Trump's Big CON: He is Unfit to Be President, And Republi-CONs Know It

UPDATE XIII:  "[W]hat are Corker’s 'issues'? He has asserted that Trump requires constant handling to control his volatility: 'I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.' Corker has accused Trump of lacking strategic thinking: 'A lot of people think that there is some kind of ‘good cop, bad cop’ act underway, but that’s just not true.' Corker has called out Trump’s routine deceptions: 'I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true.' Corker has talked of Trump’s vacuity: He acts 'like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.' Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has expressed the fear that Trump’s instability could lead to conflict: 'We could be headed toward World War III with the kind of comments that he’s making.' . .

[In other words,] Corker accuses the president of being a chaotic, directionless, shallow liar who could start a nuclear war. . . [Trump's response, he] Corker for being short. This is, after all, the way gentlemen resolve their differences.

GOP denial about Trump has generally taken Ryan’s form. The president may be eccentric and divisive, but Republicans need to keep their heads down and think of tax reform. This assumes that the main challenge is to avoid distraction from essential tasks.

But the real problem has always been Trump’s fundamental unfitness for high office. It is not Trump’s indiscipline and lack of leadership, which make carrying a legislative agenda forward nearly impossible. It is not his vulgarity and smallness, which have been the equivalent of spray-painting graffiti on the Washington Monument. It is not his nearly complete ignorance of policy and history, which condemns him to live in the eternal present of his own immediate desires.

No, Corker has given public permission to raise the most serious questions: Is Trump psychologically and morally equipped to be president? And could his unfitness cause permanent damage to the country?

It is no longer possible to safely ignore the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims. A main task of the chief of staff seems to be to shield him from dinner guests and telephone calls that might set him off on a foolish or dangerous tangent. Much of the White House senior staff seems bound, not by loyalty to the president, but by a duty to protect the nation from the president. Trump, in turn, is reported to have said: 'I hate everyone in the White House.' And also, presumably, in the State Department, headed by a secretary of state who apparently regards his boss as a 'moron.'"

Read the Washington Post, Republicans, it’s time to panic.

UPDATE XII:  "Our constitutional system designates the president as the person to execute the laws. Congress passes them, the president signs them, and then he is obligated to enforce them. His oath is clear on this point: 'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' What if he won’t or cannot execute his duties and/or cannot preserve, protect and defend the Constitution? The Constitution says the remedy is impeachment.

Within the past 24 hours we’ve seen the president threaten to ignore or violate the First Amendment and threaten a group of Americans with denial of service to which they are legally entitled."

Read also the Washington Post, Trump threatens not to do his job — when is enough, enough?

Read also the Washington Post, Impeachment probably won’t save us from Trump. But the 25th Amendment might.

UPDATE XI:  "Perhaps the discussion of Trump’s tailspin is hyperbole; Trump could be of perfectly sound mind and simply be the worst, most unfit person to hold the office."

Read the Washington Post, When do we reach 25th Amendment territory?, which notes that "the Founding Fathers had a solution for removing unfit presidents: impeachment in cases of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” If read correctly, the impeachment mechanism covers a range of misconduct well beyond illegality."

UPDATE X:  The case is being built to justify removing The Donald from office, and each day he adds to it.

Read The New York Times, The President’s Self-Destructive Disruption, which states:

"Donald Trump ran for the White House as a change agent hostile to the habits of Washington, the place he nicknamed 'the swamp.' It worked. But the customs he continues to upend as president are the scaffolding that supports the otherwise fragile words of our written Constitution. Mr. Trump’s rejection of them is more threatening to both his presidency and our constitutional regime than any technical violation of the law that he has been accused of (at least so far).

Customs are the punctuation marks of republican politics, the silent guides we follow without pausing to consider their authority. They operate in a space that is difficult for formal rules to codify. That the president of the United States speaks with caution and dignity, that he exercises the pardon power the Constitution grants him soberly rather than wantonly, that he respects the independence of law enforcement, and that, to the extent reasonable politics permit, he speaks truthfully — these are all customs, not laws. Law is powerless to impose them and powerless without them.

When Mr. Trump drains language of its normal meaning, the law can do nothing about it. His ridiculing of the United States senator who leads the Foreign Relations Committee, his repeated use of the word 'fake' to describe news coverage when he actually means 'unpleasant' and his style of rhetoric in front of the United Nations, where he called terrorists 'losers' and applied a childish epithet to the head of a nation in whose shadow tens of thousands of American troops serve and with whom nuclear war is a live possibility, are all cases in point. There is no way to formalize conventions of maturity and dignity for presidents. Custom fills that void. . .

Most ultimately find the traditions of the office to be a shield. Mr. Trump is finding them to be a constraint he cannot bear. Worse, because many elements of his base associate these customs with failed politics, every violation reinforces the sense that he sides with them over a corrupt establishment. . .

The unique arrogance of Mr. Trump’s rejection of the authority of custom is more dangerous than we realize because without custom, there is no law."

Read also CNN, Trump's authoritarian streak., which notes that "[l]ike many strongmen, Trump nurses an ego in need of constant affirmation. . . Militarism -- another obsession of autocrats -- also exercises Trump."

UPDATE IX:  Read Vanity Fair, “I Hate Everyone in the White House!”: Trump Seethes as Advisers Fear the President Is “Unraveling”, which reports:

"[H]half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers . . .all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president that seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. . .

[S]everal people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is 'unstable,' 'losing a step,' and 'unraveling.' . .

Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision. . .

One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. 'Would they tackle him?' the person said. Even Trump’s most loyal backers are sowing public doubts. This morning, The Washington Post quoted longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack saying he has been 'shocked' and 'stunned' by Trump’s behavior. . .

While Kelly can’t control Trump’s tweets, he is doing his best to physically sequester the president—much to Trump’s frustration. One major G.O.P. donor told me access to Trump has been cut off, and his outside calls to the White House switchboard aren’t put through to the Oval Office. . .

Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment—the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment, Trump said, 'What’s that?' According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term."

UPDATE VIII:  "President Trump’s attack on NBC is now a sustained attack on the press and the concept of a free press. He declared in tin-pot-dictator rhetoric: 'It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.' That’s a direct repudiation of the First Amendment in the context of threats to pull NBC’s license. That’s not merely outrageous and indefensible; it is, I would argue, one of many instances in which Trump’s words reveal an inability to carry out his oath of office.

Bob Bauer writes: 'A president who is a demagogue, whose demagoguery defines his style of political leadership, is subject for that reason to impeachment.' . .

When we add to that Trump’s public abuse of members of his own Cabinet, members of Congress, judges, etc., we can see classic demagogic conduct. That entails, Bauer argues, 'manipulation of language to attract and maintain popular support in service of the demagogue’s unbounded self-interest. The leadership function has become pathologically personalized; personal ends and ambitions are of primary importance to the demagogue. His self-interested ends justify the use of virtually any means—or at least any he could hope to get away with.' And that description truly embodies Trump’s behavior. Recall that Trump thinks members of the executive branch including the FBI owe an oath of loyalty to him personally rather than to the Constitution. That too is the mind-set of a lawless demagogue.

Add to that Trump lies, the constant big and small ones, the ridiculous and the mendacious. We know from his persist telling of untruths that have been long ago debunked that he has become indifferent to or unfamiliar with the real world when facts do not comport with his views. Couple that with his attack on an independent source of information — the free press — and one sees a president morphing into an authoritarian who imagines he is unencumbered by the law. . .

In and of themselves, Trump’s words might not be sufficient to justify impeachment. But when you combine them with his severe intellectual and temperamental limitations that require constant monitoring by a triumvirate of generals, and his attempts to obstruct the Russia investigation, there is little doubt that he is precisely the sort of person whom the Founding Fathers had in mind when they included the impeachment clause."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s words can be the basis for impeachment.

UPDATE VII:  How might Republi-CONs rid themselves of their troublesome Franken-Trump/Trumpenstein (© NoBullU.com)?

Read the Washington Post, Laying out a comprehensive case that Trump obstructed justice.

UPDATE VI:  "As the implosion of President Trump continues amid the increasingly bitter intraparty war engulfing the GOP, let’s not lose sight of the very real impact this spectacular meltdown could have: It could end up harming millions and millions of people.

This morning, Trump unleashed two tweets that telegraph the massive damage that may yet ensue. The first bashed Democrats for allegedly not wanting to secure our border and claimed this imperils a deal to protect the 'dreamers.' The second signaled that Trump is set to broaden his efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

These two stories are intimately related to Trump’s travails amid the GOP infighting we’re now seeing. When Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) fed these divisions by blasting Trump’s temperamental unfitness for the presidency, he suggested that it threatens the prospect of armed conflict and global destruction. But you can also draw a direct line from Trump’s unfitness to serve — and the battling among Republicans — right through to his gamesmanship with the dreamers and sabotage of the ACA, both of which also threaten real harm to enormous numbers of people.

The Post has a remarkable report on Trump’s frustration and fury over the insufficient plaudits he has received for his handling of hurricanes and over his conviction that congressional Republicans are letting him down. All this has made Trump more eager 'to solidify his standing with his populist base and return to the comforts of his campaign' . .

It’s that this could get worse. Republicans believe Trump’s escalating attacks on Corker, and the senator’s scalding responses, threaten to further imperil other Trump goals, such as tax reform. And above all, Trump appears preoccupied with ensuring that 'his people' don’t think he’s 'feckless' — that is, a big loser. . ."

[H]is desire to boast of wins before roaring rally crowds puts [people] in peril.

Read the Washington Post, As Trump implodes, he threatens to hurt millions — out of pure rage and spite.

UPDATE V:  "The truth can no longer be ignored: Donald Trump is dangerously unfit to be president and could lead the nation to unthinkable disaster. So what are we going to do about it?

The White House 'has become an adult day care center,' where the president’s senior aides spend 'every single day . . . trying to contain him.' That terrifying bit of information was disclosed Sunday by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), whose decision not to run for reelection has freed him to point out that the emperor is indeed naked.

'Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,' Corker told the New York Times. His colleagues in the GOP Senate majority 'understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around [Trump] to keep him in the middle of the road.' Trump treats the presidency as if it were 'a reality show' and is so erratic that he could put us 'on the path to World War III.'

The shocking thing is that Corker is merely saying publicly what many others say in private. Trump is not qualified, by temperament or character, to exercise the awesome powers of the presidency. A man who acts like a bratty, vindictive child has been given the power to launch nuclear weapons.

He has three years and three months remaining in his presidential term. What are we going to do?" [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, Trump has more than three years left in his term. What are we going to do?

UPDATE IV:  "As the curator of the Trump-as-toddler Twitter thread, I was dubious that John F. Kelly would be able to make President Trump act like a big boy while he was in power. But after Stephen K. Bannon was no longer inside the White House to rile up the president, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts did start to wonder whether some degree of normality could be achieved.

Silly staff.

The past week definitively revealed the mirage of a maturing president.

[The article then excerpted the stories below.]

Let me stress that each of the excerpted stories above broke in the past 48 hours. The pace is quickening.

What’s next? Ordinary toddlers eventually tire out after throwing a tantrum. But this is when the analogy breaks down. Full disclosure: Trump is not really a toddler, but an overindulged plutocrat who has never had to cope with political failure. With each negative shock or story he faces, his behavior worsens, and that just leads to a new cycle of negative press and disaffected GOP officials. The political effects of this is to weaken his historically weak presidency, making it harder for him to do anything that would counteract this trend. This doom loop means that his behavior is only going to get worse.

That is great for my Twitter thread. It is awful for America."

Read the Washington Post, President Trump’s temper tantrums are coming at an accelerating pace.

UPDATE III:  How can you say that the Donald is unfit to be president?

Read the Washington Post, Palace Intrigue:

"Inside the White House, Trump’s mounting frustration and isolation are causing him to lash out at allies — imperiling critical relationships and putting his own legislative agenda at stake. Robert Costa, Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker report:

'Trump in recent days has shown flashes of fury and left his aides, including [Chief of Staff John Kelly], scrambling to manage his outbursts. … One Trump confidant likened the president to a whistling teapot, saying that when he does not blow off steam, he can turn into a pressure cooker and explode. 'I think we are in pressure cooker territory,' said this person[.] … In a late-afternoon, unsolicited email to reporters Monday, Pence’s office blasted out a blanket response under the vice president’s name addressing 'criticisms of the president' …. while touting his handling of global threats[.] … But Pence’s words did little to reassure some Trump allies, who fear that the president’s feud with [Sen. Bob] Corker could cause more trouble for the administration and further unravel threadbare relationships on Capitol Hill.'

Reaction to Corker’s comments inside the White House has been mixed. 'Some Trump aides believe it is dangerous for the president to fight with Corker, the chairman of a powerful Senate committee who is not running for reelection and therefore feels he has nothing to lose. Other Trump aides blame Corker for what they consider an act of betrayal, arguing that he started the feud in a bid for relevance[.]'

Bigger picture: Trump’s political outbursts are also a major play to his populist base, especially following the defeat of Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.). 'The president has groused to numerous White House aides about his concerns over his popularity with 'my people' — his base,' our colleagues write. 'He blames the Republican establishment and others for failing to enact his agenda and making him look feckless, and is unhappy with losing in Alabama … Trump also made it known to several people that he wished to have a rally in North Carolina over the weekend and not just a fundraiser[.] [He ultimately just held a fundraiser, but later] complained that he wished he had gotten back out in front of the rowdy crowds he loves[.]'

Administration officials have described several guardrails used to keep Trump’s impulsivity at bay. Politico’s Josh Dawsey reports: 'Trump, several advisers and aides said, sometimes comes into the Oval Office worked into a lather from talking to friends or watching TV coverage in the morning. . . . Then, staffers would step in to avert a rash decision by calming him down. … [Former chief of staff Reince Priebus’s] strategy was largely to delay. Instead of ousting [Jeff] Sessions like Trump wanted, Priebus, [Steve] Bannon and others had outside advisers close to Trump call him and explain the ramifications. They tried to remind him what a dedicated campaign supporter Sessions was — and that his firing could set off unpredictable dominoes.'

The Atlantic’s David Frum argues that, while such 'containment' methods may allow cooler heads to prevail, they also threaten the power of the presidency: 'Thank you and congratulations to those officials struggling to protect American security, the Western alliance, and world peace against Donald Trump. But the constitutional order is becoming the casualty of these struggles. The Constitution provides a way to remedy an unfit presidency: the removal process under the 25th amendment. Regencies and palace coups are not constitutional. I dare say many readers would prefer a Mattis presidency to a Trump presidency. But to stealthily endow Secretary Mattis with the powers of the presidency as a work-around of Trump’s abuse of them? That’s a crisis, too, and one sinister for the future.'

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans had their own strategy for dealing with the latest Trump feud with one of their own: avoidance. Sean Sullivan reports: 'Those who did speak did so obliquely — by praising Corker generally but steering clear of inserting themselves directly into the brutal clash. ‘Sen. Corker is a valuable member of the Senate Republican caucus and he’s also on the Budget Committee and a particularly important player as we move to the floor on the budget next week,’ said [Mitch McConnell.] … The reaction highlighted the broader strategy Capitol Hill Republicans have adopted when it comes to the president’s tendency to wage rhetorical war against their own or incite other controversies: don’t engage in public no matter how anxious they may be in private.' . .

And Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman dissects the tense relationship between Trump and his chief of staff, John Kelly: 'According to conversations with four prominent Republicans close to the White House, Trump has grown frustrated with Kelly in recent weeks at what he sees as Kelly’s highhandedness. 'They’re fighting a lot' one source explained. The most recent flashpoint was Kelly’s decision late last month to reassign Peter Navarro, Trump’s nationalist trade adviser, to report to Gary Cohn, without first clearing it with Trump.'

'How long Kelly lasts in the job has become a topic of speculation in the West Wing. 'He doesn’t love this job. He’s doing it as a duty for the country,' one person close to Kelly said. According to two sources, one name being floated as a possible replacement is real-estate developer and Trump’s longtime friend Tom Barrack.'

Kelly has a 'Mar-a-lago strategy:' 'According to two sources, Kelly has developed a Mar-a-Lago strategy to prevent Trump from soliciting advice from members and friends ... Sources briefed on Kelly’s plans said he will attempt to keep Trump 'out of the dining room.'" [Links in original, formatting removed, emphasis added.]

The summary quotes from:

The Washington Post, A ‘pressure cooker’: Trump’s frustration and fury rupture alliances, threaten agenda,

Politico, White House aides lean on delays and distraction to manage Trump,

The Atlantic, The Problem With 'Containing' Donald Trump,

The Washington Post, After Trump-Corker flap, Hill Republicans choose a simple strategy: avoidance, and

Vanity Fair, Amid a Widening Rift, John Kelly Has a Mar-a-Lago Strategy to Contain Trump.

Bottom line: The Donald is UNFIT to be president, and Republi-CONs know it.

UPDATE II:  The fact that he is unfit is good news to his opponents.

Read the Washington Post, Bob Corker tirade encapsulates five reasons why Trump has failed at governing, which notes:

"Trump’s myopic impulse to counterpunch whenever he feels attacked caused him to lose another news cycle and will overshadow an immigration proposal that the White House planned to talk about today. It also underscored several of the factors that have caused the president so much trouble:

1) Trump is unserious about passing legislation. . .

2) Trump has alienated several Senate Republicans that he needs more than they need him. Since taking office, Trump has criticized Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, Dean Heller, Rand Paul and others by name. That doesn’t include several others he went after as a candidate, including Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Ben Sasse. . .

3) Trump cares more about showmanship than statesmanship. . .

Corker called Trump 'a reality show' president last night, telling the Times that he acts 'like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.'
4) Trump still does not understand how government works. Much of what has gone haywire since January was a foreseeable consequence of electing someone with no prior government or military experience to lead the government. . .

5) The president’s credibility is shot in Washington.
Trump claims Corker 'begged' him for his endorsement. Corker says Trump repeatedly offered his support and called him just last week to ask him to change his mind about retiring. Someone is not telling the truth. Whom do you believe?

'I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true,' Corker told the Times. 'You know he does it, everyone knows he does it, but he does.'

Trump’s penchant for twisting the truth on things big and small makes it very hard for people to take him at his word. Remember, he categorically denied James Comey’s accounts of their one-on-one conversations — even though the ousted FBI director had written memos about them immediately after they took place. 'This is why people take contemporaneous notes when they speak to the president,' quipped Preet Bharara, a U.S. attorney who was fired by Trump after being told he’d be kept on.

Because Trump always wants the last word, he tweeted about Corker last night for a fourth time after the Tennessean pushed back:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Bob Corker gave us the Iran Deal, & that's about it. We need HealthCare, we need Tax Cuts/Reform, we need people that can get the job done!
3:51 PM - Oct 8, 2017

In fact, Corker opposed the deal. (Read his August 2015 op-ed for The Washington Post: 'Congress should reject the bad Iran deal.')"

UPDATE:  "A dominant news story last week was the controversy over whether Secretary of State Rex Tillerson actually called President Trump a “moron.” But even if he didn't, there's now an increasing volume of people who have worked closely with Trump offering similarly dim depictions of him — and doing so publicly.

The most recent came Sunday, when Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) fought back against Trump's criticisms of him by tweeting that the White House has turned into an 'adult day-care center.'

Senator Bob Corker
@SenBobCorker

It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.
10:13 AM - Oct 8, 2017

. . .

A couple of weeks back, it was Trump's former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon suggesting Trump was basically duped into endorsing appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) in a special election. 'I have to tell you,' Bannon said, 'I think at some time later, after [the special election], a real, you know, review has to be done of how President Trump got the wrong information and came down on the wrong side of the football here.' Bannon's preferred candidate, Roy Moore, won the race against Strange.

And on Sunday, shortly before Corker's tweet, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney also weighed in on that information flow. He told 'Meet the Press' that before Kelly came onboard, Trump was getting information that 'just wasn't ready for the president' . . .

Mulvaney's comments are certainly more diplomatic than the rest, but he's also talking about the president of the United States here — and he's talking about him as if Trump can't process information well unless it is sufficiently narrowed and tailored to him. And his and Bannon's characterizations of Trump's level of informational sophistication confirm all kinds of previous (anonymously sourced) reports that suggested Trump is highly susceptible to what the last person he spoke to has told him and needs constant minding. (Dan Drezner has done a nice job keeping track of these.) Wars have reportedly been fought in the White House over who can tell Trump what — as if he can't decide these things for himself.

Also important here: the four people we're talking about. This is one of Trump's top Cabinet secretaries, his former top White House strategist, a leading adviser on tax and budget issues in Mulvaney, and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Corker. Corker's Tennessee colleague, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R), once said Trump was closer to Corker than any GOP senator. . .

[T]he totality of these remarks don't paint a flattering picture of the president at all, and they come from people who would know best."

Read the Washington Post, Bob Corker and the fast-growing list of those close to Trump who talk about him like he’s a child.

Read also:

Trump's Big CON: He is The Child President, and

Trump's Big CON: He is Not Very Smart, CONt.

"President Trump’s feud with GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee escalated over the weekend, and in an interview with the New York Times, Corker flatly warned that Trump’s antics may set us 'on the path to World War III.'

But, while that is obviously alarming, what Corker said elsewhere in the interview may end up having more of an impact, because it opens the door to a whole new round of press scrutiny of the GOP’s ongoing enabling of Trump. Corker confirmed that most Senate Republicans view Trump as, well, dangerous and crazy:

    Mr. Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts. 'I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,' Mr. Corker said in a telephone interview. …

    Without offering specifics, he said Mr. Trump had repeatedly undermined diplomacy with his Twitter fingers. 'I know he has hurt, in several instances, he’s hurt us as it relates to negotiations that were underway by tweeting things out,' Mr. Corker said.

    All but inviting his colleagues to join him in speaking out about the president, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican.

    'Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,' he said, adding that 'of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.'

Elsewhere in the interview, Corker declined to answer when asked if he believes Trump is unfit for the presidency. But the only reasonable way to read all these comments is as a declaration that Trump is indeed unfit — and that most Republicans know it. After all, Corker had previously said that Trump’s inner circle is helping to 'separate our country from chaos.' Now he has added that Trump needs to be restrained by his inner circle from devolving into conduct that could end up unleashing untold global destruction — and that most Republicans know it. . .

In August, Jane Chong and Benjamin Wittes offered a useful set of guidelines for thinking about Trump’s misconduct. They divided it into three categories. First, there are his 'abuses of power,' such as the nonstop self-dealing, the pardoning of former sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the firing of his FBI director. Second, there are his 'failures of moral leadership,' which constitute a general degradation of his office via, among other things, his unprecedented, serial lying and efforts to destroy the institutional legitimacy of the free press. To this second category we can add Trump’s refusal to unequivocally condemn the Charlottesville white supremacists and the White House’s use of taxpayer funds to stage a weekend stunt in which Vice President Pence walked out of a football game, which are both part of a broader effort to continue stoking divisions.

Third, there is the 'abandonment of the basic duties of his office,' which includes the failure to make appointments and (I would add) the deep rot of bad faith that has infested the White House’s approach to policy: He indicated he’d sign anything at all that would let him boast of destroying Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment. I would suggest a fourth category of misconduct: Trump’s sheer megalomaniacal indifference to the fundamental notion that his office confers on him any obligation to the public of any kind. This overlaps with the conduct discussed above and also includes the refusal to release his tax returns and his ongoing sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, which could harm millions.

As Chong and Wittes note, what’s challenging is to determine what sort of level of degradation of our institutions, political system and norms of political conduct all of this misconduct adds up to when taken together. We do know that congressional Republicans continue to enable many of these strands in isolation, and they continue to airbrush away the significance of misconduct that is glaring enough to require their condemnation, usually by making some variation of the claim that Trump is learning on the job. But Corker has now asserted that Republicans know Trump’s presidency constitutes an ongoing, abnormal, multifaceted danger to the country. "

Read the Washington Post, Bob Corker just confirmed it: Republicans know Trump is unfit.

As noted before, this can't end well for the country.

Trump's Big CON: He Won't Be Draining the Swamp, Quite the CONtrary (CONt., Part 4)

"During his seven months in office, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has filled his days meeting with executives from many of the companies he regulates, while all but sidestepping environmental and public health groups. But the face time with industry representatives has extended well beyond his Washington office.

On April 26, for example, Pruitt had lunch with executives from Southern, one of the nation’s biggest coal-burning utilities. They dined at Equinox, a restaurant near the White House, where the baby-carrot-and-red-beet salad with shrimp runs $28. Later that day, Pruitt met with senior leaders at Alliance Resource Partners, a major coal-mining operation, for a dinner at BLT Prime, a steakhouse in the Trump International Hotel, just across from EPA headquarters.

On other occasions, Pruitt traveled to a Ritz-Carlton golf resort in Naples, Fla., for a National Mining Association meeting; to another golf resort in Arizona to speak at a board meeting for the National Association of Manufacturers; and to a resort in Colorado to speak at an event organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The meals with company executives and other evidence of Pruitt’s close ties to industries his agency regulates were laid out in a detailed copy of Pruitt’s calendar obtained by the liberal nonprofit group American Oversight. The New York Times on Tuesday reported details from American Oversight’s Freedom of Information Act request.

The insights into Pruitt’s previously undisclosed meetings add to an already familiar story of how he has spent his time since becoming administrator in February. While EPA leaders traditionally talk with a broad array of stakeholders, Pruitt has overwhelmingly leaned toward meetings with corporate executives in industries regulated by the EPA, and in multiple cases he has quickly ruled in their favor on a range of issues. A more limited version of Pruitt’s schedule from April to September, obtained and reported last month by The Washington Post, showed that he often met with executives from the automobile, mining and fossil fuel industries while only rarely making time for environmental or public health groups. . .

[For more examples, read the article.]

'The EPA has tried very hard to keep Pruitt’s actual work quiet,' Climate Investigations Center Director Kert Davies said in an email. 'It took a court order to get the details we learned today. . . . For Pruitt, it’s the same as it ever was, a lack of transparency and far too cozy connections with the industries he is supposed to be regulating.'"

Read the Washington Post, Fancy dinners, far-flung speeches: Calendars detail EPA chief’s close ties to industry.

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Military Strong Man Edition (AKA Trump's Big CON: He is Really is a Moron)

UPDATE III:  It's not verified until The Donald calls it "FAKE NEWS!" and threatens the media.

Read the Washington Post, Trump attacks NBC News over report he wanted massive increase in nuclear arsenal.

UPDATE II:  The Donald loves to look pretty.

And nothing says pretty to his supporters than lots of new military equipment, especially nuclear weapons.

Read the Washington Post, Trump sees power as military strength — and nukes as the apex of that power, which notes:

"Trump came to the job from the private sector, from spending decades as the sole authority over his own company. He revealed his sense of what the job of president entailed when he said during the Republican convention last year that 'I alone can fix' the problems the country faces. He never had a distinct strategy for building consensus on Capitol Hill and has, instead, pushed the boundaries of unilateral executive orders to enact his will. The president isn’t a CEO, but there are ways in which the president can act like a CEO, and Trump has embraced those tools.

Nowhere is that power more immediate than in the president’s role as civilian commander of the armed forces. As president, Trump calls the shots for the nation’s soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. He can’t launch a war without congressional authority but, as recent presidents have shown, he has a lot of leeway to take military action without a formal declaration of war. This is the closest Trump will get to CEO power in the White House — and it’s a power for which he has an ingrained respect.

Trump never served himself, avoiding the Vietnam War draft by deferment while he was in college and later for bone spurs in his heels, a reason that has been met with scrutiny. He instead suggested that his time at the New York Military Academy — a boarding school north of New York City — offered him an equivalent experience. . .

[T]here’s no military more raw or more powerful than a nuclear weapon. The country’s reduced-but-still-significant nuclear weapons could obliterate any number of countries in a near-instant, including, as Trump threatened from the lectern at the United Nations, North Korea.

That’s a tangible expression of power, and it’s not subject to veto. Trump can launch a nuclear strike without any intervention, likely becoming a global pariah but, certainly, demonstrating the power of the United States and its president.

So we get to Trump in that meeting asking why the arsenal can’t be substantially larger instead of being winnowed into nothing. Reducing the number of nuclear weapons is, when extrapolated outward, a reduction of the central source of power Trump seems to understand.

This was the meeting after which Tillerson reportedly referred to Trump as a 'f—-ing moron.'"

My Mr. President, what big crowds you have!

P.S. This would be funny if it wasn't so scary!!

UPDATE:  Silly pundits, a showman doesn't need a plan, he has the show.

Read the Washington Post, The real problem with Trump’s foreign policy plans? He may not have any., which notes "Trump’s slurs and insults may be distracting us from a more basic foreign policy problem: On some key issues, when it comes to actual policy plans, the cupboard is bare."

Remember: it's all 'bout the show, 'bout the show, stupid people!!! (Repeat til you get it).

The Donald is a showman and he knows that there is nothing like some military arms for a good show.

Remember how badly he wanted the military to parade down Pennsylvania Avenue for his inauguration.

Of course, after the parade is over, nothing like spending money on the military and nuclear arms to show your supporters you are a 'Great Military Leader'.

Read the NBC News, Trump Wanted Tenfold Increase in Nuclear Arsenal, Surprising Military, which reports:

"President Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.

Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve.

According to the officials present, Trump’s advisers, among them the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, were surprised. Officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to a nuclear buildup and how the current military posture is stronger than it was at the height of the build-up. In interviews, they told NBC News that no such expansion is planned.

The July 20 meeting was described as a lengthy and sometimes tense review of worldwide U.S. forces and operations. It was soon after the meeting broke up that officials who remained behind heard Tillerson say that Trump is a 'moron.' . .

[Trump's] comments raised questions about his familiarity with the nuclear posture and other issues, officials said.

Two officials present said that at multiple points in the discussion, the president expressed a desire not just for more nuclear weapons, but for additional U.S. troops and military equipment.

Any increase in America’s nuclear arsenal would not only break with decades of U.S. nuclear doctrine but also violate international disarmament treaties signed by every president since Ronald Reagan. Nonproliferation experts warned that such a move could set off a global arms race.

'If he were to increase the numbers, the Russians would match him, and the Chinese' would ramp up their nuclear ambitions, Joe Cirincione, a nuclear expert and MSNBC contributor, said, referring to the president.

'There hasn’t been a military mission that’s required a nuclear weapon in 71 years,' Cirincione said.

Details of the July 20 meeting, which have not been previously reported, shed additional light on tensions among the commander-in-chief, members of his Cabinet and the uniformed leadership of the Pentagon stemming from vastly different world views, experiences and knowledge bases. . .

That meeting followed one held a day earlier in the White House Situation Room focused on Afghanistan in which the president stunned some of his national security team. At that July 19 meeting, according to senior administration officials, Trump asked military leaders to fire the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and compared their advice to that of a New York restaurant consultant whose poor judgment cost a business valuable time and money.

Two people familiar with the discussion said the Situation Room meeting, in which the president’s advisers anticipated he would sign off on a new Afghanistan strategy, was so unproductive that the advisers decided to continue the discussion at the Pentagon the next day in a smaller setting where the president could perhaps be more focused. 'It wasn’t just the number of people. It was the idea of focus,' according to one person familiar with the discussion. The thinking was: 'Maybe we need to slow down a little and explain the whole world' from a big-picture perspective, this person said.

The Pentagon meeting was also attended by Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford, Vice Chairman Gen. Paul Selva, Undersecretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, Stephen Bannon, who served then as Trump’s chief strategist, Jared Kushner who is a senior adviser to the president and Reince Preibus who was then chief of staff. Sean Spicer who was then White House spokesman, and Keith Schiller who was Director of Oval Office Operations at the time, also accompanied Trump to the Pentagon that day. . .

It’s unclear which portion of the Pentagon briefing prompted Tillerson to call the president a 'moron' after the meeting broke up and some advisers were gathered around. Officials who attended the two-hour session said it included a number of tense exchanges.

At one point, Trump responded to a presentation on the U.S. military presence in South Korea by asking why South Koreans aren’t more appreciative and welcoming of American defense aid. The comment prompted intervention from a senior military official in the room to explain the overall relationship and why such help is ultimately beneficial to U.S. national security interests. . .

The president left the Pentagon on July 20, telling reporters the meeting was 'absolutely great.'" [Emphasis added.]

Note all the people needed to 'babysit' the president.

And now we know why The Donald was called a moron.

Trump's Big CON: "He's So Pretty", 'Fake News' Edition (AKA Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man (CONt., Part 17))

UPDATE: "Donald J. Trump is frustrated. He’s the president of the United States, and yet there are limits to how he can use his power. He can’t just snap his fingers and end Obamacare; his travel ban got gummed up in litigation; he can’t flick a switch and 'open up' libel laws; the regime in North Korea doesn’t appear to respect him too much.

And then there’s the issue of the Beltway media, which refuses to enable a man extraordinarily unfit for his responsibilities. NBC News, for example, reported on Wednesday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had referred to President Trump as a 'moron' after a July meeting at the Pentagon, not to mention that the top diplomat 'was on the verge of resigning.' The story carried four bylines and extensive sourcing. CNN reported that Trump knew before Wednesday about the 'moron' moment.

None of those considerations, of course, prevented Trump from blasting the story the way he commonly blasts negative press . . .

Being president is a tough line of work. As the New York Times wrote in February, Trump came to the White House with a long background in manipulating, goading and feeding New York tabloids. His virtuoso work with reporters — including a stunt in which he impersonated his own PR guy — doubtless fed an expectation that perhaps he’d be able to pull the same moves in the nation’s capital.

He cannot, and so he lapses into autocratic desperation, as in this tweet from Thursday:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!
5:59 AM - Oct 5, 2017

For context, the Senate intelligence committee has heard testimony about the distortions and propaganda of Russian-funded outlets such as RT and Sputnik. . .

That the president of the United States would suggest that U.S. news organizations deserve scrutiny ahead of RT and Sputnik is, once again, not surprising. Which is not to say it isn’t scandalous, because it surely is. In President Ronald Reagan’s day, the suggestion of any equivalence between Soviet propaganda and this country’s best media outlets would have fed outrage for weeks. As things stand today, there’ll be some op-ed-ing about this violation of our country’s constitutional norms, and on to the next stupid tweet. . .

And if Trump really, really must have this investigation under his terms, he can just sue us all and depose his adversaries in a court proceeding. Though he’ll have to do so under long-standing libel laws."

Read the Washington Post, Autocracy, anyone? Trump calls for Senate investigation of media outlets. 

"On Thursday, the latest in the salvo that’s come to define his presidency.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!
5:59 AM - Oct 5, 2017

. . .

It, like 'voter fraud,' is not an actual problem.

Sure, there have been cases in which news outlets (including The Washington Post) have had to correct news reports after they ran to clarify points or ensure factual accuracy. Sure, the media have reported tips that haven’t been borne out. Sure, there have been cases in which bad actors have simply made up news reports — the original 'fake news' that was a focus of attention after the election — but those reports weren’t from reputable mainstream outlets. There were also four cases of voter fraud last year (mostly from Trump supporters), but just as those scattered examples of fraud don’t prove a concerted effort to throw the 2016 election, a few corrected news stories don’t prove Trump’s claim that there is a massive effort to make up negative stories about him.

Why does Trump talk endlessly about fake news? For the same reason he talks about voter fraud: to soothe his ego and hoodwink his supporters. In a world where voter fraud threw the election and a nefarious news media make up stories to embarrass Trump, Trump is actually the popular, effective pick of the American people. That’s a much nicer thing to be than the broadly unpopular and at times fumbling leader of a country in which a majority of voters preferred someone else.

The real question is whether Trump actually believes either of these claims. . .

Or, perhaps, he doesn’t really believe it, any more than a wrestling fan believes the story lines in the WWE. They serve a purpose and are fun to parse, but ultimately they solely serve the bigger purpose of entertainment. Arguing that voter fraud and 'fake news' are rampant problems serves the bigger purpose of repositioning Trump as a successful, popular president. . .

The main question: Who’s he trying to convince, his supporters or himself? And which of those options is more problematic for the country?"

Read the Washington Post, ‘Fake news,’ like ‘voter fraud,’ is one of Trump’s favorite ways to soothe his ego.

Trump's Big CON: He Laughs at His Supporters, CONt.

UPDATE:  "There is probably no better illustration of the scam President Trump’s tax plan would perpetrate on working- and middle-class people than its provision repealing the estate tax. Getting rid of it would benefit a tiny slice of high earners and their families — including Trump’s family, who could save as much as $1 billion once Trump moves on to delivering an accounting for his life to his maker.

Yet Trump has absurdly sold estate-tax repeal as a huge boon to “millions” of small businesses and even to 'the American farmer.'

Trump will now introduce a new trope to his pitch for estate-tax repeal: He will claim it helps truckers. . .

I spoke this morning to David Cay Johnston, a veteran tax reporter who has written numerous books on how the wealthy game the tax system to their advantage. When I ran this claim about the estate tax by Johnston, he burst out laughing and dismissed the assertion as 'absurd' and a 'scam.'

As it is, Trump has already dissembled madly about estate-tax repeal. His recent claim that “millions” of small businesses and farms would be helped was neatly debunked by the Post fact-checking team. As the Tax Policy Center points out, estates with a gross value of under $5.49 million are exempt from the estate tax; more than two-thirds of taxable estates come from the top 10 percent of earners and nearly one-fourth come from the top 1 percent. This means that in 2017, only 80 taxable estates would have qualified as farms and small businesses.

Johnston ran the math for me on trucking companies. His conclusion: The number of trucking businesses that would be helped by estate tax repeal is likely to be around 30 or lower, and that’s being 'very generous,' he said. . .

This use of trucking families as a symbol of the alleged unfairness of the estate tax appears to be something new. For many, many years, Republicans pushing the estate tax have cited the American family farm as a symbol of that unfairness. Going back to at least the George W. Bush administration, the argument has been that estate-tax repeal is necessary to save the family farm and allow it to be transferred to future generations. But as Johnston has written, the notion of the family farm broken up by the estate tax was largely a myth.

Now the family owned trucking business looks like it is on its way to becoming the new family farm. It’s unclear whether Trump will merely argue that estate-tax repeal is good for truckers in some general sense, or whether he will argue more specifically that repeal is necessary to prevent IRS bureaucrats from breaking up the hallowed family-owned trucking business and preventing it from getting passed down to the next generation of hard-working American truckers. But if he does, the administration should be called on this, too.

'Show us the actual cases,' Johnston said. 'This is just another phony claim to protect billionaires from paying taxes on the gains over their lifetime. This is a political scam. Show us the trucking companies that went out of business.'"

Read the Washington Post, This may be Trump’s most insulting scam yet. 

"Conscientious analysts on the right and left may have differences on tax policy, but they agree on one thing: You could not do better than the White House’s proposed tax plan if your intention was to increase the gap between rich and poor. . .

Moreover, if one suspects that Republicans intend to cut domestic programs (as they attempted to do with Medicaid) to partially pay for lopsided tax cuts for the rich, the wealth gap would widen further. Quite simply, taking from the poor and allowing the rich to get richer will widen social and economic stratification. If you think that is a recipe for economic failure, social instability and political extremism, this should concern you greatly.

The blatant sop to the rich also alarms some conservative scholars. At the American Enterprise Institute, Angela Rachidi sees that [low-income families are] entirely excluded from any benefits from the tax plan . . .

And, of course, taking away social services to fund tax cuts that the poor don’t receive adds insult to injury. . .

This isn’t rocket science. It’s simply a matter of whether Republicans want to cement their reputation as self-serving defenders of the rich and powerful or instead want to make good on their supposed philosophy that work is the most essential element in fighting poverty. Unfortunately, in championing the rich over the poor, the party perpetuates the impression that capitalism robs from the poor to reward the rich; that’s not capitalism — its Republicanism in the Trump era."

Read the Washington Post, It pays to be rich in the Trump era.

Read also Trump's Big CON: He Laughs at His Supporters.

Trump's Big CON: Is It the End of the Republi-CONs?, CONt.

UPDATE V:  "Why have our politics gone haywire, why have our political arguments turned so bitter, and why was Donald Trump able to win the Republican nomination and, eventually, the presidency?

A central reason has been the mainstreaming of a style of extremist conservative politics that for decades was regarded as unacceptable by most in the GOP.

The extremist approach is built on a belief in dreadful conspiracies and hidden motives. It indulges the wildest charges aimed at associating political foes with evil and subversive forces. What’s striking about our current moment is that such groundless and reckless accusations have become a routine part of politics — all the way to the top.

Read the Washington Post, The mainstreaming of right-wing extremism.

UPDATE IV:  With Twitter and small donations, can anyone stop The Donald?

Read USA Today, Trump now Twitter's most followed world leader.

Then read the Washington Post, Trump supporters eager to ‘drain the swamp’ help fill Republican Party coffers, which notes "angered by the sense that the president is being treated unfairly, thousands of his loyal backers are helping redefine a party that has long cultivated rich contributors — one small donation at a time."

UPDATE III:  "Republican leaders in Congress are under attack from all sides of their own party, battered by voters from the right and left, spurned by frustrated donors and even threatened by the Trump White House for ineffective leadership and insufficient loyalty.

Since last week, Senate Republicans lost one of their own when Roy S. Moore, the firebrand former state judge, trounced Senator Luther Strange in a Senate runoff in Alabama. The retirement of Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee kicked off a potentially fratricidal fight for his seat, with the establishment’s preferred successor, Gov. Bill Haslam, declining to run on Thursday.

An audiotape surfaced of Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, lambasting Republican leaders and urging conservative donors to close their wallets to lawmakers who are disloyal to President Trump. And a House Republican, Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, was forced to resign this week after a text from his mistress became public in which she mocked him for trumpeting his staunch opposition to abortion as he pressured her to terminate a pregnancy.

Former Representative Michael Grimm of New York has also resurfaced after serving time for felony tax fraud to challenge his Republican successor on Staten Island — with the backing of Mr. Trump’s former strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, who was first elected to Congress in 1978, said he had never seen rank-and-file Republicans so stirred up against the party’s leaders in Congress.

'Right now, the Moore-Bannon faction prevails,' Mr. Shelby said.

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are making no attempt to mask their fear, predicting that failure to pass a tax overhaul in the coming months will lead to a wipeout in next year’s midterm elections. For the first time, some senators are contemplating whether their advantages on the electoral map next year could crumble amid a wave of primary challenges and other departures, putting their two-seat majority in jeopardy next year.

Republicans are increasingly mystified by their own grass roots, an electorate they thought they knew, and distressed that a wave of turnover in their ranks could fundamentally change the character of Congress. They fear that the inchoate populism that Mr. Trump personifies, and which Mr. Bannon is attempting to weaponize against incumbents, is on the march.

Mr. Trump is not helping. . .

All of that indicates that 2018 could bring back the ferocious infighting of the Tea Party insurgency."

Read The New York Times, For Republican Leaders in Congress, the Headaches Keep Mounting.

UPDATE II:  Where would the Republi-CON party be without fear, anger and hate?

And how long can it last?

Read the Washington Post, Trump just pumped his ugly sleaze into the Virginia gubernatorial race.

UPDATE:  "Seven years after Republicans first seized on the unruly rise of the Tea Party as a vehicle for winning elections, GOP leaders are confronting a stark reality: They have lost all control and comprehension of the populist movement they were supposed to be marshaling—and they may soon be facing a mutiny.

The volatile dynamic inside the Republican Party was thrown into sharp relief last week when Roy Moore—a fringe relic of the fading religious right—emerged victorious in Alabama’s GOP Senate primary, defeating the establishment incumbent President Trump had endorsed.

With the dust still settling, many Washington Republicans are mystified—and alarmed—by the fact that not even Donald 'Drain the Swamp' Trump had enough populist cred to swing a primary race to his candidate in deep-red Alabama. While the GOP’s class of professional strategists are generally ambivalent at best when it comes to the president, they had taken a certain comfort in believing that he was fully in command of his base. The assumption allowed them to draw conclusions about what his voters wanted, how to cater to them—and how to avoid drawing their wrath.

But Alabama fully punctured the illusion that Trump was in control. For all the race’s idiosyncrasies—Trump’s endorsement of the more establishment-friendly candidate was uncharacteristic for him, and his support often seemed conflicted—it seemed to reveal that there was a limit to his supporters’ loyalty."

Read The Atlantic, 'Nobody’s in Control'.

"In Alabama’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, Steve Bannon defeated Donald Trump. The state’s GOP voters showed how sharply divided their party is. And right-wing insurgents were given a license to challenge Republican incumbents all over the country in 2018.

Former judge Roy Moore’s victory over Sen. Luther Strange was a sign of just how extreme Republican rank-and-filers have become. Moore, who believes biblical law should override the Constitution, beat Strange 55 percent to 45 percent. Contrast that with the 2006 gubernatorial primary in which then-Gov. Bob Riley trounced Moore by a margin of 2-to-1.

Moore is now 70 years old and was twice suspended as the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to obey laws he saw as at odds with his religious beliefs. Normally all this would be career-ending. But that was before the Age of Trump. “What Donald Trump has done,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, 'is embolden the Roy Moores of the world.' . .

Bannon saw the Alabama contest as an occasion for teaching his former boss a lesson. Trump seems to think that his support base is so loyal to him that it will follow him anywhere. Bannon would beg to differ. He threw his all behind Moore’s candidacy to show that Trump’s movement is attached even more to a rebellious right-wing ideology than it is to the president himself.

Bannon got exactly what he wanted. 'Ironically, given who Trump supported, what got Moore nominated is what got Trump nominated,' said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. 'What’s going on is bigger than Trump, and he is just a vehicle.'

The good news for Bannon is very bad news for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who put millions of dollars behind the campaign to defeat Moore. Strange’s defeat came on the same day that McConnell was forced to back off his latest effort to repeal Obamacare. Taken together, the two events showed how the GOP is fractured several ways at once. . .

Moore’s triumph, in the meantime, presents Democrats with opportunities — and a hard choice. . .

Jones has the potential to be a strong candidate, but some Democratic strategists have counseled against committing substantial resources to a state where successes for their party have been scarce. Advocates of a major undertaking on behalf of Jones see this as precisely why taking on Moore would be worth the gamble. Jones could do in Alabama this year what Republican Scott Brown did in a 2010 special election in Massachusetts: demonstrate the dominant party’s vulnerability going into the midterm elections by capturing a Senate seat far inside opposition territory. A Jones win would also cut the Republicans’ already tough-to-manage Senate majority to a bare 51 seats.

And whatever happens in December, Bannon himself is determined to make the job of Congress’s current GOP leadership as difficult as possible. At an election eve Moore rally, Bannon called out McConnell and Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, by name.

'Your day of reckoning is coming,' Bannon declared.

It’s a statement that also applies to Trump. The message from Alabama is clear; he and his party have unleashed forces they cannot control."

Read the Washington Post, How Steve Bannon just defeated Trump.

So, after whipping them into a frenzy for years (as former House Speaker John Boehner said), what goes around comes around!

The inmates taken over.  

Ain't karma a you-know-what?

:) 

Read also Trump's Big CON: Is It the End of the Republi-CONs?

Trump's BIB CON: He Distracts With Outrage

"Addiction compels you to chase a high that only makes you feel worse; it reduces you to a lesser version of yourself. And you can’t stop because deep down you don’t really want to change.

Too many Americans are controversy junkies. . .

And the dealers know that, rather than endure the misery of withdrawal, the junkies will return again and again for future fixes.

This is a business. An ugly business, but a lucrative one. Controversy, real or manufactured, juices ratings at cable “news” networks. It drives readers to partisan websites and listeners to talk radio. It pumps up speaker fees and inflates book advances. When Russians wanted to mess with the heads of American voters, they trafficked in hyped conflict, Facebook informed Congress this week.

No ignorant remark by a city council member or grade-school teacher concerning guns, God or gays is immune to exploitation. No hurtful graffiti scrawled by drunk teenagers is wiped away without a round of Internet hand-wringing. The oversupply of controversy is bottomless, because some human somewhere is always indulging a thoughtless blurt, and social media seduces us to publish our blurts for the world to overhear.

In better times, our leaders would model a more sober discourse. Unfortunately, President Trump is the El Chapo of addictive controversy, the kingpin of ginned-up division.

So we’re left to get ourselves sober. Switch away from the televised outrage orgies that masquerade as news. Resist the urge to get worked up about stupid stuff that knuckleheads say."

Read the Washington Post, Americans are addicted to outrage.

Trump's Big CON: He is Not Very Smart, CONt.

UPDATE III:  "Bring on the IQ test — Mensa says it’s willing to host President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a battle of the brains."

Read The Hill, Mensa offers to host IQ test for Trump and Tillerson.

UPDATE II:  "President Trump proposed an 'IQ tests' face-off with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after the nation's top diplomat reportedly called the president a “moron” and disparaged his grasp on foreign policy.

In an interview with Forbes magazine published Tuesday, Trump fired a shot at Tillerson over the 'moron' revelation, first reported by NBC News and confirmed by several other news organizations, including The Washington Post.

'I think it's fake news,' Trump said, 'but if he did that, I guess we'll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.'

Trump's dare is the latest evidence of what White House officials have described as a breach of trust between the president and secretary of state."

Read the Washington Post, Trump proposes ‘IQ tests’ face-off with Tillerson after secretary of state calls him a ‘moron’.

As noted before: I've always thought The Donald had an exceptionally high EQ (although I think he misuses it).

And he know how to connect.

Too bad he connects to people only as a CON Man.

UPDATE:  "Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just delivered an unscheduled statement to reporters about 'some news reports this morning that I want to address.'

But while Tillerson went on to dispute one major contention in those 'reports' — that he considered resigning — he directly and pregnantly declined to dispute another one — that he called his boss, President Trump, a 'moron.'

The juxtaposition of those two things was striking, and it leads to basically one logical conclusion: He can't deny it . . . because he said it. . .

This isn't going away, and it's going to color reporting on Tillerson and Trump's relationship for the remainder of Tillerson's time as secretary of state — until he denies it or actually does resign. He might not realize that or have a good answer for it, but it's true."

Read the Washington Post, Rex Tillerson might as well have just admitted he called Trump a ‘moron’.

In fact, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referred to The Donald "as a 'moron,' after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident."

Read NBC News, Tillerson’s Fury at Trump Required an Intervention From Pence.

That said, as noted before: I've always thought The Donald had an exceptionally high EQ (although I think he misuses it).

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Qu'ils Mangent de la Brioche Edition, CONt. Part 2 (AKA The Trump Populism CON, CONt. Part 2)

UPDATE II:  "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s top aide flew on a hedge fund billionaire’s private jet to Palm Beach several months ago, people familiar with the trip said, the latest example of senior Trump administration officials using luxury air travel even though it often raises red flags with ethics officials.

Eli Miller, Mnuchin’s chief of staff, flew with Nelson Peltz, a founding partner of New York-based Trian Fund Management on the trip. Peltz is an activist shareholder who has sought a board seat at Procter & Gamble, seeking to shake up management. He has spoken glowingly about Trump's proposal to slash tax rates on businesses and the wealthy, which is something designed in large part by senior Treasury officials. . .

Hedge funds often have interest in the Treasury Department’s operations, as Treasury has a unique influence over the White House’s decisions related to financial markets, debt decisions and new policy proposals."

Read the Washington Post, Hedge fund billionaire flew top Mnuchin aide on private jet to Palm Beach.

UPDATE:  "The inspector general for the Interior Department has opened an investigation into Secretary Ryan Zinke’s travel during seven months in office, from his use of taxpayer-funded charter and military planes to his mixing of official trips with political appearances. . .

'It’s not just one trip,' [Nancy K. DiPaolo, a spokesperson for Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall] said. 'It’s seven months of travel.' . .

Zinke, a former Navy SEAL commander and former congressman from Montana, is one of several Trump administration Cabinet secretaries whose travel is under scrutiny. Tom Price, another former member of Congress who was Secretary of Health and Human Services, resigned Friday after taking at least $400,000 in chartered flights at taxpayer expense. The watchdog for the Environmental Protection Agency also is investigating agency head Scott Pruitt’s frequent travels to his home state of Oklahoma.

In June, Zinke and his staff chartered a four-hour private flight from Las Vegas to near his home in Montana aboard a plane owned by executives of a Wyoming oil-and-gas firm, aviation and business records show.

The flight cost taxpayers $12,375, according to an Interior Department spokeswoman. Commercial airlines run daily flights between the two airports and charge as little as $300."

Read the Washington Post, Federal watchdog opens probe into travel by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Another MUST READ: the Washington Post, Of course Tom Price shouldn’t have to fly coach!, which states in full:

"For Tom Price, the price is right.

The fake-news media is attacking our hard-working secretary of health and human services. First, those losers at Politico reported that Price took $60,000 in charter flights, including a $25,000 flight to Philadelphia, apparently at taxpayer expense. Politico pointed out that a train to and from Philly cost $72.

The clear implication: Price is not worth the additional $24,928 of taxpayer money. Wrong!

Sure, a train would have gotten him there nearly as quickly. But we can’t have the nation’s top health official risking an unhygienic Amtrak bathroom.

Now, Politico is reporting that Price took a government-funded private jet to a resort in Georgia where he owns land, and to Nashville, where his son lives. As if there’s something wrong with this.

It’s impossible for Price to fly commercial, because that could expose him to the unwashed masses — and nobody wants a repeat of what happened in West Virginia when a reporter had to be arrested for asking Price a question. Also, as one of the lower net-worth individuals in President Trump’s Cabinet (only $14 million, so little he can’t afford to dye his eyebrows gray to match the rest of his hair), Price needs the subsidized travel, just as he needed to enhance his meager congressional pay by trading stocks of health-care companies that had interests in legislation he pushed.

The persecution of Trump officials by the media does not stop with Price. They carp about Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin trying to use a government plane for his European honeymoon and flying on a government plane with his wife to Kentucky on solar-eclipse day. They natter about EPA chief Scott Pruitt securing round-the-clock security for himself as he shrinks the rest of the agency and having a $25,000 soundproof booth built in his office. (The noise of fired bureaucrats cleaning out desks can be quite distracting.) They moan about Trump officials using their offices to promote Ivanka Trump’s shoes and Mnuchin’s 'Lego Batman' movie. They whine about the hundreds of millions of dollars being paid to Trump properties by foreign countries, the Pentagon, the Secret Service and more.

The critics just don’t get it. For America to dream big, its leaders must live large. Rich people are the smartest people, and to lure the best into government service, you have to entice them — with more riches. Besides, after Mnuchin gets Trump’s tax cut through Congress, all Americans will be able to afford charter planes.

It is time that we drain the swamp of 'watchdogs' at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Send those namby-pambies back to Nambia.

Few appreciate the sacrifice these public servants make. 'Dude U have no idea!' Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb wrote in an email to a restaurateur who was worried about losing his health insurance. 'I walked away from $4 million annually to do this, had to sell my entire retirement account for major capital losses.'

The horror! This is why I’m not worried about Trump officials taking taxpayer-funded gratuities.

I have no objection to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos being guarded by U.S. marshals for an extra $1 million a month or so. With grizzly bears attacking public schools, it’s only a matter of time before they go after her.

I think the EPA’s inspector general should mind his own business and stop probing those government-funded trips that took Pruitt home to Oklahoma for 43 days over three months.

I’m not troubled by Trump White House official Christopher Liddell meeting with CEOs of 18 companies in his personal stock portfolio.

I don’t believe it’s anybody’s business that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was getting money from Russia.

I don’t lose sleep over Jared Kushner’s family using his Trump ties to lure Chinese real estate investors.

I’m okay with China granting copyrights to Ivanka’s fashion brand on the same day the Chinese and American presidents dined.

I don’t care if Trump releases his tax returns; or if he divests himself of his businesses; or if he touts his properties during official appearances; or if federal political committees spend lavishly at the Trump properties; or if Trump’s administration is paying Trump’s businesses for space at his properties; or if foreign powers splurge at D.C.’s Trump International, leased to Trump by the federal government.

I’m with Mnuchin’s wife, actress Louise Linton, who posted a social media photo of her getting off a military jet. Her caption noted her Hermès scarf, Tom Ford sunglasses and Valentino shoes. When one taxpayer complained, Linton shot back: 'Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband?'

Exactly!

It is high time we held government to a lower standard."

Trump's Big CON: The Family is a Criminal Racket

As a customer once said: "'Goldman Sachs is a racketeering entity that does whatever they can to make a dime without conscience, thought, foresight or care about ramifications.'"

The same could be said of the Trump family.

Read ProPublica, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. Were Close to Being Charged With Felony Fraud, which explains in great detail that "New York prosecutors were preparing a case. Then the D.A. overruled his staff after a visit from a top donor: Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz."

Trump's Big CON: Thank You Dear Leader (AKA Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man (CONt., Part 16))

"Do President Trump’s Cabinet members have to call him 'Dear Leader' when graced by his august presence? Must they enter the Oval Office on bended knee? Do they weep with joy when he reaches out a delicate hand and pats their bowed heads?

One of the most appalling aspects of the Trump presidency is the sycophancy he requires of the officials who serve him. Trump demands not just loyalty but flattery, too. He insists that his courtiers treat his pronouncements, however absurd or offensive, as infallible holy writ. Members of his Cabinet have made a humiliating bargain: humor him, suck up to him, and maybe — just maybe — he will leave you alone and let you make policy. . .

Cabinet members have made their peace with the Sun King’s demand for unctuous deference. . .

What these officials don’t seem to fully grasp is that their policy initiatives can be undercut by the president at any time, and probably will. Look at budget director Mick Mulvaney, who has big ideas about shrinking government and the deficit. He didn’t anticipate having to wipe away Puerto Rico’s debt, which Trump offhandedly promised to do.

Someday we may look back and thank these officials for standing between our nation and the abyss. For now, I suppose they will continue telling Trump how strong he is, how wise, how special. Why, did you see him tossing those rolls of paper towels in Puerto Rico? Magnificent! The ungrateful NBA star Stephen Curry, who still is not invited to the White House, can only dream of such form!"

Read the Washington Post, Loyalty to Trump isn’t enough.

Trump's Big CON: The Donald is a Russian Agent, CONt. Part 3

Putin's "goal is to sow division in America."

And The Donald is his agent.

Read the Washington Post, Senator: Russian trolls using NFL debate to sow discord.

Trump's Big CON: You Are Free to Speak, As Long As You Agree With Me

UPDATE:  Apparently the President called and ordered NFL players to stand during the anthem.

"The president was really throwing around his weight and meant business about the national anthem protests.

In addition to tweeting his feelings on the matter, President Donald Trump also called Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones multiple times Monday ahead of the team’s game with the Arizona Cardinals on 'Monday Night Football' to talk about the protests, according to a report.

NBC Dallas Fort Worth’s Jean-Jacques Taylor reports the news:

Jean-Jacques Taylor @JJT_Journalist

2 sources told @nbcdfw President Trump blew up Jerry’s cell Mon calling him 4 times throughout the day to talk about anthem stuff. Wow.
7:02 PM - Sep 27, 2017

Jones and the Cowboys ended up on somewhat of a compromise with respect to their handling of the anthem. The entire team kneeled in unity prior to the anthem, then rose and stood for the entire song."

Read MSN, Report: Donald Trump called Jerry Jones multiple times about anthem protest.

The Donald is a man without principles who demands personal allegiance, and otherwise you better stay quite or else.

Recently the campaign for loyalty to Trump continued when "Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered an extraordinarily dystopian speech at Georgetown Law’s Center for the Constitution . .

Trump is not alone in using his administration’s position and power to pressure private companies to fire employees who express political views contrary to his, or critical of him. Earlier this month, his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in the White House briefing room that ESPN sportscaster Jemele Hill’s tweet that Trump is a white supremacist 'is a fireable offense.'

Such abuse of the office of the president to call for the silencing and firing of private individuals is the real threat to free expression — one that is far more serious a threat than that posed by college students or public university administrators. . .

Sessions’s speech Tuesday strained to portray the national state of play as one in which conservatives are the victims of constitutional deprivations at the hands of liberals who demand conformity of thought, adherence to orthodoxy and unquestioning loyalty to the cause.

It might be tempting, under these circumstances, to dismiss Sessions’s remarks as mere hypocrisy. But they were far, far worse than that. They were deliberately aimed at misleading the public about whose rights are under more serious attack — and who is doing the attacking. His remarks were clearly calculated to portray certain people (conservatives) as victims of suppression of free speech, and certain people (liberals) as the perpetrators of that suppression. Given his position as the top law enforcement official in the nation, this is alarming, as Sessions is prejudging the motivations and rights of certain categories of people.

Sessions’s manipulations did not end there. He also had the audacity to invoke Martin Luther King Jr. 'Indeed, it was the power of Dr. King’s words that crushed segregation and overcame the violence of the segregationists,' he said. 'At so many times in our history as a people, it was speech — and still more speech — that led Americans to a more just, more perfect union.'

What makes this particularly galling is that speech protesting the injustice of racism is at the very core of the protests by the football players, which Trump has been attacking. They are protesting systemic racism, racist police brutality, racist sentencing laws and the incarceration state.

This, of course, is a viewpoint Sessions has spent his career opposing. . .

After his speech, Sessions was asked about the NFL controversy. 'Well, the president has free speech rights, too,' Sessions said, making clear that he would not dare cross the president. 'I agree there’s a big mistake to protest in that fashion, because it weakens the commitment we have that has provided us this freedom,' he added.

In other words, in Sessions’s telling, the 'big mistake' the players make is not conforming to the president’s view of what is patriotic, even though Sessions had only moments earlier decried universities as an 'echo chamber' of 'homogeneous thought.'"

Read the Washington Post, Jeff Sessions’s appallingly cynical defense of free speech.

Trump's Great Strength: He Knows How to Connect to People, Unfortunately Only As a CON Man

As noted before: I've always thought The Donald had an exceptionally high EQ (although I think he misuses it).

And he know how to connect.

Too bad he connects to people only as a CON Man.

Read the Washington Post, Trump has picked fights over the flag before. But this time was different., which notes:

"As a businessman, Donald Trump erected unauthorized flagpoles on his properties to embarrass local officials who were trying to uphold zoning ordinances. As a presidential candidate, he told the first football player who sat in protest during the national anthem to 'find another country.' And as president-elect, he attempted unsuccessfully to revive the decades-old debate about the constitutionality of flag burning, after a single incident at a small college in Massachusetts.

So when he decided, out of the blue, to attack the National Football League over its players’ protests during the national anthem, the resulting controversy followed a well-worn formula. What was different, however, was the enormous backlash that his comments created — far larger than any of those previous incidents combined.

Trump attacked an enormously popular sport whose fans prefer it to be a politics-free arena, while once again touching on the raw nerve of race. In so doing, the president proved anew that divisive provocations can mean something completely different when they come not from a private citizen, but the man whose very job description is to lead the country.

'Most presidents believe that a big part of their job is to keep the country together,' said Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, who noted that even Richard M. Nixon spoke of bringing the nation together during his 1969 inauguration. 'There is very little sign that Donald Trump has much of an idea that unifying this country has much to do with being president. He just hasn’t shown it.'

Trump credits his ability to see and exploit cracks in American society as the key to his political success. During the campaign, he praised his gut instinct in latching onto fears about Muslim refugees and Hispanic immigration as the key to his victory in the Republican primary, comparing it to his ability to predict successful real estate investments.

'I understand people,' he said before another rally in Alabama in 2015. 'I’ve made a lot of money because of people, because deals aren’t anything other than people.' . .

Trump’s political strategy appears to be following the logic of other national firestorms he has prompted: take a stand for a position that brings into clear relief the divide between himself and those who he describes as unpatriotic elites. He uses the controversy to dominate the news cycle, position himself as a strong leader and demonstrate that he is fighting for regular working Americans nostalgic for an earlier time in the country’s history. . .

Trump’s longtime instincts tend to come to the fore when he is looking to distract from other issues. Shortly after his attorney general recused himself from the Russia investigation, Trump decided to rattle the government with a false claim that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. The most recent attack on the NFL came as he stares down two potential blows to his presidency this week, the likely failure of another Senate plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and a special primary election in Alabama, where his chosen candidate, Strange, continues to trail in the polls."

So, The Donald understands how to manipulate people, but he can't control himself, and use his skill for any good purpose.

Trump's Big CON: "He's So Pretty", Hurricane Maria Edition (AKA Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man (CONt., Part 15))

UPDATE III:  Another MUST READ: the Washington Post, A Narcissist’s Guide to Helping Others Understand It Is All About You, which states in full:

"Excerpted from 'The Me-Driven Life: A Narcissist’s Guide to Helping Others Understand It Is All About You,' by John Barron.

Reprinted without permission.

Chapter 12, 'Coping with Natural and Man-Made Disasters,' pp 269-277

Natural disasters and their man-made counterparts (mass shootings, terrorist attacks) pose an obvious challenge for those living the Me-Driven Life. These events are frustrating, and inconvenient, because they tend to cause those people to think about their own problems: their injuries, the loss of loved ones, their hunger, thirst, discomfort, life-threatening cholera, what have you.

This is a common character flaw, and it is harmful because it distracts them from their more pressing obligation to think about you.

It is likely that this loss of perspective is temporary, but even a temporary loss of focus on you is dangerous. It must be arrested and reversed as quickly as possible. You can help these people by getting them to stop thinking about their own concerns and to redirect such destructive thoughts. Here are a few practical steps to return others’ focus to where it appropriately belongs.

First, show them what extraordinary things you are doing for them. Use adjectives such as 'great,' 'amazing' and 'incredible' frequently when referring to the work you have done. Some examples: 'I think it’s now acknowledged what a great job we’ve done.' 'We get an A-plus.' 'We have done an incredible job.' Don’t be afraid to tell them the work you and those who work for you have done 'is really nothing short of a miracle.'

Be sure to highlight those who affirm you and your centrality to the situation. This positive reinforcement encourages others to drop thoughts of themselves in favor of thoughts about you. If somebody praises you, say, 'He started right at the beginning appreciating what we did,' or, 'He was saying it like it was, and he was giving us the highest grades.'

If somebody has praised you, you might even try to get that person to repeat the praise in front of an audience. Note that the person has said 'such nice things' about you and suggest, 'Jenniffer, do you think you can say a little bit of what you said about us today?' If Jenniffer does as requested, encourage others to do the same by saying, 'I saw those comments, and everybody saw those comments, and we really appreciate it.'

Visual aids can help. If people need food, for example, don’t just hand out bags of rice and paper towels. Make a show of it! Toss supplies through the air as if shooting baskets. If people gather at the scene of disaster, make them all appear to be your fans simply by saying 'What a crowd!' or 'What a turnout!'

The sad fact is, when a disaster causes somebody to dwell on his or her pain or loss, they are not capable of fulfilling their obligation to you. They must be jolted back to reality. Tell them what they are going through is not a 'real catastrophe.' Tell them the death count is low, or say their disaster doesn’t measure up to other disasters. Telling them to 'have a good time' and letting them know 'you don’t need' emergency supplies will help them realize their catastrophe is not as central to them as you are. To the extent they believe they are suffering, you need to convince them that this is only because they are not helping YOU. Say, 'They have to give us more help,' or, 'They want everything to be done for them.'

Don’t hesitate to remind others of your importance to them. Say that everything you’re spending to help them has 'thrown our budget a little out of whack.' Remind them that they 'owe a lot of money' and 'we’re going to have to wipe that out.'

Never forget that what should matter to them most is you: your role, your experience, your needs. If they have suffered loss, tell them that 'it’s a very, very sad day for me, personally.' After consoling people, say that 'it was really something that I enjoyed very much.' Try to mention some association you have with the place: a business transaction you made, something you own, a victory you won. Offer them what they want most — an invitation to visit you.

If you employ these techniques, you will find that you can successfully divert others’ attention from whatever 'catastrophe' distracts them — and back where it belongs. When you depart the scene of tragedy, you will be able to say: 'I think it means a lot to the people . . . that I was there.' And you will mean it."

FYI, John Barron contacted the media and claimed to be a spokesman for The Donald, but was actually Donald Trump himself.

UPDATE II:  "In the Aesop’s Fables tale of the frog and the scorpion, the frog asks why the scorpion stings him as the frog carries the scorpion across the river, thereby dooming both of them to death. 'It’s my nature,' replies the scorpion. So it is with President Trump, who can only be true to his nature, despite its dire consequences.

A day after playing the role of healer in a teleprompter-read statement about the Las Vegas shooting, Trump went to Puerto Rico. Before leaving, he rapped the islanders’ knuckles: 'On a local level, they have to give us more help.' For himself, he had only praise: 'But I will tell you, the first responders, the military, FEMA, they have done an incredible job in Puerto Rico.'

His frail ego demands constant stroking. 'I think it’s now acknowledged what a great job we’ve done, and people are looking at that,' he said. 'And in Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus. And I’ll tell you what, I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico, and it’s actually a much tougher situation. But now the roads are cleared, communications is starting to come back. We need their truck drivers to start driving trucks.' He insisted that the San Juan mayor who criticized the federal response has 'come back a long way.'

Once in Puerto Rico, he sounded like an unfeeling, bitter man, one at the mercy of his own grudges and resentments . .

He thought it was funny to chide Puerto Rico for its financial needs. (“I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack.”)

The visit was off-key, cringe-worthy and embarrassing (for those capable of embarrassment). It did him no political good, serving only to break his 'streak' of one day in a row of acceptable public rhetoric. The visit was in every respect true to Trump’s nature. He can read a script but not generate his own genuine empathy; he is always the worst victim in any disaster — but also the superhero. He is incapable of rising to a situation, eschewing partisanship, displaying magnanimity or demonstrating empathy.

He simply cannot be allowed to improvise without risking another demonstration of his deeply warped character." 

Read the Washington Post, It is Trump’s nature

As I've said before, I think The Donald lacks the ability to empathize.

UPDATE:  "'Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico,' President Trump said during his visit to the hurricane-devastated island on Tuesday, 'but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack, because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico.' Sensing that his attempt at humor had gone awry, he then added, 'And that’s fine.' . .

[And] it makes no sense. One congressional aide estimated that the federal government would eventually have to spend as much as $30 billion over the long term to help Puerto Rico recover. Over the short term, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan pledged $6.7 billion.

This is not a lot of money, in comparison with the federal budget. This year, the government will outlay $4 trillion, which means that what’s being spent in Puerto Rico over the short term is the equivalent of someone who makes $50,000 a year spending $84.

For another, the comments come as the White House is trying to make the case for why government revenue should be slashed — in the form of doing things like dropping the corporate tax rate and eliminating the estate tax. That latter tax generated $19.3 billion in 2014. Eliminating it, in other words, would 'throw the budget out of whack' three times as badly as the money spent to assist Puerto Rico over the short term.

For a third, he also spent time during his remarks praising each branch of the military — even bragging about how much the government is spending on a new fighter aircraft.

'An amazing job,' he said of the Air Force’s aid in Puerto Rico and on the Gulf Coast. 'So amazing, that we’re ordering hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new airplanes for the Air Force, especially the F-35.' He then boasted about how hard to detect the plane was. 'That’s an expensive plane, that you can’t see,' he said. 'As you probably heard, we cut the price very substantially. Something that other administrations would never have done, that I can tell you.'

The most recent estimate is that the F-35 program will cost the government $406.5 billion — 13 times what it will cost to rebuild Puerto Rico.

Read the Washington Post, Trump ribs Puerto Rico for costing the government money (by being destroyed).

Did anybody hear a similar remark after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas?

Why now?

"In President Trump's first public remarks in Puerto Rico, he shed almost no light on the federal response to the crisis there. What he did do was praise himself, tell the hurricane-ravaged island that it was putting the U.S. federal budget “out of whack,” and — perhaps most questionably — compare death counts between Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Katrina.

It was a characteristically Trump performance: offbeat, impromptu, meandering and often highly suspect in its taste. Toward the end, Trump brought up the Katrina comparison, suggesting it — unlike Maria in Puerto Rico — was a 'real catastrophe.'"

Read the Washington Post, Heckuva job, me: Trump just favorably compared Puerto Rico’s death toll to Katrina.

Trump's Big CON: Stay Calm, It Was Just an Old White Guy Committing Mass Murder

UPDATE IV:  Read the Daily Mail, If a Muslim terrorist had committed this Vegas atrocity we'd have a slew of new laws in a heartbeat. But because it's an old white guy with guns NOTHING will happen.

UPDATE III:  "Pre-presidential Trump was a man of many faults and vices, but one endearing quality: He was no hypocrite. He exaggerated his wealth, his success, his physical fitness, but he never pretended to religion or morality.

Trump’s speech to the nation after the Las Vegas atrocity, however, was steeped in hypocrisy. He is the least outwardly religious president of modern times, the president least steeped in scripture. For him to offer the consolations of God and faith after mass bloodletting is to invite derision. “'It is love that defines us,' said President Trump, and if we weren’t heartbroken, we would laugh. . .

But whereas Vice President Pence could have pronounced those words with sincerity, or a convincing simulacrum thereof, Donald Trump looked shifty, nervous, and false. Speeches are watched as well as heard, and the viewer saw a president who wished he were somewhere else because he had been compelled to pretend something so radically false to his own nature.

For once, Trump read the speech exactly as written. Perhaps his aides talked him into it. Because Trump is not a good reader, he read the speech wrong. And because it sounded wrong, he looked bad.

Nevertheless, Trump had to say something. He is the president. At times of national mourning, it falls to him to speak on the nation’s behalf. What could he possibly have said instead? . .

So advice to Team Trump: You can’t make him better, and you can’t make him different. Let him be the man he is, just tidied up a little. Cut the God talk. It’s insulting to those who believe, and no comfort to those who grieve. Cut the appeal to national unity; it rings false from a president who just two days ago was accusing homeless hurricane victims of looking for a handout. Trump voters—there are still many of those—liked it that with him, what you saw was what you got. Be real. Be true. Even Donald Trump must have something authentically human within him. Unearth that, and let it speak. He will never be a compassionate man, but even he cannot be so thoroughly empty and remote as he seemed today."

Read The Atlantic, A Presidential Speech Steeped in Hypocrisy.

UPDATE II:  "In recent years, gunmen have shot up fast-food restaurants, post offices, military installations, a movie theatre, a holiday party, a night club, a health clinic, a congressional softball game, churches, high schools, colleges, an elementary school. Three weeks ago, someone killed eight people at a football-watching party in Plano, Texas. You didn’t hear about it because eight gun deaths barely register as a national news story anymore.

But the most horrific mass shootings force Washington’s political élite to respond. Trump addressed the public just before eleven on Monday morning, and he read haltingly from a teleprompter in the Diplomatic Reception Room, where F.D.R. once calmed Depression- and Second World War-era America with his fireside chats.

It was not Trump’s worst public performance. He stayed on script, and read a short and well-crafted statement without making any bizarre Trumpian asides. But it was a classic of the 'thoughts and prayers' model in that it offered no promise of a policy response whatsoever."

Read The New Yorker, Washington’s Ritualized Response to Mass Shootings.

UPDATE:  BTW, The Donald first tweet after the mass murder was: “My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!”

I thought it odd, I haven't been able to find common use of the phrase "warmest condolences".

As I've said before, I think The Donald lacks the ability to empathize.

The Donald spoke calmly, if not robotically, from a prepared script.

"Out of the Las Vegas carnage, however, Trump identified no clear villain. He issued no call to action. A president typically quick to make black-and-white declarations spoke instead in shades of gray.

Trump long ago conditioned both his supporters and detractors to expect him to do the unexpected in the face of tragedy — and time and again, he has capitalized on terror to advance his agenda.

After a bomb attack on a train in London in September, Trump called for a 'far larger, tougher and more specific' travel ban and condemned the person responsible as a 'loser terrorist,' well before London authorities had declared that terrorism was the cause.

When an indebted gambler assaulted a Manila casino in June, killing dozens by starting a fire, Trump called the event 'terrorism' at the White House, even though local police later said the attack was a robbery attempt unconnected to terrorism.

During his campaign, Trump made the shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., which was carried out by Islamic radicals, a centerpiece of his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. 'I would handle it so tough, you don’t want to hear,' he boasted days after the attack.

And Trump reacted to the shooting at an Orlando nightclub with self-praise, suggesting that the incident was a symptom of weak Democratic policies. 'Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism,' he tweeted the day after.

But the Las Vegas massacre was different, both because investigators have found no evidence linking the shooter to a terrorist organization and because he was a white American, as opposed to a Muslim immigrant.

The emerging facts prevented Trump from following his typical playbook — to rally his supporters against Islamic extremism while speaking and tweeting in a combative, even belligerent tone to try to project strength and resolve.

Rather, Trump uttered just 574 words on Monday and tried to play the role of uniter."

Read the Washington Post, Another tragedy but a new tone: Trump calls for unity after Las Vegas massacre, which noted that "'You compare Trump to other presidents when they’ve seen tragedies in this country, be it from natural phenomenon or from disturbed or troubled people, and he just seems so remote and removed from the suffering,' presidential historian Robert Dallek said. 'He just demonstrates such a lack of compassion and understanding for the troubles of those who are in greatest need and are limited by their circumstances.'"

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Twitter Edition, CONt. (AKA The Trump Populism CON, CONt. Part 2)

UPDATE:  Advice The Donald will never follow:  "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."

From Proverbs 17:28: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

"Increasingly . . . Trump’s bloody-minded jihad against the NFL must be seen as an attempt to distract from something far more dangerous to Trump: the malfeasance of his Cabinet and White House staff.

Trump loves to recall his presidential campaign, so he should remember that he campaigned on two themes: draining the swamp and Hillary Clinton’s sense of entitlement. His administration was ostensibly going to be above the cozy perquisites of power of previous administrations. Team Trump would swear off the arbitrary application of rules to others but not to themselves. Trump’s inaugural address blasted how 'The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country,' and declared: 'January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.'

Let’s just review how this populist project has been going in the past two weeks:

    Politico has reported on Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s love affair with chartered planes. This apparently started due to a canceled commercial flight because of inclement weather, but grew to be such a habit that Price charted a plane to fly from Dulles International Airport to Philadelphia. Which is nuts. The reports are so bad that Price was forced to acknowledge that “the optics in some of this don’t look good” and suspend the practice. Price’s allergy to commercial travel is so bad that even this White House is distancing itself.

    Price is hardly the only Cabinet official to demand travel perquisites. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is being investigated for using a government plane to fly to Fort Knox to possibly obtain a primo view of last month’s solar eclipse. Mnuchin also started the paperwork to request a military plane to fly him to Europe for his honeymoon. He also used a government plane to fly from New York back to Washington after Trump’s news conference at Trump Tower. Mnuchin has insisted that he needed these aircraft for secure national security communications. As a former Treasury employee, let’s just say that I doubt that assertion. Oh, and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt is facing a similar investigation into his frequent travel back to his home state of Oklahoma.

    We learned from Politico that Jared Kushner set up a private email account and occasionally used that account to conduct official business with other White House officials. We learned from Newsweek that Ivanka Trump did the same thing. And then the New York Times reported that at least six White House staffers did something similar. That includes this priceless anecdote: “Most of Mr. Trump’s aides used popular commercial email services like Gmail. Mr. Kushner created a domain, IJKFamily.com, in December to host his family’s personal email.”

So, to sum up: Trump’s Cabinet officers sure seem to be enjoying the perquisites of power, and the Trump White House thinks that the rules do not apply to them in the same way they claimed the rules did not apply to the Clintons. . .

During the transition there were fierce debates among journalists about how to cover Trump’s Twitter feed. Politico’s Jack Shafer argued that it was a massive misdirection engine from real stories. Others argued that it would be inappropriate to ignore them. Eight months into his administration, I think the epiphany should be obvious to everyone. Sure, maybe Trump is trying to pick and choose Twitter fights that he thinks he can win. However, there is too much malfeasance and incompetency to deflect.

If I were Trump I would be tweeting about the NFL, too. I would be tweeting about anything that distracted people from my administration, which has accomplished nothing populist in its first eight months. But no Twitter account, no matter how provocative, can distract from the entitled, God-awful mess that is Trump’s presidency."

Read the Washington Post, The president is going to need a bigger Twitter account.

Trump's Big CON: He is The Middle School Bully President, CONt.

UPDATE:  "Meghan McCain posted an angry and emotional tweet Wednesday in response to a report that President Trump has been 'physically mocking' her father, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

'What more must my family be put through right now?' she asked, as her father struggles with an aggressive form of brain cancer. 'This is abhorrent.' . .

Trump has a history of taking digs at John McCain. His comment in July 2015 that John McCain is 'not a war hero' because he got captured sparked national outrage.

John McCain, a former Navy pilot, spent more than five years as a prisoner of war after being shot down over North Vietnam. During that time he was tortured and spent two years in solitary confinement. Poor medical treatment in prison left John McCain unable to raise his arms above his shoulders."

USA Today, Meghan McCain appalled by report Trump mocked her dad. 

"In private, President Trump has taken to physically mocking M&M: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (slumped shoulders; lethargic body language) and Sen. John McCain (imitating the thumbs-down of his historic health-care vote).

Trump is venting about his frustration with what he considers failed leadership by Senate Republicans as he takes his lumps this week in wars with, well, everyone".

Read Axios, Trump, at war with everyone, mocks McCain, McConnell.

You might remember: "McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years until his release on March 14, 1973.  His wartime injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head."

Maybe his wife should have a talk with him.

Read the Washington Post, Melania Trump condemns bullying — and raises some eyebrows — in her first U.N. speech.

Read also Trump's Big CON: He is The Middle School Bully President.

Trump & The Repuli-CON's Big CON: Fiscal Responsibility, CONt.

"The United States' debt topped $20 trillion for the first time ever in September. If some Republican senators get their wish, it will grow even more.

Senate Republicans have tentatively agreed to a budget deal that would allow them to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut. The catch is they aren't proposing spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere to pay for it. That means the nation's debt could increase by $1.5 trillion or more over the next decade. . .

The deal is even more remarkable, given that Republicans railed for years about how much money President Barack Obama (and President George W. Bush before him) added to the debt."

Read the Washington Post, The United States just hit $20 trillion in debt. Republicans have a plan to make it worse.

Trump's Big CON: He Laughs at His Supporters

UPDATE II:  "The only thing today’s Republican Party knows how to do is cut taxes for the very rich.

It’s depressing because the GOP has abandoned roles it once played in our public life: pioneering programs aimed at assisting Americans of modest means in lifting themselves up, and supporting productive government investments that the private sector was unlikely to undertake.

The party of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell has abandoned the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, who championed the Homestead Act and land-grant colleges; Teddy Roosevelt, who protected vast tracts of nature on behalf of future generations; and Dwight Eisenhower, who pushed for student loans and the Interstate Highway System.

The heirs to Honest Abe, TR and Ike seem to believe in only one thing: throwing vast quantities of money at the already wealthy. And they have the nerve to pretend that they aren’t really trying to further enrich the moneyed classes. They claim that comforting the comfortable will someday, really and truly, help working people by creating jobs and economic growth.

They pretend a lot of other things, too. They say their goal is to 'simplify' the tax system, so they reduce the number of individual income-tax brackets to three. Isn’t it funny that in their “simplification,” the tax rate for the richest among us (people earning more than $418,400 a year) would drop from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, but the tax rate for the poorest (those earning less than $9,325 a year) actually would go up , from 10 percent to 12 percent?

The GOP apparently believes that taxing the poor is part of the recipe for growth. Now there is an innovative idea. . .

For eight months, Republicans told us repeatedly that they would enact a tax bill. Yet they still can’t show us the whole thing.

In fact, for a large swath of the middle and upper-middle classes, this is not a tax cut at all, but a tax increase. Using the details available, the Tax Policy Center concluded that nearly a third of taxpayers with incomes between $50,000 and $150,000 would see their taxes go up, as would a majority of those making between $150,000 and $300,000.

There is much that is very bad here, but perhaps the most insidious aspect of the bill is the part that might be called the Punish Our Opponents Tax Act of 2017.

To pay for their tax cuts for the rich, Republicans propose to make the tax code 'fairer' by getting rid of the deduction that people can take for the taxes they pay to state and local governments. Republicans rail against “double taxation” of income when it comes to capital gains. But they have no problem with double taxation when it hurts taxpayers in states that ask their citizens to pay a bit more to provide decent public services and stronger social safety nets.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, the states with the largest deductions for state and local taxes as a percentage of adjusted gross income are New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California and Maryland. All voted against Trump. . .

Naturally, a tax proposal designed to pamper the super-rich does exactly that for a man named Donald Trump. The New York Times estimated his savings at about $1 billion. But his refusal to release his tax returns conveniently clouds how much he’ll get.":

Read the Washington Post,

UPDATE: "President Trump and congressional Republicans keep saying their tax plan doesn't help the rich. But that's not true. . .

In fact, in nine pages, The Washington Post counts at least nine ways the wealthy benefit, including Trump himself. Here's our list:

1) A straight-up tax cut for the rich. . .

2) The estate tax goes bye-bye. . .

3) Hedge funds and lawyers get a special tax break. . .

4) The AMT is over. . .

5) The wealthy get to keep deducting mortgage interest. . .

6) Stockholders are going to be very happy. . .

7) The favorite tax break of hedge fund billionaires is still safe. . .

8) Capital gains taxes stay low. . .

9) The Obamacare investment tax goes away. . .

When reporters asked Trump whether the tax plan would help him personally, he quickly said no. . .

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), who was part of the team that worked with the White House to craft the tax-overhaul outline, was asked a similar question on Fox News. He, too, said this plan does little to help the rich.

'I think those who benefit most are middle-class families struggling to keep every dollar they earn,' Brady told Fox News.

But one look at this plan tells a very different story. It gives an outright tax cut to the wealthiest Americans and it preserves almost all of the most popular loopholes they use to reduce their tax bills.

Read the Washington Post, 9 ways Trump’s tax plan is a gift to the rich, including himself.

"The term 'deplorables' survives today in our political lexicon as a kind of sarcastic badge of honor that President Trump’s supporters pin on themselves. When self-applied by the likes of Stephen K. Bannon, it serves as a device to feed the narrative that liberal elite criticism of Trump — including the argument that he is scamming his own voters — signifies nothing but cultural contempt for Trump’s America. Trump supporters won’t let supercilious liberal disdain weaken their conviction that Trump is the one who is really on their side, dammit!

But a host of new developments underscore with fresh clarity that if anyone views Trump supporters with profound contempt, it’s Trump and his advisers — and that liberals are right to point out that he is actively trying to fleece them. Consider:

    Trump’s new tax plan eliminates the estate tax, which he has justified by claiming that it would help 'millions of small businesses and the American farmer.' That’s a paean to his small-business and rural base. But as the Post fact-checking team points out, this is absurd: Because only the very top estates get targeted, a mere 80 such estates that would get hit by the tax in 2017 count as small businesses and farms. However, Trump’s family would benefit bigly, because his estimated net worth is in the billions. . .

    Trump’s new tax plan eliminates the alternative minimum tax. As Linda Qiu explains, this 'largely impacts people making between $200,000 and $1 million. Without this tax, Mr. Trump would have paid $31 million less in taxes in 2005, according to his tax return that year, which was disclosed on the ‘Rachel Maddow Show’ in March.'

    The mere fact that Trump would benefit from his tax plan does not itself mean he is scamming his supporters. Rather, the key here is that Trump is lying to them about this point. Trump says this about his plan: 'It’s not good for me, believe me.' But not only would he benefit, Trump also still won’t release his tax returns, which would actually allow us to evaluate how his plan would affect him and his family. Trump doesn’t want his voters (or any voters) to be able to do this. Trump is simply assuming that his voters will believe him (or he doesn’t care whether they do or not), even though he’s lying to them.

    Trump claims his tax plan will not benefit 'the wealthy and well-connected' and will protect 'low-income and middle-income households.' But a new analysis by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities undercuts both claims. Trump’s plan would also lower the top marginal income tax rate from 39.6 to 35 percent, lower the rate on 'pass-through' businesses to 20 percent and cut the corporate rate from 35 to 20 percent. The CBPP analysis concludes that 50 percent of the net tax cuts in his plan’s framework would go to the top 1 percent of earners and that the impact on middle-class families would negligible at best. . . Trump’s empty promise to his working- and middle-class supporters is being used to sell tax cuts that will likely shower large benefits on the wealthy — himself included.

    Trump is sabotaging Obamacare in new ways that will likely hurt untold numbers of his voters. . .

    The Trump administration’s sabotage of the Affordable Care Act shows contempt for his supporters in another way. In its statement justifying the latest pullout from enrollment events, HHS did not even attempt to offer an actual policy rationale for the move — there is none — and instead lied robotically about how Obamacare 'continues to collapse.' But the Trump administration’s actions are encouraging chaos in that direction. . .

The point here is not that this should reflect badly on Trump supporters. They of course may disagree that all these things operate against their interests, or they may have plenty of other reasons to continue backing him anyway. Rather, the point is that the arguments that Trump and his administration are making to them on all these fronts are not being made in good faith, as if Trump believes his own supporters can be lied to or betrayed with great ease. Never mind whether they’re 'deplorables' — Trump himself is treating them like a bunch of suckers."

Read the Washington Post, Hey, deplorables: Trump and his advisers are laughing in your faces.

Read also Trump's Big CON: Happy Labor Day Suckers!