Seriously, Objectively, Has Trump Lost His Marbles?

Let's start off with some numbers, like the numbers folks at the Trump campaign-- if not their sheltered capo-- are confronting daily. These come from Change Media, one of this cycles' best polling firms. Biden leads Trump by 10 points among likely voters nationally, and by 6 points in the battleground states, steady over the past two weeks. Majorities disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, helping your pocketbook, COVID-19, and ensuring relief for COVID-19 goes to those who need it. Only 43% of voters nationally approve of Trump’s overall job performance and strong approval is also at a new record low of 35% in the battleground states, while 51% strongly disapprove.

Voters are also rejecting GOP governance more broadly. In Florida a 57% majority disapprove of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ handling of the outbreak. In Arizona, a stunning 71% disapprove of the job Republican Governor Doug Ducey is doing handling COVID-19. Democratic Governors, on the other hand, receive much better ratings for their handling of the outbreak: 55% approve of Gretchen Whitmer’s handling of COVID-19 (50% strongly approve), 55% and 56% approve of the jobs Tom Wolf and Tony Evers are doing, respectively, and 51% approve of Roy Cooper’s handling of the outbreak. The rejection of GOP governance is translating to strong margins for Democratic candidates for Senate in Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina. The Democratic candidates lead by 7 points in each of those races.

I asked Adam Christensen, a progressive House candidate in an open, red-leaning district in north-central Florida (FL-03) how this negative feeling about Trump and DeSantis and GOP governance in general is playing out in his race against Trump extremist Judson Sapp. Wednesday morning Christensen told me that "Last night's AARP public debate was a perfect encapsulation of the reason the Republican Party is self destructing. Nearly every Republican was more concerned about 'government overreach' than they were about protecting the people they claim to want to serve. We had many brag about openly flaunting mask regulations, decrying 'socialism,' and claiming that this pandemic happened because 'we didn’t know how to stop it.' They blamed the CDC, the WHO, China, everyone but themselves. To most people watching last night, the reason the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that hasn’t gotten a handle of this crisis is obvious. Grown men are throwing a temper-tantrum when being asked to do the equivalent of wearing a seat belt. I’m sure their mothers told them growing up that every action has consequences. The consequence for burying your head in the sand in the middle of a pandemic and making up conspiracy theories is that no one takes you seriously anymore."

Trump is, clearly, having a mental breakdown and his grasp on reality is, at best, tenuous. At his press conference/campaign rally in the Rose Garden Tuesday, wrote the Washington Post's Jacqueline Alemany, he invoked Biden's "name nearly 30 times on a range of topics, and despite his claims otherwise, sounded like an underdog on shaky ground throwing spaghetti at the wall to find a new message that might stick." She noted that as an excuse for his poor poll numbers, he seems to think "a lot of people don’t want to talk about" their support for him. "I think they’re not going to say, 'Hey, I’m for Trump, I’m for Trump'-- they don’t want to go through the process. And I fully understand that, because the process is not fair. The media doesn’t treat us fairly. They never have, and perhaps they never will. But maybe they will when we turn this around for a second term, and it’s going to happen very quickly."

Dana Milbank went right to the heart of it: he's losing (or lost) his mind-- or, as he put it, Trump's window is closing. "All signs suggest it’s closing on his presidency because of his world-class incompetence with the coronavirus pandemic, the protracted economic collapse that resulted, and the increasingly overt racism Trump has embraced," he wrote. "But it also appears the window is closing on his connection to reality, if it hasn’t already. Trump called a news conference Tuesday evening in the Rose Garden... to launch an hour-long diatribe against Joe Biden, attributing a platform to his Democratic opponent that bore hardly any resemblance to anything occurring in the real world."

Biden would “incentivize illegal alien child smuggling,” Trump announced.

He would “abolish immigration enforcement," “abolish our police departments” and “abolish our prisons, I guess.”

Biden’s party is even “calling for defunding of our military,” Trump alleged.

And, yes, Biden’s energy plan “basically means no windows” in homes or offices by 2030, he said, and “cold office space in the winter and warm office space in the summer.”

Um, Biden would abolish windows?

“I’m not making this up!” Trump said, mid-jeremiad. (Actually, he was.)

He alleged that Democratic mayors possibly “wouldn’t mind” if terrorists “blow up our cities.”

“We could go on for days,” he said after 40 minutes. Indeed, the only limitation was Trump’s, and his staff’s, imaginations.

...He started with an announcement about Hong Kong; bounced to Biden’s infrastructure plan; swerved to the pandemic; careened to the swine flu of 2009; lurched to Ukraine and Burisma (“Where is Hunter?”); wobbled into the stock market; detoured to “AOC” (“a young woman not talented in many ways"), “Bernie" and Nancy Pelosi; floated into Maine fisheries; listed into the “tremendous fraud” of mail-in voting (“a mailman was indicted someplace”); and took on water with a claim about “criminals pouring into our country”-- from Europe.

Every now and again, his thoughts would return to the paper in front of him, and he would read some other fantastic allegation against Biden, so absurd it seemed to surprise even Trump. “Oh, I didn’t notice that,” he said, reading an allegation that Biden has plans to rejoin the Paris climate agreement but make it “worse than it was.”

“We did this very quickly,” Trump explained at one point as he read through the imaginary Biden agenda.

Who would have guessed?

Trump’s instability seemed to have been set off by Biden himself, who earlier Tuesday did the very opposite of what Trump did: He delivered a reasoned and measured speech about his infrastructure plans, hewing closely to the teleprompter and taking no questions, and eschewing liberal favorites from the Green New Deal. “Look, these aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams,” Biden said. “These are actionable policies.”

Confronted with an opponent who is conspicuously reasonable, Trump has pretended he is running against somebody else. He has tried to brand Biden as senile and corrupt, and his allies have tried to brand the presumptive Democratic nominee a sexual predator and a pedophile.

“Joe Biden’s entire career has been a gift to the Chinese Communist Party,” Trump alleged. Biden “never did anything but make very bad decisions.”

“Last Independence Day, Biden attacked the United States.”

“Biden is pushing a platform that would demolish the U.S. economy.”

“He wants to kill American energy!”

He has “the most extreme platform of any major party nominee by far in American history.”

“It’s worse than Bernie’s platform it’s gone so far right,” Trump said, mixing up his directions.

5-Watt Bulb by Nancy Ohanian

How stupid and ignorant does anyone have to be not to notice the president is off his rocker? Does he expect anyone to believe any of this? Certainly not the press, but what about Trump fans in Wyoming, Mississippi and Oklahoma-- a state to which he personally brought the pandemic and where a 993 one-day spike on Tuesday brought the state's total cases to 21,738? Milbank wrote that "Maybe some in the MAGA crowd will believe that. They’ll also believe that 'thousands of people in New York died because of poor management' by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and that Trump’s decision to stop flights from China saved '2 to 3 million lives' ('a number that we’re actually working on'). Asked whether his extraordinary Rose Garden tirade was a sign that he thinks he might lose, Trump’s answer included references to his electoral college win in 2016 and the fact that 'we’re making swabs [in] a beautiful big new factory.' Beautiful, that is, until Biden takes away all its windows."

In response to the Rose Garden loony session, CNN analyst Stephen Collison wrote about Trump's denial and delusion... brutally. "Rarely," he noted, "has a president shown himself to be so unequal to a tragic national emergency. Hundreds of Americans are dying daily and tens of thousands are getting infected from a once-in-a-century virus. States and cities are closing down again, threatening to trigger a ruinous new economic slump. Doctors and nurses lack sufficient protective gear as they battle the deadly pathogen. And with testing swamped by waves of disease, one top official is warning of the 'the most difficult time' ever for US public health this winter. Yet this is what is on Donald Trump's mind: Joe Biden didn't fix the country's roads and bridges, crowds of bikers and boaters in MAGA hats prove that election polls are wrong, and the border wall is almost finished (except it isn't). Oh, and by the way, where is Hunter Biden?

What is needed from Trump and his administration is a plan to tackle the most relentless national challenge since World War II, consoling words to memorialize the 140,000 Americans who are already dead and the thousands destined to follow, and the rhetoric to summon the will to triumph over this invisible enemy.

All Trump could offer on Tuesday was self-pity, incoherence and indifference. He came across as a leader living in a different dimension from his people and their fear and suffering and uncertainty about what the coming months will bring.

This is a President who has demonstrably failed to beat back the virus and has long since stopped trying to lead the country out of the darkness. He resorts to boasting about inconclusive steps he took months ago-- like limiting travel from China-- that have no relevance to the current moment, and he complains he's not getting enough credit for his performance.

He's also mining divisive political seams he thinks helped him in the past. In a CBS interview on Tuesday, he insisted that more White people than Black people are killed in police violence, dealing an insult to the national soul searching about race following the death of George Floyd.

"We could go on for days," Trump said at one point in his Tuesday tirade, and for a while it seemed that he might in the blasting July heat of the Rose Garden, where journalists sat wearing masks, socially distanced and in bemused silence.

...Trump has been charging that Biden is mentally impaired and is not fit for the Oval Office. But at times, it was the President who appeared to be veering into confusion and incoherence. At one point he appeared to argue that his rival's vow to sign the Paris climate accord would lead to US office buildings being constructed without windows. And he suggested Biden wouldn't even know how to define the word "carbon."

...The President did his best to talk up his "transition to greatness," but the idea is so divorced from the awful reality of the last few weeks-- with the average daily rate of new infections hitting 60,000-- that his words only served to display his own considerable remove from reality.

"I think you're going to have some good news very, very quickly having to do with the vaccines," Trump said, at about the same time that Fauci said that it could take a year-to-a-year-and-a-half for the world to get a Covid-19 vaccine, that even then may not be completely effective.

Despite the rolling shutdowns in cities across the country, certain to throw many Americans who work in the service, tourism and transit industries out of work again, the President stuck by his predictions of a riotous return to economic growth.

But absent any credible plans to stem Covid-19's march, all the President has to sell right now is hope.

"I think by Election Day you're going to see some incredible numbers. The third quarter is going to be really good, the fourth quarter is going to be great, but next year is going to be one of the best economic years," he insisted.

"So hopefully I'll be able to be the President where we say, 'Look at the great job I did.'"

And as far as that enthusiasm gap problem... Sure voters aren't enthusiastic about voting for Biden-- how could anyone but a complete jerk or ignoramus be?-- but what they are enthusiastic about is voting against Trump. That looks like it will be enough to get him out of the White House. And even Trump voters aren't filled with anti-Biden jet fuel, the way they were in Hillary's case.

Was Dana Milbank Always This Stupid?

Still wrong

Milbank got just what he wanted-- a lot of attention for his poorly reasoned anti-Bernie diatribe in the Washington Post on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders has emerged as the Donald Trump of the left. I certainly agree with his first line-- "In politics, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Hence, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s emergence..."-- and I often use it to explain why it makes sense that America elect the best president in history after having just gone through the absolute worst. But that isn't where Milbank was taking this. That second line of his ended with "...as the Donald Trump of the left." Jesus! What an imbecile!

Like so many other champions of the status quo, Milbank, husband of Democratic Party pollster Anna Greenberg, currently working for one of the more conservative-- and least popular-- presidential hopefuls, John Hickenlooper, is worried that Bernie is raising too much money from too many small donors and that he "remains untouchable, in a Trumpian way." Keep in mind that Milbank has admitted that he voted for John McCain in 2000, Chuck Hagel in 2004, and Michael Bloomberg in 2008, none of whom were on the ballot but each of whom he saw as a potential great president. Total doofus-- a contrarian for the sake being an asshole and getting attention. "Sanders," he conceded, "isn’t Trump in the race-baiting, lender-cheating, fact-avoiding, porn-actress-paying, Putin-loving sense. But their styles are similar: shouting and unsmiling, anti-establishment and anti-media, absolutely convinced of their own correctness, attacking boogeymen (the '1 percent' and CEOs in Sanders’s case, instead of immigrants and minorities), offering impractical promises with vague details, lacking nuance and nostalgic for the past."

Skip Kaltenheuser, the first of a dozen people who brought Milbank's latest idiocy to my attention noted: "Sanders scapegoating billionaires as if they’re immigrants being chased by Trump; imagine that. How could anyone sketch out such a grotesque comparison? I suppose it helps if one works for the richest guy in the world, on the off-chance he has self-interests other than it would be fun to run a newspaper. Own one, anyway."

I spent Monday at a cattle call for eight Democratic presidential candidates hosted by labor unions, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood and other progressive groups. Sanders was easily the least charismatic, hoisting his trousers by the waist, tugging at his socks, hunching over the lectern, sitting stiffly and awkwardly greeting questioners. But the reception among liberal activists, which had ranged from tepid (Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand) to enthusiastic (Warren) was, for Sanders, rapturous. “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” they chanted, standing when he appeared and when he finished. In between, they applauded a routine full of Trumpian flourishes.

He simplified and blamed: “The crisis that we are facing today is not complicated... We have a government that ignores the needs of the working people... yet works overtime for wealthy campaign contributors and the 1 percent.” He mocked those who questioned ideas such as Medicare-for-all (“the establishment went crazy, media went nuts, still is”), and he celebrated his prescience. He channeled rage at the “vulgarity” of a “grotesque” and “corrupt” system, the “absolute hypocrisy” of Republicans, corporations that “lie” and billionaires who “buy elections.” Of the wealthy, he said, “Many of them are bandits,” and he said if Republicans “don’t have the guts to participate in a free and fair election, they should get the hell out of politics.”

Like Trump, he railed against companies moving jobs to China or Mexico, and he harked back to simpler times: “Forty, 50 years ago, it was possible for one worker to work 40 hours a week and earn enough money to take care of the whole family.”

It’s less hateful, perhaps, to blame billionaires than immigrants or certain “globalists” for America’s troubles, but the scapegoating is similar. So is Sanders’s “socialist” label (worn as defiantly as Trump wears the isolationist “America First”), and his Democratic credentials are as suspect as Trump’s Republican bona fides were. Most Republicans opposed Trump, but the large field of candidates prevented a clean matchup.

A similar crowd could likewise prevent Democrats from presenting a clear alternative to Sanders’s tempting-- if Trumpian-- message that a nefarious elite is to blame for America’s problems. Universal health care, higher education and child care are within reach, Sanders said to cheers, if only “we stand up and tell this 1 percent that we will no longer tolerate their greed.” In real life, it’s not so simple. But in our new politics, maybe it is.

Anyone recall Thomas Frank's November, 2016 essay, Swat Team-- The media’s extermination of Bernie Sanders, and real reform, for Harpers? Or how about this much passed-around passage? "Extra credit is due to Dana Milbank, one of the paper’s cleverest columnists, who kept varying his angle of attack. In February, he name-checked the Bernie Bros-- socialist cyberbullies who were turning comment sections into pens of collectivist terror. In March, Milbank assured readers that Democrats were too 'satisfied' to sign up with a rebel like Sanders. In April, he lamented Sanders’s stand on trade on the grounds that it was similar to Trump’s and that it would be hard on poor countries. In May, Milbank said he thought it was just awful the way frustrated Sanders supporters cursed and 'threw chairs' at the Nevada Democratic convention-- and something close to treachery when Sanders failed to rebuke those supporters afterward. 'It is no longer accurate to say Sanders is campaigning against Clinton, who has essentially locked up the nomination,' the columnist warned on the occasion of the supposed chair-throwing. 'The Vermont socialist is now running against the Democratic Party. And that’s excellent news for one Donald J. Trump.'" Frank wasn't finished with Milbank and the other status quo ass-kissers at The Post:

What can we learn from reviewing one newspaper’s lopsided editorial treatment of a left-wing presidential candidate?

For one thing, we learn that the Washington Post, that gallant defender of a free press, that bold bringer-down of presidents, has a real problem with some types of political advocacy. Certain ideas, when voiced by certain people, are not merely debatable or incorrect or misguided, in the paper’s view: they are inadmissible. The ideas themselves might seem healthy, they might have a long and distinguished history, they might be commonplace in other lands. Nevertheless, when voiced by the people in question, they become damaging.

We hear a lot these days about the dangers to speech posed by political correctness, about those insane left-wing college students who demand to be shielded from uncomfortable ideas. What I am describing here is something similar, but far more consequential. It is the machinery by which the boundaries of the Washington consensus are enforced.

...What The Post is saying here is that the American system, by its nature, doesn’t permit a president to achieve anything more than “incremental change.” Obama did the best anyone could under this system-- indeed, as the paper pointed out, he had “no other option” than to proceed as he did. Therefore he should be exempt from criticism at the hands of other Democrats.

The board explained its philosophy slightly differently in the other editorial, battle of the extremes. Sanders, like Ted Cruz, was said to harbor the toxic belief that “the road to progress is purity, not compromise.” Again, his great failing was his refusal to acknowledge the indisputable rules of the game. Heed the wisdom of our savviest political journalists:

Progress will be made by politicians who are principled but eager to shape compromises, to acknowledge that they do not have a monopoly on wisdom and to accept incremental change. That is a harder message to sell in primary campaigns, but it is a message far likelier to produce a nominee who can win in November-- and govern successfully for the next four years.

The reason The Post pundits embrace these tidy sophistries is simple enough. Knee-jerk incrementalism is, after all, a nifty substitute for actually thinking difficult issues through. Bernie Sanders ran for the presidency by proposing reforms that these prestigious commentators, for whatever reason, found distasteful. Rather than grapple with his ideas, however, they simply blew the whistle and ruled them out of bounds. Plans that were impractical, proposals that would never pass Congress-- these things are off the table, and they are staying off.

...[N]o group knows the story of the dying middle class more intimately than journalists. So why do the people at the very top of this profession identify themselves with the smug, the satisfied, the powerful? Why would a person working in a moribund industry compose a paean to the Wall Street bailouts? Why would someone like Post opinion writer Stephen Stromberg drop megatons of angry repudiation on a certain Vermont senator for his “outrageous negativity about the state of the country”? For the country’s journalists-- Stromberg’s colleagues, technically speaking-- that state is pretty goddamned negative.

Maybe it’s something about journalism itself. This is a field, after all, that has embraced the forces that are killing it to an almost pathological degree. No institution has a greater appetite for trendy internet thinkers than journalism schools. We are all desperately convincing ourselves that we need to become entrepreneurs, or to get ourselves attuned to the digital future-- the future, that is, as it is described for us hardheaded journalists by a cast of transparent bullshit artists. When the TV comedian John Oliver recently did a riff on the tragic decline of newspaper journalism, just about the only group in America that didn’t like it was-- that’s right, the Newspaper Association of America, which didn’t think we should be nostalgic about the days when its members were successful. Truly, we are like buffalo nuzzling the rifles of our hunters.

Or maybe the answer is that people at the top of the journalism hierarchy don’t really identify with their plummeting peers. Maybe the pundit corps thinks it will never suffer the same fate as, say, the Tampa Tribune. And maybe they’re right. As I wrote this story, I kept thinking back to Sound and Fury, a book that Eric Alterman published in 1992, when the power of pundits was something new and slightly alarming. Alterman suggested that the rise of the commentariat was dangerous, since it supplanted the judgment of millions with the clubby perspective of a handful of bogus experts. When he wrote that, of course, newspapers were doing great. Today they are dying, and as they gutter out, one might expect the power of this phony aristocracy to diminish as well. Instead, the opposite has happened: as serious journalism dies, Beltway punditry goes from strength to strength.

Yesterday a response to Milbank on The Post website by "danrev" totally nails it. "This article, like many of Dana Milbank's, is hopefully some great farce because if these are his actual opinions, and the editors of WaPo allow this level of bullshittery, I really have to just abandon WaPo entirely, again. I get that this is an op-ed with zero journalism involved or evidence, but ew. This is the same old, washed up hits: a one issue candidate (yes, the most important issue: inequality), he's old (you got him), he's white (guilty), he's socialist (oh no, get in the bunker), tax returns waaahhhh. He always releases his tax returns, he addressed the campaign harassment issues from the 2016 campaign and apologized directly for actions of others because he holds himself accountable, he fired a bunch of guys, and has the most diverse and female campaign team in the D race."

The problem here is that a bunch of commenters (and therefore readers), are just saying 'hey, yeah this Milbank guy is on to something.' This being despite the support from 525,000 individuals, who donated ~2x each in the first quarter, and his dominance in polls with younger voters.

'Screw old white men' am I right? ...because nothing they say, do, believe, or propose as law that would be disproportionately more beneficial for women, POC, veterans, or even the elderly makes them anything other than 'an old white man.' Bernie has the groundwork, the money, and the votes from broad constituencies to enact legislation that would provide the drastic changes the working poor have been asking for (unfortunately they did so from a billionaire liar in 2016 to their own detriment).

Oh, and those places with 'disaffected Trump voters in key states' you ask. Many of them voted for Bernie in 2016 (WI, MN, MI, WV, IN, ~IL, ~MO, ~KY). These are all wins or 50/50 states from a then no-name socialist from Vermont. Those disaffected voters HAVE BEEN destroyed by the ultra-wealthy (Ds and Rs) for decades...and Bernie, unlike Trump would actually work for those people rather than against them. 

The World Doesn't Revolve Around Trumpanzee But..."It Was As I A Chill Had Descended On That Front Row" When He Showed Up

The Sound of Music by Nancy Ohanian

Fox News' Chris Wallace came up with the "a hill had descended" line in the station's coverage of George H.W. Bush’s funeral on Wednesday when Trump awkwardly joined the legitimately elected presidents in the front row. He didn't belong-- and it was obvious, even at Fox. "You had seen a lot of chatty talk between the Clintons and the Obamas, the Carters," said Wallace. "But when Donald Trump sat down, the greeting that he was given by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama was about as cold, about as cool as it could have been." Then the previously chatty front row fell silent as they had to endure the usurper among them. Wallace: "And I have to say that where you usually have a presidents club and people that ran against and maybe one beat the other that doesn’t seem to have extended to President Trump when you see them sitting in that front row."

Others noted that the funeral couldn't help but come off like a renunciation of Trump and Trumpism. Dana Millbank at The Washington Post: "Bush’s funeral was so powerful a renunciation of his current successor because it was a celebration of character. Friendship was invoked 21 times by his eulogists. Loyalty, 10. 'Honor,' 'integrity,' 'dignity,' 'decency' and inner peace all recurred. Certainly, Bush could be a fierce partisan and a brutal politician (remember Willie Horton?), but his service in World War II-- he was shot down over the Pacific-- left him with lessons that fueled his generation’s greatness: The opposition is not the enemy. There are causes greater than self. Political defeat is not the worst thing. And American leadership in the world is indispensable... Trump, for whom no cause is greater than self, must have struggled to sit through 90 minutes of something that was not all about him. Rather, it was all about what he is not."

Trump sat grimacing self-consciously and making angry monkey faces all through the ceremony. In his head, he was likely composing his howling-in-the-wind tweets which he likely wished he was sending rather than wasting time at an event that had nothing to do with him and that he clearly didn't want to be at. John Harris, writing for Politico noted that in Washington these days, subtext always becomes text. "The service," he wrote, "was replete with praise for the 41st president that could, with just the slightest nudge of interpretation, be heard as implied rebuke of the 45th president. But only implied, never explicit-- this, unlike almost everything else in American politics today, was not about Donald Trump. And yet it very much was. Speakers rhapsodized about Bush’s natural good cheer and optimism; his willingness to share credit and accept blame; his preference for self-deprecating humor; his gift for personal diplomacy; his loyalty to friends when they were down; his talent at assembling international coalitions; his mistrust of 'unthinking partisanship'; his inaugural address in which he said that Americans must judge our lives by kindness to friends and neighbors rather than the pursuit of 'a bigger car, a bigger bank account'; his commitment to truth and to living up to the obligations of a 'gentleman.' Who wouldn’t admire these traits? Or expect that any president should try to emulate them?"

Trump's Reverse Coattails

Mutiny by Nancy Ohanian

Early in the cycle, I noticed that a reasonable theme to cover would be Trump as an albatross whose reverse coattails would pull down Republican candidates across the country-- particularly in districts with large numbers of independent covers. I asked Nancy Ohanian, the best of the political artists, what she thought about it. She came up with these two graphics:

Yesterday, in his Washington Post column, Dana Milbank went right for it: The Trump Albatross. He wrote that Señor Trumpanzee "is getting his wish: It’s all about him. The election, that is. New evidence indicates that the midterm elections in seven weeks will be the clearest referendum on a president in at least 80 years. But while it may delight the narcissistic president that the 2018 midterms are entirely about him, this is precisely what his fellow Republicans were hoping to avoid. With Trump’s support at historic lows-- 60 percent overall disapprove of his performance, including 59 percent of independents-- Republicans scrambling to hold the House and Senate have been struggling in vain to make the election about other issues: tax cuts, Democrats’ personal foibles-- anything to avoid the election being about Trump.This has failed, bigly."

Midterm elections have generally come to be seen as the electorate’s reaction to a presidency. But this one is on a whole different level. “In no previous election,” Gary Jacobson, a University of California political scientist who crunched the numbers, tells me, “has the linkage between opinions of the president and how people are likely to vote been as strong as this time.” Jacobson’s research goes back to the 1930s, before which there was no polling and therefore no ability to compare... [He] found in 93.1 percent of cases this year, voters’ approval or disapproval of the president is correlated with their planned votes for or against the president’s party in House races. That’s an all-time high. It averaged 86 percent in recent elections, 74 percent in the 1980s and 1990s.

And it’s more than a casual correlation. Using regression analysis, Jacobson determined that for every percentage point movement in Trump’s job approval rating, support for Republican House candidates in the midterm elections move by 0.75 percentage points-- the highest effect ever seen.

...Trump’s unpopularity seems to offset the benefit Republicans should get from the strong economy [and gerrymandering]. Using results from previous midterms and factoring in the president’s approval and the growth in real disposable income, Jacobson reports that in conditions close to the current situation-- 2 percent income growth and Trump’s approval at 40 percent-- Republicans would, by historic models, lose 33 House seats.

Republicans in competitive races are in a bind. Among independent voters they need to win, Trump is a pariah. But among the Republican voters they need to turn out in high numbers, Trump has 78 percent approval.

Their dilemma was evident on Thursday when Trump made the outrageous and false claim that the official death toll of 2,975 from last year’s storms in Puerto Rico was inflated by Democrats “to make me look as bad as possible.” (Even storm deaths are all about him.) Delicately, Republican candidates in Florida, who had been trying to win over Puerto Rican voters, tried to step away from Trump. Gov. Rick Scott, running for Senate, tweeted: “I disagree.” Rep. Ron DeSantis, running for governor, issued a similar statement.

Good luck with that. Trump, later in the day, repeated his insulting and bogus claims.

As Trump continues to repel, opinions of him drop and support for a Democratic Congress rises. It has the makings of a wave, but one that could recede before the election. We are destined for one of two outcomes: a massive repudiation of Trump or an unthinkable affirmation of him.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

I spoke with David Keith, campaign manager for Randy Bryce and one of the sharpest minds on the political landscape. He told us he "gets the feeling that a lot of pundits and pollsters and operatives are going to wake up on November 7 and say, 'How did I miss that? No one knew the wave was going to be that powerful.' The 'Trump factor' hasn't been properly factored in to Beltway projections. Trump is an albatross around the neck of every Republican on every level. Even those progressives who ousted those 6 IDC state senators in New York last week. No one beat Jeffrey Klein before but this time, he collapsed, in part thanks to people disgusted with Trump wanted to get out and vote. He's driving turn out and he's turning independent voters away from the GOP. People who may have found him amusing at one time, have woken up and they're starting to worry for their families and their country. There are going to be a lot of Republicans in 'safe' seats looking for jobs after January."

Yesterday Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote from a very similar perspective about why GOP candidates are so worried going into the midterms. "As Democrats," they wrote, "enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Trump’s advisers pointing to the high number of G.O.P. retirements and lawmakers placing the blame squarely on the president’s divisive style.

To the dismay of party leaders, the healthy economy and Mr. Trump have become countervailing forces. The decline in unemployment and soaring gross domestic product, along with the tax overhaul Republicans argue is fueling the growth, have been obscured by the president’s inflammatory moves on immigration, Vladimir V. Putin, and other fronts, party leaders say.

These self-inflicted wounds since early summer have helped push Mr. Trump’s approval ratings below 40 percent and the fortunes of his party down with them.

“This is very much a referendum on the president,” said Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, about the November election. “If we had to fight this campaign on what we accomplished in Congress and on the state of the economy, I think we’d almost certainly keep our majority.”

Perhaps... but voters' seem to have decided that what the midterms are about are not countervailing claims about so-called GOP "accomplishments," but on Trump. They know it and they're freaking out. If you drive straight south from Ardmore in Cole's district, you'll hit TX-10, where entrenched Republican multimillionaire Trump rubber-stamp Michael McCaul is getting the battle of his life from Austin City Attorney Mike Siegel. Siegel doesn't have to mention Trump as he crisscrosses the gerrymandered district stretching from Austin to the exurbs west of Houston. The voters are already aware of Trump, but what they hear from Siegel is about what trade wars have done to the price of sorghum and how climate change denial is causing flooding. He talks about healthcare and jobs and environmental and racial justice, not about Trump. He won his primary election with 70.2% of the vote and now faces one of the architects of Trump's family separation agenda. Still, the DCCC is refusing to back his race. This morning I asked Mike about a path to victory in a district where Trump beat Hillary 52.3% to 43.2%.

A while back, he told us McCaul is less "safe" than Beltway pundits all assume he is. "Even though the 10th was gerrymandered to be a 60/40 District in favor of the Republicans, Texas cities keep growing, and Austin and Houston continue to sprawl towards each other. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump beat Clinton by nine points in the 10th. And since that time, McCaul has only inflicted harm on his constituents, by cutting our healthcare and transferring a trillion dollars from working families and essential government programs to the richest among us. McCaul has also neglected the most basic aspects of representation. The 10th includes Katy, Cypress, and Tomball, three Harris County cities that were dramatically impacted by Hurricane Harvey. McCaul has done little to nothing to help those affected. And instead of obtaining federal support to fund fixes to decrepit flood control facilities, McCaul trumpeted his demand for $20 billion to fund a useless Border Wall."


McCaul’s base of support is brittle, and can be dislodged by a strong field campaign supplemented by targeted outreach across the nine counties of the 10th. We can motivate volunteers because we are fighting for the needs of our friends and neighbors.


We are fighting for healthcare for all and a reversal of the 2017 cuts; for fair immigration policies that keep families together; for a living wage and a retirement with dignity. We are fighting to keep corporate and NRA money out of politics.


To win the primary in a field of seven Democrats, I recruited 250 volunteers from diverse constituencies, including labor organizations, Indivisible activists, and the immigrant rights community.

"To win the general," he continued, "we will need to multiply efforts and reach out to additional communities who are suffering under the Trump-McCaul paradigm. The 10th is not first on the "flippable" lists, but McCaul is not invincible, and his disdain for regular Texans is an Achilles heel."

Glen Bolger, a leading Republican pollster working on several top races this year, was even blunter: “People think the economy is doing well, but that’s not what they’re voting on-- they’re voting on the chaos of the guy in the White House.”

...Bolger and many other prominent Republicans now believe they are likely to lose the House, where they have a 23-seat majority and as many as 60 seats are being fiercely contested by Democrats. The party is preparing to shift advertising money away from some of their most beleaguered incumbents toward a set of races in somewhat more favorable territory. In the narrowly divided Senate, both parties see eight to nine seats, most of them held by Democrats, on a knife’s edge.

And instead of attempting to highlight positive economic news like the 3.9 percent unemployment rate, Republicans have turned to a scorched-earth campaign against the Democrats in a bid to save their House majority and salvage their one-seat edge in the Senate.

Republican electioneering groups, including the Congressional Leadership Fund “super pac” and the National Republican Congressional Committee, have spent millions in recent weeks attacking Democratic candidates in intensely personal terms. The committees, along with some Republican candidates, have blasted one Democratic hopeful in New York for rap lyrics he once wrote; branded another, in Pennsylvania, as a “trust fund baby” and “tax dodger;” and aired commercials featuring veterans in wheelchairs to sow doubts about the patriotism of some Democratic nominees.

The Republican lurch away from economic issues amounts to a bet on the politics of Trump-style cultural division as a means of driving up conservative turnout and disqualifying some Democratic candidates among more moderate voters.

From the very first day of his campaign in southeast Wisconsin, Randy Bryce started talking about Medicare-For-All. It's part of his sterling @IronStache brand and it's expected to help win in a red district where Trump beat Hillary 52.6% to 42.3%. Bryce seems very focused on what he wants to do for his neighbors in Racine, Kenosha, Janesville and points in between. "When people in WI-01 learn what Medicare for all actually involves they like it," he told me yesterday. "A Koch Brother funded study shows that we’ll actually save ten trillion over ten years with it in place. Premiums keep getting higher and higher. Healthy people are getting charged more every year for health care some can’t afford to actually use. Those who have insurance will always be paying for those who don’t so why is it so much to ask to do the right thing and give everyone access to health care? With regular checkups we can catch a problem before it gets too big."

Katie Porter has gone from being a long-shot to being a slight-front-runner in her Orange County district. I suspect a lot of that is because of messaging similar to what she told me today: "Mimi Walters," she said of her Trump-enabling opponent, "voted for Donald Trump's health care bill that would have gutted protections for pre-existing conditions, while allowing insurance companies to charge older Californians up to five times more. I will take on the big insurance companies and fight for a Medicare for All system that ensures every American has high-quality, affordable health care."

Another weak Republican incumbent whose reelection bid in Omaha is failing, is backbencher and Trump enabler Don Bacon. Ryan's SuperPAC, desperate to save the seat has been attacking progressive Democrat Kara Eastman, who is campaigning on issues that directly impact Nebraska voters, because she was in a punk rock band when she was in college, decades ago. That's what GOP desperation looks like. I asked Kara's communications director what they think of the pounding Ryan's SuperPAC is giving them with those personal, vicious ads. She told me that they "find it ironic that the opposition would want to attack Kara, and Beto, for doing something many American teens do-- join a band, sing songs about issues that matter to them, and express themselves through music. Congress would be a better place with more musicians, and while we were joking about a College Band Congressional Caucus, Kara is looking forward to working with politicians like Beto who lead with heart-- and music." Meanwhile, Kara's another candidate who doesn't have to spend time talking about Trump. Omaha voters don't like him at all and he lost the district in 2016. What Kara is concentrating on are the issues Nebraska voters care about: healthcare, education, jobs, the environment and getting dark money out of politics.

Kevin McCarthy, in laying out the Republican strategy for the GOP campaign to The Times reporters, said they plan to warn voters that if the Democrats win, they will "seek to enact universal health care." I guess he doesn't realize he will be helping Democrats, not hurting them, with that message.

Kendra Fershee doesn't mind that kind of advertising at all. She reminded us she's "running for Congress in West Virginia, home to the people whose backbreaking labor made it possible to build America. West Virginians got almost nothing in return. Healthcare is about freedom. You can’t live free if you can’t see a doctor when you’re sick. And our drug addiction crisis is bringing us to our knees. I don’t know what it looks like for a state to collapse, but I fear without universal healthcare, West Virginians may find out."

James Thompson, is appealing to voters in the Wichita Metro-- Koch country-- and he's making enough headway to scare the Republicans, even if the DCCC still refuses to notice. "Article I Section 8 of the Constitution," he told us, "states that Congress is to 'provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.' If people in this country are unable to get healthcare then Congress is abdicating its role to provide for the general welfare of the United States. Healthcare must be available to every single person in this country and based on their healthcare needs not their ability to pay. Opening up Medicare to everyone is the answer. It allows for a greater pool of people paying in to Medicare making it more solvent while also making health insurance affordable for everyone at 1/3 of the costs of current private insurance companies. Healthcare decision should be made by patients and doctors, not  bureaucrats and politicians. Republicans are great at making suggestions for destroying healthcare but have yet to provide any reasonable alternative to our current system. One suggestion they make is health savings accounts, but what they forget, or often simply ignore, is that people have to have money to put it into savings. With wages remaining stagnant for the past 40 years while health costs have climbed exponentially, people in this country are broke, struggling to make ends meet, and simply need their government be responsive to the needs of the people rather than big corporate donors. People who are not rich deserve healthcare too. So Republicans need to either put up or shut up when it comes to healthcare in this country. All they have done since the passage of the ACA is complain and promise to provide alternatives. They have had 8 years to come up with a plan and failed to provide even one viable alternative that they could agree on. If Republican politicans cannot agree amongst themselves, then there is no hope that Republicans can fix this problem. Having said that, this is not a Republican problem or a Democrat problem, it is an American problem that must be solved. Everyday that we continue to argue, more people die because they do not have access to healthcare. As Americans, we are better than this and must answer the call of our citizens to provide a healthcare system for everyone and Medicare is the answer."

[T]here are already clouds forming over the Republican-controlled capital, visible in the growing anger between the Trump White House and those in the party aligned with Congressional Republicans.

After a summer in which the administration implemented a policy of separating migrant children from their parents, the president sided with Mr. Putin over American intelligence services, and then showed little sympathy following the death of Senator John McCain, Republican strategists said Mr. Trump is alienating a sizable bloc of moderate and Republican-leaning voters who favor right-of-center economic policies but recoil from the president.

“There’s 15 percent of the electorate that’s happy with the direction of the country but angry with the president,” said Corry Bliss, who runs the Congressional Leadership Fund.

But this sort of talk infuriates Mr. Trump’s aides, and one senior White House official swiped back at Mr. Bliss, accusing him of attempting to lay the groundwork for deflecting blame for the loss of the House majority. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid about the party’s predicament, said the Republicans were facing deep losses because of the 40 House Republicans who chose not to run again-- a list, the official pointedly noted, that includes Mr. Ryan himself.

Yet the intraparty finger-pointing goes beyond the skirmishing between the White House and Congress.

Republican strategists affiliated with the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House “super pac,” are privately voicing exasperation with the National Republican Congressional Committee for not raising more money, and for being unwilling so far to begin a triage that would transfer resources toward their most viable incumbents. For example, the committee still has $8 million committed to two lawmakers, Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania, who many in the party do not think can win.

...Republican officials say privately that the performance of the economy under Mr. Trump has not been a major motivating factor for pro-Trump voters. For some Americans on the right, it may even be contributing to the mood of political apathy that has so alarmed G.O.P. leaders, since voters who are optimistic rarely vote with the intensity of those who are angry or afraid.

America First Action, a political committee aligned with Mr. Trump, conducted a series of focus groups over the summer and concluded the party had a severe voter-turnout problem, brought on in part by contentment about the economy and a refusal by Republicans to believe that Democrats could actually win the midterm elections.

Conservative-leaning voters in the study routinely dismissed the possibility of a Democratic wave election, with some describing the prospect as “fake news,” an official familiar with the research said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the data was not intended to be disclosed. Breaking that attitude of complacency is now the Republicans’ top priority, far more than wooing moderates with gentler messaging about economic growth.

...[T]he main reason Democrats are sensing a wave is obvious to party veterans.

“He won’t allow himself to get credit for the economy,” said James Carville, the Democratic strategist, referring to President Trump. Mr. Carville, who fashioned Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid” mantra in 1992, continued: “He’s made himself bigger than the economy. Every conversation starts and ends with Trump.”

I want to end with an example of what kind of thing Trump's chaos and dysfunction bring. Leslie Wexner has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the political process-- all of it to Republicans and GOP organizations (except a few fat checks to Joe Lieberman, essentially a Republican masquerading as a Democrap). He gave lots of maxed out contributions to lots of Republicans-- including to far right extremists like Marsha Blackburn-- as well as $250,000 to a SuperPAC backing Romney and $500,000 to a SuperPAC backing Jeb. So... yeah, a high roller. One of his most recent was to the successful campaign of Troy Balderson ($2,700) in his home state of Ohio. That may be the last to a Republican for a while. According to the Columbus Dispatch Wexner, a billionaire and chairman and CEO of Limited Brands, renounced his affiliation with the Republican Party after hearing Obama's speech on the same Columbus Partnership panel Wexner was speaking at. He called Obama's speech a "great moment for the community. I was struck by the genuineness of the man; his candor, humility and empathy for others... I just decided I’m no longer a Republican."

He's the Ohio GOP's wealthiest contributor and losing his campaign cash will hurt. He says he's an independent now and he "won’t support this nonsense in the Republican Party."

Trump’s Psychopathology and the Government Shutdown

-by Helen Klein

What is becoming increasingly clear is that despite Dr. Ronny Jackson’s gushing superlatives about Trump’s clean bill of health that extend beyond the physical, Trump’s personality make up and his mental/cognitive functioning are dead center in this shutdown mess. All arrows point to Trump. Now that the Republicans have hit a wall with Trump during the negotiations, even they are being forced to recognize his impairments in judgment and decision making, although of course they won’t do anything about it. They cannot help but realize with increasing disgust that they cannot control him, nobody can control him and he is one sick and crazy dude. Hello!

Is Graham going to make another about turn in his view of Trump? Compare his quote from February 2016, “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office,” to his quote in November 2017, “What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label [Trump] some kind of kook not fit to be president.” He may soon need to eat those words.

Dr. Jackson’s findings and conclusions regarding Trump’s recent physical were discussed in a DWT post a few days ago, The Physical, by this author.

Kurtz, who worked at The Post from 1981 to 2010, writes that Trump’s aides even privately coined a term for Trump’s behavior-- “Defiance Disorder.” The phrase refers to Trump’s seeming compulsion to do whatever it is his advisers are most strongly urging against, leaving his team to handle the fallout.

Dana Milbank, in his January 17 editorial in the Washington Post, “Is Trump’s Doctor Okay?” was “alarmed, not about the President’s health but the doctor’s.”

And not just his heart! The doctor rhapsodized about Trump’s vision, his stamina (“more energy than just about anybody”) and above all his mental acuity, which, Jackson made sure to note, he examined only “because the president asked me to.” Trump is “very sharp, and he’s very articulate... Very, very sharp, very intact... Absolutely no cognitive or mental issues whatsoever... The president did exceedingly well.”

From "The Physical:"

In conclusion, while Trump’s basic general health appears satisfactory, Jackson’s presentation of the findings leaves much to be desired and is alarming to many. His use of over the top superlatives was unwarranted and uncalled for. His conclusions about Trump’s mental, cognitive and language skills are well beyond that indicated from a routine physical and appear misleading, unethical, unprofessional and even untrustworthy. Unfortunately, Jackson gives the impression of being a political lackey rather than a professional doctor of medicine. This is worrisome. One wonders if there were any findings he is hiding.

On Twitter, Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone and Matt Damon humorously questioned even the factual aspects of the findings.

Here are some excerpts from Gail Collins’ January 17 editorial in the New York Times, Donald Trump Gets His Sanity Grades:

Donald Trump has passed his mental test. This may come as either a relief or a shock.

But the big news was the mental test. Trump took something called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and got a perfect score. Not perhaps the highest bar possible, unless you were concerned about whether he can identify pictures of animals and draw hands on a clock. But the test can be useful if there is, for some reason, concern that the subject is suffering from... um, dementia.

But about the president’s mental report. It didn’t measure judgment, and there was no score to indicate whether the test-taker would, if faced with a question of what to do about immigration policy, change his position 12 times in 24 hours. Whether he would confide to several million Twitter followers that the country “needs a good shutdown”? Whether he thinks of himself as a “very stable genius.”

Maybe Jackson could have given him a passing grade without going so far over the deep end. Something like: “Identified the camel picture, and no problems you could lock him up for.”

So here we are. Our current president is in O.K. physical condition and has “absolutely no cognitive or mental issues whatsoever.” The doctor says so. And really, he’s doing better than Woodrow Wilson, his jaw is intact and everything’s fine, unless you count a terrible attention deficit disorder and rampaging narcissism as mental issues. If so, they don’t come up on that test with the camel.

Up top you can watch Saturday Night Live's lovely skit about Dr. Jackson. Hopefully heron't be a recurring character.

Mental and cognitive issues and jokes aside, the bottom line in this shutdown mess is Trump’s psychiatric issues. These have been described in the media by a variety of professionals and were also reviewed in a previous DWT post. Concern in this realm is really nothing new, but it keeps getting buried in importance. Now it is raising its ugly head and is an unavoidable aspect of the mess we are in.

Trump has a mental disorder, Dr. Jackson. While an assessment along these lines is not part of a routine physical, you had no professional basis for any statement ruling this out.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a key player here, which Howard Dean noted last week on Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word on MSNBC. Even a superficial glance at the designated features listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- Fifth Edition, the bible for mental health professionals, reflects a slam dunk for Trump – he meets all 9 features, well beyond the required 5 for the diagnosis.

Here is a refresher to remind everyone what we are dealing with:

Symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

The definition of NPD states that it comprises of a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy. It starts by early adulthood and occurs in a range of situations, as signified by the existence of any 5 of the next 9 standards (American Psychiatric Association, 2013):

• A grandiose logic of self-importance
• A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love
• A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions
• A desire for unwarranted admiration
• A sense of entitlement
• Interpersonally oppressive behavior
• No form of empathy
Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her
• A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes

A summary of the features is helpful:

The most important characteristics of NPD are grandiosity, seeking excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy. These identifying features can result in a negative impact on an individual’s interpersonal affairs and life general. In most cases, on the exterior, these patients act with an air of right and control, dismissing others, and frequently showcasing condescending or denigrating attitudes. Nevertheless, internally, these patients battle with strong feelings of low self esteem issues and inadequacy. Even though the typical NPD patient may achieve great achievements, ultimately their functioning in society can be affected as these characteristics interfere with both personal and professional relationships. A large part of this is as result of the NPD patient being incapable of receiving disapproval or rebuff of any kind, in addition to the fact that the NPD patient typically exhibits lack of empathy and overall disrespect for others.

Malignant Narsissism, while not an official DSM-5 category, zeros in on other factors affecting Trump’s recalcitrant stance and blatant unconcern about the shutdown. Trump has no conscience. He thrives on causing disorder, mayhem and destruction. He gets a kick out of others’ misery. Now he has the power of the Office of the President to create chaos on a YUGE scale. Sad to say, he may be finding this reinforcing. The only downside for him is that he had to miss the one-year celebration party in Florida. Naturally, this was held anyway to rake in lots of bucks.

Malignant narcissism is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism. Often grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.

All Aboard! by Nancy Ohanian

This description is particulary noteworthy regarding Trump. He is certainly raising hostility levels, undermining our institutions and demeaning those around him.

To distinguish between narcissist and malignant narcissist:

A narcissist will deliberately damage other people in pursuit of their own selfish desires, but may regret and will in some circumstances show remorse for doing so, while a malignant narcissist will harm others and enjoy doing so, showing little empathy or regret for the damage they have caused.

Unfortunately, Trump appears to fit the latter description.

Furthermore, Eric Fromm, the social psychologist who coined the term Malignant Narcissism in 1964, described it as a “severe mental illness” representing “the quintessence of evil” and “the most severe pathology and the root of the most vixious destructiveness and inhumanity.” The British psychoanalysist, Herbert Rosenfield, decribed this condition as “a disturbing form of narcissistic personality where grandiosity is built around aggression and the destructive aspects of the self become idealized.”

Trump has never been held accountable for his behavior so why should he be now? Frankly, HE DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT. He has demonstrated over and over that he does not care about our country, our democracy, our institutions, the American people or the planet for that matter. He only cares about himself. He seems to enjoy denigrating others and take pleasure in their suffering. He is clearly a RACIST who has no compassion whatsoever for the Dreamers-- as far as he is concerned, they could be shipped back to whereever (aka their “shithole” countries). And he has Miller and Cotton, two evil anti-immigrant racists, whispering in his ear to keep him on track lest he be influenced in another direction. He has extremist minders keeping him in their clutches. They will likely hover at any future meetings.

A brief look at his behavioral history stemming from childhood is notable. He punched his second grade teacher in the face! His father sent him to military school because of his unruly uncontrollable behavior. He appears to have had Conduct Disorder, another DSM-5 category. Trump has always has been a bully who has bulldozed his way into adulthood using threats and intimidation. He has never kept his promises-- he has cheated a long trail of contractors and workers without the slightest guilt. He has shown no morality or ethics and a complete disregard for the law. And he has always gotten away with it! To him, scoffing at rules has been highly effective and this has become his M.O. He has NEVER been held accountable for his criminal shenanigans. What are a few fines here and there (e.g., $25 million for Trump University)? (One question that arises is - how has he managed to snub the justice system and the IRS for his extensive money laundering, which has apparently been going on for decades? This does not say much for our justice system).

Trump has a low bar for whom he associates with-- he is loyal to no one. All he cares about is how he will personally benefit from relationships. “He sucks up and shits down.” He was in bed with the Italian mafia for many years-- this is covered in a documentary film by the Dutch, for one-- and later with the Russian mafia for more than a decade. As Simpson from Fusion testified to the House Intelligence Committee, the Russian mafia, the Russian security services and the Russian government are all entwined and headed by Putin. Many Russians danced at Trump’s Inaugural balls. The extensive list of the folks surrounding Trump in the White House as well as many of his appointees SCREAM of Russia. Does he care one whit about being a traitor? He has shown over and over that he does not. He carries on about The Wall but not about Russian interference in our democracy, the greatest threat to our security in history. Trump admires Putin and loves Russia!

Trump is likely running around the White House rubbing his hands with glee about the shutdown. Too bad Wolff is no longer there to supply us with some juicy quotes. Trump has stated that what our country needs is “a good shutdown.” He loves confrontations. He loves blowing things up. He never backs down. He loves sticking it to others in the face. Malignant narcissism is written all over this. Putin must be laughing his head off. Trump has brought us down. He is destroying our government one tantrum at a time.

Trump does not even care about his positions on much of anything, which shift back and forth with the wind. This weekend Schumer said that negotiating with Trump is like negotiating with “Jell-O.” Even McConnell said he has no clue what Trump wants. Trump enjoys keeping everyone guessing and on tenderhooks. He is the all powerful, the master of the universe. His ego is on steroids.

His ignorance is YUGE. He does not read, he does not listen, he does not attend, he does not process. His speech is off topic and incoherent, a “word salad.” He makes Sarah Palin look like an orator. Trump may well have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and a Language Disorder (some indications of a language disorder are reduced vocabulary (word knowledge and use), limited sentence structure (e.g., ability to put words and endings together to form sentences based on the rules of grammar) and impairments of discourse (e.g., ability to use vocabulary and connect sentences to explain or describe a topic or series of events).

Thus Trump appears to be a man with many clinical diagnoses. He thrives on chaos and consults only himself in the mirror, as he knows better than everyone. He has no idea of the costs, human or financial, of a shutdown that may continue for weeks. And as long as he does not personally have to pay for it out of his own pocket, he does not care. He continues to enrich himself on our dime. He is thrilled that there is a domestic crisis. He loves being the center of attention, and that he surely is. His delusions of grandeur are our reality.

It seems doubtful that Trump will back down or that the right wingers in the House will either.

In a January 17 piece, Trump’s Enablers Destroy Their Reputations for Nothing, Brian Buetler writes:

In this world, they (McConnell and Ryan) are too ineffectual and paralyzed by fear of Trump’s outbursts to negotiate with Democrats in good faith, even when they know they need Democratic votes to keep the government from shutting down.

After a year of abdicating their constitutional obligations on Trump’s behalf, he returns the favor by making routine governance impossible.

The precise mechanisms are different, but in one respect, they’re suffering the same fate as Graham. Like him, they put a career’s worth of political cache on the line for Trump without condition, and in both cases he flushed it unblinkingly down the shithole.

It seems we will be in shutdown mode for a long haul. I hope I am wrong.