number of ways and belatedly spoken the truth and stopped putting his political party ahead of the nation and the best interests of the residents of the Virginia 2nd Congressional District.  Perhaps knowing that he no longer had to worry about a primary challenge by white supremacists and Christofascists in the GOP base, Rigell has felt free to speak candidly.   His recent comments on the 2016 election and Der Fuhrer are most part directly on point.  One can only hope that newly elected Scott Taylor will act as Rigell has in the waning days of his term of office. Here are highlights on Rigell's remarks from Roll Call:

Retiring Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell, who made waves when he broke with the Republican Party over Donald Trump’s presidential nomination, said the president-elect's choice of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State is “deeply flawed.”

In addition to his worries about Tillerson’s lack of diplomatic experience, Rigell told Hampton Roads TV station WAVY he is concerned about the Exxon Mobil CEO’s close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the role Russia may have played in the U.S. presidential election.

“It is clear to some degree they influenced our election,” Rigell said.

Additionally, Rigell hopes Trump takes seriously the implications of the hack, and heeds the intelligence agencies call for further investigation.

“I think it would actually heighten his presidency if he would lead and advance the cause of exactly what happened,” Rigell added. 

Rigell, who represents Virginia's 2nd District, was an outspoken opponent of Trump’s candidacy, and eventually endorsed Libertarian Gary Johnson over his party’s nominee.

At one point, Rigell called the real estate mogul “a bully unworthy of our nomination,” and asserted that a Trump presidency would be “reckless, embarrassing and ultimately dangerous.”

Months later, Rigell’s opinion hasn’t changed.  “I have always said there is not one character trait in him that I would want my son to emulate. Not one," Rigell told WAVY. 

“I think Donald Trump has deeply divided our country, and I cannot see him bringing us together,” Rigell said. “Do I hope that happens? Yes, I do because I am an American first, but for him to say, ‘We are going to make Mexico pay for it’ is a bizarre statement."

Rigell decided not to seek a fourth term in January, and will be replaced by Republican Scott Taylor.

I guess Rigell's conversion is a case of better late than never.  Scott Taylor needs to know that we will be watching him closely, especially when it comes to voting on anti-LGBT legislation.  Personally, I cannot fully trust Taylor after his endorsement of Trump.