The 25th Amendment Was Written In Case Someone Like Trump Ever Got Into The White House-- But It Didn't Count On Such A Pusillanimous Political Establishment

According to the Trump Labor Depratment, here was bad economic news on Friday. 150,000 new jobs were expected. Instead "private payrolls rose just 96,000, a three-month low, after a downwardly revised 131,000 advance the prior month." Most economists blame Trump's senseless and disastrous trade wars and his tax cuts to the top 1%. But Trump blamed... the news media. (Really.)

Trump also decided to distract his base (xenophobes and racist like himself) by promising a drastic cut in the number of legal refugees welcomed into the country. White House Neo-Nazi Stephen Miller has been dancing the same jig that Hitler did at the Eiffel Tower when his troops overran Paris. "In meetings over the past several weeks, one top administration official has proposed zeroing out the program altogether, while leaving the president with the ability to admit refugees in an emergency. Another option that top officials are weighing would cut refugee admissions by half or more, to 10,000 to 15,000 people, but reserve most of those spots for refugees from a few handpicked countries or groups with special status, such as Iraqis and Afghans who work alongside American troops, diplomats and intelligence operatives abroad. Both options would all but end the United States’ status as one of the leading places accepting refugees from around the worl." Normal Americans oppose these ideas, but the racists who still back Trump love them and can't understand how immigrants create jobs and wealth. The vast majority of Trump supporters have 2 digit IQs making is very hard for most of them to think abstractly. At least they understand these:

James Poniewozik, the chief television critic for the NY Times and the author of Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television and the Fracturing of America wrote an OpEd for the Times yesterday, The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV. "Understand that," he wrote, "and you'll understand what he's doing in the White House."

On Sept. 1, with a Category 5 hurricane off the Atlantic coast, an angry wind was issuing from the direction of President Trump’s Twitter account. The apparent emergency: Debra Messing, the co-star of Will & Grace, had tweeted that “the public has a right to know” who is attending a Beverly Hills fund-raiser for Mr. Trump’s re-election.

“I have not forgotten that when it was announced that I was going to do The Apprentice, and when it then became a big hit, Helping NBC’s failed lineup greatly, @DebraMessing came up to me at an Upfront & profusely thanked me, even calling me ‘Sir,’ ” wrote the 45th president of the United States.

It was a classic Trumpian ragetweet: aggrieved over a minor slight, possibly prompted by a Fox News segment, unverifiable-- he has a long history of questionable tales involving someone calling him “Sir"-- and nostalgic for his primetime-TV heyday. (By Thursday he was lashing Ms. Messing again, as Hurricane Dorian was lashing the Carolinas.)

...Try to understand Donald Trump as a person with psychology and strategy and motivation and you will inevitably spiral into confusion and covfefe. The key is to remember that Donald Trump is not a person. He’s a TV character.

I mean, O.K., there is an actual person named Donald John Trump, with a human body and a childhood and formative experiences that theoretically a biographer or therapist might usefully delve into someday.

But that Donald Trump is of limited significance to America and the world. The 'Donald Trump' who got elected president, who has strutted and fretted across the small screen since the 1980s, is a decades-long media performance. To understand him, you need to approach him less like a psychologist and more like a TV critic.

I think we all know how this ends: in a mental institution. And by "we," that includes his whole White House staff. Everyone knows he's lost his marbles. It would be really tragic for our country if the 2020 election winds up swinging on just twofer-arching questions:

• Who lies more, Trump or Biden?
• Who is more senile, Trump or Biden?

The president also latched onto another tweet Messing posted in which she praised a sign in front of an Alabama church implying that black voters who support Trump are mentally ill. Messing later apologized for "recklessly" sharing the sign and added that its use of the term "mentally ill" was "wrong & hurtful."

Add Latinos, gays, women, immigrants, union workers, Jews...

Trump called Messing a "racist because of the terrible things she said about blacks and mental illness" and added that if the actress Roseanne Barr-- an avid Trump supporter-- had said the same thing, she would have been fired.

Barr was fired from her sitcom last year after making racist comments about an aide to former President Barack Obama. "Will Fake News NBC allow a McCarthy style Racist to continue?" Trump wrote, referring to Messing.

The actress responded by linking to a New Yorker piece this week that detailed Trump's wild behavior over the past month.

She added that she hoped "his family gets him the help he needs. Sad."