Do You Ever Wonder About The Things We've Done, As A Nation, That Have Made Us Deserve Trump?-- Just Asking For A Friend

A psychologist friend of mine diagnosed Trump last night. Prognosis doesn't sound good-- for us. "Trump’s ego has dissipated and his id has risen to the surface of consciousness. Trump has realized he can do whatever he wants and he is letting his id loose. It is growing and morphing into a lethal andromeda strain. A malicious, gleeful, vindictive, wrecking crew of impulses is on the move." Schumer warned him of "severe consequences" if he shuts down the Mueller investigation. Oh, yeah, that'll stop him. I think it was the Washington Post that hissed from the sidelines that we're a country of laws. Oh, yeah, that's shut him down for sure. Nothing will stop him-- short of American Secret Service martyrs on a level of Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. 30 bullets... wow!

And his Republican enablers-- in Congress and in the media-- have gotten more aggressive... not in the slightest bit outraged. ICE agents haven't been rounding up MS-13 members in California... they're been rounding up just normal folks... IN CALIFORNIA. And no one seems to be able to do anything about it.

Meanwhile one piece of shit from a gerrymandered Virginia district, Trump fellator Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a hideously racist, xenophobic, Trumpist immigration bill, Securing America’s Future Act, which funds the Great Wall of Trump, end the kind of family-based visas that Melania just used to get her family over here, and create a guest worker program that's somewhat better than indentured servitude. Oh, yeah-- and withhold federal funds from "sanctuary cities." Don't ask me why there are Hispanic Republicans but, somehow, Hispanic Republicans-- or some at least-- are giving Goodlatte some pushback.

Goodlatte put together a propaganda event last week to tout all these Hispanic groups that back his bill. But the groups his office said were coming didn't show up and many denounced Goodlatte and his fascist bill, like the Latino Coalition. Omar Franco, from the Latino Coalition-- and former chief of staff for Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL)-- said he opposes the bill. "That bill," he said, "is a sellout to the entire community, we would never support something like that." Goodlatte had promised Rev. Tony Suárez and Rev. Gus Reyes of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Lourdes Aguirre of Eres America, and Danny Vargas, the former chairman of the National Republican Hispanic Assembly would all be there. None of them showed up.

Mario López, head of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative advocacy organization, opposes the bill described the bill as "a piece of shit," the exact same way I described Goodlatte!

With every Democrat in the House opposing it, the bill doesn't have the 218 Republican votes it needs to pass and move on to the Senate and Señor Trumpanzee. Who thinks it will stop Trump's agenda? Who thinks anything will stop Trump's destruction of American norms? Can he get away with shutting down the Mueller investigation? He's going to try... and ta majority of congressional Republicans back him. A majority... most of them. It looks like nearly all of them.

Over the weekend, there was a lot of buzz about Peter Baker's NY Times piece, Trump and the Truth: A President Tests His Own Credibility. Señor T "has made so many claims that stretch the bounds of accuracy," he wrote, "that full-time fact-checkers struggle to keep up. Most Americans long ago concluded that he is dishonest, according to polls. While most presidents lie at times, Trump’s speeches and Twitter posts are embedded with so many false, distorted, misleading or unsubstantiated claims that he has tested even the normally low standards of U.S. politics."

Trump’s presidency has been marked from the start with false or misleading statements, such as his outlandish claims that more people came to his inauguration than any before and that more than 3 million people voted illegally against him, costing him the popular vote. He has gone on to assert that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, a claim that his own Justice Department refuted, and that he would not benefit from his tax-cutting plan.

The lack of fidelity to facts has real-world consequences in both foreign affairs and domestic policymaking. Foreign diplomats and lawmakers of both parties say they do not assume anything he says is necessarily true. In a White House where one aide described the existence of “alternative facts” and another acknowledged telling “white lies,” staff members scramble to defend his claims without putting their own credibility on the line. News organizations debate when to use the word “lie” because it implies intent.

...Advisers say privately that Trump may not always be precise, but is speaking a larger truth that many Americans understand. Flyspecking, tut-tutting critics in the news media, they say, fail to grasp the connection he has with a section of the country that feels profoundly misled by a self-serving establishment. To them, the particular facts do not matter as much as this deeper truth.

...As a businessman, Trump often fabricated or exaggerated to sell a narrative or advance his interests. In his memoir, The Art of the Deal, he called it “truthful hyperbole” or “innocent exaggeration.”

When trying to lure investors to a hotel project, he had bulldozers dig on one side of the site and dump the dirt on the other to give the impression that the project was making progress. He would call reporters and pretend to be a publicity agent for himself named John Barron. He claimed to earn $1 million from a speech when it was $400,000. He claimed to be worth $3.5 billion when seeking a bank loan, four times what the bank eventually found.

“He’s a salesman and that’s not about telling the truth, that’s not the DNA about being a salesman,” said Gwenda Blair, the author of The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President, a biography of his family. “The DNA of being a salesman is telling people what they want to hear. And he’s got it.”

Jack O’Donnell, who was president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, recalled Trump telling New Jersey authorities that he had secured bank financing for a new casino and would not use junk bonds, only to turn around and then use junk bonds.

“In my experience with him, there are times when he just compulsively lies, and there are times when he strategically lies,” said O’Donnell, who wrote a scathing book about Trump. “In both regards, after he says something, I do think he believes that whatever he says becomes his reality. That’s my experience with him. It doesn’t have to be anything big, but it certainly can be.”

Trump continued his practice as president. The Washington Post’s fact-checker documented more than 2,000 false or misleading claims in Trump’s first year in office, a rate of more than five a day, many of them repeated even after he was corrected.

Polls show that only 35 percent of Americans consider him honest, while 60 percent do not. In their first terms, more than 50 percent considered Bush honest and more than 60 percent considered Obama honest, although those numbers fell for both by their second terms.

Republicans as well as Democrats express concern. Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, has a new book coming out in May called Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us. On the cover is an illustration of Trump with a Pinocchio nose.

Her explanation is that Trump’s supporters do not see deception, they see a commitment to winning. “Donald Trump’s lies and fabrications don’t horrify America,” says the publisher’s summary of her book. “They enthrall us.”

We've all got to keep our eyes on the ball-- the one way to actually slow him down: defeating Republicans in November, as many as possible, and replacing them with courageous Democrats, not wooses. You ready for that? Please consider supporting the progressive Democratic candidates running for the House that you'll find by clicking on the Blue America thermometer on the right. There is virtually no other way to slow this maniac, seemingly hell-bent on destroying our country, down. We can do it; if this post sounded pessimistic, I'm extremely optimistic. What happened in PA-18 Tuesday indicates Democrats can win over 100 seats in November. That means impeachment, not any kind of need for Satwant Singh and Beant Singh.