Trump’s Desperate and Deadly Search for a Scapegoat

One thing that can be depended upon when dealing with a malignant narcissist such as Donald Trump is that they will NEVER admit that anything is their fault. Any misfortune or calamity MUST be the fault of someone else because their narcissistic personality disorder prevents them from ever admitting a mistake or miscalculation - no matter what the objective evidence indicates otherwise. Today, in a further morally bankrupt attempt to shift blame from his own and his administrations failures and incompetence in handling the coronavirus threat, Trump has targeted the World Health Organization and cut US funding to the international organization - a move criticized even by a number of otherwise self-prostituting Republicans.  A column in the New York Times looks at this dangerous move by a tyrant who seemingly increasingly sees himself as a monarch rather than a elected official who serves at the bidding of the public.  Here are column highlights:

Thousands of Americans would be alive today if President Trump had spent more time listening to the World Health Organization instead of trying to destroy it.

Trump’s announcement that he is halting American funding for the W.H.O. just as the world is facing a raging pandemic is a dangerous attempt to find a scapegoat for his own failings.

Yes, some of the complaints about the W.H.O.are valid,  . . . . But it has still managed the coronavirus crisis far better than the Trump administration has.

The W.H.O. tweeted its first warning about the coronavirus on Jan. 4 and then rang alarm bells, culminating at the end of that month when it declared a “public health emergency of international concern.” It developed an effective diagnostic test that is used in dozens of countries, while the United States still cannot manage adequate testing.

In late January and in February, the W.H.O. issued increasingly urgent warnings about the coronavirus. Trump ignored them, instead insisting that it was “totally under control,” predicted the number of infections would drop, declared that “it’s going to disappear” and consistently downplayed the virus while talking up the stock market.

Trump’s passivity — even as the W.H.O. and his own advisers warned him of the risks — squandered the chance to acquire more personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses. His likening of Covid-19 to the flu led people to join public gatherings like Mardi Gras and Florida spring break, and that is one reason the United States has had 80 deaths per million inhabitants from Covid-19, compared with four per million in South Korea and fewer than one per million in Taiwan.

The W.H.O. is bureaucratic, frustrating, timid — and indispensable. No other organization can fill its international role overseeing the fight against disease. It has battled an outbreak of Ebola since last year in Congo, and that’s one reason we haven’t had Ebola cases in the United States.

Every day, the W.H.O. saves lives. It has promoted safe childbirth, and the number of women dying in childbirth has been cut almost in half over 25 years. It fights female genital mutilation and helps women with obstetric fistula. It is struggling to eliminate cervical cancer. It is part of the campaign against polio.

Normally, an American president is a leader in global health, and Democrats and Republicans have often cooperated on a humanitarian agenda. President George W. Bush started a program against H.I.V./AIDS called Pepfar that has saved 17 million lives. President Barack Obama helped lead the global effort to end the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16.

In contrast, Trump has provided zero global leadership against the coronavirus, and he is now trying to crush the one organization providing such leadership.

Trump’s main complaint about the W.H.O. is that it is too close to China, and there’s some truth to that — but Trump himself fawned over China’s response to the pandemic. “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump tweeted on Jan. 24. “I want to thank President Xi.”

Gutting the W.H.O. would mean more kids dying of malnutrition, more moms dying of cervical cancer, and the coronavirus infecting more people in more countries — impairing the pandemic response, which may well cost even more American lives. And all because an American president is seeking a scapegoat for his own ineptitude.

Yes, Americans have died unnecessarily from Covid-19, and I’ve been seared by my own reporting in “hot zones” of New York hospitals. But if Trump insists on holding people accountable, he needn’t denounce the W.H.O. He can gaze in the mirror.

Over 36 Mental Health Professionals: Trump Too Mentally Ill for Office

I have not made any effort to hide my view that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, is mentally ill.  Perhaps dangerously so.  Now three dozen plus mental health professionals, one of whom is a retired  professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, have voiced similar concerns in a letter to the editor of the New York Times. Indeed, they state that Trump is too mentally unstable to occupy the office of the presidency.  The following is their letter in full (the full list of signatories is here):

Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, Feb. 9) describes Donald Trump’s constant need “to grind the opposition underfoot.” As mental health professionals, we share Mr. Blow’s concern.

Silence from the country’s mental health organizations has been due to a self-imposed dictum about evaluating public figures (the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 Goldwater Rule). But this silence has resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time. We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.

Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).

In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.

Yes, admitting that one made a mistake isn't always easy, but we are far past the time when not hurting the feelings of Trump supporters cannot make us hold are tongues and not state the obvious truth: Trump IS mentally ill and he poses a danger to the nation and the world. He needs to be removed from office ASAP.  True, that would leave the country with the every foul Mike Pence in the oval office.  But at least Pence isn't flat out insane.  Scary and a danger, yes, but not an utter insane loose cannon that is the only way to describe Trump. 

Trump's Alarming First Week - Is He Mentally Ill?

Having safely escaped Tidewater Virginia for a long weekend of warm weather, there is one thing that we have not been able to escape: the continuing menace to the nation and the world posed by the current deranged occupant of the White House.  The first week of Der Fuhrer's presidency has been marked by bizarre lies and one demonstration after another that Trump likely DOES suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, a real danger to national security and the civil rights of everyday Americans.  As for immigrants and refugees, Der Fuhrer is imposing policies reminiscent of the bans that sent thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe to their deaths.  Everything revolves around satiating Trump's insatiable and fragile ego and pandering to the ugliest prejudices of his base.  Some Republicans have begun to display alarm, but most seem indifferent to the reality that the White House id now occupied by a madman who is incapable of controlling himself or moderating unhinged behavior.  A conservative columnist recaps the week's alarming cavalcade of unbalanced and ego mad behavior in a piece in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts:

Week One of the Trump administration was among the most alarming in the history of the American presidency.

There have been scarier weeks for the country, certainly — the Cuban missile crisis and the Sept. 11 attacks. There have been more tragic ones — the Sept. 11 attacks again, the terrible toll of wartime, the horror of four presidential assassinations.

There have been occasions of terrible presidential judgment — Franklin D. Roosevelt’s order to detain U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II. And there have been moments of looming constitutional crisis — during Watergate alone, the Saturday Night Massacre, the showdown with the Supreme Court over the release of the tapes, the impeachment inquiry that resulted in Richard Nixon’s resignation.

But the first week of the Trump presidency was alarming in a different way, because the frightening part involved the president’s own erratic, even bizarre, behavior.

Anyone who paid even glancing attention to the 2016 campaign already understood Donald Trump to be undisciplined, easily provoked and self-absorbed to the point of narcissism. But it was one thing to know that in theory; it was much more unsettling to witness President Trump in action. 

[Each day feeling scarier than the one before, and Trump’s sycophantic aides modeling his own fact-free rants — press secretary Sean Spicer’s falsehood-filled briefing-room tirade, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway’s brazen defense of “alternative facts,” chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon’s brutish admonition to the media to “keep its mouth shut.”

Trump himself outdid his petty obsession with crowd size with his delusional obsession with popular-vote fraud. . . . . What was once delusional ego-salving now appears headed for official inquiry.

This is ominous not only for the implicit threat of imposing new and unnecessary obstacles to voting, but also because it means that no one, neither American citizens nor foreign leaders, can believe the president of the United States when he makes an assertion.

[M]y lament about the week is largely devoid of ideological content. That is not because his policy moves are not appalling — they are. But you don’t have to disagree with Trump’s policies to be rattled to the core by his unhinged behavior.

What is to be done? In a meeting last week with The Post editorial board, Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chair of the House Oversight Committee, said he was weighing legislation to require presidents to undergo an independent medical examination, including for mental health. Chaffetz cautioned that he wasn’t “talking about some of the rhetoric that’s flying around” about Trump. Still, he said, “If you’re going to have your hands on the nuclear codes, you should probably know what kind of mental state you’re in.”

That can’t happen soon enough.

How anyone sane and rational can continue to support the man and make excuses for his bizarre behavior is baffling.  Are really that many Trump voters who put satisfying their bigotries ahead of the nation's long term welfare.  Trump represents "change" only because he is insane.  

Watching "President" Trump With Horror

Just six days into Der Fuhrer's reign of terror and I already cannot tolerate to hear his voice much less listen the mix of outright lies and ramblings of an mentally unsound narcissist.  Indeed, I am overwhelmed with the urge to scream at the television or switch from satellite radio to disc rather that endure the foul miasma that is Trump.  In such a mood it is easy to forget that outside of Putin's Russia which wanted America reduced and divided and neo-fascist groups in Europe, most of the world is feeling similar fear and disgust. As a piece in the New Yorker - have you noticed how the NYC news outlets hate Trump more than, thus suggesting that familiarity grows contempt - looks at the worldwide dismay and loathing.  Here are article excerpts:

On Thursday, Donald Trump’s sixth full day in office, I asked a British friend for his initial impressions. Noting that the new American President had moved swiftly, signing executive orders to end Obamacare, complete the Dakota Access pipeline, and begin building the border wall with Mexico, my friend shook his head and remarked, “The real problem is it’s not just America, is it? The whole world gets Trump, whether it likes it or not.”

In Britain, as elsewhere, there has been a widespread sense of impending catastrophe during Trump’s first week as President. Much of the chatter revolves around his transparently vindictive spirit—particularly toward Obama’s legacy—and his customary ridiculousness. Trump has long been seen abroad as an absurdly cartoonish figure, a perception compounded this week by his insistence about the size of the crowd at his Inauguration and by his spokespeople’s use of Orwellian phrases such as “alternative facts.” The Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell routinely depicts Trump as a monstrous slug of a man, with a bloated body, dark-orange skin, tiny hands, huge pouting lips, puffy white eyes, and a toilet seat on his head instead of his helmet of yellow hair. The contempt for Trump spans the political spectrum: the premier cartoonist at the Murdoch-owned London Times, Peter Brookes, presents equally grotesque images of Trump.
 [T]he underlying shock over the new American President is often palpable. Yesterday, a friend who is a prominent British journalist, and who has been reporting on Trump’s first week in office, sent me the day’s White House press-room handout. Marked “For immediate release,” the memo was titled “Praise for the President’s Bold Action” and featured adulatory quotes from various journalists. “Yes, it’s for real,” my friend deadpanned. “Worthy of Mugabe.”

The contrast between the media’s disdain for Trump and the Tory government’s craven pandering to the President is huge, as Trump might say. As Prime Minister Theresa May prepared for her visit to the White House this week, there was a widespread sense of embarrassment in Britain over the begging-bowl nature of her trip. . . .

The British will return from Washington with a little less dignity than before, but with their “special relationship” intact. Other countries are receiving more bruising treatment. Mexicans have been feeling justifiably offended by Trump for some time, but their sense of grievance has sharpened considerably since Trump’s gleeful Tuesday-night tweet that he would sign executive orders the next day to begin the construction of his long-threatened border wall.

As ever, Trump has laid down his gauntlet by tweet. Clearly, he intends to govern in the same way that he campaigned—for all the feelings of reproof that his diction and his opinions arouse in millions of people around the world. He will be motivated by his understanding that, in the modern age, branding is everything. Just as he made a fortune by cashing in on the Trump brand, Twitter’s hundred and forty characters allow him to exercise power with a minimum degree of actual statecraft. 

[S]ince Trump’s victory, many of my Latin-American friends have sent me their heartfelt commiserations. Almost all of them compared Trump to the populist despots who have long dominated their region. Seen from sophisticated aeries such as New York or London, their politics have often seemed clownish and tinhorn. No longer. 

Will White House Leaks Defeat Trump?

Despite his full blown assault on the free press, Der Fuhrer has one problem that may yet sink him and open the way for his removal from office: leaks flowing in a torrent from White House staffers and others. The picture that is emerging should surprise no one other than the most brainwashed or bigotry filled Trump supporters:  the occupant of the Oval Office is a thin skinned narcissist who cannot stand anything that does not further inflate his overweening ego and who will lash out at anything not in keeping with his alternate universe.  One can only hope that with time even the worse political whores in the Republican Party will wake up to the fact that Trump needs to go for the good of everyone in America.  I loath Mike Pence, but at least he isn't clinically insane and might be controlled by tradition and the ability to grasp some semblance of objective reality.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the ongoing leaks flowing from the White House.  Here are highlights:

 We now have a story from The Washington Post ("The first days inside Trump’s White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot") to match yesterday's from The Times ("Rocky First Weekend for Trump Troubles Even His Top Aides"). They are each a classic type for a major newspaper.

But there is an underlying, not-made-explicit message to both which is perhaps the most important. We are three days into the administration and the Trump White House leaks not so much like a sieve as a bucket with no bottom.

The Trump White House not only leaks like crazy. It casually leaks the most intimate and humiliating details about the President - hurt feelings, ego injury, childlike behavior, self-destructive rages over tweets, media failure to credit his own grandiosity. We have simply never seen this level of leaking, with this little respect for the President's dignity or reputation, this early.

From The Post ...

Trump has been resentful, even furious, at what he views as the media’s failure to reflect the magnitude of his achievements, and he feels demoralized that the public’s perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.

From Politico ...

One person who frequently talks to Trump said aides have to push back privately against his worst impulses in the White House, like the news conference idea, and have to control information that may infuriate him. He gets bored and likes to watch TV, this person said, so it is important to minimize that.

There is, to put it mildly, a rather clearly recurring theme: a torqued up man-child, alternatively rageful and fragile, both grandiose and profoundly insecure.

It is a bracing picture, chilling and hilarious. But don't lose the point: no White House leaks like this, leaks this much or leaks this casually about the President's emotional weakness. 

Again, no one should be surprised if they have even casually followed Trump over the years.  That said, it is frightening that we have someone mentally disturbed in the office of the presidency.  Trump needs to go and the sooner the better.  He is a clear and present danger to America and the world.

How the Electoral College Could Still Stop Trump

Only two days after the election and Donald Trump is already showing his unfitness for office going off on a twitter rant that protesters in various cities are being paid to protest against him.  Meanwhile, one of his thugs transition team members is threatening that the protests will be "quelled." Never mind the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.   Trump is a mentally unbalanced narcissist who seemingly thought that by winning the election, suddenly all Americans would like and respect him. I respect the office  of the presidency but I have zero respect for Trump who is not yet sworn in. I never will and will hold to the #NotMyPresident mantra for the next four years.  The irony is that Trump - and the party he now leads - spent the last eight years trashing Barack Obama.  Does he not realize that he will get equal treatment?  Does he not realize that the protests may swell once more of his dangerous appointments and coming policies become widely known?  The man is unfit for the presidency.  The Founding Fathers knew of the dangers of a man like Trump, hence the Electoral College that had the ability to override the election of someone who is a danger to the nation.  While seemingly, the system backfired, it could still work if electors have the balls to do what the Founders expected them to do.  A piece in the Huffington Post looks at what could save the republic if there are enough with the spine to do their intended job.  The worry is that no such responsible electors will act as required. Here are highlights:  

Trump can still be stopped. The Founding Fathers foresaw just this catastrophe, and built a fail-safe into the Constitution. It’s called the Electoral College. Alexander Hamilton was explicit: this mechanism was designed to ensure that “the office of president will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” In short, it was designed to prevent just this situation: the rise of an unqualified demagogue like Donald Trump.

You can make it do what it was meant to do.

The requirement here is modest: ten Republican electors appalled at the prospect of a Trump presidency, and sufficiently courageous to vote accordingly, must be persuaded to do so. It doesn’t matter who they choose — in most red states, they would likely not be thwarting the will of the the majority, as long as they chose a Republican. This would give Trump only 269 votes in the Electoral College.

If neither party ends up with 270 votes, then the decision passes to the House of Representatives, and a vote in that chamber determines the winner. The House is permitted to choose from among the three candidates who receive the most votes in the Electoral College. Hence, dissenting electors can rest assured that they — and the voters they represent — will end up with a Republican president.

Although 24 states seek to prohibit faithless electors by a variety of methods, including pledges and the threat of fines or criminal action, most constitutional scholars believe that once electors have been chosen, they remain constitutionally free agents, able to vote for any candidate who meets the requirements for President and Vice President.

These so-called “faithless electors” are vanishingly rare, which is as it should be — this is a unique circumstance, which requires emergency measures. Ignore the epithet: these electors would not be remotely faithless; this act would be faithful to the letter and intent of the Constitution. It would be patriotic.

A crucial fact here is that votes in the Electoral College are cast anonymously. An elector need not reveal that he or she is the one who chose to support another candidate. This shields an individual from retribution.

Why should Democrats fight for this? Because any conceivable choice on the part of the Electoral College and the House, however extreme, would be preferable to Trump.

This would not be an abuse of the Constitution. Quite the opposite, as I say: it would be the proper use of the Constitution to prevent the abuse of a general election. The Founding Fathers would have approved. More: they would have been distressed to see this not happen, given the circumstances. They chose to found a republic that was not a direct democracy, and this is why: a simple binding majority vote provides no check upon the election of a tyrant. (This election was an exception, ironically: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, and direct democracy would have spared the world the terrifying promise of a Trump presidency.)

If you honor the Founding Fathers — and the Constitution — then you will insist upon employing the emergency measures coded into the very definition of the republic.

So, how do you accomplish this? The process is simple: write to Republican electors in states that went red, and beg them to vote their conscience. You can download a template for a short petition — a joint letter from you and your colleagues — on this site. The complete list of relevant electors can be found here, with contact information: United States presidential electors, 2016.

I’m urging everyone to do this: not simply Democrats, but responsible Republicans. Modern history has witnessed few events more admirable than bipartisan efforts to thwart racist demagoguery: most recently in France, when decent people on the left and the right combined — despite their mutual loathing — to prevent the election of Marine Le Pen.

So, embrace decency. It’s not just a civic duty; it’s a moral duty. It is a categorical imperative.

Once you have written letters, the next step is to agitate loudly for just this solution. The nation must see rallies, marches, blogs and editorials. Let these electors know that you’re on their side, that you will support them in what would be unquestionably a courageous act. An act of heroism. Even though votes are cast anonymously, electors will likely be threatened and slandered as a group. But patriots have withstood worse.

Trump supporters will scream; there will likely be violence, and perhaps riots. But these people did not write the Constitution; they do not get to rewrite it; and they are bound by it. It will not be civil war. Genuine Trump supporters are a minority within a minority; they will be opposed by genuine Republicans, as well as Libertarians, Democrats, and Greens. They will lose.

Occupy the Constitution. The alternative is unthinkable.

America must be saved from the coming nightmare.

Trump's Repudiation of American Democracy

I have always viewed Trump as a clear and present danger to America ever since he launched his narcissism driven campaign.  Last night he confirmed it for all to see when he refused to confirm that he would aide by the election results, win or lose.  His refusal should come as no surprise give the narcissistic personality disorder he seemingly suffers from.  A disorder exhibited by many of history's worse tyrants, including Hitler, Stalin - and perhaps Vladimir Putin.  Everything is ALWAYS about them, they are never wrong, and they cannot handle that people might reject them and/or their dangerous agenda.  The main editorial in the Washington Post sums up Trump's self-centered, ego driven existence and the threat that he (and some of his insane supporters) poses to the country.  Here are highlights:

DONALD TRUMP showed a bit more self-control in the third and final presidential debate Wednesday night than he had in the previous two. His back and forth with Hillary Clinton was more substantive, thanks in part to firm guidance from moderator Chris Wallace. But all of that was overshadowed by Mr. Trump’s breathtaking refusal to say that he will accept the results of the election.

“I will look at it at the time,” he said. “The media is so dishonest and so corrupt . . . they poison the minds of the voters . . . She should never have been allowed to run for the presidency.”

Ms. Clinton rightly called his stance a “horrifying” repudiation of U.S. democracy. Respecting the will of the voters has since the end of the Civil War allowed for a peaceful transition of power that has made this country the envy of the world.

Next to that, policy issues seem small. Yet the policy discussion was clarifying also, exposing as it did Mr. Trump’s ignorance of — or is it distaste for? — facts and policy. He again insisted that the North American Free Trade Agreement has sucked jobs from the country, when economists have found otherwise. He indicated the debt would take care of itself under his economic plan because “we will have created a tremendous economic machine,” which is pure snake oil. 

In another striking moment, Mr. Trump denied that the Russian government has been meddling in this election, refusing to accept the judgment of the country’s intelligence community. Ms. Clinton said “the most important question” was whether Mr. Trump would acknowledge Moscow’s interference. Mr. Trump at first declined to do so, saying he doubted the reports by U.S. intelligence agencies. He avoided any criticism of Russia’s Vladi­mir Putin, repeatedly insisting it would be “good” to get along with Russia, with no mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other actions that have made getting along difficult.

When Mr. Wallace turned to the scandals that have dominated the past month, Mr. Trump incorrectly insisted that the women who have come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct have been “debunked.”

These are gaps that would have been probed and tested in a normal campaign. They fade to the status of trivia in the face of an opponent who will not accept the basic rules of American democracy.

The man is very, very dangerous and the spineless leadership of what's left of the GOP must act decisively to rein this Frankenstein monster in under control.

Trump Spirals into Ideological Psychosis

I for one have always seen Donald Trump as mentally ill.  Not so much in a "raving maniac" way, but rather a very sick narcissism and total lack of care or empathy for anyone but himself.  In seeking to satiate his unquenchable ego he engages in behavior that must be painful to his children, perhaps other than Donald Jr. who seems as sick as his father.  Now, as the election nears an end and Trump finds himself losing by most accounts, the man is lashing out and offering any and all excuses rather than taking a good look at himself in the mirror and understanding how unsavory and dangerous he appears to those tethered to objective reality.  Conservative columnist and former GOP white house staffer Michael Gerson has an op-ed that looks at Trump's increasing psychosis.  Here are excerpts:

Given even the lowest expectations, Donald Trump still has the capacity to surprise.

In recent days, Trump has sneered at the looks of a woman who accuses him of sexual assault, denigrated the appearance of Hillary Clinton, proposed to drug-test his opponent, used his campaign to promote what appears to be a Russian covert operation, asserted that Clinton has held secret meetings with international bankers “to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty,” attacked“Saturday Night Live,” promised to jail his opponent and contended that the “whole election is being rigged.”

Which means that Trump is sickeningly cruel, boorish, bonkers, subversive, conspiratorial, obsessive, authoritarian and reckless with the reputation of American democracy.

This is quite a closing argument for a presidential candidate. I imagine it did not emerge from focus groups. So what does all of this mean?

(1) It means that the Republican nominee for president is frighteningly unstable under pressure. He is easily baited, highly sensitive to slights, prone to using faulty information from the Internet, hyperbolic and vengeful. Now imagine those characteristics during a confrontation with China in the South China Sea.

(2) It is an indication of the quality of his closest, non-family advisers. Stephen Bannon and Rudy Giuliani are not attempting to keep Trump in check. They are feeding his manias. Trump is completely unmoored from restraining influences, and would be as president.

(3) Trump’s closing case is a version, not of movement conservatism or tea party conservatism, but of crackpot conservatism — an alt-right rage against a vast, scheming establishment that includes the liberal media, global financiers and a growing list of women making accusations of sexual assault. All this was previewed during Trump’s political rise, which included birtherism, vaccine denialism and insinuations of foul play in the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. GOP leaders can hardly pretend to be surprised  . . .

(4) It is a further indication (as if we needed it) that Trump has no commitment to the American political system. He is perfectly willing to delegitimize democratic institutions as a campaign tactic, squandering a civic inheritance he does not value. Even before his current troubles, he said that an electoral loss would be prima facie evidence of fraud and encouraged supporters to monitor majority-black polling stations in Pennsylvania. Now he is entering uncharted territory. By preemptively questioning the legitimacy of his forthcoming shellacking, Trump is stepping outside the four corners of the constitutional order, on the model of autocratic strongmen he has publicly admired.

The man is a clear and present danger and MUST be defeated on November 8, 2016, hopefully by a resounding margin which will underscore  his utter unfitness to have ever been the GOP nominee.  Hopefully he drags down GOP members of the Senate and House of Representatives with him. 

Will Republican Leaders Have the Balls to Kill Trump's "Rigged Election" Lies?

With two new polls out showing Donald trump losing the presidential election contest - one has him down by eleven points - it is a safe bet that Trump, a complete narcissistic egomaniac, will continue to lay the groundwork among his delusional supporters that he lost the election solely because it was "rigged" and stolen from him.  Frankly, I do not see Trump ever admitting that a majority of Americans rejected him and found him unfit - even though he is, in fact unfit for office.  Trump's ego will never allow him to make this admission.  Therefore, he may refuse to concede the election or find other ways to throw the nation's constitutional system into disorder (something his buddy, Vladimir Putin would savor).   Thus, the burden will fall on other Republican leaders - most of who have shown themselves to be spineless and little better than castrated eunuchs to date - to make the case that Trump lost fair and square and largely because of his own doing.  A piece in Politico looks at the issue and why many are worried.  Here are highlights:

No one knows how to handle what might be about to hit on Nov. 9.

Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to lose on Nov. 8, refuse to concede the election, and teeter the country into an unprecedented crisis of faith in government. Republicans and Democrats, in Washington and beyond, fear that the aftermath of the 2016 election will create a festering infection in the already deep and lasting wound that the campaign is leaving on America.

And, they say, only Republican leaders who speak up will have any chance of stopping it.

President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and their top aides, along with leaders on Capitol Hill, worry about the preview Trump is providing in this final month, part kamikaze mission to take down Clinton, part temper tantrum by a man who has never been embarrassed on either this scale or spotlight.

They worry about how his egged-on followers might respond, and the violence — perhaps against Muslims, Latinos or any of the many other groups he has targeted in his campaign rhetoric — that might follow.

“People do dangerous things when dangerous leaders foment deep resentment,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.).

If Clinton does win, most agree that the immediate burden will likely fall on Republican leaders — particularly House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — to quickly and vocally insist on the legitimacy of her election.

“What this would be is an assault on the foundations of the long-established traditions of the country, an assault on democracy, vandalizing it,” said Steve Schmidt, the Republican strategist who led John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “It would be incumbent finally on national leaders in the Republican Party to speak clearly, unequivocally about not just the situation, but the totality of it.”

“[I]f Donald Trump loses and fights the outcome, it will make many of his followers, which means millions of people, question the legitimacy of our American government. That’s destructive and corrosive.”

Tony Fratto, a former aide to George W. Bush, said, “You hate to have to fight something like this, but it is very corrosive, so you do have to fight it. You don’t want it to even pick up with a small segment of the population. Reince [Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman] and Ryan and McConnell will have to concede for him, for the party. They just have to take things out of his hands.”

Trump’s refusing to concede “totally fits into his strategy of exploiting voters’ historic breakdown in faith in institutions across the board,” Israel said. “The problem is he'll make democracy itself collateral damage to his ego.”

“Trump is now attacking our democracy. Any elected R who doesn't condemn this anti-American thug will carry a moral stain forever,” tweeted Republican strategist Mike Murphy on Saturday, adding the hashtag “#cowards.”

“Democracies rely on some modicum of trust between people & their institutions. Destroy that thru conspiracy mongering & there's no going back,” tweeted Neera Tanden, a former Clinton aide who’s remained in touch with the campaign in Brooklyn.

A potential constitutional crisis all because of the insatiable, uncontrolled ego of one man.  

Inside the Deranged Mind of Donald Trump

There have been many columns and news stories about Donald Trump's narcissism and the danger his self-absorption would pose to the country and world should he ever make it to the White House.  But perhaps the most accurate description of the man can be found in a column in the Chicago Tribune by Garrison Keillor (thanks to the reader who sent me the link).  That Trump is one psychologically twisted individual with juvenile impulses is an understatement.  Here are column highlights:

Your eyes look dead and your scowl does not suggest American greatness so much as American indigestion. Your hair is the wrong color: People don't want a president to be that shade of blond. You know that now.

Why doesn't someone in your entourage dare to say these things? So sad. The fans in the arenas are wild about you, and Sean Hannity is as loyal as they come, but Rudy and Christie and Newt are reassuring in that stilted way of hospital visitors. And The New York Times treats you like the village idiot. This is painful for a Queens boy trying to win respect in Manhattan where the Times is the Supreme Liberal Jewish Anglican Arbiter of Who Has The Smarts and What Goes Where. When you came to Manhattan 40 years ago, you discovered that in entertainment, the press, politics, finance, everywhere you went, you ran into Jews, and they are not like you: Jews didn't go in for big yachts and a fleet of aircraft — they showed off by way of philanthropy or by raising brilliant offspring. They sympathized with the civil rights movement. In Queens, blacks were a threat to property values — they belonged in the Bronx, not down the street. To the Times, Queens is Cleveland. Bush league. You are Queens. The casinos were totally Queens, the gold faucets in your triplex, the bragging, the insults, but you wanted to be liked by Those People. You wanted Mike Bloomberg to invite you to dinner at his townhouse. You wanted the Times to run a three-part story about you, that you meditate and are a passionate kayaker and collect 14th-century Islamic mosaics. You wish you were that person but you didn't have the time.

Running for president is your last bid for the respect of Manhattan. If you were to win election, they couldn't ridicule you anymore. They could be horrified, but there is nothing ridiculous about being Leader of the Free World. You have B-52 bombers at your command. When you go places, a battalion of security guys comb the environs. You attract really really good speechwriters who give you Churchillian cadences and toss in quotes from Emerson and Aeschylus and Ecclesiastes.

Labor Day and it is not going well. You had a very bad month. You tossed out those wisecracks on Twitter and the Earth shook and your ratings among white suburban women with French cookware declined. The teleprompter is not your friend. You are in the old tradition of locker room ranting and big honkers in the steam room, sitting naked, talking man talk, griping about the goons and ginks and lousy workmanship and the uppity broads and the great lays and how you vanquished your enemies at the bank. Profanity is your natural language and vulgar words so as not to offend the Christers but the fans can still hear it and that's something they love about you. You are their guy. You are losing and so are they but they love you for it.

So what do you do this winter? Hang around one of your mansions? Hit some golf balls? Hire a ghostwriter to do a new autobiography?

What the fans don't know is that it's not much fun being a billionaire. You own a lot of big houses and you wander around in them, followed by a waiter, a bartender, a masseuse, three housekeepers, and a concierge, and they probably gossip about you behind your back. Just like nine-tenths of your campaign staff. You're losing and they know it and they're telling mean stories about you to everybody and his brother.

Meanwhile, you keep plugging away. It's the hardest work you've ever done. You walk out in the white cap and you rant for an hour about stuff that means nothing and the fans scream and wave their signs and you wish you could level with them for once and say one true thing: I love you to death and when this is over I will have nothing that I want.

If he wasn't such a threat to the nation and so indifferent to others, he would almost be a figure worthy of pity.  He's made money his god and has perhaps discovered that it cannot find him happiness or the acceptance by his betters that he so desperately craves.

The Devolution of the GOP

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough recently was the target of Donald Trump's wrath simply because he was speaking the truth about Trump and the ugly direction in which he has taken the Republican Party. Just because Trump cares nothing about the truth - especially when directed at him, of course, doesn't make it any less the truth.  Scarborough has an op-ed in the Washington Post that looks at the episode and the larger descent on the GOP into something truly vile.  The party he remembers in the persons of George and Barbara Bush despite their faults and failures, was a far better party and is what I remember growing up.  The GOP today is unrecognizable and the Bushes will not be voting for Trump.  Here are excerpts:

These days, a rudely out-of-bounds Trump attack surprises Mika and me about as much as a puppy relieving himself on a living room rug. We’ve figured out by now that it does no good to lose your cool with the puppy or Donald Trump, since neither have and control over their bladder or mouth. As Aristotle famously said, “It is what it is.”

Fortunately, things became a bit more interesting by the time we rolled into Kennebunkport for a speech on the 2016 campaign and made our way to Walker’s Point to visit President Bush and Barbara. . . . .

George and Barbara Bush were the same gracious and welcoming hosts Friday night that they had been when my family last visited Kennebunkport five years earlier. Mrs. Bush even asked about my youngest children, who she remembered remarkably well considering the countless guests that have streamed through their world since that summer’s day in 2011. But her human touch is the kind of thing the family always seems to manage with ease. They make others around them feel special despite the fact that they have lived the most remarkable of lives

But good luck getting George or Barbara Bush talking about themselves. They just don’t do it and they never will. First of all, their parents didn’t allow it. And besides, that kind of thing wasn’t done in the world from which they came. It is just one small way that the ethos of Walker’s Point is so radically different from the mindset that infects Donald Trump’s garish corner office high above 5th Avenue in Trump Towers.

As Meacham and I walked down the driveway after saying goodbye to the Bushes, Jon lamented the fact that the same Republican Party that nominated a man like Bush, who rarely spoke about himself, would a quarter century later select a reality TV showman who obsessively talked about little else. Meacham paraphrased Henry Adams in saying that the historical devolvement from Bush to Trump proves that Darwin’s theory of evolution was less compelling when applied to American politics.

We soon drove away from Walker’s Point and into the night knowing that the world we had just departed would soon be fading as fast as the dying sunset over that rocky Maine coast.

Trump's GOP Enablers Need to Be Held Accountable

As noted in several posts that have compared 2016 America with 1933 Germany, both Hitler and Trump have rose in power and respectability thanks to self-serving politicians who foolishly thought that they could control the demagogue that they believed would increase their own power and/or wealth.  The Germany enablers proved to be terribly wrong and Germany and the world paid a terrible price.  Here in America, there is still time to stop Trump and his racist and fascist agenda.  A column in the New York Times by a long time GOP apologist calls on Trump's enablers to take a stand and put the nation ahead of partisan ship and self-aggrandizement.  Would that this columnist and others would have condemned the GOP over the last 20 years for the hate, racism, homophobia and general misogyny that were used with great calculation to win elections.  Here are column excerpts:

Up through the convention there were all sorts of Republican officeholders who weren’t really for Trump, but they weren’t really against him. They sort of endorsed him implicitly, while trying to change the subject.

They had all sorts of squirrelly formulations about why it was O.K. to ride the Trump train: He can be tamed or surrounded and improved. Sure, he’s got some real weaknesses, but he’s more or less a normal candidate who is at least better than Hillary.

Over the past few days, Trump has destroyed this middle ground. He’s exposed the wet noodle Republicans as suckers, or worse. Trump has shown that he is not a normal candidate. He is a political rampage charging ever more wildly out of control. And no, he cannot be changed.

He cannot be contained because he is psychologically off the chain. With each passing week he displays the classic symptoms of medium-grade mania in more disturbing forms: inflated self-esteem, sleeplessness, impulsivity, aggression and a compulsion to offer advice on subjects he knows nothing about.

Trump insults Paul Ryan, undermines NATO and raises the specter of nuclear war. Advisers can’t control Trump’s brain because Trump can’t control it himself.

He also cannot be contained because he lacks the inner equipment that makes decent behavior possible. So many of our daily social interactions depend on a basic capacity for empathy. But Trump displays an absence of this quality.

Republicans are not going to be able to help the 70-year-old man-child grow up over the next few months. Nor are they going to be able to get him to withdraw from the race. A guy who can raise $82 million mostly in small donations has a passionate niche following.

But they can at least get out of the enabling business. First, they can acknowledge that they are being sucked down a nihilistic whirlpool. Second, they can acknowledge the long-term damage being done to the country and to themselves.

Amid the chaos, all sorts of ugliness is surfacing. See the video of the horrific things shouted at Trump rallies compiled by Times reporters. Moreover, Trump is permanently tainting the names of conservatism and the Republican Party and the many good men and women who have built and served it.

Events are going to force Republicans off the fence. For the past many months Republican leaders have been condemning Trump’s acts while sticking with Trump the man. Trump is making that position ridiculous and shameful. You either stand with a man whose very essence is an insult to basic decency, or you don’t.

Those who don’t will have to start building a Republican Party in Exile. They will have to tell the country what they honestly think of Donald Trump. They will have to build a parallel campaign structure that will survive if Trump implodes, a structure of congressional and local candidates.

There comes a time when neutrality and laying low become dishonorable. If you’re not in revolt, you’re in cahoots. When this period and your name are mentioned, decades hence, your grandkids will look away in shame.

Sadly, I am not holding my breath to see what Brooks calls for to happen.  The GOP sold its soul long ago to Christofascist, racists, and white supremacists.  

Key for Democrats: Expose Trump as Weak, Thin Skinned

As noted in a number of posts, psychologists have described Donald Trump as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder - a trait he shares with dictators of the past such as Hitler, Stalin  and others.  This disorder causes him to be totally self-centered and dangerous due to a never ending desire to inflate his image and to lash out at those who question him or, worse yet, expose him for the fraud that he is.  Being a foul tempered narcissist does not make one strong.  Instead, it shows severe weakness - something the Democrats must expose between now and election day so that the elements of the ignorance embracing  right will awake to the fact that Trump is not the strong leader they think he is.  Rather, he is a grown version of a temper tantrum afflicted child.  A piece in Politico looks at the danger Trump poses to America and the world and the need to expose him.  Here are highlights:

American presidents get insulted and abused and lied about more than anyone on earth. They don’t have the options of thin-skinned dictators who jail dissidents and close newspapers. They have to take the attacks and do their jobs, or they can’t function. Worse, if they overreact and try to get even, they become downright dangerous.

That is why it would be so reckless to elect Donald Trump president. Nothing is more dangerous than a weak man with power, and Trump is weak. Very weak. He can’t take the pain of arguments and evidence that contradict his self-image.

If Trump can’t control himself when he gets bad press on a charity event, what would he do if a U.S. fighter pilot were downed in a skirmish with the Chinese? Would he escalate to prove he is a winner—putting more lives at risk to save his self-image?

Presidents need to take the heat and stay cool.

Trump’s self-description can’t be changed by the facts because it’s not driven by the facts; it’s driven by his emotional needs. It is how he needs to see himself and how he needs you to see him. But no one is as brilliant and triumphant as Trump claims he is. So what happens to the facts that don’t fit his story, the things he leaves out when he’s telling us what a winner he is? They become his shadow—the insulting labels such as “stupid,” “pathetic” and “loser” that he denies in himself and projects onto others.

If Trump’s self-image collides with reality, he revises reality. There is a big gap between who he is and who he wants to be, and when anyone says or does anything that makes him dimly aware of the difference, he hits them with a hot blast of abuse. This is the key to understanding Trump: He is driven by a relentless, belligerent defense of his self-image.

This is why he made racist attacks against Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel for his actions in the lawsuit on Trump University.

That’s why Trump attacked the media over their questions on his charity to Veterans Groups—calling one reporter “a sleaze,” another “a loser” and complaining, “You make me look very bad.”

Trump’s self-image runs his life. If he becomes president, it will run our country.
Trump is dangerous because he’s more extreme than we are—and in five ways: how grandiose his self-image is, how much he twists reality to fit it, how furious he becomes when it’s threatened, how much scrutiny his self-image takes in the media, and how many tools he has to promote his self-image and punish the people who threaten it.

The element that could change dramatically in the next year, and the one that ultimately determines how dangerous he is, is the last one—the tools he has to promote his self-image and punish people who threaten it.

He’s also said, "If I become president, oh, do they [the New York Times and The Washington Post] have problems. They're going to have such problems. And one of the things I'm going to do … if I win … is I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

Trump would not, as president, have the power to change libel laws, but this statement shows how eager he is to use the powers of the presidency to strike at his critics. Imagine if he had the tools of the CIA, FBI, IRS, the Justice Department, the U.S. military—and the nuclear codes—to promote his grandiose sense of self. President Trump would be able, almost entirely on his own—because there are no real checks and balances when it comes to pushing the button—order a nuclear strike. That makes his proximity to the presidency a global emergency.

Trump’s supporters all think he’s strong, so opponents should expose him as weak. They just have to change the way voters see his tantrums.

If the view of Trump as a thin-skinned guy who can’t take a punch becomes a dominant part of the campaign narrative, then his show of strength becomes a sign of weakness—and that weakness is not only exposed; it can be exploited.

The more attention is focused on his tirades, the more Trump’s pattern will become clear: He has a grandiose sense of self; he gets furious with those who challenge him, and if he gains the powers of the presidency, he will use them to confirm his self-image and punish those who attack it. This is the profile of a man who is not fit for duty. It is the face of a tyrant. The question is whether the country sees it before the election, or after he wins it.