For The Trumpist Regime, Everything Is Falling Apart

Nothing seems to work. Trump tried negotiating an increase in oil prices but 3 days later they resumed their nose-dive-- as did the stock market (down another 2.4% yesterday). His regime has failed to deliver the emergency $1,200 checks that everyone should have had in their pockets almost a month ago. Betsy DeVos botched the $6 billion emergency funding for college students. And as Trump tells federal employees to prepare to come back to work, the number of confirmed infections shot up by around 20,000 overnight. A new YouGov poll shows that the "Fire Fauci" rallies that the Trumpist regime is promoting aren't working. 71% of Americans are more worried about lifting the restrictions too quickly, rather than too slowly (29%). Even 51% of Republicans say lifting the restrictions too fast are dangerous and that they oppose that. Most Americans-- including a plurality of Republicans-- oppose the Trumpist protestors.

California, which put social distancing rules in place early and entirely ignored Trump's ranting and raving, has just 30 deaths per million people. Compare that to states with governors who insisted on waiting and whose residents waited to take social distancing seriously:

• New York- 957 per million
• New Jersey- 493 per million
• Connecticut- 315 per million
• Louisiana- 285 per million
• Michigan- 248 per million

There are 9 more states with seriously increasing rates of infection that are likely to also show over 200 deaths per million in the next month:

• Ohio- 1,317 new cases yesterday
• Pennsylvania- 1,180 new cases yesterday
• Maryland- 854 new cases yesterday
• Georgia- 790 new cases yesterday
• Louisiana- 595 new cases yesterday
• Indiana- 476 new cases yesterday
• Virginia- 453 new cases yesterday
• Rhode Island- 384 new cases yesterday
• Florida- 346 new cases yesterday
• Iowa- 257 new cases yesterday

A new poll of Michiganders by the Glengariff Group for the Detroit Regional Chamber shows that Michiganders trusts their governor, Gretchen Whitmer considerably more than they trust Trump, who has been attacking her for her social distancing policies, which aren't even that strong and need to be tightened. Her approval on the pandemic is 57% with 37% disapproving. Only 44% approved of Trump's handling of the pandemic and 50% disapproved.





The Associated Press reported yesterday that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, that said that in terms of the pandemic "the worst is yet ahead of us... It has a very dangerous combination and this is happening… like the 1918 flu that killed up to 100 million people. But now we have technology, we can prevent that disaster, we can prevent that kind of crisis."

Stat's infectious diseases specialist, Helen Branswell, wrote yesterday about the magical thinking behind the inaction of the political class as China was being pounded by the pandemic in January and February, when Trump ignored it or made light of it. "Magical thinking-- you could call it denial-- hampered the ability of even some of the most seasoned infectious diseases experts to recognize the full threat of what was bearing down on the world," she wrote... "The virus, the thinking went, didn’t appear to be behaving as explosively outside of China as it had inside it. In hindsight, that argument, from a biological point of view, didn’t make any sense-- and it ignored a soon-to-be-apparent Epidemiology 101 lesson: It takes time for a virus that spreads from person to person to hit an exponential growth phase in transmission, even if every new case was infecting on average two to three other people. It wasn’t that the virus was behaving differently; we simply hadn’t yet seen what it was doing as it moved beyond China. When large outbreaks exploded in Iran and then Northern Italy in late February, the reality became abundantly evident. And then it was too late."

Some would argue that it was too late after January, 2017, when the orange slug-- a sociopath and narcissist, moved into the white House. Over the weekend, David Masciotra, wondered aloud, at Salon, why Democrats don't level with the American people about Trump's mental illness. "Trump," he wrote, "is the lunatic authority figure stalking and traumatizing the victims-- the American people-- while the Democratic Party, along with the mainstream media, act as the silent partner. It becomes increasingly evident, with Trump's every social media post, public utterance and policy directive, that our president suffers from a severe form of mental illness. His insanity threatens millions of lives, and has become particularly dangerous during the most devastating public health crisis in the last 100 years. For all the criticism that Democrats and pundits advance against Trump, their refusal to state the obvious forces the American public to feel as if we are the ones confined to a mental institution. It also emboldens Trump, even as he prioritizes his fragile ego, his compulsion to appear infallible and political expediency above the lives of countless human beings."

The most popular terms that Trump's opponents use are "liar," "un-American," "egomaniac" and "malignant narcissist." All of these labels are weak, which is why we watch as Trump peels them off like Band-Aids after a shower. Half the public probably doesn't know what "malignant narcissist" means, while "un-American" is too vague and ideological to have any widespread resonance. "Liar" quickly collapses into the "all politicians lie" refrain, and "egomania" is borderline meaningless, considering that almost anyone who becomes famous in our consumer society-- including most high-powered CEOs, Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes-- obviously have massively swollen egos.

...One recent morning-- again, while thousands are dying and the coronavirus ravaged numerous American cities-- Trump tweeted 46 times in a few hours, mostly to mock House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whine about "fake news" and retweet conspiracy theorists arguing for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

If any of our loved ones behaved in a similar manner, we would plead for psychiatric intervention. One does not have to have the expertise of a psychiatrist at the Yale University School of Medicine to make that assessment, but Dr. Bandy X. Lee, who indeed holds that title, recently told Salon that Trump's "pathological malice," "mental pathology," and "bottomless need to place his own psychic survival above any protection of the public" could "destroy the nation or the world."

...Even as rates of infection and the daily body count escalate, while overwhelmed hospitals lack the equipment to properly care for their patients and protect their workers, Trump displays a horrific failure to empathize with victims, place public need above personal interest or even acknowledge reality. He continues to tout the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which so far has shown little if any positive effects on coronavirus patients, and is known to increase the risk of cardiac arrest.

Trump makes decisions that threaten more lives, such as the elimination of U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, which is not only on the front lines against the global spread of COVID-19, but is also central to the campaign against treatable diseases throughout the developing world. He boasted of the creation of a coronavirus website in partnership with Google-- which does not exist and never will-- and has likened his presidential powers to those of a dictator, telling a report that "the authority of the president of the United States is total." (In an entirely typical Trumpian maneuver, he then retreated from that position without acknowledging he had ever said any such thing.)

Unlike other world leaders, who allow their chief medical officials to lead press briefings on the pandemic, the wannabe dictator hosts a surreal press conference nearly every afternoon. This has become a pathological national spectacle, in which Trump insults journalists, makes transparently false claims and answers simple questions, like "What do you say to the Americans who are scared?" with incoherent rage: "I say you're a terrible reporter."

In their cowardice, weakness and lack of imagination, the White House correspondents, the networks and publications they represent, and most Democratic officials offer a hideous illustration of "malignant normality."

Most journalists, adhering to an institutional decorum that might have been appropriate during the Carter administration, ask Trump a question and then dutifully take notes while he blusters through an illiterate response.

Lenore Taylor, an editor with Guardian Australia, offered a reasonable perspective on Trump last year that still eludes her American peers. After attending a White House press conference, she wrote that she realized "how much the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect," and concluded that most of journalism "masks and normalizes his full and alarming incoherence."

Major newspapers and television networks largely refuse to publish or air consideration of Trump's mental health, ignoring the consensus of hundreds of the most prestigious academics and doctors in the field.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was recently compelled to grovel before the Dear Leader, insisting that when he had said that earlier adoption of social distancing would have saved lives, he of course intended no criticism of the porcelain president.

For the sake of the country, millions of lives and everyone's sanity, some political figure of national prominence needs to respect the consensus of mental health professionals, and publicly declare that President Donald Trump is mentally unstable and unfit for office. This must be stated in the simplest terms possible, and while making clear that he or she is not joking or issuing the statement for dramatic effect. It is time to liberate American discourse from its self-imposed restraints, and it is essential to the future of American democracy that Trump's mental condition becomes a focal point of urgent investigation and discussion.

Shameless and dishonest operatives on the right have no reticence about making the health of a major Democratic figure part of public inquiry, even when they have to resort to baseless lies. In 2016, many Republican commentators-- from Sean Hannity to Trump himself-- warned that Hillary Clinton was near death, because she appeared wobbly at one public event. Four years later, she is still alive. Currently, discussions of Joe Biden's "dementia," without any clear evidence of cognitive decline, dominate right-wing chatter about the prospective Democratic nominee.

More than a thousand mental health professionals are now on the record declaring that Donald Trump is mentally unfit for office, but leading Democrats still refuse to discuss the issue openly. Amid this pandemic, Democratic cowardice regarding Trump's insanity goes beyond the usual liberal pattern of bringing a pillow to a knife fight. It puts millions of lives at risk.

No Democratic governor, even one with considerable power and influence like California's Gavin Newsom or New York's Andrew Cuomo, can afford to gamble with the health of his or her people by alienating Trump. But a prominent U.S. senator-- perhaps Chris Murphy of Connecticut or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts-- or even Joe Biden himself, must level with the country about what anyone outside Trump's cult following can see with their own eyes. The president is sick. It's time to talk about it.

A recent profile in the New Yorker of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quoted a staffer as claiming that behind closed doors McConnell has described Trump as "nuts." Democrats should demand to know if the Republican Senate mastermind truly believes that the president is impaired, and force McConnell to choose between yet more lies and the future of his country.

Democrats should also get over their concerns about angering Trump supporters. Anyone who continues to applaud Trump's weird and reckless disregard for humanity at this point is beyond the limit of rational persuasion. Trump supporters live in a hallucinatory dreamscape under the authority of a maniac. Let them have their anti-social distancing rallies, and allow them to believe that Barack Obama invented COVID-19 shortly after he was born in Kenya.

Rational Americans need to stop enabling this abusive and deranged presidency. Declare Donald Trump insane and, at long last, bring an end to our era of malignant normality.

Ole Trumpy-The-Clown Had Such A Bad Week! And, Including The Cognitive Decline He's Suffering, No One Ever Deserved It More!

Finally, Republicans are started to break. Yesterday, Digby pointed out that younger Republicans are finally starting to jump off that sinking ship. Florida GOP Congressman Francis Rooney said he's open voting for impeachment-- the first one to say anything like that, as when their are still a handful of Blue Dogs who haven't! And John Kasich was on CNN yesterday saying he thinks Trump should be impeached. And if it can be proved that Trump was gaming the stock market, as appears more than likely... well, even his die-hard supporters will understand what that's all about. Oh... and his chief Capitol Hill henchmen, who has propped him up, Moscow Mitch told the Washington Post that withdrawing from Syria is a "grave mistake." A grave, I hope, that is big enough for the entire Regime and all his congressional lackeys.

Reporter Ashley Parker, reminded Washington Post readers that all the impeachment evidence points squarely at Trump as having personally orchestrated the Ukraine effort against Biden. "Two Cabinet secretaries. The acting White House chief of staff. A bevy of career diplomats. President Trump’s personal attorney. And at the center of the impeachment inquiry," she wrote, "the president himself. Over two weeks of closed-door testimony, a clear portrait has emerged of a president personally orchestrating the effort to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on a potential 2020 political rival-- and marshaling the full resources of the federal bureaucracy to help in that endeavor. On Thursday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney waded further into the morass, saying during a rare news conference that he understood Trump to be asking for a quid pro quo with his Ukrainian counterpart-- only to attempt to retract those comments in a bellicose statement six hours later.

Contrary to weeks of denials from the president and his defenders, a growing body of evidence makes clear it was Trump himself who repeatedly pushed his own government and a foreign power to intervene in domestic political concerns, enlisting and ensnaring a growing number of administration officials in a way that increasingly made even some members of his own team uncomfortable.

The wave of witnesses reflects the growing peril enveloping Trump amid the burgeoning inquiry, which he and some top aides have tried to block by refusing to abide by congressional subpoenas. Not only are a growing number of officials and longtime employees choosing to come forward with damaging evidence, the narrative they are laying out points to potential violations of law, including prohibitions on accepting campaign help from a foreign entity, that bolster the case for impeachment.

The prepared testimony Thursday of Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, showed how deeply the president involved himself in the Ukraine negotiations that are the focus of the inquiry, and the extent to which he outsourced Ukraine policy to his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.

“I would not have recommended that Mr. Giuliani or any private citizen be involved in these foreign policy matters,” Sondland said, according to his prepared remarks.

Yet despite his discomfort, Sondland said that because he and his team had been “given the president’s explicit direction,” the group “agreed to do as President Trump directed” and involved Giuliani in the ongoing Ukraine discussions.

...In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry also clarified just how adamant Trump was in ensuring that Giuliani be included in Ukraine discussions.

“Visit with Rudy,” Perry paraphrased the president as saying.

Perry told the paper that after he contacted Trump’s personal attorney as part of an effort to facilitate a meeting between the president and Zelensky, Giuliani relayed to him unsubstantiated concerns that Ukraine-- not Russia, as the U.S. intelligence community has concluded-- had interfered in the 2016 presidential elections.

On Thursday, Perry notified Trump in writing that he planned to resign soon.

As early as May, Giuliani began publicly pushing theories involving Ukraine for which he had no reliable evidence. He urged, for instance, a corruption investigation into Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, while his father was vice president. So far, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or his son.

At the time, many viewed Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine as something of a personal passion project-- the extracurricular schemes of an aging lawyer whose behavior even some in Trump’s own orbit considered erratic.

Now, however, as Giuliani has said himself and as a number of other witnesses have made clear, Giuliani was working at the behest of his client, the president of the United States.

In rough notes released by the White House of Trump’s controversial call with Zelensky, the president seems to view Giuliani as almost interchangeable with Attorney General William P. Barr, telling Zelensky he hoped the Ukrainians could work with Giuliani and Barr to root out corruption there, including investigating the Bidens.

Mulvaney, too, acted as an enabler, organizing a meeting in late May that stripped control of Ukraine policy from experts at the National Security Council and State Department. He reassigned control to Perry, Sondland and Kurt Volker, then the special U.S. envoy to Ukraine-- a trio that called themselves “The Three Amigos.”

Even those with fewer one-on-one interactions with Trump have offered testimony painting a picture of dysfunction at best-- and malfeasance at worst-- emanating from the president.

Last Friday, Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told congressional investigators that she had been forced out of her post by “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.” Yovanovitch specifically named associates of Giuliani-- two of whom have since been arrested over campaign finance violations-- who she believe regarded her as a threat to their financial and political dealings.

On Monday, Fiona Hill, the White House’s former top Russia adviser, told investigators that on Ukraine, Giuliani ran a shadow foreign policy that bypassed traditional channels and career diplomats. Then-national security adviser John Bolton was so alarmed by Giuliani’s actions that he instructed Hill to alert White House lawyers about his efforts, she testified.

Hill also testified that Bolton said he wanted no part of any “drug deal” that the president’s allies were pursing with Ukraine, and that Bolton described Giuliani as a “hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

As for Sondland-- a wealthy Oregon hotelier-- Hill told investigators that she believed he was a possible national security threat because he was so out of his depth when it came to handling the administration’s Ukraine policy.

Then, on Wednesday, Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, testified that he had resigned the previous week in protest over how he believed the State Department had become politicized under Trump and Pompeo. McKinley, according to his prepared testimony, also cited his concerns over the administration’s efforts to pressure Zelensky into investigating the president’s political rivals.

“I was disturbed by the implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative information on political opponents,” McKinley said in his prepared remarks.

The steady stream of closed-door testimony, as well as public statements, contradicts Trump’s repeated claims that his phone call with Zelensky was “perfect” and “totally appropriate,” and that he did nothing wrong.

Nick Akerman, a prosecutor who investigated President Richard Nixon, said that unlike Watergate, when prosecutors struggled to figure out Nixon’s role in the events they were investigating, a growing body of evidence points directly to Trump.

“Here, you’ll have that in spades,” Akerman said. “All these individuals, all testifying that this is what happened... It’s just cascading at this point.”

Akerman said that unlike Nixon’s loyal cadre of aides, Trump’s outer circle of aides and advisers is increasingly unwilling to shield him from what some view as his own dubious behavior.

“This is a situation where you’ve got a lot of people who are career people, extremely smart people who certainly don’t want their reputations smeared,” Akerman said. “Trump had to use these foreign services people and professionals. He didn’t speak Ukrainian and Russian. He couldn’t communicate his threat without these people. He was forced to use people whose loyalty was to the U.S. government and Constitution and not to him.”

And, he added, each new witness and detail seems to reveal a common thread: “You’ve got Trump clearly involved.”

"I really try very hard to be super-ethical and always legal"

Of the 241 Republicans in the House when Señor Trumpanzee was installed, about 40% are gone or retiring-- and that will be a lot higher after election day, 2020. There were two pieces in The Atlantic that I want to point to, one from last year by James Fallows, This Is the Moment of Truth for Republicans, and one from yesterday by Peter Nicholas, The Unraveling of Donald Trump. Both are horrendous for Trump and the GOP. Let's start with Fallows, who warned Republicans back then that they could "either defend the United States or serve the damaged and defective man" who is now its illegitimate and soon to be gone "president." He continued that "There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president. Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests-- maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter. Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not  realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded. Conscious tool. Useful idiot. Those are the choices, though both are possibly true, so that the main question is the proportions." Brutal!

But never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people.

Trump manifestly cannot help himself. This is who he is.

Those who could do something are the 51 Republican senators and 236 Republican representatives who have the power to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, pass resolutions of censure, guarantee the integrity of Robert Mueller’s investigation, condemn the past Russian election interference, shore up protections against the next assault, and in general defend their country rather than the damaged and defective man who is now its president.

For 18 months, members of this party have averted their eyes from Trump, rather than disturb the Trump elements among their constituency or disrupt the party’s agenda on tax cuts and the Supreme Court. They already bear responsibility for what Trump has done to his office.

But with every hour that elapses after this shocking performance in Helsinki without Republicans doing anything, the more deeply they are stained by this dark moment in American leadership.

Yesterday Nicholas wrote that "As the impeachment inquiry intensifies, some associates of the president predict that his already erratic behavior is going to get worse. The country is entering a new and precarious phase, in which the central question about President Donald Trump is not whether he is coming unstrung, but rather just how unstrung he is going to get. The boiling mind of Trump has spawned a cottage industry for cognitive experts who have questioned whether he is, well, all there. But as the impeachment inquiry barrels ahead on Capitol Hill, several associates of the president, including former White House aides, worry that his behavior is likely to get worse. Angered by the proceedings, unencumbered by aides willing to question his judgment, and more and more isolated in the West Wing, Trump is apt to lash out more at enemies imagined and real, these people told me. Conduct that has long been unsettling figures to deteriorate as Trump comes under mounting stress. What unfolded Wednesday inside the West Wing’s walls might be only a foretaste of what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described that day, after a meeting with Trump, as a presidential 'meltdown.'

“He’s grown more comfortable in the job and less willing to assimilate new information and trust new advisers,” a former White House official told me. “He’s decided to throw caution to the wind and go it alone, especially when he’s stressed and feels under attack and threatened in various ways. Then his worst impulses and vices shine through.” ...[T]he latest concerns about Trump are just a crescendo in a long-running drama. Sam Nunberg, a former 2016 Trump-campaign aide, told me that a colleague once approached him and asked if Trump was losing it, saying they had just had the same conversation twice. Nunberg dismissed such concerns, assuring him that it was only because Trump likely wasn’t paying attention the first time.

His speech has changed over time, too. Software programs show that Trump currently speaks at a fourth-to-sixth-grade level. (Politicians are practiced at speaking to wide swaths of Americans, but Obama, for example, according to those speech analyses, spoke at an 11th-grade level in his final news conference as president.) A study last year by two University of Pittsburgh professors examining Trump’s appearances on Fox News found that the quality of his speech was worsening. They studied his comments over a seven-year period ending in 2017-- just as his presidency began-- and found that he had begun using substantially more “filler words”such as um and uh, though the authors did not conclude that the change signaled cognitive decline.

Even a casual observer can see the disordered and nonlinear thinking behind Trump’s speech. A case in point was Trump’s rally last week in Minneapolis. Within minutes of taking the stage, Trump launched, without explanation, into a dramatic reading of what he imagined was the pillow talk between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, a pair of former FBI officials who had exchanged text messages critical of the president. He gave no context as to why he was talking about them, leaving it to the audience to fill in the Mall of America–size blanks. Trump never even mentioned that they had worked for the FBI or that Strzok was at one point involved in the Russia investigation-- just that they were “lovers” who disliked him. (Still, as theater, it seemed to work. When Trump cooed, “Oh, God. I love you, Lisa!” the audience laughed appreciatively.)

Other people who have worked with Trump in the White House and on the 2016 campaign pushed back on the notion that his mental acuity has eroded over time. “Every president has a super-exaggerated ego and personality in some way,” Tom Bossert, Trump’s former homeland-security adviser and a former official in President George W. Bush’s administration, told me. I asked him if presidents or presidential candidates should be subject to a fitness test measuring whether they’re up to the job. Various psychologists have floated this idea in response to Trump’s behavior. “I’m not sure what the fitness standard would reveal about people who are already wired that way,” Bossert said.

Conventional wisdom in Washington is that impeachment won’t lead to Trump’s removal, but that view rests on Republicans continuing to stay by his side. Even those most loyal to Trump could lose patience if his rash decision making collides with their own interests. Trump’s impulsive decision to pull U.S. troops out of northern Syria last week, setting the stage for Turkey’s attack on America’s Kurdish partners, has already infuriated some of his closest friends in Congress. It was soon after the House, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, rebuked his Syria gambit on Wednesday that Trump lashed out at Pelosi, prompting her to abruptly walk out of their meeting. (Democrats, of course, are seizing the opportunity. “For those who don’t do politics professionally or even follow it closely: It is getting worse. He is getting worse,” Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii tweeted last night.)

At least one lawmaker thinks that Republicans could hit a tipping point-- though he’s a Democrat. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland told me that it might be easier for Republicans to concede that Trump is unwell than that he’s a criminal who violated his constitutional oath by committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The path to removing Trump, in this formulation, might not be impeachment, but the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

[Raskin is the obvious best replacement to head the House Oversight Committee but Pelosi will want to put an elderly and easily controlled crony of her on in that position, not an independent-minded firebrand like Raskin.]

Raskin, a former constitutional-law professor, is sponsoring a bill aimed at clarifying a provision of that amendment-- a vehicle for removing a president who is unable to carry out his duties, with the consent of the vice president-- by shifting responsibility for making such a judgment from the Cabinet to a panel created expressly for that purpose.

“It may be easier for at least certain Republican colleagues just to admit that the president is acting increasingly incapable of meeting the arduous tasks and duties of his office,” Raskin told me.

That’s still a lot to ask of Republican lawmakers who fully grasp Trump’s mystic hold on his political coalition and fear backlash. The question is whether Trump’s base starts to notice, or care, that the man it elected, facing pressures he’s never seen before, is devolving unmistakably into a different sort of man.

Henceforth, Only Invertebrates And Opportunists Need Apply

Writing for the conservative Washington Examiner, Salena Zito reminded her readers that "In the wake of an election where Republicans lost 40 seats, Trump has careened, strategy-free, toward a shutdown, negotiating only with himself. He's blowing up the staff that gave wary Republicans confidence, and in the realm of foreign policy, he's abandoning the Reaganite conservative part of his coalition to the consternation of Israel and the delight of dictators in Moscow and Ankara. Trump won by bringing wary nationalists and populists into a conservative party. But the tail cannot wag the dog. Trump's coalition is big enough to govern as long as he agrees to preserve the four legs of the conservative stool: babies, guns, tax cuts, and a muscular foreign policy... Trump did not create this conservative/populist coalition. His presidency is the result of it. The past few weeks show he’s either forgotten that or he believes that doesn’t matter anymore."

The past few weeks? Trump's entire life has shown what his capabilities are and aren't. That he somehow slipped into the White House-- whether because of Putin or because of a hopelessly flawed electorate or because of a Democratic Party establishment determined to spit in the eye of America-- is a dangerous condemnation of our country that needs to be seriously examined and ameliorated. As for Trump... absolutely hopeless. There is no amelioration, just an exit. Last week, Eliot Cohen, a very conservative professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins and a pillar of the Military Industrial Complex, wrote that the departure of Jim Mattis shows you can't serve both Trump and America. His kind of conservative understands Trump's danger and his toxicity. Trump gave up on Mattis as soon as he got an inkling that he wasn't really a "mad dog," which was the only reason Trump chose him as Defense Secretary. Trump was not looking for what Cohen describes as "a resolute military leader who was a reader and a thinker." If Trump had been told you could "give him a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, and he would compare it with the other two editions that he already owned," he would have climbed out a bathroom window rather than give him a position. Trump, wrote Cohen, "had a vague notion of the killer part when he appointed Mattis. He had no notion of the morally and strategically informed restraint, of the intellectual sophistication, of the selflessness." One thing about Trump is that he has never hired anyone good or sought to be in the company of anyone good. The best executives look for people who have traits and abilities that strengthen what they themselves have to offer. Trump is the opposite of that. You can count on him hiring only the worst people. He always has and he always will. Stephen Miller is a pure Trumpian hire.

It was not Mattis’s idea to become secretary of defense, and indeed, he may not have been the best pick for the job in normal times. But then again, 2017 was anything but a normal time, and even those who believed that the job should in principle go to a real civilian rather than a retired general were relieved that Mattis took it. In office, he had to spend most of his time buttressing the alliances that the president despised, and affirming values of fairness and legality that Trump could not comprehend. Success in government is often measured less by the brilliant things one does than by the stupidities one prevents. By that standard, Mattis’s tenure as secretary of defense was a success.

His story, however, has a larger significance. From the unlikely victory of Trump in the November 2016 election to the present, some have argued that principled patriots could serve in high office, retain their character, and either mitigate the damage or do some positive good. To be sure, they would need their red lines, their signed-but-undated letters of resignation. But they could pull it off. Though they might be maligned by irresponsible enemies of the administration, they would serve the country, and do so more honorably than mere critics.

Mattis indeed had his walking points, and he leaves with his head held high. But he is alone. The clusters of sub-Cabinet officials who privately boasted about their walking points have, with very few exceptions, stuck it out. They give sickly smiles when, at a seminar or dinner party, someone describes the president’s character as it is; they give no evidence of sticking their necks out to take positions that might incur the wrath of the America Firsters; they have taken the mad king’s shilling, and they are sticking with the king.

The departure of Jim Mattis from government service is proof that you cannot have it all. You have to walk if you are to remain the human being you were, or conceived yourself being, before you went in. He alone refused to curry favor, to pander at the painful televised Cabinet sessions, or to praise someone who deserved none of it. In the end, he could not do his job and serve the country as he knew it had to be served. No one could.

Henceforth, the senior ranks of government can be filled only by invertebrates and opportunists, schemers and careerists. If they had policy convictions, they will meekly accept their evisceration. If they know a choice is a disaster, they will swallow hard and go along. They may try to manipulate the president, or make some feeble efforts to subvert him, but in the end they will follow him. And although patriotism may motivate some of them, the truth is that it will be the title, the office, the car, and the chance to be in the policy game that will keep them there.

They may think wistfully of the unflinching Sir Thomas More of Robert Bolt’s magnificent play about integrity in politics, A Man for All Seasons. But they will be more like Richie Rich, More’s protégé who could have chosen a better path, but who succumbed to the lure of power. And the result will be policies that take this country, its allies, and international order to disasters small and large.



Jim Mattis’s life has been shaped by the Marine motto: semper fidelis, always faithful. Against the odds, he remained faithful to his beliefs, to his subordinates, to the mission, to the country. The president who appointed him to the office might have as the motto on his phony coat of arms nunquam fida, never loyal. His career has been one of betrayal-- of business partners, of customers, of subordinates, of his wives, and as we may very possibly learn from Robert Mueller, of his country. The two codes of conduct could never really coexist, and so they have not.

Chris Christie was on This Week yesterday and pointedly announced he was addressing the audience directly, and then compared Trump to "a 72 year old relative whose behavior they were attempting to change... When people get older they become more and more convinced of the fact that what they’re doing is the right thing and it becomes harder to convince them otherwise." That was around the same time we learned that the brittle and somewhat senile Señor T, enraged when someone finally told him what Mattis' letter was actually saying about him, kicked his Secretary of Defense out-- Mattis had planned to stay through February to ensure a smooth transition-- and replaced him with Mattis' deputy, Patrick Shanahan, now Acting Secretary of Defense. By the time the Trumpanzee Regime is put out of its misery, every confirmable position will be held my an acting this or an acting that. And the invertebrates.

I don't want to see Michael Bloomberg wind up with the Democratic nomination by any stretch of the imagination but yesterday he was right on target when he wrote that "the past week all too perfectly exemplified [Trump's] destructive effect on competent government in Washington-- and it should give all Americans, in all parties, cause for concern... At the halfway mark of this terrible presidency, one has to wonder how much more the country can take... Unless something changes-- unless, in particular, Republicans in Congress start showing some spine-- two more years might be enough to test whether we can sustain Trump’s model of bad government. This past week, we got a glimpse of what the beginning of the collapse may look like-- and what it may ultimately cost us."

Looks Like The Americans Fleeing To Canada Aren't Progressive Resisters After All

Lucky John Kelly! He won't be central to the final unravelling of the Trumpist House of Horrors. Trump, who had already promised Nick Ayers that he would make him chief of staff, finally worked up the courage to announce he was firing Kelly-- although, of course, not to his face. Instead, he told reporters before departing to attend the Army vs. Navy football game in Philadelphia. "John Kelly will be leaving," announced The Ape. "I don't know if I can say retiring but, he's a great guy. John Kelly will be leaving at the end of the year. We'll be announcing who will be taking John's place, it might be on an interim basis. I'll be announcing that over the net day or two."

Ayers who got his start as a DC male prostitute and lobbyist, works for his old amigo, Mike Pence, now, taking care of his staff. He'll be presiding over the national nightmare as Robert Mueller's investigation reveals the rot and criminality at the heart of the Trumpets Regime. Gabe Sherman reports that this is the week the bombs start exploding. Trumpanzee, Jr, he revealed has fled the capital, departing "on a hunting trip to Canada. 'They think the bomb’s coming this week, and he doesn’t want to be anywhere near a microphone if the bomb drops,' the source said. In addition to fears that Don Jr. may have lied to Congress, he’s also said to be worried about his role as an executive at the Trump Organization. Last Friday, Michael Cohen’s lawyers revealed that Cohen cooperated with the New York State Attorney General on matters relating to the Trump Organization finances."

Today, the West Wing is bracing for Mueller’s office to file a document outlining how Paul Manafort violated his cooperation agreement by lying to prosecutors. And the John Kelly-is-departing drumbeat is once again deafening. “It’s chaos,” a former West Wing official told me. Trump fired off a few volleys of tweets this morning, signaling his mood. “There’s a feeling this could all unwind quickly,” a prominent Republican close to the Trumps told me.

So far Trump's own Department of Justice has implicated "Individual 1" as the director of a conspiracy to commit felony "campaign finance crimes" during the campaign. Trump didn't seem to be aware that he's "Individual 1." Meanwhile, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN viewers that Trumpanzee, Jr. lied to Congress, not once but multiple times, each lie being a separate felony count. Trump and his repulsive family are in deep shit and Ayers-- not to mention Rudy Giuliani-- is the wrong guy to fish them out of it and clean them up. Kellyanne's husband, George Conway, a conservative Republican, mocked Señor T's claim that sentencing documents filed in the prosecution of his former attorney "totally" clear the Oval Office moron:

Did you watch Saturday Night Live last night? Kind of cute-- or sad, depending on your perspective, of course. I wonder how many people try to explain the Mueller investigation based on what they hear by watching Saturday Night Live. You know, people who find Hannity too crazy but Maddow too complicated.



What about Samantha Bee's Full Frontal last week? (What the hell does a muppet taste like?) I wonder how many people try to explain the Mueller investigation based on what they hear by watching Full Frontal. You know, people who find Hannity too crazy but Adam Schiff too... distracting.

How Dangerous Are Trump's Severe Mental Illnesses To America? Why Not Give Him The $25 Billion Hew Wants To Steal If He Promises To Resign?

They also have a problem with him overseas

Yeah, yeah, we all know Trump is a lying sack of shit. The idea that this man is president is more disgusting and unpalatable by the day. The idea that the latest job approval poll shows that 39% of Americans actually approve of the way he's doing his job-- and only a mere 54% disapprove-- makes me worry if my country can actually survive as a beacon of hope and a decent place to live. The Washington Post ran another Trump's the Biggest Liar in History piece yesterday. The compulsive liar-in-chief and the I-was-just-doing-what-I-was- told-Nazis who populate his ghastly regime "say U.S. laws or court rulings are forcing them to separate families that are caught trying to cross the southern border. These claims are false... It’s strange to behold Trump distancing himself from the zero-tolerance policy ('the Democrats gave us that law') while Nielsen claims it doesn’t exist ('it’s not a policy') and Sessions defends it in speech after speech."

For Trump, the family-separation policy is leverage as he seeks congressional funding for his promised border wall and other immigration priorities, according to reporting by the Washington Post. Top DHS officials have said that threatening adults with criminal charges and prison time would be the “most effective” way to reverse the rising number of illegal crossings.

The doublespeak coming from Trump and top administration officials on this issue is breathtaking, not only because of the sheer audacity of these claims but also because they keep being repeated without evidence. Immigrant families are being separated at the border not because of Democrats and not because some law forces this result, as Trump insists. They’re being separated because the Trump administration, under its zero-tolerance policy, is choosing to prosecute border-crossing adults for any offenses.

Meanwhile Eliana Johnson and Annie Karni have written a shocking report for Politico on how frustrating Trump's family separation agenda has become inside his own Regime. Towards the end of a long piece on how hapless Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is caught up in Trump's horrifying actions towards children, they mention that her sponsor, Chief of Staff John Kelly-- himself the former Homeland Security Secretary-- is flipping out entirely.

"Kelly’s status in the White House," they wrote, "has changed in recent months, and he and the president are now seen as barely tolerating one another. According to four people close to Kelly, the former Marine general has largely yielded his role as the enforcer in the West Wing as his relationship with Trump has soured. While Kelly himself once believed he stood between Trump and chaos, he has told at least one person close to him that he may as well let the president do what he wants, even if it leads to impeachment-- at least this chapter of American history would come to a close." (Trump's deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin bailed yesterday afternoon. He had wanted to quit long ago but Kelly had persuaded him to stay on.)

Standing between Trump and chaos is not something Trump approves of or finds supportive of his ultimate ambitions. Trump is certifiably insane on several levels-- from Narcissistic Personality Disorder to traits that are far more dangerous to the country. On Tuesday he exploded during a private meeting with Senate Republicans over the one thing he's trying to accomplish that will outlast his miserable time in office: the Great Wall of Trump. He threatened to shut down the government in September-- so right before the midterms-- if they don't give him the $25 billion he wants to build the wall, much of which, no doubt, will line the pockets of his friends and family. This defines a kleptocracy. The senators fear that shutting down the government will shut down their careers.

In a private meeting regarding the wall Monday, Trump fumed to senators and his own staff about the $1.6 billion the Senate is planning to send him this fall, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Trump wants the full $25 billion upfront and doesn’t understand why Congress is going to supply him funds in a piecemeal fashion-- even though that’s how the spending process typically works.

...GOP lawmakers are loath to see a government shutdown on their watch just weeks before the midterm elections.

“It’s probably an overwhelming belief in the House and the Senate, especially the Senate, that government shutdowns aren’t good for anybody,"[Alabama Senator Richard] Shelby said.

The Appropriations Committee, which is led by Shelby, began working to pass its Homeland Security bill on Tuesday. Democrats seem unlikely to change course and agree to add more border security money for the president.

"We've got the bill and we're moving forward and I think we're going to get good bipartisan support for it. I think it's a good bill that will keep our borders safe," said Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), the ranking member of the Homeland Security appropriations committee.

On Monday, GOP Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Shelby both tried to explain to Trump that the Senate is merely meeting Mulvaney’s request and has to cut a bipartisan deal with Democrats. The Senate needs 60 votes to pass a spending bill, so Republicans would have to find at least nine Democratic votes.

"We're going to do make a down payment on that working together," said Capito, chairwoman of Homeland Security spending panel.

But Trump has not been mollified. He raised his voice several times in Monday's meeting with Mulvaney, White House staffers and the senators, insisting he needs the full $25 billion-- an unlikely outcome in the narrowly divided Senate.

Shelby said he views $1.6 billion as a floor in negotiations, which could increase if Democrats want to do some horse-trading.

Horse-trading-- like in rescuing the children Trump has put in concentration camps?

This is a letter the American Psychological Association sent to Trump last week:

On behalf of the American Psychological Association (APA), we are writing to express our deep concern and strong opposition to the Administration’s new policy of separating immigrant parents and children who are detained while crossing the border. We previously wrote to then Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly on April 5, 2017, about this matter. Based on empirical evidence of the psychological harm that children and parents experience when separated, we implore you to reconsider this policy and commit to the more humane practice of housing families together pending immigration proceedings to protect them from further trauma.

APA is the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. Our membership includes researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. APA works to advance the creation, communication, and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives. We have 115,700 members and affiliates across the United States and in many other countries, many of whom serve immigrant youth and adults in a wide range of settings, including schools, community centers, hospitals and refugee resettlement centers.

The current policy calls for children to be removed from their parents and placed for an often indeterminate period of time in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Decades of psychological research have determined that it is in the best interest of the child and the family to keep families together. Families fleeing their homes to seek sanctuary in the United States are already under a tremendous amount of stress. Sudden and unexpected family separation, such as separating families at the border, can add to that stress, leading to emotional trauma in children. Research also suggests that the longer that parents and children are separated, the greater the reported symptoms of anxiety and depression are for children. Adverse childhood experiences, such as parent-child separation, are important social determinants of mental disorders. For children, traumatic events can lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health disorders that can cause long lasting effects. Furthermore, immigration policies, such as separating families at the border, can also adversely impact those immigrants who are already in the United States. They can suffer from feelings of stigmatization, social exclusion, anger, and hopelessness, as well as fear for the future.

As a tragic example of the current policy’s serious potential for harm, a Honduran man who was separated from his wife and 3-year-old son after he crossed the border into Texas recently took his own life while detained in a holding cell, according to the Customs and Border Protection officials, public records, and media reports. There are also reports of detained immigrants foregoing legitimate claims for asylum by pleading guilty to expedite the return of their separated children and reports of parents being deported while their children, including infants, remain in custody. These incidents serve to highlight the mental health crisis for many families caused by the Administration’s policy.

Given these considerations, a change in immigration policy regarding the detention of immigrant families at the border is desperately needed-- from separating parents and children to housing them together and providing needed physical and mental health services. As psychologists, we have documented multiple harmful effects of parent-child separation on children’s emotional and psychological development and well-being and urge that the current policy of family separation be reversed. Should you have any questions regarding these comments, please contact Serena Dávila, J.D., with our Public Interest Directorate.

Trumpism-- Is It A Uniquely American Infectious Disease?

Earlier this morning, we looked at the mad house the White House has become since Putin installed Señor Trump in the Oval Office, the most brilliant foreign policy coup in Russian history-- and certainly the worst non-violent attack on America ever. Our resident psychologist, Helen Klein, keeps trying to explain Trump's behavior in terms of psychological deformities. Yesterday right-wing polemicist Jonah Goldberg tried the same thing, more or less, at the National Review, although in terms of Trumpism rather than the workings or dysfunction of Señor T's mind. His point is that "Trump presents an insurmountable challenge to an intellectual approach to politics because his decisions aren't based on any coherent body of ideas... Trumpism," he says is a "psychological phenomenon." I think most observers have come to that conclusion over the past several decades, several years, several months... or even several days, depending on how long he or she has been paying attention to the penny-ante huckster and cheap cable TV reality show Putin saddled us with. There certainly is no "coherent Trumpist ideology."

On the left, there’s an enormous investment in the idea that Trump isn’t a break with conservatism but the apotheosis of it. This is a defensible, or at least understandable, claim if you believe conservatism has always been an intellectually vacuous bundle of racial and cultural resentments. But if that were the case, Commentary magazine’s Noah Rothman recently noted, you would not see so many mainstream and consistent conservatives objecting to Trump’s behavior.

Intellectuals and ideologically committed journalists on the left and right have a natural tendency to see events through the prism of ideas. Trump presents an insurmountable challenge to such approaches because, by his own admission, he doesn’t consult any serious and coherent body of ideas for his decisions. He trusts his instincts.

Trump has said countless times that he thinks his gut is a better guide than the brains of his advisers. He routinely argues that the presidents and policymakers who came before him were all fools and weaklings. That’s narcissism, not ideology, talking.

Even the “ideas” that he has championed consistently-- despite countervailing evidence and expertise-- are grounded not in arguments but in instincts. He dislikes regulations because, as a businessman, they got in his way. He dislikes trade because he has a childish, narrow understanding of what “winning” means. Foreigners are ripping us off. Other countries are laughing at us. He doesn’t actually care about, let alone understand, the arguments suggesting that protectionism can work. Indeed, he reportedly issued his recent diktat on steel tariffs in a fit of pique over negative media coverage and the investigation into Russian election interference. His administration was wholly unprepared for the announcement.

News emanating from the White House is always more understandable once you accept that Trumpist policy is downstream of Trump’s personality.

The president's attack on his attorney general's conduct as "disgraceful" makes no political, legal or ideological sense, but it is utterly predictable as an expression of Trump’s view that loyalty to Trump should trump everything else.

Likewise, his blather about skipping due process to “take the guns” was politically bizarre but perfectly consistent with his poor impulse control and well-established tendency to tell people in the room with him what they want to hear.

And, of course, his decision to promote and protect his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is purely psychological. Giving Kushner the responsibility to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for all time seems like the premise of a sitcom-- yet is wholly congruent with Trump’s management style.

Still, many of Trump’s biggest fans stick by him, mirroring Trump’s mode of thinking and discovering ever more extravagant ways to explain or rationalize the president’s behavior. (Krein’s abandonment of Trump was an exception to the rule.) When Trump attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University tweeted his support, floating the idea that Sessions was an anti-Trump deep cover operative who endorsed Trump to undermine his presidency from within.

It seems Trumpism is infectious. If this infection becomes a pandemic-- a cult of personality-- one could fairly call Trumpism a movement. But psychology would still be the best way to understand it.

Too late for the U.S. Congress. Few were immune and the bulk of Republican members of both the House and the Senate are the equivalent of the Walking Dead now. The rest of us have to protect ourselves, not just from Trump, but from Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell as everyone in their voracious, insatiable herds. Count on American women to protect their children, their families-- and the species. A new Quinnipiac poll released yesterday found 41% of voters feeling that Señor Trumpanzee is the worst of the 13 presidents who have served since the end of World War II. Trump's overall approval rating is 38%. (And only 26% of Americans approve of how he handles issues involving Putin.)