Trump And The Banality Of Evil

Annie Karni reported at the NY Times today that another bunch of #NeverTrump Republicans-- this one led by Bill Kristof, Sarah Longwell and former Jeb Bush top aide Tim Miller-- has started a well-funded campaign against Trump, pushing a perspective on Republicans that basically tells them to hold their noses and vote for Biden. The campaign is being run under the ad hoc Republican Voters Against Trump committee. They have dozens and dozens of videos you might enjoy watching. She wrote that they plan "to chip away at Mr. Trump’s support from white, college-educated Republican voters in the suburbs, hoping a more surgical approach will help to elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., his expected Democratic opponent. The new group is set to begin a $10 million digital and television advertising campaign that will use personal stories of conservative voters giving voice to their deep-- and sometimes brand-new-- dissatisfaction with the president."





Tony Schwartz, wrote The Art of the Deal for Trump, the book that launched him onto a public platform. Schwartz is so sorry and has been writing about what an asshole Trump was then and still is now. Yesterday he wrote an insightful essay about why Trump does the things he does-- The Psychopath in Chief. There's a lot there; this is just a small sampling. He wrote that "Like many other Trump critics, I believed that he was driven by an insatiable narcissistic hunger to be loved, accepted, admired and praised. That remains prima facie true, but it deflects attention from what drives Trump more deeply: the need to dominate. His primary goal is to win at any cost and the end always justifies the means. Ultimately, he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks or feels. For Trump, the choice between dominating and being loved-- saving himself or saving others-- is no contest. The catalyst for my shift came after a friend sent me a long paper written by Vince Greenwood, a Washington, D.C.-based psychologist. Greenwood makes a detailed clinical case that Trump is a psychopath, a term that is now used nearly interchangeably with sociopath. Psychologists continue to debate whether it’s legitimate to diagnose anyone from a distance without the benefit of a clinical interview. In Trump’s case, his life history is so well documented that a thorough assessment does seem possible. As I once did up close, we can observe every day which psychopathic traits Trump manifests in his behavior. The highly regarded Hare Psychopathy Checklist enumerates 20 of them. By my count Trump clearly demonstrates 16 of the traits and his overall score is far higher than the average prison inmate. The trait that most distinguishes psychopaths is the utter absence of conscience-- the capacity to lie, cheat, steal, and inflict pain to achieve their ends without a scintilla of guilt or shame, as Trump so demonstrably does. What Trump’s words and behavior make clear is that he feels no more guilt about hurting others than a lion does about killing a giraffe."

So long as we seek to understand Trump’s motivations and behaviors through our own lens, we will feel forever at sea. Viewing Trump through his lens helps clarify that his behavior is completely predictable, and why it has become more extreme during each year of his presidency. “When somebody’s president,” Trump declared on April 13, “the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total. It’s total.” When it became clear to Trump that total authority also meant personal responsibility, he backed off that claim. But Trump is akin to a battering ram. He just keeps coming at you. The only limitation on his behavior is whether he believes he can get away with whatever it is he’s trying to do.

“People with a strong sense of conscience speak truth to power,” Greenwood explains. “Trump speaks power to truth.” Since his election in 2016, Trump has told more than 18,000 lies without acknowledging or apologizing for any of them. The frequency of his lies has risen from five per day in the first year of his presidency, to more than 23 a day during 2020. For Trump, lying is second nature. Facts are simply are obstacles to be batted away when they contradict his preferred fictions.

It is a fact, for example, that Trump has been a defendant in nearly 1,500 lawsuits over the past three decades-- by government agencies seeking to collect unpaid taxes on his properties, contractors trying to get paid for services rendered to him and his companies, and women charging him with sexual assault. As far back as 1973, Trump and his father Fred were sued by the U.S. government for refusing to rent to African Americans in Trump Village, a housing project built by his father Fred. The two Trumps fought the charges for two years but eventually signed a consent order that included agreeing to take a series of actions to end their discrimination.

In 2015, Trump settled two class-action lawsuits charging him with defrauding students at Trump University by paying $25 million in penalties, and agreeing to close down the business. In 2018, in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general against Trump and his three oldest children alleging “persistently illegal conduct,” the Trumps agreed to shut the phony foundation, and to allow its remaining assets to be directed to charities chosen by the court.

The second quality that sets Trump apart is his lack of empathy. In the face of a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, we expect leaders to feel our pain, and to respond with expressions of compassion and comfort. Not Trump. In 13 hours of comments he made over a recent three-week period the Washington Post reported that he spent a total of two hours attacking others, including the media, 45 minutes praising himself and his administration, and a total of just 4.5 minutes expressing rote condolences for Covid-19 victims and front line workers.

Trump doesn’t appear to make heartfelt connections with anyone, nor to value relationships beyond the extent to which they serve his immediate self-interest. Turnover in his administration-- 85% in the first 32 months-- dwarfs that of his five most recent predecessors for their entire first terms. Trump treats even his relationships with family members as transactional. Consider the way he describes his relationship with his father, arguably the most important influence in his life. “I was never intimidated by my father, the way other people were,” he explained to me for The Art of the Deal. “I stood up to him and he respected that. We had a relationship that was almost businesslike. I sometimes wonder if we’d have gotten along so well if I hadn’t been as business oriented as I am.”

...The third trait that most characterizes Trump is his need for dominance, and the evident pleasure he takes in exercising it. “I love getting even when I get screwed by someone,” he explains in his book Think Big and Kick Ass. “Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back 15 times harder.” In the absence of a conscience to shape and limit his behavior, Trump defaults to a more primitive and predatory impulse. Life for him is a zero-sum game. He either wins or he loses, dominates or submits. This explains why Trump felt no compunction about lashing out this week at a frequent critic, Joe Scarborough, by falsely accusing him of murder, even in the absence of a shred of evidence to support his claim. Cruelty is second nature to Trump.

Perhaps nowhere is Trump’s need for dominance more evident than in his relationship with women, captured most vividly in his comments to Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood tape. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]. I just start kissing them,” he bragged. “It’s like a magnet. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.” More than 20 women have now publicly accused Trump of sexual assault.

Another tactic that Trump employs to assert his authority is declaring his unique expertise on virtually any subject. He instinctively disdains and dismisses the knowledge of experts, including scientists, and instead casts himself as the leading expert on anything and everything. Topics that Trump has claimed to “know more about than anyone” include ISIS, drones, social media, campaign finance, technology, polls, courts, lawsuits, politicians, trade, renewable energy, infrastructure, construction, environmental impact statements, nuclear weapons, banks, tax laws, income, money, and the economy. In fact, because he can never focus his attention for long, his knowledge about any subject tends to be superficial and severely limited. Trump has even felt free to contradict the health care professionals on his own team during the Covid-19 crisis, most notably in describing the potential healing power of injecting disinfectants into the body. “Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” he explained. “Maybe I have a natural ability.”

So what does all this tell us about how we can expect Trump to behave going forward? The simple answer is worse. His obsession with domination and power have prompted Trump to tell lies more promiscuously than ever since he became president, and to engage in ever more unfounded and aggressive responses aimed at anyone he perceives stands in his way.

In the end, Trump does what he does because he is who he is, immutably. The research now strongly suggests that the absence of conscience has a strong hereditary basis, even as it may also be activated by adverse childhood experiences. The genetic abnormality itself manifests in the limbic system, the set of brain structures involved in the processing of emotions. People without a conscience, it turns out, often have an undersized or under-active amygdala and less gray matter in the limbic area of the brain.

For four years, along with millions of other Trump critics, I have wrestled with the best way to respond to a president who is incapable of shame or empathy and cares only about his self-interest. There is no effective treatment for a person with these traits, and Trump wouldn’t seek one if there was, because he genuinely doesn’t believe there is anything wrong with him. The horrifying truth is that it’s precisely what he’s missing that gives him a permanent advantage over the vast majority of us who are guided by a conscience and concern for others.

Trump revels in attention, domination, and cruelty. “The sociopath wants to manipulate and control you,” explains Martha Stout, “and so you are rewarding and encouraging him each and every time you allow him to see your anger, confusion or your hurt.” Even so, in order to protect our democracy and our shared humanity, it’s critical to push back, calmly and persistently, against every single lie Trump tells, and every legal and moral boundary he violates. We must resist what Hanna Arendt has called “the banality of evil”-- the numbness and normalizing that so easily sets in when unconscionable acts become commonplace. “Under conditions of terror, most people will comply,” Arendt has written, “but some people will not.”

Understanding what we’re truly up against-- the reign of terror that Trump will almost surely wage the moment he believes he can completely prevail-- makes the upcoming presidential election a true Armageddon.

Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.

Can Someone Be Intentionally Deceitful And Deluded At The Same Time? Absolutely-- And Putin Put Him In The White House

Frank Schwartz knows Trump far more intimately than almost anyone writing about him-- and he detests him. It's always worthwhile hearing what he has to say about the orange-hued baboon. But while Schwartz was on CNN, Bob Woodward, of Fear fame, was doing his first TV interview since the book came out with CBS News' David Martin. It's impossible to imagine you're following the Trump saga without watching it. "You look at the operation of this White House," said Woodward, who has looked at the operation of many White Houses, "and you have to say, 'Let's hope to God we don't have a crisis.' People who work for him are worried ... that he will sign things or give orders that threaten the national security or the financial security of the country or the world."

Martin asked Woodward how White House staffers, like Gary Cohn and Rob Porter were able to steal documents dangerous to the country off the chimp's desk and get away with it. "He doesn't remember," said Woodward, describing a senile old coot. "If it's not on his desk, if it's not immediately available for action, it goes away... In the eight others," he said, referring to the 9 White Houses he's written about, "I never heard of people on the staff in the White House engaging in that kind of extreme action"-- basically unelected officials intentionally thwarting the actions of the elected president (albeit for the sake of the country)... but still exactly the opposite of what White House aides are hired to do.

The boastful asshole, hoping Mattis' military service would somehow rub off on him, bragged at one of his deranged rallies that "We are going to appoint 'Mad Dog' Mattis as our Secretary of Defense. "The president surrounded himself with generals-- active duty and retired-- all of whom had served in Afghanistan. But before he decided on a new Afghan strategy, he insisted on meeting with enlisted men who had served there as well... In a meeting the next day, he lashed out at the generals: "I don't care about you guys," he said to Mattis, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford, and then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Woodward: "'The soldiers on the ground could run things much better than you,' he says to Mattis and Dunford, and there is a 25-minute dressing down of the generals and senior officials." Sir Bone-spurs (AKA, the king of genital warts and veneral disease) has persuaded himself he's the toughest guy in the room-- any room, every room. America may be; he's not anything more than a transparent coward and bully, a terrible-- and very dangerous-- combination.

When Economic Adviser Gary Cohn was upset over the president's reluctance to condemn white supremacists for the violence in Charlottesville he went into the Oval Office to resign. According to Woodward, "Trump said, 'You can't resign. I need you to do tax reform.' He said, 'If you leave, this is treason.' And Trump talked him out of resigning."

Afterwards, Chief of Staff John Kelly, who had been in the room, pulled him aside: "Cohn wrote this down, 'quote from General Kelly: If that was me I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times.'"

...Woodward quotes harsh criticism of the president from some of his closest advisers. Chief of Staff Kelly called his boss an "idiot."  Secretary of Defense Mattis said the commander-in-chief acted like, and had the understanding of, "a fifth- or sixth-grader."

Both men have denied saying such things. And the president continues to denounce the book at every turn. At a rally Friday night Mr. Trump said, "These guys that write books and they put phony quotes out all over them-- totally phony quotes. I mean, totally, like, fraudulent books. They're, like, fraudulent books!"

"He says the quotes are just not the way he speaks and the quotes are fabricated. What do you say to that?"

"He's wrong, and my reporting is meticulous and careful."

In a second interview with CBS' Sunday Morning, Woodward said he had multiple sources for every claim in the book: "Multiple interviews with key witnesses. One person I interviewed nine times, and the transcripts of those conversations are 700 or 800 pages."

"700-800 pages for one person?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many people did you interview?"

"Over a hundred. I would say that maybe half of those are key people."

The theme of Woodward's book-- that aides fear what the president might do if allowed to follow his impulses-- received an unusual confirmation last week, when the New York Times published this anonymous article written by a person described as "a senior official in the Trump administration."  "I work for the president, but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations."

"I have no idea who it is. It's very important, who it is. It's very important whether this is somebody who witnessed and participated. And quite frankly, if there was a person in the White House or the administration who wanted to tell me what's in that op-ed piece, I would say, 'Okay, name me who was there. What is the specific incident?' As you know, from having read my book, the dates and times and participants. I wouldn't have used it."

"Too vague?"

"Well, too vague, and does not meet the standards of trying to describe specific incidents. Specific incidents are the building blocks of journalism, as you well know."

Fear: Trump in the White House is Woodward's 19th book, and he says reporting it took him deeper inside a working White House than he's ever been before.

"This one was in the belly of the beast."

"And what did you conclude about the beast?" "That people better wake up to what's going on."

Ever Hear Of The Amyntor Group? It's Part Of Whitefish, Montana's Quest For World Dominance

That 4 and a half minute video about VEEP was kind of meta and theoretical. This 25 second one from the show gets right down to it; you kind of have to if you only have 25 seconds, right? But, by all means, watch them both; it's Friday night after all.



So... you thought the corrupt Debbie Wasserman Schultz version of private prisons was bad? How about an Erik Prince version? They both President Selina Meyer look vaguely appealing-- or relatively appealing anyway. BuzzFeed reporter Adam Roston wrote yesterday about how the Trump Regime is working towards privatizing-- giving to Erik Prince-- part of the U.S. intelligence services. If you're wondering if this is supposed to sound scary... yeah, very scary, very, very scary. "The White House and CIA," he wrote, "have been considering a package of secret proposals to allow former US intelligence officers to run privatized covert actions, intelligence gathering, and propaganda missions, according to three sources who’ve been briefed on or have direct knowledge of the proposals."

One of the proposals would involve hiring a private company, Amyntor Group, for millions of dollars to set up a large intelligence network and run counter terrorist propaganda efforts, according to the sources. Amyntor’s officials and employees include veterans of a variety of US covert operations, ranging from the Reagan-era Iran–Contra affair to more recent actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amyntor declined to discuss the proposals, but a lawyer for the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that the type of contract being contemplated would be legal “with direction and control by the proper government authority.”

Another proposal presented to US officials would allow individuals affiliated with the company to help capture wanted terrorists on behalf of the United States. In keeping with that proposal, people close to the company are tracking two specific suspects in a Middle Eastern country, the sources said, for possible “rendition” to the United States.

A source speaking on behalf of the company stressed that while Amyntor officials are aware of and involved in the rendition plan, the company itself would not be involved.

People involved in the highly unusual project have asked BuzzFeed News not to name the country or the targets because of concerns about the safety of operatives who, they say, are on the ground. They say that the people involved have the information and capabilities to snatch the two suspects and transport them to the US or a third country.

The proposals sound like a convoluted movie plot, but two of the sources familiar with the project say discussions have been held recently with top national security officials.

The CIA declined to comment, but a US government official downplayed the proposals' significance. “The idea they are pitching is absurd on its face,” he said, “and it is not going anywhere.”

A spokesperson for the National Security Council said that Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser, and other officials were not aware of the proposals.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo has publicly promised that the agency would become “much more vicious” and aggressive. He said in one speech that the administration “is prepared to engage in activities that are different from what America has been doing these past few years.”

Those familiar with the proposals say one of the driving impulses for privatizing some missions is a fear by some supporters of President Donald Trump, outside government, that the CIA bureaucracy has an anti-Trump bias that would thwart efforts to fulfill the president’s objectives. “The system does not work,” one source who is sympathetic to the Amyntor efforts told BuzzFeed News. “The people leaking this to you just want to destroy the president.”

...Amyntor Group is a reclusive company headquartered in Whitefish, Montana, a town of 6,500 residents that recently gained notoriety after a company based there won, then lost, a $300 million contract to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid. There is no known relationship between the two companies.

Amyntor’s website describes its mission as “providing extraordinary security solutions.” It claims to “maintain an experienced cadre of cleared professionals that possess Subject Matter Expertise (SME) in the areas of intelligence training, collections and analysis, risk assessment, and counterintelligence to support U.S. and friendly foreign government activities around the globe.”

Among the management of Amyntor is John Maguire, a former CIA case officer who reportedly led a US effort to provoke Saddam Hussein into war before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [Yes, you read that right.]

Sources say Maguire and others who run Amyntor previously worked with the late Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a CIA officer known for his colorful personality. Indicted and then pardoned for his role in the so-called Iran–Contra affair during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, Clarridge also tried in 2008, while in his seventies, to set up his own private intelligence agency to collect information about terrorists in Afghanistan. Clarridge ran the business under the name “The Eclipse Group.” Reportedly, his operation was, for a time, funded by the Department of Defense. Clarridge died in 2016.

Among Amyntor’s unusual cast of characters is a cosmetic surgeon, Keith Rose, who lists himself on his Linkedin page as the “medical director” of Amyntor. He was involved in Clarridge’s Eclipse Group, according to two people who are familiar with both Clarridge and Rose.

Rose did not return a phone message to his medical clinic in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The pitch to the Trump administration began in the summer, according to the former intelligence official familiar with it. It involved at least three components: collecting intelligence on terrorists using “a network of assets in a denied area” (meaning spies in hostile countries), an online propaganda operation to counter Islamic extremism, and the rendition plan.

One source saw the plan presented in a PowerPoint. He says it appeared that the pitches coincided with a widely publicized effort by Erik Prince-- the private security official, founder of Blackwater, and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos-- to privatize the war in Afghanistan.

But the source speaking on behalf of the company says that while Prince is close to some Amyntor officials, he has nothing to do with the rendition plan or the other proposals.

As BuzzFeed News reported earlier in November, a CIA official assigned to the NSC once worked on an assassination plan at a time when the agency had contracted it to Prince.

Privatizing intelligence operations and covert actions is highly controversial. Asked about Amyntor’s proposal and the rendition plan, one former senior intelligence official said, “All the institutional structures exist to prevent things from going off the rails. Is this an attempt to circumvent oversight?”

Sleep tight! Yeah, I know we ran this earlier, but if you missed it... Or watch it again; believe me, it's even better-- if that's the word-- the second time through.

Is Trump Honest And Trustworthy? Most Americans Say NO-- And Most Say Fox Is The Top Source Of Fake News

Trumpanzee-- no brain surgeon-- was at least smart enough to always know he was too intellectually limited (and perhaps aware that he is deteriorating mentally too fast) to actually be a real president in anything but name. And that was fine with him. When he offered Kasich the vice-presidency, Kasich was told he would be in charge of all domestic and foreign policies, while Señor T would just be in charge of Making America Great Again. When he's not out golfing or making ceremonial appearances he sits around watching Fox and tweeting their nonsense.

Nancy Ohanian asks, "What Would Freud Do?"

Yesterday, Republican polling firm Rasmussen, Trumpanzee's favorite pollsters released a survey of likely voters on the trustworthiness of various news sources. Señor Trumpanzee, they reported "suggested earlier this week that the media should award an annual Fake News Award for the worst coverage of his presidency but left Fox News out of the running since it is the only network the president and his supporters believe gives him fair coverage. But 40% of all voters think Fox News should be the winner of the first annual Fake News Trophy... 53% of Democrats and a plurality (42%) of voters not affiliated with either major party declare Fox News the winner, just 24% of Republicans agree." These were the results of which news organizations voters find least believable and the most fake:

• Fox- 40%
• CNN- 25%
• MSNBC- 9%
• ABC- 4%
• CBS- 3%
• NBC- 2%
• someone else or undecided- 17%

SSRS did a poll for CNN earlier this month. When asked if Trump’s statements and actions since taking office have made respondents more confident or less confident in his ability to serve as president only 30% said more confident while 64%-- the highest ever-- said less confident. When asked if foreign leaders respect Trump, just 24% said they thought so, while an astronomical 68% said no. The they got to the trustworthiness question. Just 20% of likely voters believe most of the communication that comes from the White House, while 37% believe "some of it" and 32% believe none of it.

This isn't just bad for Trump; this is dangerous for the U.S. And when they asked specifically if Trump is "honest and trustworthy," only 34% were delusional enough to say yes. (64% of American voters say Trump isn't honest and trustworthy.) Only 33% think he should be reelected and 63% say he doesn't deserve reelection.

Nancy Ohanian takes a look at Huckabee's deranged daughter

Watch Tony Schwartz, Trump's Art of The Deal ghost writer, being interviewed on MSNBC this week about the deterioration of Trump's mental health. "This is a person," he said, "who is exceptionally dangerous because he is losing his grip... someone no longer connected to reality."



Who you calling a kook? Is Donald J. Trump fit to be president of the United States? Has he ever been? And, while, we're at it, is Lindsey Graham fit to serve as a U.S. Senator and has he ever been? Please... you decide:

Who's Watching Trump To Make Sure He Doesn't Do Anything Dangerous?

Last night Trump's Art of the Deal ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, told CNN viewers on Anderson Coope’s 360 that Señor Trumpanzee is having a "significant meltdown. He’s in pure defensive mode. I think that he’s being run by the part of his brain that’s reactive and impulsive, not capable of reflection... The sense of siege that he feels because his sense of self-worth is so, so vulnerable that the series of things that have happened are overwhelming to him." This morning he took to twitter to whine about how unfair life is to him.

Katie Glueck, writing for McClatchy: "Pangs of fear and frustration are rippling through the Republican donor and operative classes as Donald Trump's self-inflicted wounds threaten to fully derail the GOP legislative agenda and tarnish the party's brand headed into the midterm."

Last night, the Time's Nick Kristof speculated that "the Trump presidency may now be disintegrating, tumbling toward entropy... If Trump thought he was removing a thorn by firing Comey, he now faces a grove of thistles." He seemed concerned about the dangers ahead for the country.

One is that America will be incapacitated and paralyzed by Mueller’s investigation and the suspicions-- this partly explains the stock market’s big fall on Wednesday-- and foreign powers may take advantage of this to undertake their own mischief. I would worry about Russia in both Ukraine and the Baltic countries, and we must make clear that we will work with allies to respond in kind.

Another danger is the risk of an erratic, embattled, paranoid leader at home who feels that he may be going down the tubes anyway. In domestic policy, presidents are constrained by Congress and the courts about what damage they can cause, but in foreign policy a president has a largely free hand-- and the ability to launch nuclear strikes that would pretty much destroy the world.

In 1974, as Richard Nixon’s presidency was collapsing, he was drinking heavily and aides worried that he was becoming unstable. Fearing what might go wrong, Nixon’s defense secretary, James Schlesinger, secretly instructed the military not to carry out any White House order to use nuclear weapons unless confirmed by him or Henry Kissinger.

This was unconstitutional. And wise.

Schlesinger also prepared secret plans to deploy troops in Washington in the event of problems with the presidential succession.

We don’t know how Trump will respond in the coming months, and let’s all hope for smooth sailing. But as with Schlesinger’s steps, it’s wise to be prepared.

There have been calls for Trump aides to resign rather than ruin their reputations, but I hope the grown-ups-- H. R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, Dina Powell, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson-- grit their teeth and stick it out. The White House has never needed more adult supervision.

The cabinet has the constitutional power to remove a president by majority vote under the 25th Amendment (if the president protests, this must be confirmed by two-thirds of each chamber of Congress). Such a vote is unlikely, but in the event of a crisis like the one Schlesinger envisioned, it would be essential.

I hope that cabinet members are keeping one another’s cellphone numbers handy in case an emergency meeting becomes necessary for our nation.

Will Trump's Handlers Successfully Persuade Him Not To Throw His Spaghetti On The Wall Before The Debate Ends?

Trump likes to reassure his dumbell fans that he's in the fraternity of top business leaders. But he's a joke in the business world and, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out Friday, not a single Fortune 100 CEO is backing him, or at least not contributing to his campaign. Nearly a third of them gave to Romney's campaign and during the primary quite a few gave to Bush and Rubio to try to save America from Trump. So far 11 have contributed to Hillary's campaign.

I suspect that the endorsement Trump got from Cruz Friday isn't going to sway any CEOs. (Remember when Trump brayed that he wouldn't accept a Cruz endorsement? Today he says he's honored to have it. Maybe he promised Cruz's crackpot father a pardon for the JFK assassination in return for the endorsement.)

The latest polls aren't going his way. The national Marist poll McClatchy sponsored shows Clinton continuing to build a lead against him. She's leads him 48-41% in a head-on contest and 45-39% in a 4-way race including Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. The AP's poll by GfK showed a similar lead for Clinton-- 41-35% of likely voters in a 4-way match-up. Shouldn't she be ahead of him 70-30%? She's not my idea of a good candidate but he really is the worst thing ever-- unthinkable. Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald gave a more serious demonstration of Trump's disengagement with truth and objective reality. He wrote that Trump either committed perjury (in court, under oath) or blatantly lied in one of the most dramatic moments of the primary debates. "There are two records," he wrote, "one, a previously undisclosed deposition of the Republican nominee testifying under oath, and the second a transcript/video of a Republican presidential debate. In them, Trump tells contradictory versions of the same story with the clashing accounts tailored to provide what he wanted people to believe when he was speaking."

In the lie we are examining here, Trump either committed a felony or proved himself willing to deceive his followers whenever it suits him.

Trump told the public version of this story last year, during the second Republican presidential debate.

Trump had been boasting for weeks at his rallies that he knew the political system better than anyone, because he had essentially bought off politicians for decades by giving them campaign contributions when he wanted something. He also proclaimed that only he—as an outsider who had participated in such corruption of American democracy at a high level-- could clean it up. During the September 2015 debate, one of Trump’s rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, verified Trump’s claim, saying the billionaire had tried to buy him off with favors and contributions when he was Florida’s governor.

"The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something-- that was generous and gave me money—was Donald Trump,” Bush said. “He wanted casino gambling in Florida."

Trump interrupted Bush:

Trump: I didn’t...

Bush: Yes, you did.

Trump: Totally false.

Bush: You wanted it, and you didn’t get it, because I was opposed to...

Trump: I would have gotten it.

Bush: Casino gambling before...

Trump: I promise, I would have gotten it.

Bush: During and after. I’m not going to be bought by anybody.

Trump: I promise, if I wanted it, I would have gotten it.

Bush: No way. Believe me.

Trump: I know my people.

Bush: Not even possible.

Trump: I know my people.

If Trump was telling the truth that night, so be it. But if he was lying, what was his purpose? His “If I wanted it, I would have gotten it,” line may be a hint. Contrary to his many vague stories on the campaign trail about being a cash-doling political puppet master, this story has a name, a specific goal and ends in failure. If Bush was telling the truth, then Trump would have had to admit he lost a round and, as he assured the audience, that would not have happened. When he wants something, he gets it.

But that wasn’t the point he needed to make in 2007. The deposition was part of a lawsuit he’d filed against Richard Fields, who Trump had hired to manage the expansion of his casino business into Florida. In the suit, Trump claimed that Fields had quit and taken all of the information he obtained while working for Trump to another company. Under oath, Trump said he did want to get into casino gambling in Florida but didn’t because he had been cheated by Fields.

A lawyer asked Trump, “Did you yourself do anything to obtain any of the details with respect to the Florida gaming environment, what approvals were needed and so forth?”

Trump: A little bit.

Lawyer: What did you do?

Trump: I actually spoke with Governor-Elect Bush; I had a big fundraiser for Governor-Elect Bush…and I think it was his most successful fundraiser, the most successful that he had had up until that point, that was in Trump Tower in New York on Fifth Avenue.

Lawyer: When was that?

Trump: Sometime prior to his election.

Lawyer: You knew that Governor Bush, Jeb Bush at that time, was opposed to expansion of gaming in Florida, didn't you?

Trump: I thought that he could be convinced otherwise.

Lawyer: But you didn't change his mind about his anti-gaming stance, did you?

Trump: Well, I never really had that much of an opportunity because Fields resigned, telling me you could never get what we wanted done, only to do it for another company.

One of these stories is a lie-- a detailed, self-serving fabrication. But unlike the mountain of other lies he has told, this time the character trait that leads to Trump’s mendacity is on full display: He makes things up when he doesn’t want to admit he lost.

Assume the story he told at the debate is the lie. Even though Bush’s story reinforced what Trump was saying at rallies-- he had played the “cash for outcomes” political game for years-- he could not admit he had tried to do the same in Florida because he could not bring himself to say that he had lost. Instead, he looked America in the eye and lied. And then he felt compelled to stack on another boast: His people are so wonderful that they would have gotten casino gambling in Florida, regardless of Bush’s opposition-- if Trump had wanted it.

Now consider the other option, that Trump committed perjury in the 2007 testimony. There, he admitted pushing for casino gambling in Florida, but said he would have gotten what he wanted if he hadn’t been tricked by Fields. The rationale for the perjurious testimony is simple-- Trump wants money from a man who stopped working for him and, once again, the story lets him deny he is anything less than perfect.

"Is the Republican nominee," Eichenwald concluded, "a perjurer or just a liar? Obviously both-- and serially. Tony Schwartz, the Art of the Deal ghostwriter who now regrets he made Trump nationally famous, explained to the NY Times' Michael Barbaro how Hillary can beat Trump Monday in the debate.

Trump has a tiny little attention span, smaller than his hands. "He couldn’t tolerate doing interviews. He just couldn’t stay focused for more than a few minutes at a time. And think about this... it was when he was talking about himself, which is his favorite subject."

“What I would hope is that she doesn’t go the same route she did with Matt Lauer when he started coming at her relentlessly, which was to revert to her knowledge, to revert to her ability to produce a hundred facts in a short period of time,” he says. “Because this debate is going to turn not a bit on the issues. It’s going to turn on emotion, it’s going to turn on which candidate makes all of us feel safer and which candidate makes us feel less safe. And the one who wins that contest wins the debate-- and probably wins the election.”

...“I think of Trump as a toddler sitting in a high chair,” [columnist Frank] Bruni says. “And his advisers are saying ‘Donald, you must get through the meal without throwing your spaghetti on the wall.’ So the question is, will they successfully persuade him not to throw his spaghetti on the wall before the debate ends?”

Does America Need A More Authoritarian President?

Early yesterday-- just after midnight-- Señor Trumpanzee had one of his notorious Twitter freakouts, this one about Tony Schwartz, the guy who virtually lived with him "day and night for 18 months" and then wrote Art of the Deal and allowed El Trumpanzee to take co-author's credit despite the fact that he was the subject of the book, not the author of even one word of it. Trump's tantrum (below) was a reaction to Schwartz's appearance on Anderson Cooper's CNN show (above). Trump, it should be remembered, has been threatening to sue Schwartz.

Schwartz responded to Cooper's question about Trumpanzee affinity for brutal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, by explaining that Trumpy-the-clown "is at heart a deeply, deeply insecure man and he is a sucker for flattery... He reveres authoritarians because he dreams of being one... Here is one of his favorite phrases: 'I love that guy; he's a killer'... Anybody who does know him well knows who Donald Trump is and no one who knows him well would doubt that to be a dictator and to be able to control everything would be his dream come true."

It scares me that over a third of Americans seem incapable of discerning Schwartz's simple diagnosis-- or that they just don't care. Is life that bad-- that hopeless and that devoid of meaning-- that they'd just as soon throw it all away? That's what a vote for Trump is: throwing it all away. Remember, Hitler kind of won an election too... supported by the same kind of ignorant, hate-filled losers who support Señor Trumpanzee today. Life's losers... they vote too, I guess.