I have reviewed Trump’s application for the 25th Amendment treatment and I think it is well done and thorough. His cabinet should convene immediately and give it the most serious consideration.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Sorry, but after 30 seconds my brain went into lockdown and I couldn’t read another word. Someone else will have to proofread the application.
That’s exactly what happened to me, though in my case it took a little more than 30 seconds. I lasted about a minute. I guess I’m a little more of a masochist than you are. No, that’s not right either, since I got no pleasure from the pain.
To Trump’s people, every word of this makes perfect sense.
Someone explain it to me again. How did this idiot get elected? I only got half way through that word salad interview. Everything is superlative. He saves money and does every thing just amazing. That’s what he promised after all. Some few of his idiot friends elected him and now we all suffer.
How did he get elected? A complicated mess of circumstances that probably will never be repeated ever, but an important part is that a whole political party has been dumbed down and brainwashed over decades to accept this madness.
“He hates the same people I hate. Hand me the goddamn ballot.”
Whom does Hillary hate?
I stand by my OPINION he is in the early stages of Alzheimers
First of all I wonder what time of day this interview was. After having been through this with my grandfather, I recognize sundowning when I see it. Trump was always vile and bombastic but he was at least coherent in the past. He is not now especially towards the end of day which is a classic sign of sundowning i.e. the more tired a dementia patient becomes the less they make sense, often at an alarming rate.
He also seems to be cumulatively sundowning, as the tiredness that comes with the presidency builds, the less coherent he becomes.
I really do wonder how horrific his foreign trip is going to be. Not only will his internal clock be messed up but he will be in unfamiliar surroundings, another factor that exacerbates sundowning.
There are a number of senile dementias – there is Pick’s Disease, vascular dementia etc. Not necessarily Alzheimers.
Also my grandmother had vascular dementia and that developed much differently than my grandfather’s. His was a slow decline over several years. Hers was a rapid decline over a couple of months as she had hundreds of “mini strokes” that came with vascular dementia.
Trump’s decline reminds me a lot more of my grandfather’s decline.
That’s what I was thinking. Trump has a family history of Alzheimer’s. Now having a family history is no guarantee that one will end up with Alzheimer’s, but it is certainly one heck of a risk factor. Beyond that, I’ll refrain from any armchair diagnosis. The guy was a babbling idiot long before he became a regrettably viable Presidential candidate and now White House occupant.
But he was mostly coherent in that bombastic-ism. Now he is both bombastic and incoherent which to me shows a marked cognitive decline. Of course this is only my OPINION from afar but having lived through it I can’t share the similarities.
No worries. I wouldn’t wish Alzheimer’s or any dementia on anyone or their relatives. We’ve been dealing with the dementia of my last living grandparent, and although the decline has been slow, it is difficult to watch and especially has been hard on my mother.
If someone were to ask me if Alzheimer’s were plausible in Trump’s case, I’d probably agree. I’m not an MD, so my opinion on the matter amounts to very little. Plus I tend to be a bit hesitant to do armchair diagnoses, and even more so at the pond given how critical I was of efforts to “diagnose” HRC with all sorts of maladies last September.
You’ll know it’s real when his handlers suddenly start pulling him out of interviews or meetings.
Like said above..the overseas trip might be a trigger.
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That’s exactly what St Reagan’s people did during the last year of his administration. Of course now there are plenty of reliable reports that he was in some dementia state (as it was understood medically at the time).
Did his people invoke the 25th Amendment? Of course not and the Popular Vote Loser’s people won’t do any such thing in this case. The only way that would be triggered is if Twitler stroked out and was so incapacitated as to be on a ventilator or in a coma or both.
It’s not like president No Puppet No Puppet You’re the Puppet was able to navigate his way through a complete thought during the campaign, and yet…
No, but the difference is, this is not a campaign. Although try telling him that.
Ya, but emails!
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In spite of how all of us view this interview, here are the true feelings on the ground in my state. And I bet you a thousand dollars that it is the same everywhere that he won.
Trump’s 100 days: We don’t judge a president the same way Washington does, Ohioans say
And I am afraid that we are deluding ourselves if we expect his supporters to abandon him because he gives rambling and incomprehensible stream of consciousness interviews to national media outlets. His claim during the campaign that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters”, still applies and is as true as the day he uttered it. It might be even more true, now that he is President.
The more I contemplate the mindsets of Trump supporters who I am encountering and talking with, the more I begin to see that they are not following anything which actually exists in reality, but they are following an image they have created in their own minds, and has been reinforced by the echo chamber that is their information bubble. Karl Rove’s prophecy of “creating our own reality” has come to pass, not in the form that Karl envisioned, but in the person and perceived image of Donald Trump.
This creation has almost a cult-like hold on the minds of millions upon millions of otherwise intelligent adults in this country. And even if their own lives or livelihoods become threatened as a result of the policies and incoherent incompetence of Donald Trump, I am convinced they will still believe in him. I am wondering if this death watch mentality about the Trump administration that seems to be happening on much of the left might be a case of many of us being too clever by half when it comes to predicting the downfall of Donald Trump?
As one who surmises that we are in for 8 years of Der Trumper (assuming no intervening nuclear Armageddon), I can’t be seen as one “predicting his downfall”, certainly not at the 100 Days of Victory mark, ha-ha.
He has successfully scooped up the non-empirical, faith-based reactionaries, by and large. These folks can’t be “reasoned” with, reason and debate hold no purchase on them—these are the folks whose absurd opinions are held even tighter after cascades of (un-rebutted) data are hosed all over them. They are know-nothings who have been trained to despise the “elite” know-somethings. They will not countenance actual experts in any field ever again. This is the Great Work of the “conservative” movement, and we now see the teeming harvest.
Der Fuhrer had his years of “successes” after establishing his cult of personality, and having established a reasonably solid dictatorship mechanism, didn’t begin to lose “public opinion” (a controversial subject in the Third Reich) until very, very late in the war. As for Hitler’s most die-hard supporters, it’s doubtful even Germany’s Gotterdammerung in 1945 caused them to rethink their prior support and actions.
Today’s Trumper cultists are likely to be highly unshakeable as well, and even another Great Recession seems unlikely to move their vote if the alternate is the now feverishly-hated Dems, the party of all the demographics and tolerance they hate. Given the unreformable anti-democratic electoral college, they will remain in the driver’s seat.
Trumper has been shedding campaign stances of late, such as his supposed economic confrontation of China. It seems not to register with the cultists, so it’s doubtful that hypocrisy or flip-flopping loses him too many cultists, either. I suppose some voluntary retreat by Der Trumper on something like the promised harassment/detention/removal of illegal Brown people could anger them, but that seems extremely unlikely.
In any event, several dozen such interviews like this are meaningless to the fools who were taken in by this political criminal. And there’s no need to be “checking in” with them too frequently to gauge their current mood, either. Perhaps the “Friedman Unit” needs to be resurrected here—let’s see where we are in another 6 months. Until then, one can both guffaw and shudder at the calamity that our incompetent white electorate hath wrought…
Seriously, 8 years? His health won’t let him last that long (physical or mental) no matter how popular he is with the base. And you are apparently assuming that a Democratic challenger to him in 2020 would be much more unpopular than HRC. Hard to imagine. Finally, there is this huge FBI investigation of him, not only for treason but also extensive money laundering. When it comes out, later this year, he may end up being forced to resign under threat of impeachment, like Nixon (even though the GOP would not likely actually ever vote for articles of impeachment no matter how criminal he was).
Anything can happen etc. etc. but Dems have no bench after the Obama era gutting.
Finally, there is this huge FBI investigation of him, not only for treason but also extensive money laundering. When it comes out, later this year, he may end up being forced to resign under threat of impeachment, like Nixon…
I think it might be wise to temper your assumptions about anything which might, or might not, come out of the FBI investigation. It is going to take A LOT of very hard evidence to create a situation which parallels the Nixon circumstances. And we are a very long way from any Nixon-ian, “What Have I Done?” moment. To be truthful, I cannot even imagine such a moment ever happening with Donald Trump.
I don’t think there is a prayer in hell Trump doesn’t make it through this term. The odds of him dying are about 11% if you use the social security actuarial tables, so there is that hope.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
But man, the dude is incredibly inarticulate. He seldom makes it through a complete sentence without interrupting himself.
The AP interview was a mess.
Sarah Palin is a good deal more articulate than Donald Trump.
It is definitely delusion on the lefts part. Democrats havent actually beaten Trump on anything yet. All losses have been from the courts or GOP infighting or Trumps own imcompetence. Politically they got nothing.
“Democrats havent actually beaten Trump on anything yet. All losses have been from the courts or GOP infighting or Trumps own imcompetence. Politically they got nothing.”
You may think this. But this is just incorrect.
The left’s mobilizations against the travel ban and Obamacare repeal are responsible for those wins. Yes, I know it’s popular to believe that judges are unaffected by what happens outside the courtroom, but that’s baloney. Of course the massive and immediate outrage affected the judges.
And it’s frustrating to see a member of this community try to toss away the Obamacare win that both organizers and individuals gained thru their town hall appearances and hundreds of thousands of phone calls to Congressmembers.
And, on each of these fights, Congressional Democrats were monolithic in their oppositions, giving Republicans no bipartisan cover at all. They were crucial to these wins as well.
If we owned the wins we gained, it would be easier to keep up the mood of our movement. This is particularly true at this difficult time.
For certain values of “the left” everything Obama ever did was worthless crap and everything the Democrats have done and will do is also worthless crap. All issues and events get interpreted in light of that bedrock assumption.
The social fascist is the real class enemy…
This, more than neolibconism or whatever the current whipping boy happens to be, is a crucial part of why we’re struggling.
It’s not too different from the craziness he spewed all through the campaign and since getting elected, but it’s obvious he is mentally ill at some level. I know his voters don’t care about this, but I really don’t know how elected Republicans can put up with this level of insanity and delusion and dishonesty. At what point do THEY start to worry about the president being ill?
Party over Country. QED
Career over Party.
If or when supporting Trump jeopardizes their own careers.
I’d like to think that Trump’s support will eventually erode. In my better moments, I can bring myself to almost believe it. But I don’t know what it will take.
To a lesser extent, we saw the same thing with Bush-the-younger-er-dumber. Those who were inclined to support him found reasons to support him until his incompetence and mendacity became too much for even them to stomach.
Deep down, people hunger for a king or emperor; for someone who will make everything simple. They also hunger for a world that makes sense, for a world that aligns nicely with their beliefs.
They’ll hold firm with Trump until reality makes it too painful to continue. With his people, he’s still in the honeymoon phase. Hopefully it won’t last forever. If they really lost access to healthcare, I can’t imagine how they could avoid the reality. In Bush’s case, some saw loved ones suffer or die as a result of war. Some realized that their Social Security was really, truly at risk. Some watched as a city drowned and their hearts opened to the suffering of other poor folks. Each of those things had an impact. Eventually a new story took hold and his people abandoned him in droves. Unfortunately, their new story made him the problem rather than the Republican party or conservative ideology.
Checking favorables on Huffpost Pollster, from Jan.23 (date of Trump’s inauguration) to now there has been a very slow but steady erosion from a 7-point spread to 8 1/2 points favorable/unfavorable. I believe it’s statistically significant because Huffpost/Pollster is an aggregator and because the trend has been steady. It suggests that marginal supporters are dropping off at a slow but steady rate.
And remember 43.3/51.8 (as it now is) is really bad for this point in a presidential term.
I’m amazed to say that my super rightwing fundie family absolutely loathe, detest and despise Trump. I’m not entirely certain, but I don’t think they voted for him. Probably left that part of the ballot blank.
I’ll point out that my family were all IN for Palin; absolutely worshipped the ground that grifter walks on. I bring up Palin bc I truly believe she paved the way for a numbskull, know-nothing, word-salad-spewing super narcissist like Trump.
My family stuck with W and praised him to the bitter end.
I figure: If Trump’s lost my rightwing family… maybe some hope exists that he won’t be re-elected in 2020.
Can’t argue with that.
I don’t get that follow up from the AP writer. There are no fees in NATO, there’s nothing to pay up. How is that not the follow up?
He’s just feeding out rope.
Incredulity?
I mean, if I tell you that the media is controlled by aquatic lizard demons from the 6th dimension, you won’t point out that lizards aren’t an aquatic species.
that totally made me laugh but it’s very true
I think maybe the more likely assumption is that the majority of the media don’t know it’s not true?
Total self-belief is a powerful weapon.
Of course…it is also insanity when considered along the plane of an infinite universe. We are all of us simply wisps of smoke, blown away in a millisecond of time compared to the lives of stars and galaxies.
But he has it.
He’s not faking.
He’s not making believe.
Even failure doesn’t change it.
Total self-belief, aimed in this case at total control of whatever he is doing.
Dangerous to a fault.
Only by taking him out of office can the danger be averted. I don’t know how, when or even if this will happen, but I pray that it does before something truly awful occurs.
My own tactic…were I in a position to actually do something about him…would be relentless investigation of every part of his business, political and private life, followed public presentation of rock-solid, provable evidence. Anything short of that…like the whole RussiaGate thing so far…would be all rumor and inference, easily defeated or at the very least stalemated by equally false news in the opposite direction.
Where, O where is Trump’s John Dean, his “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, his Deep Throat?
I open the news every day, hoping to see something concrete and encouraging.
But what do I see instead?
NADA!!!
Nothing but pitiful little centrist pols and media, all scurrying around playing their partisan political games of self-interest.
Sad.
Every day lost is a day closer to some terrible fate.
Bet on it.
AG
AG–You are forever condemning centrist politicians and commenters here whom you perceive as centrist, including yours truly. You yourself, of course, are “progressive”, or “on the left”, or some such. You tell us that.
You don’t, however, actually put forth any policy proposals or preferences. The only sense I have about your policy preferences derives from the fact that you’ve been a Ron and Rand Paul supporter. Hm. If those guys are progressives or leftists, I obviously don’t understand those terms.
So please lay it out for us, Arthur. Write down the key platform planks of your envisaged progressive political party, and post them here.
You write:
In a two-dimensional world such as the one in which you obviously live, there are only straight lines. I cannot…will not…be fixed like a dead butterfly on some fixed point in your linear world, JDW.
I am above all a survivalist. People who say and do things that appear to me to be conducive to the survival of humanity (and thus to the ongoing evolution of life on Earth) get my support, no matter how the false news-spewing PermaGov media may try to label them. People who espouse anti-evolutionary positions…which to my mind includes most of the sitting power structure of the so-called “progressive” Democratic Party today…do not get my support.
Deal wid it.
You and a number of others here…media-blinded, two-dimensional thinkers, all…persist in throwing my admiration for the Pauls in my face as proof of my support of some sort of towering evil.
Ron Paul opposed the Permanent War Machine that we call the United States of America extraordinarily consistently and damned near singlehandedly in the House of Representatives from 1976 to 1985 and again from 1997 to 2013. He continued to do so in his runs for the presidency. He has opposed what is now called “identity politics”…the lumping of people of different racial, religious, cultural and economic groups into blocs of undifferentiated clones for political purposes. He has opposed Big Government, Big Corp., Big Med, Big Food, Big Finance etc. his whole political career. These things are the reasons that the U.S. is now in big, big trouble.
You blatter on about “progressivism.” The following is the most “progressive” thing to come out a a nationally prominent politician’s mouth in my entire life:
Plain.
Simple.
And right on the money as far as I am concerned.
His approach to the military and defense in general?
Also very simple.
and
You…and any other undoubtedly well-meaning so-called “progressives” that support the current Democratic Party…support the Permanent War system against which Eisenhower quite plainly warned us in his farewell speech.
You are a bunch media-blinded fools as far as I am concerned.
Deal wid dat as well.
And…
Wake the fuck up!!!
Thank you and good night.
AG
P.S. And now the news. (Google Headlines, 10:25 AM EDT, 4/25/17:
Do you actually think that anything would be any different under Dem rule!!!???
After 8 years of our “Peace President’s” ongoing international violence?
Get real.
So reality sucks, you are angry and frustrated.
You have no solutions for the many problems, and your best hope are the pauls.
So you offer nothing, but toxic thinking, or am i wrong?
What do you think would be a positive change thats realistic, that would change things for the better? What would be the preferred future, something that has a chance of working?
It cant be that you are just here to tell us all how stupid and blind we are, right?
Worst interview since Kaiser Wilhelm.
If you are old enough there is this:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/doonesbury_at_40/2010/10/doonesburys_200_greatest_moments.html
EMK was 10 times the human DJT was.
Meanwhile our mentally unstable commander in chief will host the entire US senate at the white house, for a briefing on North Korea.
I wonder what he has planned? A little nuclear war? Great ratings!
The nuclear is very important, you know.
It means war. He’s noticed that the media loves bombs, and those that drop them. Syria is a client of Putin, so it’s out of reach unless Trump wants his IOU’s pulled on. Iran is on the Strait of Hormuz, so it’s to unpredictable a target.
NK is perfect for his goals. All he has to do is ignore South Korea’s wishes.
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Actually I’m hoping his advisors can convince him that going nuclear is not healthy for living creatures. And maybe try something else, like ( financial) sanctions. And this time let them go until it hurts a bit. But DerTrumpster is not a patient man so all bets are off.
They won’t go nuclear because you don’t need nuclear bombs to destroy NK.
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That is what some say. So let’s end those fuckers. Peacefully.
and South Korean lives, there’s what 10 million living in Seoul?
Slightly more than 10 million in the city proper. I believe that around 25 million people live in the metropolitan area around Seoul. Add in that all of that and quite a few nuclear power power plants are all in the range of the huge numbers of artillery that are in fortified positions in North Korea and you’re talking about devastating the world economy and wiping out more than half of the population of South Korea while likely making the area unlivable.
North Korea never needed nukes to protect itself, no one was going to go in there because South Korea would simply cease to exist as a functioning country.